11 dispatches
The rise of Asia as a force to be reckoned with in large scale manufacturing of critical components like batteries, solar panels, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and semiconductors has left US and European governments seeking to catch up with a bit of a dilemma. These activities largely moved to Asia because financially-motivated management teams in the West (correctly) recognized...
Until recently, I only knew of the existence of cat(astrophe) bonds — financial instruments used to raise money for insurance against catastrophic events where investors profit when no disaster happens. I had no idea, until reading this Bloomberg article about the success of Fermat Capital Management, how large the space had gotten ($45 billion!!) or how it was one of the most...
Nice piece in the Economist about how Costco’s model of operational simplicity leads to a unique position in modern retail: beloved by customers, investors, AND workers: * sell fewer things ➡️ * get better prices from suppliers & less inventory needed ➡️ * lower costs for customers ➡️ * more customers & more willing to pay recurring membership fee ➡️ * strong, recurring...
Commercial real estate (and, by extension, community banks) are in a world of hurt as hybrid/remote work, higher interest rates, and property bubbles deflating/popping collide… ---
One of the core assumptions of modern financial planning and finance is that stocks have better returns over the long-run than bonds. The reason “seems” obvious: stocks are riskier. There is, after all, a greater chance of going to zero since bond investors come before stock investors in a legal line to get paid out after a company fails.
If you’ve been exposed to any financial news in the last few days, you’ll have heard of Gamestop, the mostly brick and mortar video gaming retailer who’s stock has been caught between many retail investors on the subreddit r/WallstreetBets and hedge fund Melvin Capital which had been actively betting against the company.
S&P500 Performance for 2020 (Yahoo Finance), pulled Jan 17, 2021 2020 has seen the greatest market volatility in history for American stocks. The roller-coaster ride investors have experienced over the last 6 months included a steep ~33% single-month drop followed by a four-month bull market run taking the S&P500 back roughly to where it started.
Despite the recent spotlight on the staggering $1.5 trillion in student debt that 44 million Americans owe in 2019, there has been surprisingly little discussion on how to measure the value of a college education relative to its rapidly growing price tag (which is the reason so many take on debt to pay for it).
You can learn a great deal from reading and comparing the financial filings of two close competitors. Tech-finance nerd that I am, you can imagine how excited I was to see Lyft’s and Uber’s respective S-1’s become public within mere weeks of each other. While the general financial press has covered a lot of the top-level figures on profitability (or lack thereof) and revenue...
A look at what Snap’s S-1 reveals about their growth story and unit economics If you follow the tech industry at all, you will have heard that consumer app darling Snap Inc. (makers of the app Snapchat) has filed to go public. The ensuing Form S-1 that has recently been made available has left tech-finance nerds like yours truly drooling over the until-recently-super-secretive...
In recent years, it’s been the opposite of controversial to say that the tech industry is in a bubble. The terrible recent stock market performance of once high-flying startups across virtually every industry (see table below) and the turmoil in the stock market stemming from low oil prices and concerns about the economies of countries like China and Brazil have raised fears...