Interestingly – “Given the pronounced shift to digital, we reassessed how much shops contribute to whether our customers buy online with us or not. Before the pandemic we believed that shops contributed around £6 of every £10 spent online but we now think that figure is £3. John Lewis shops are now held on our balance sheet at almost half the value they were before the write downs recognised in 2019/20 and 2020/21“.
“The five year constant maturity Treasury yield has risen; but after accounting for the estimated term premium, the increase is much more modest, if not negative. Moreover, expected 5 year inflation has not on net moved much over 2021.“
Correction: One needs to also adjust for the liquidity premium.
A thought provoking and contrarian read arguing that the tailwinds from the internet and silicon valley are fading i.e. the industry is maturing.
This chart shows that growth rates are coming down in most areas of tech.
Worth noting it was done in early 2020 so missed the pandemic driven acceleration (the unanswered question being whether that was just pull forward or a true step change).
This type of environment leads to a rebalance of growth away from start-ups towards internet-first incumbents – as the former can’t rely on the market to grow and the latter use vast operational muscle.
This has profound effects including the financialisation of the technology industry.
“Making a train journey 20 per cent faster might cost hundreds of millions, but making it 20 per cent more enjoyable may cost almost nothing.“
“The Uber map is a psychological moonshot because it does not reduce the waiting time for a taxi but simply makes waiting 90 per cent less frustrating.“
“It seems likely that the biggest progress in the next 50 years may come not from improvements in technology but in psychology and design thinking. Put simply, it’s easy to achieve massive improvements in perception at a fraction of the cost of equivalent improvements in reality.“
This chart shows the S&P 500 (green line) vs. dealer gamma exposure (yellow/purple line).
“The read is simple: positive dealer gamma means that dealer flow attenuates market flow (i.e. the brakes are on); negative dealer gamma means that dealer flow amplifies market flow (i.e. pedal to the metal).”
The level on the 4th of March is 30% more than this time last year – which ever direction the market moves it will be get an extra boost.
The article covers its tumultuous founding (YC start-up) and history.
The undervaluation vs peers – the latest round valued the company at $6bn or $115 per daily active user (DAU) vs. $400 for Facebook and $310 for Twitter.
And finally possible areas of improvement and expansion.
All interesting to read ahead of the speculated IPO.
We previously covered one brilliant tool to emerge from his lab – Project Alpha – which tracks in real time probability of success for clinical trials.
This is a good article about him and how his ideas about pooling biotech research into a mega-fund has come to life with BridgeBio (IPOed in 2019).
The inventory of housing in the US is at a record low.
Seasonally it tends to be the lowest around the winter months.
Inventory dictates prices more than any other variable and factors suggest it will increase slowing house price growth from the blistering +10.9% forecast for January.
They relate largely to teaching and writing mathematics but, with Farnam Street’s magic commentary, they transcend to much of life.
A nice quote from Feynman as well – “Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’”
