Cheap Cars are Disappearing

  • Based on S&P Global Mobility analysis of registration data since 2017, the US market has seen a significant decline in the share of new vehicles registered below a $30,000 price point. In just seven years, the percentage of vehicles registered with an MSRP below $30,000 has decreased from half the market to barely one-quarter – with vehicles in the $41,000-$60,000 band taking up nearly the entirety of that vehicle count.
  • Source: S&P Global

Autonomous Vehicle Safety

  • In over 3.8 million miles driven without a human being behind the steering wheel in rider-only mode, the Waymo Driver (Waymo’s fully autonomous driving technology) incurred zero bodily injury claims in comparison with the human driver baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles. The Waymo Driver also significantly reduced property damage claims to 0.78 claims per million miles in comparison with the human driver baseline of 3.26 claims per million miles.
  • Source: Swiss Re.

IRA and Pharma

  • Interesting set of company quotes on views about the impact of IRA on Medicare negotiating drug prices.
  • Most of the industry has launched multi-pronged lawsuits (including constitutional challenges) against this.
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AI and Healthcare

  • Healthcare is one area where the application of AI, in its LLM and other forms, could be enormous.
  • This nice article from AlphaSense Expert Insights explores the topic, mirroring the huge rise in expert calls in the sector mentioning the term.
  • It is not all areas that can be bent to the will of ML. As this piece argues, academic literature and the correspondent knowledge graph is both difficult and not that useful to program.
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Regulatory Capture

  • Bill Gurley’s September 2023 talk “2,851 Miles.” is a very interesting read on this very important topic in economics and investing.
  • As a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit.” I like to say, “Regulation is the friend of the incumbent.”

SEC New Short Disclosure Rules

  • SEC is increasing disclosure around shorts.
  • Investment managers that carry large short positions in equity securities will be required, within two weeks after each month, to report those positions and related short sale activity to the Commission. The threshold for reporting will be met when an investment manager’s short position in a particular equity security of a reporting issuer is at least $10 million or the equivalent of 2.5 percent or more of the total shares outstanding on average during a month.
  • Based upon the filings to the Commission, the Commission will make public, within four weeks after the end of each month, aggregated, anonymized data about the gross, end-of-month large short positions. The Commission also will publish the net aggregated daily activity data for each settlement day.
  • The UK (and EU) have good disclosures on shorts >0.5% of shares outstanding.
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