Misc
Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.
US Sports Franchise Transaction Values
- Transaction value of sports teams in the US.
- “As you can see, transaction prices for sports franchises have been marching upwards for the last two decades, with NBA and NFL teams registering the biggest increases, but have seen breakaway surges in the last few years.”
- Source.
Wind Turbnine Innovation
- Turbines without giant blades are the next stage of evolution.
- This could bring wind power generation closer to homes.
- Really fascinating developments.
Who is the world’s largest landowner?
- Try to guess who is number one – they own 1/6 of the world’s surface.
- Fascinating who else tops the list.
- Answers here.
Political Bias in LLM Models
- Something to be aware of.
- “OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4 were identified as most left-wing libertarian.”
- “Meta’s LLaMA was found to be the most right-wing authoritarian.“
- Source.
Biology as Engineering
- What if drug development could one day be like engineering?
- Artificial intelligence has the potential to make this a reality, as is so well explored in this accessible Forbes profile.
- One of the most exciting parts they highlight is de novo protein design i.e. building proteins from nothing (this is a nice post about it from Derek Lowe).
AML/KYC
- Anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) are gospel in finance – but should they even exist? Does it actually work?
- Bruce Fenton and Tyler Cowen think no, with some compelling arguments and data.
Scientific Revolutions
- Fascinating chart showing how scientific revolutions progressed 1300-1850 between different countries.
- “Here, we leverage large datasets of individual biographies (N = 22,943) and present the first estimates of scientific production during the late medieval and early modern period (1300–1850). Our data reveal striking differences across countries, with England and the United Provinces being much more creative than other countries, suggesting that economic development has been key in generating the Scientific Revolution.“
- Source: Cambridge University.
The Laws of Trading
- “A book about trading isn’t ever actually about trading. It is either:
- “A former trader sharing stories from their glory days, e.g. Liar’s Poker, the exposé that morphed into a how-to guide, or“
- “Tales of Icarus flying too close to the sun, where readers revel in schadenfreude, e.g., When Genius Failed.“
- So starts this engaging review of “The Laws of Trading” – a different take on the endeavour with broader lessons for decision-making in other domains.
- The book’s author, Lebron, trained and worked as an engineer before switching to a career as a researcher and quant trader at Jane Street.
Collateral Damage
- There has been a “seismic shift” in global financial markets – “the use of collateral, notably in the form of government securities” becoming “ubiquitous” at the cost of directly assessing borrower cash flow.
- Pushed along by policy this switch from relationship to transactions banking has resulted in an unprecedented broadening and deepening of financial markets, especially derivatives.
- Yet, this has also created huge vulnerabilities in financial markets, according to a new BIS article.
How to write like Malcom Gladwell
- It’s not just simple and clear – his writing, like that of Dickens, is rich and dense with information.
- Or at least that is what this brilliant article argues.
Hoarding Cash
Birds
- “Since 1970, the team reported in Science in 2019, the number of birds in North America has declined by nearly 3 billion: a 29 percent loss of abundance.“
- Source.
Inequality Narrative Violation
- “The world is growing more equal than it has been for over 100 years.“
- That might surprise many.
- Source.
Algorithms and AI
- AI is now being applied to finding better computer science algorithms.
- For example, Deepmind just cracked making a better sorting algorithm.
- This is a big deal. Why?
- “They underpin everything from ranking online search results and social posts to how data is processed on computers and phones.“
IRS Auditing Returns
- On average the IRS makes 2x return on audits.
- However, this varies greatly by income.
- Source.
Patient Capital with High Active Share
- High active share – where portfolios differ markedly from the benchmark – does well (+2% pa outperformance) but only if holding periods are over two years.
- So having high active share isn’t enough if the fund trades a lot.
- Being patient isn’t enough – as those with low active share do worse.
- Full paper here.
Understanding AI
- Economics says change happens in the adjustment of prices and relative prices.
- “Thanks to GPT, every programmer has the potential to be 10x more productive than the baseline from just 2 years ago.”
- This means:
- (1) The data-software combined price is collapsing opening enormous “volume growth”.
- (2) Within it the relative value of software vs. data, especially unique data sets, is changing in the benefit of the latter (Media companies?).
- (3) New scarcity is arising – likely in hardware and energy.
- Full article here.
Solar vs Oil Capex
- “In 2023, for the first time, investment in solar energy is expected to beat out investment in oil production. It’s a stark difference from what the picture looked like a decade ago, when oil spending outpaced solar spending by nearly six to one.”
- Source.
Ship Sulphur Emissions and Unintended Consequences
- From 1st of Jan 2020 ships had to reduce the amount of sulfur in shipping fuels from 3.5% to 0.5%.
- Although intended to reduce pollution, all that sulfur was reflecting solar radiation from the surface of the ocean.
- With it gone, the part of the ocean dominated by shipping lanes is starting to heat up.
- Source.
