S&P 500 is a Market-Cap Weighted Index

It's that time of year, when pundits look back at the last 12 months and try to say something meaningful.

It's striking how the vast majority of those pundits say something like "2025 was a great year in the stock market; the S&P 500 is up 17 % this year".

Here's CNBC: S&P 500 slides, but gets set to close out 2025 with 17% gain; here's the BBC: US stock market ends 2025 on a high note after volatile year.

Deep down in the fine print, they'll mumble something about market-cap weighting and large cap stocks, of course.

It's really striking to see the details though, for this year has been very startlingly the year of winners and losers.

Let's just look at the top 10 holdings of the SP 500 in January and today, and see how they went. It's a simple table: where were they at the start of 2025, where are they now, and what was the year like for them?

So, if you owned the entire index this year, you indeed saw a 17% gain.

If you were a holder of just, say, Google or Broadcom or nVidia, you saw a 55% gain this year!

If you were a holder of Apple or Microsoft or Tesla or Berkshire Hathaway, you saw a gain of something from 7% to 17%.

But if you were a holder of Amazon or Meta, you actually saw a 2 or 3 percent loss this year.

Remember, these are very big companies. Amazon's market capitalization is 2.5 trillion dollars.

This year, there were winners and losers.

NIL and the LU Oaklanders

I routinely go for bicycle rides that take me past the old Oakland Raiders headquarters, which is about 1.5 miles from my house.

I had noticed, over the years, several other organizations which were using that facility for various purposes, including: a local youth soccer league, the Oakland Roots semi-pro soccer team, etc.

TIL that there is another occasional tenant, the Lincoln University Oaklanders.

Even after nearly 40 years living in the Oakland area, I had no idea that Lincoln University existed. Even though my daughter's office is only one block away from Lincoln. My bad.

But why does Lincoln University have a football team?

Wikipedia observes

Lincoln University is a private university in Oakland, California, United States. It enrolls more than 500 students in undergraduate- and graduate-level programs in business administration as well as an English-language program, certificate programs, and bachelor of science programs.

Not really the sort of institution you'd expect to find fielding a college football program.

The Chronicle's SFGate writers attempt to explain what's going on: For Calif.'s worst college football team, a 0-287 slump is the tip of a scandal:

Results against Lincoln count just as much as wins and losses against any blue-blood program. Thanks to the university’s accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission, known as WSCUC, which is up for review in February 2026, the Oaks qualify as a “countable opponent” for NCAA teams.

Even without standard governing structures in place, Lincoln has no problem filling out a schedule. As the old coaching adage goes: The best ability is availability. Lincoln is more than happy to occupy a blank space on a schedule for teams across the country.

And really, that's all you need to know, if you've been paying enough attention to the world to know what NIL is, and why the CFTC is now in charge of sports gambling for college sports.

It's a weird world we live in. But, at least now I know who the newest tenant at the old Raiders facility is.

Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing!

Of course, you already knew that BG3 is amazing. Everybody knew it. Even I knew it.

But somehow I had waited 2 years to actually install it on my computer.

Happily, I have now fixed that problem.

And so all I need is some time...

Not only is this the most beautiful XKCD post of all time, ...

... it is the most beautiful webcomic ever posted anywhere on the web by anyone.

The ouroboros is preparing to close the loop.

My blogging software suggested that it would be glad to allow the AI to write my blog from now on.

NTSB video explaining why the Dali lost control

18 months ago, in March 2024, the MV Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore Harbor.

The National Transportation Safety Board has released the summary section of its report on the incident.

There are many findings in the report, and lots to think about, but a particularly interesting part is the loose wire that crippled the ship at a critical moment. The NTSB made a very good 2 minute video explaining exactly what went wrong.

Another very interesting observation is this:

Contributing to the collapse of the Key Bridge and the loss of life was the lack of countermeasures to reduce the bridge’s vulnerability to collapse due to impact by ocean-going vessels, which have only grown larger since the Key Bridge’s opening in 1977. When the Japan-flagged containership Blue Nagoya contacted the Key Bridge after losing propulsion in 1980, the 390-foot-long vessel caused only minor damage. The Dali, however, is 10 times the size of the Blue Nagoya.

This seems like a sensible recommendation in response to that observation:

To the US Coast Guard:

1. Conduct and publish the results of a study that examines the availability, feasibility, and safety benefits of redundant means to ensure that large singlepropulsion-engine cargo vessels maintain propulsion and steering when maneuvering in restricted waters.

Quite a lot has changed in 50 years. There's lots to learn, and lots to do.

The Road from the Past: a very short review

Ina Caro's The Road from the Past is hard to describe. It's not a travel guide, it's not a history, it's not an autobiography. And yet, in various ways, it is all three.

Caro found herself traveling extensively in France, and decided to try her own approach:

Most people return from Europe with a memory of the places they have visited that is very much like a salad after it has been put through a Cuisinart. They have been to so many countries and heard so many dates and names of kings that when they return, the trip is all a blur. When I see the typical American tourist, I feel like yelling out, "Don't do it that way, it's no fun. Do it my way."

If you do it my way, you will rent a time machine -- available at any rent-a-car agency -- and drive through history. Our time machine can't take us into the future any faster than a minute at a time, but we can, if we properly plan our route, actually simulate the sensation of traveling through several centries of the past on a magical vacation in France. If you follow the route I describe from Provence to Paris, traveling to some of the most magnificent and beautiful monasteries, churches, chateaux, and towns built in France over a period of nearly two thousand years, and visit these sites in the order they were built, you will feel almost as if you are traveling through the past, through the history of France.

Indeed, her book describes exactly that: a journey she and her husband took through France, from Provence to Paris, visiting locations in a way designed to move from the very early Roman times, though the middle ages, into the Renaissance, through the Grand Siecle, and ending at last in modern-day France.

I read portions of Caro's book before a recent trip to Bordeaux, bouncing around from chapter to chapter and "visiting" some of my planned destinations ahead of time, through Caro's eyes.

It was a lovely way to whet my appetite for my journey, but in a way I broke Caro's cardinal rule, because I didn't read her entire book, start to finish, but rather sampled different portions that matched my existing plans.

That is, I read her book as a guidebook, rather than as autobiography.

But really, it doesn't matter: if you're interested in France, and have the time, Caro's book is a lovely way to start learning the extraordinarily long and complex history of this fascinating country. Read it however you want to.