Football Clubs

  • Interesting report from KPMG on valuation of football clubs.
  • There are actually several listed football clubs – Manchester United, AS Roma, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Celtic, Lazio to name a few.
  • Attached is an interesting table showing operating revenue evolution as well as how the revenue split between matchday, broadcasting and commercial has evolved.

Netflix Accounting

  • A good article on accounting at Netflix.
  • In short, it analyses content amortisation accounting and shows that this line item is being understated, boosting earnings.
  • A staggering stat is that Netflix content spend went from $2bn in 2011 to nearly $14bn last year.
  • This might not be relevant for the share price for now but is still worth knowing about.

George Soros

  • An old but fantastic article on George Soros.
  • Interesting lessons here on buying into bubbles, reflexivity (that markets can influence the events they anticipate), instinct (the famous back pain he gets) and mistakes.
  • He once asked Byron Wien, an investment strategist and friend, why he went to work every day. Why not work on the days when it makes sense to do so, he asked, when there is something special to be done?
  • Wien replied: “George, one of the differences between you and me is you know when those days are and I don’t.

Alternative Data

  • A must read article on the rise of alternative data in the investment management industry from the Man Group Institute.
  • This chart shows how the supply of this data has exploded.
  • Demand has also followed.
  • The article contains plenty of warnings and things to be mindful of including – methodology, data quality, historic length, data lag, various biases, scope, governance and crowding.

UK Universities

  • Good article on the possible future financial difficulties faced by UK Universities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • This chart shows that from 2006 to 2019 the number of Chinese students (paying full fees) in UK universities increased from 25k to 90k.
  • Fees are by far the most important source of income.
  • It is unclear what Covid-19 impact will be next year but as suggested it could just be short term liquidity issue for universities.

Making Mistakes

  • Making mistakes in investing is normal.
  • One of the better investment books around is exactly about that.
  • A personal favourite was when Stanley Druckenmiller got himself involved in Tech stocks at the top of the dot-com bubble.
  • Druckenmiller knew exactly what he was doing – he just couldn’t stop himself. ‘I bought $6 billion worth of tech stocks, and in six weeks I had lost $3 billion in that one play. You asked me what I learned. I didn’t learn anything. I already knew that I wasn’t supposed to do that. I was just an emotional basketcase and couldn’t help myself. So maybe I learned not to do it again, but I already knew that.‘”
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