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A great bit of analysis on the supply chain financing “fintech” called Greensill that saw $800m of investment from Softbank last year. A lot of red flags and conflicts of interest in this new asset class.
Netflix has a bigger content budget than the top five European countries combined. From a brilliant slide deck by Benedict Evans.
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.
Money supply growth, driven by the explosion of Fed liquidity, has been considerably stronger than during the last crisis. Source .
Intriguing post about Apple possibly launching their own search engine with lots of supporting evidence.
Employment PMIs are important to watch for economic follow through. It appears only the US is seeing a rebound in hiring according to flash PMIs for August.
The statement Jeff Bezos gave to US Congress at the end of July is worth a read. A great piece on what it takes to build a business.
JPM compiled global Covid risk index (weighted by population (green) and by GDP (orange)), continues to decline. Source: JPM Covid Research Compliation .
Yelp data suggests that, despite total business closures falling, the percentage that are permanent has risen from 41% in June to 55% now. Source: Yelp Economic Average Report – which contains lots of interesting data.
Latest internal JPM Chase data suggests gradual recovery in socially distanced discretionary spending is back after a pause. This is defined as “card present” transactions that require people to go someplace and not buy from home (e.g. lodging, rental cars etc). Taken from the latest and always excellent JPM Covid Research Compilation .
Cool table comparing metrics for Billboard Top 10 tracks in 2020 vs. 2000. It now takes more producers, more songwriters, and a whopping 60% have a featured artist. Songs are also about 16% shorter (the Spotify effect ).
YC have consolidated nearly 15 years of resources for startup founders in one place – the YC Startup Library . Full of blog posts, essays, videos and podcasts.
Surprising list of the top 10 countries by population in 2100 compared to the past. Could you have guessed?
A good tool that shows how Trump is tracking vs. Biden when compared to the same time in the 2016 election against Clinton.
Interesting chart showing the drivers of individual stock performance 1990-2009 from BCG/Morgan Stanley study. The study found that sales and (eventual) profit growth are the most important drivers – and that their importance increases with investment period.
A great presentation and separate post about a huge eCommerce business you probably haven’t heard of, founded only in 2015. Its success is down to a team buying feature, social integration, gamification and live streaming. These features have led to a daily active user (DAU) to monthly active user (MAU) ratio, a measure of engagement, of almost 50% – the highest, by some margin, among peers. h/t Benedict Evans .
Chart showing valuations of the US stock market using Shiller P/E from latest piece by GMO, who argue that it is “absurd”. Valuations on this basis are in the 95th percentile (right up there in terms of one of the most expensive markets of all time).
It is well documented that the CO2 intensity (CO2 per unit of economic growth) of the world has improved. However the level of emissions keeps going up, with recent increases mostly coming from emerging economies. The reason? These countries have taken the burden of de-industrialisation by the developed world over the last 25 years. As the chart shows – this has taken the form of a shift of carbon-intensive manufacturing of steel, cement, ammonia and plastics. These goods are produced both for domestic needs but also for export to the developed world. Sourced from the brilliant JPM Energy Outlook note .
A fascinating post on the history of fraud and how short sellers and the media uncover it – with clear parallels to Wirecard today. As Jim Chanos put it – “It is short sellers who are the real time financial detectives, whereas the regulators are often financial archaeologists.” Interesting chart showing how speculative grade bonds dominated as the role of underwriters changed.
The growth of podcasts has gone parabolic. So has listening – growing 31% since Jan 2020. It is likely a $1bn advertising industry by next year.
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