Mid Q2-2026 Article Summaries (Flourishing and Capitalism)

Flourishing
We (mankind) continue to learn more about happiness. It seems to have 5 (4 strong and 1 weak) components.

PERMA is one acronym for those five components--and this article is an overview on those 5 things. FYI--they don't say it in the overview, but the weak component is the last.

Check it out and see how you would rank yourself. 

Capitalism (and socialism) 
The one foundational belief we have as investors is that capitalism works. We expect companies to create products that people like and buy, and then we share in the profits.

Recently, socialism is getting attention. Like a zombie that will never really die, it continues to resurface.

So a quick understand of the basics of each is helpful. I found this article provided a nice insight.

Private Market investing
Not all companies can be bought on the stock market. In fact, they guess only about 13% of them can be. Some of that makes sense--who wants to buy shares in the corner Chinese diner, the tattoo parlor, or a million other tiny businesses that are out there?

But there are some sizeable/reputable companies that are still privately held (see the next article summary for a look at when they go public). And recently, much has been made about investing in those private companies--should we be participating, if possible?

Turns out, we have been indirectly investing in them (to a minor degree) already. Because large companies that we hold spend some of their money on those private ventures, as this article discusses.

SpaceX and IPOs
When a company starts to trade on the stock market ("goes public"), it is called an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Often that happens when companies are small/medium sized, but on occasion you get a behemoth private company going public. 

SpaceX and some AI companies are doing that shortly. And it has some impacts, especially to Index investors.

We are not specifically Index investors, but are similar. These large IPOs reveal why we have that "same, but not same" philosophy about index investing. And this video explains it well!