Truck Orders

  • The very economically sensitive orders of heavy (Class 8) trucks in the US continue to be robust.
  • This is an odd situation. We are in a highly uncertain, yet very stable, environment. You have a pandemic, a presidential campaign, and social unrest all occurring at the same time. However, the economy is briskly recovering and generating ample freight. Fleets are ordering only what they need, and thus, orders are aligning very closely to production rates.

Income Mobility

  • Interesting chart on income mobility in the US.
  • This graphic plots the probability that a 30-year-old American has to out earn their parents (vertical axis) depending on their parent’s income percentile (horizontal axis). The 1st percentile represents America’s lowest earners, while the 99th percentile the richest.
  • Take the 50th percentile (“middle class”) – the probability of someone out-earning their parents has fallen precipitously – it was 93% for people born in 1940 and dropped to 45% for those born in 1980.

Food delivery and competition

  • Brilliant article on the monopolistic power of food delivery businesses especially as they begin to vertically integrate and merge around the world.
  • Losing money to acquire market power, or to steal from investors, is a form of counterfeiting, because it drives honest competitors that have to generate a profit out of the market“.

Rapid Covid Testing

  • There was a lot of excitement about the FDA approving a rapid (15 minute, $5) SARS-CoV-2 test.
  • This is an interesting analysis of when such a test would be useful and when not?
  • In short – if the true infection rate of the population you are testing is very low (<1%) it won’t be useful.
  • Which means using such a test on cruise ships, as some have suggested, won’t work.

US Government R&D spending

  • Over the past six decades, US government spending on R&D has steadily declined as a percentage of total federal spending (outlays) and GDP.
  • This has occurred while other countries sped ahead.
  • Because of this the government’s role has diminished – from funding 66.8% of all R&D spending in 1964 to just 21.9% in 2018.

The story of ICE

  • A great post about the history of Intercontinental Exchange and its founder Jeffery Sprecher. Its success was based on a few factors.
  • (1) “Sprecher gave away 80% of the company to his customers as an incentive for them to trade at his venue.” 
  • (2) “the company had a lucky break when Enron went bust.”
  • (3) Lots of deals meant diversification especially into oil trading and clearing. 20 deals in the past 15 years. Three criteria drove these – enhance network, new content, turnarounds.
  • It also comes down to three insights – analogue to digital, using regulation as an opportunity and the power of data.
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