75% of containers that come to the US from overseas return to their origin empty. [qz]
China is disclosing 90% less economic statistics than it did in 2010. [JP Morgan]
Blue zones, “regions of the globe that supposedly contain lots and lots of extremely old people“, have nothing to teach us about extending human life. [Cremieux Recueil]
In an unprecedented move, the Tokyo Stock Exchange sent letters to any company trading below book value to ask for a concrete plan to reverse this valuation. [Nikkei]
Roger Federer said “In the 1526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for you. What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%.” [fs]
In the UK, more than half of crimes are estimated to be caused by alcohol consumption. [OurWorldinData]
At the end of the 19th century, Japan transformed from a poor economy to a manufacturing export powerhouse in just fifteen years. How? A massive effort to translate and codify technical information in the Japanese language. The only non-Western country to do so at such scale. [NBER]
The best car salesman in history offers simple advice “People want a fair deal from someone they like.”When questioned about his actions to get people to like him, he simply says, “I tell them that I like them.”. [fs]
If you had 100 bottles of wine and one was poisoned you could figure out which one with just seven tests. [Understanding the unseen]
Electric vehicles are now selling more slowly than gas-powered cars. [Edmunds]
Encouragingly for gas-powered cars, the 2022 model year saw the largest single-year improvement in CO2 emission rates and fuel economy in nine years. All while horsepower keeps going up. [EPA]
You can now circle something in a screenshot and search for it on Google. [Google Circle]
Stock markets are an amazing place – since 1980 intra-year the market fell 14.2% on average, but recovered to end positive 33 out of those 44 years. [JP Morgan]
More countries have produced a nuclear bomb than mass-produced a jet engine. [Construction Physics]
In his 2020 annual letter Larry Fink, the CEO of the largest asset manager in the world, mentioned the the words “sustainability” and “climate” nearly 50 times. In 2023 it was less than 10. [Nat Bullard]
Transsion Holdings is the world’s fifth-largest mobile phone maker, commanding 40% of Africa’s market. [Nikkei]
The cost of desalination has fallen sharply. [LGIM]
China controls 40% of the world’s commercial shipbuilding capacity. The US has just 0.5%. [CIMSEC]
Almost 60% of the volume of options traded are those with one day left to expiry. [BIS]
1,250 artists in 2023 earned more than $1m from Spotify, triple the level in 2017. [Spotify]
Where you live—what city, what country—has more impact on your well-being than any other factor. Where you live is one of the few things in your life you can choose and change. [KK]
“Addiction kills more Americans than cancer or heart disease but only 4% of people with substance use disorders currently receive medication.“ [Recursive Adaptation]
More people use Marijuana daily or nearly daily than those who drink alcohol. [Axios]
“I know that the legal profession does a great job of identifying competence and rewarding it financially. Cheap lawyers are expensive.“ [Sasha]
Owning a major US sports team in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL has handily outperformed the S&P 500. [JPAM]
We may have just discovered a word processor for DNA, whereas before we had newspaper clippings and scissors. [Arc Institute]
87% of companies with revenues above $100m are private. [CAIA]
Shipping goods with a value less than $800 in the US (150 EUR in Europe) is import duty-free – something Chinese firms like Temu and Shein have been taking advantage of, accounting for an estimated 30% of such “de-minimis” shipments last year. [Reuters]
PVC pipe markers managed to collude on fixing prices via an industry newsletter. [FTC]
Response rates of major economic surveys are falling making economic data hard to trust. [Apollo]
The S&P 500 index is meant to represent 500 companies. It has become so concentrated due to the rise of Mag 7 stocks that its effective diversification is less than 60 stocks. [GMO]
“The risk of a fatality from commercial air travel was 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period — a significant improvement from 1 per 7.9 million boardings in 2008-2017 and a far cry from the 1 per every 350,000 boardings that occurred in 1968-1977, the study finds.“ [MIT]
Compliance officer is one of the fastest growing professions in the US, along with manicurist and HR manager. [Net Interest]
Organic food is neither healthier nor better for the environment, it also uses pesticides. [Scientific American]
26 million Americans are still uninsured, this is down from 46.5 million in 2010 all thanks to The Affordable Care Act. [EconoFact]
In the UK online is now on par with TV in terms of how people consume news. [Ofcom]
Newspapers just don’t endorse presidential candidates anymore. [Axios]
29% of all workers in agriculture and 25% in construction are immigrants. [Pew]
Drug overdose deaths have been falling over for the last 18 months. [Kevin Drum]
Just 3% of companies that grew sales 20%+ are doing so 10 years later. [Goldman Sachs]
The vast majority of Y Combinator startups today are focused on AI. [JP Morgan]
“A 2024 IQVIA report shows that the share of clinical trials launched by Chinese-headquartered biopharmaceutical companies rose from 3 percent in 2013 to 28 percent in 2023, suggesting a growing involvement of Chinese companies in early-phase drug development.“ [IQVIA]
The CTA industry appears to be in terminal decline. [CAIA]
The equity base of US markets is shrinking – since 1986 just $2.6 trillion worth of new and follow-on equity was issued in the US market against $21 trillion of demand (from buybacks, M&A, and retail flow). [Fidelity]
The power efficiency of datacenters has flatlined even before AI. [Nat Bullard]
“People whose surnames start with U, V, W, X, Y, or Z tend to get grades 0.6% lower than people with A-to-E surnames. Modern learning management systems sort papers alphabetically before they’re marked, so those at the bottom are always seen last, by tired, grumpy markers. A few teachers flip the default setting and mark Z to A, and their results are reversed.” [Tom Whitwell]
Only 7% of people made it through Nobel Prize economist Daniel Khaneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”. [Idea Farm]
The Chernobyl disaster may have killed 60 people and poisoned 60,000 but the abandonment of nuclear power that followed was likely responsible for 4 million deaths from air pollution as more coal was used for base power [Klementoninvesting]
Due to AI and other drivers of demand, The US could face up to a 40 GW electricity supply gap by 2030, equivalent to 40 nuclear power plants. [TemaETFs]
“It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.“ [Slate Star Codex]
The overturning of the Chevron deference is perhaps one of the most important Supreme Court decisions with far-reaching ramifications for how the US writes, interprets, and implements administrative laws. [Supreme Court]
Since 2010, the UK has cut every public sector department expenditure in real per capita terms apart from health. It has moved the country to the bottom of the G7 in terms of spending and taxation. [Mainlymacro]
“The IoD Directors’ Economic Confidence Index, which measures business leader optimism in prospects for the UK economy, fell to -65 in November 2024 from -52 in October and for the fourth month running.“
“People whose surnames start with U, V, W, X, Y or Z tend to get grades 0.6% lower than people with A-to-E surnames. Modern learning management systems sort papers alphabetically before they’re marked, so those at the bottom are always seen last, by tired, grumpy markers. A few teachers flip the default setting and mark Z to A, and their results are reversed.“
Ozempic seems to be changing the second hand clothes market, creating a surge in plus-size women’s apparel sales. Size 3XL listings have doubled over the last two years
“Evo is a genomic foundation model that enables prediction and generation tasks from the molecular to genome scale. Using an architecture based on advances in deep signal processing, Evo is trained on 7 billion parameters with a context length of 131 kilobases at single-nucleotide resolution. Evo captures two fundamental aspects of biology—the multimodality of the central dogma and the multiscale nature of evolution.“
Elliott are after Honeywell with a $5bn stake and a letter arguing for a break-up.
This chart from their letter shows how splitting up has led to improved performance – which so far the stock market has rewarded handsomely (e.g. CARR is worth more now than UTX was pre-spins).
