Stocks

Interesting, and often contrarian, Snippets on individual companies and the stock market.

Stocks

Average is not Median

  • “Antti Petajisto analyzed the return distribution of all US stocks in the CRSP database going back to 1926. Below is the distribution of returns for different investment horizons. Note that the distribution gets more and more skewed to the left as investment horizons increase and that the left-hand side of the distribution is not zero, but a total loss of investment (-100% return).“
  • Source.
Stocks

Shein and Temu – the tax loophole

  • Shipping goods with a value less than $800 in the US (150 EUR in Europe) is import duty free – something Chinese firms have been taking advantage of.
  • By some estimates these firms account for 30% of these de minimis shipments in the US. Most is by air freight.
  • This is all about to change in the EU. Will the US follow?
Stocks

Bridge RNA

  • This looks like a big deal – “The bridge RNA system is a fundamentally new mechanism for genome design,” said Dr. Patrick Hsu, senior author of the study and an Arc Institute Core Investigator and University of California, Berkeley Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. “Bridge recombination can universally modify genetic material through sequence-specific insertion, excision, inversion, and more, enabling a word processor for the living genome beyond CRISPR.“
  • Full Arc Institute blog here and AI simplified version here.
Stocks

GPU Semiconductor Content

  • Nice slide from KLA.
  • “So I tried just to put together this chart to show how different the GPU package is between 2015 & 2024. So of course, the B100 chip, the GPU introduced a few months ago, and this is not enough because Jensen has already introduced the next generation of GPU last week” (h/t The Transcript).
Stocks

GLP-1s and Addiction

  • There is probably enough evidence now to suggest GLP-1s, like Ozempic, work to treat all kinds of addiction.
  • Why does this matter? “Addiction kills more Americans than cancer or heart disease but only 4% of people with substance use disorders currently receive medication.“
  • The big breakthrough in this field will likely be the next generation of weight loss drugs, especially orals.
Stocks

Concentration and Active Management

  • “Rising stock market concentration is challenging for active managers because on average they own stocks with smaller market capitalizations than those in their benchmarks. That means when large-cap stocks do well relative to small-cap stocks, the percentage of mutual funds that outperform the benchmark tends to go down. When small caps outperform large caps, active managers outperform at a higher rate. Exhibit 7 shows this relationship from 1960 to 2023. The striped red dot shows the outcome for 2023.“
  • Source: Mauboussin.
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