Most Read on Bloomberg: Good-But-Busted ETFs, Drifting Stocks

(Bloomberg) -- The most-read Bloomberg News reports from the past week are listed below. The rankings are based on daily statistics through Aug. 27.

See READSUMS for previous lists.

STORIES

1. At BlackRock Even a 40% Gain Can’t Save ETFs From the Trash
(Bloomberg) -- Making money isn’t enough to survive in the fund industry anymore.

2. Dollar Gains, Stocks Fall as Fischer Adds to Fedspeak; Oil Sinks
(Bloomberg) -- Traders pushed up the dollar, while sending stocks and commodities down as comments from a Federal Reserve official bolstered speculation that U.S. borrowing costs will rise this year.

3. Stock, Bond Rally Fizzles as Fischer Remarks Bolster Rate Wagers
(Bloomberg) -- The stock market optimism with Janet Yellen’s bullish comments on the U.S. economy fizzled after Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said an interest-rate increase is possible in September. Bonds tumbled, while the dollar gained.

4. Stocks Decline on Emerging-Market Risk as U.S. Drugmakers Tumble
(Bloomberg) -- Stocks fell as heightened political and security risks rattled emerging markets, oil tumbled and U.S. biotechnology stocks had their biggest drop in two months as politicians decried drug price hikes.

5. World’s Biggest Bond Traders Undeterred by Negative Yields
(Bloomberg) -- It might be considered absurd, if not for the unprecedented contortions in global financial markets.

6. Yellen Says Rate-Hike Case ‘Strengthened in Recent Months’
(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the case to raise interest rates is getting stronger as the U.S. economy approaches the central bank’s goals.

7. S&P 500 Closes Near High on Fed Bets Amid Mixed Data; Oil Rises
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks closed near a record high after mixed data in the world’s largest economy bolstered speculation the Federal Reserve will be in no rush to raise interest rates. Oil climbed.

8. Stocks Run Out of Steam With Bonds, Dollar Before Yellen Speech
(Bloomberg) -- Traders pushed down the value of U.S. stocks, bonds and the dollar before a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen that may provide clues as to the path for interest rates in the world’s largest economy.

9. September Fed Bets Jump to 1-in-3 From Zero as Yellen Speech Key
(Bloomberg) --Traders see one-in-three odds of higher U.S. interest rates next month as more Federal Reserve officials joined the chorus arguing the case for policy tightening before Chair Janet Yellen speaks Friday.

10. Donald Trump the Mortgage Broker Was in Trouble From Start
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump had heard all the chatter, the idle talk about how the U.S. housing market was overheating and trouble was looming. He was unfazed. It was the spring of 2006 and he was pushing a new mortgage business, Trump Mortgage LLC.

COLUMNS

1. Watch Trump Build His Campaign Team (Again): Timothy L. O’Brien
(Bloomberg View) -- Eric Trump emailed Monday to encourage me to donate $25 to his father’s presidential campaign, promising that I’d be added to a list of supporters that his Dad would review personally. The mass message also highlighted some priorities that Eric said he’s learned from his father and that presumably are being put to use in the Trump campaign: research, fast action, hard work and building "a team with smarts and experience."

2. It’s Fundamental Why Buffett Beats the Stock Market: Noah Smith
(Bloomberg View) -- Eugene Fama and Richard Thaler, two legendary finance professors at the University of Chicago, recently had a debate about whether markets are efficient. Fama was generally perceived to have gotten the better of the exchange, and I tend to agree with him -- the efficient markets hypothesis isn’t strictly true, but it’s a great baseline for thinking about markets.

3. Apollo Paid Itself Some Fees and Gave Itself Loans: Matt Levine
(Bloomberg View) -- There is a genre of Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action in which someone starts an investment fund, raises money from investors and then blows that money -- or some of it, anyway -- on personal expenses. A feature of this genre is that the SEC lists the personal expenses in some detail, because they are funny. Really anyone’s personal expenses, pulled from their context in life and placed into the context of an SEC enforcement action, will be funny. "I can’t believe this dope spent investor money on bagels, whiskey and in-game purchases on his phone," I’ll laugh, as though there were other things to spend money on. But also, people who steal from their investment funds tend to spend the money on certain kinds of expense, and those expenses just read funny. If you catered to people running crooked investment funds, you could run a very profitable steakhouse, or a Ferrari dealership, or like eight strip clubs. You’d have a harder time with a used bookstore.

4. Brexit Delay Risks Triggering a Shotgun Divorce: Mark Gilbert
(Bloomberg View) -- It’s been exactly two months since Britain voted to quit the European Union. Since then, the silence on how the divorce proceedings will be conducted has been deafening. It’s an impasse that helps neither side and, once Europe’s August holiday season is over and the region’s politicians are back at their desks, there’s a risk that things could turn nasty.

5. Do Index Funds Put Us on the Road to Communism?: Matt Levine
(Bloomberg View) -- I have been half-joking for a year and a half that maybe index funds should be illegal, but here is an almost entirely serious claim from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. that they are worse than communism.

MULTIMEDIA

1. Marks: ’Stakes Are Too High’ to Be Quiet on 2016 Election
(Bloomberg) -- Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Group, explains why he felt the need to speak to his clients about the importance of presidential politics and why Hillary Clinton is the better choice for President of the United States.

2. Marks: Oaktree Has ’Amped Up’ Caution, Selectivity
(Bloomberg) -- Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Group, talks about being cautious and selective in current market conditions, the relative attractiveness of high yield bonds, and what may end investors’ interest in high yield. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker on "Bloomberg ‹GO›."

3. A Toast to Maintaining Inherited Wealth Over Thirty Generations
(Bloomberg) -- Lamberto Frescobaldi sets two wine glasses atop a wooden barrel in the spacious cellar of his company’s winery in a 1,000-year-old castle not far from Florence. Uncorking a bottle of Nipozzano, he takes a sip and nods. The red that his family supplied to Michelangelo and Pope Leo X still tastes pretty darn good. To Frescobaldi, 53, directing the family business is something of a trust. It’s a way to preserve a dynasty that began with wool traders in about the year 1000 and made its money financing the English crown almost 200 years later.

4. Block: St. Jude Heart Devices Vulnerable to Hacks
(Bloomberg) -- Muddy Waters LLC, the research firm founded by short seller Carson Block, enters new territory: placing a bet against the financial strength of St. Jude Medical Inc. even as the medical device company is in the midst of being taken over by Abbott Laboratories.

5. Fed’s George: ’Time to Move’ on Normalizing Rates
(Bloomberg) -- Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George is reiterating her position that it’s time to continue the process of normalizing monetary policy. She spoke to Bloomberg’s Michael McKee before the start of the Kansas City Fed’s Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

--With assistance from Anny Kuo in New York.

To contact the reporter on this story: Audrey Barker in New York at abarker3@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bob Brennan at rjbrennan@bloomberg.net.

To contact the reporter on this story: Audrey Barker in New York at abarker3@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bob Brennan at rjbrennan@bloomberg.net, Stanley James