Misc

Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.

Misc

Chinese AI

  • From only being founded in 1949 to having no AI publication in 1980, the Chinese Academy of Sciences now firmly has the top spot in quality AI research.
  • Truly remarkable catch up, also by the Chinese universities, now publishing on par with Western leaders.
  • Source: State of AI Report 2021 (must read report, just overflowing with interesting insights)
Misc

Hedge Fund Correlation

  • Hedge fund returns have become gradually more correlated to the S&P 500*.
  • This is bad for diversification and when combined with falling alpha, as described in this post, is worrying.
  • *This chart shows the 10-year trailing correlation of hedge fund returns (measured by a 50/50 weighted after fee return of Barclay Hedge Fund and HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Indices) vs. S&P 500.
Misc

Dan Loeb

  • A belated snippet of this outstanding profile of legendary investor Dan Loeb (I posted his letters several times) – founder of Third Point Capital, a $20bn hedge fund, that compounded over +15% pa for 25 years and pioneered activist investing.
  • Third point is named after his favourite surf break in Malibu.
  • In the early days of the fund – Loeb posted on forums as “Mr Pink”. Interesting to see further confirmation of media-first investors.
Misc

Newsletters

  • There is a growing trend of financial newsletters being acquired.
  • Abrdn (the newly renamed Aberdeen Asset Management) has acquired Finimize and their 1m subs (40,000 premium).
  • Morning Brew went to Business Insider for $75m (ca. 3.8x sales or $25 per each of its 3m subs).
  • Robinhood acquired MarketSnacks.
  • Others are looking to deploy serious capital into financial media.
  • Big media is also noticing (e.g. The Information launched a tech stack for newsletters).
Misc

France

  • “France is a monarchy that undergoes a succession crisis every five years, by way of an election.“
  • Simply fascinating read on the structure of French politics – namely the importance of the presidential seat of power.
  • This is all down to de Gaulle and his dislike of parliamentary democracy.
  • Through a referendum in 1962 he effectively destroyed the legislative branch.
  • “In France the President truly is the Roi-Soleil, the Sun-King, just by virtue of what you may call political gravity. There is a reason why the often petulant Macron calls himself Jupiter. It rings somewhat ridiculous and orotund. It also happens to be correct.“
Misc

52 Things I learned – 2021 edition.

  • We previously covered this brilliant list of 52 things learnt for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
  • Here is the 2021 edition – full of gems. A few choice examples:
  • “Social media headlines are evolving fast. Since 2017, they’ve got shorter (11 words vs 15 words), and many clickbait phrases like “…will make you…” or “things only … will understand” no longer work.” [BuzzSumo].
  • “Adding nature imagery (grass, trees, rainbows) to a pitch document seems to increase the likelihood of investment a little.” 
  • “Baileys Irish Cream was invented in 45 minutes in 1973 by two ad creatives in Soho.“
Misc

COBOL

  • COBOL is the programming language that underpins the entire financial system.
  • “Over 80% of in-person transactions at U.S. financial institutions use COBOL. Fully 95% of the time you swipe your bank card, there’s COBOL running somewhere in the background.“
  • “The second most valuable asset in the United States — after oil — is the 240 billion lines of COBOL”
  • The language is old (from the 1960s) and runs on huge machines (mainframes), yet it is extremely suited to the task of processing billions of transactions very fast.
  • A fascinating read.
Misc

UNPRI

  • “The number of asset managers and asset owners that are signatories to the Principles for Responsible Investment – thereby committing to incorporate environmental, social, and governance considerations into investment analysis and decision-making processes – more than doubled from about 1,400 in 2015 to more than 3,000 in 2020“
  • Source: IMF.
Misc

European Cloud (update)

  • Two years ago we posted about Europe’s attempt to challenge US tech dominance in cloud computing.
  • Predictably it has struggled.
  • “In conversations with POLITICO, more than a dozen industry and government officials involved with the work of Gaia-X said the project was struggling to get off the ground amid infighting between corporate members, disagreement over its overall aims and a bloated bureaucratic structure that is delaying decisions. One industry official closely involved in the work of Gaia-X called it a “mess.”“

Misc

Peter Thiel

  • Intriguing review of latest book on the Silicon Valley legend.
  • The book “does an excellent job of unpicking the disparate elements of the Thiel mythology”
  • From trying to get out of his early Facebook investment as fast as he could, including trying to convince Zuckerberg to sell to Yahoo for $1bn.
  • To his failed anti-college scholarships.
  • Absolutely worth a read.
Misc

Creator Economy

  • The creator economy is booming.
  • New platforms are largely to thank – they have transformed the economics of creating.
  • This is seen in the table from The Independent Creator Manifesto.
  • “In aggregating monetization across these 50 platforms, we’ve found that creators will soon pass more than $10 billion in aggregate earnings. While 2020 saw a jump in new creators, it wasn’t a one-time spike. A year later, creators are still coming online at a record clip: the number of creators is up a whopping 48% year-over-year. In total, these platforms have onboarded 668,000 creators.“
  • Substack just announced they have hit 1 million paid subscribers.
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