Social Media and Efficient Markets

  • Does Twitter make sell-side analysts better?
  • The answer, according to a new study, is yes.
  • Analysts are generally overly optimistic when presenting earnings forecasts (largely due to incentives).
  • As information technology has proliferated, the competition for information production has increased.
  • Negative and positive information are treated differently by human psychology – the former being valued more highly.
  • Analysts looking at Twitter succumb to this asymmetry, biasing their forecasts downwards i.e. negating their over optimism.
  • These are fascinating results (there a few others in the article).

EV and Gas Stations

  • The electrification of cars will have a big impact on gasoline stations.
  • This was a nice piece analysing this impact.
  • It is from Harding Loevner, using Circle K (owned by Alimentation Couche-Tarde) in Norway (which has electrified faster than other countries) as their case study.
  • Positives – charging takes a lot longer = higher conversion to spending customer + longer in store.
  • About 15% of gasoline customers venture inside to make additional purchases during their car’s few minutes at a Circle K pump, while 40% of EV drivers do so during the 20–30 minutes their vehicle is charging.
  • Negatives – three quarters of charging is done at home.

SSRN

  • SSRN the Social Science Research Network – is an open repository of papers on social science (and other areas).
  • Malcom Gladwell called it “The greatest website on the internet” (Source).
  • They now also have a new service dedicated to finance (in partnership with Quantum).
  • It covers everything from Equities to Financial Statement Analysis.
  • Many investors neglect academic work in their field – but it often holds valuable insights.
  • The top papers section at SSRN is also excellent, featuring many financial topics.

The Best Strategies for Inflationary Times

  • Most investors, including me, have limited experience of inflationary risk.
  • This paper, from 2021, is an excellent guide – looking at passive/active strategies across asset classes over the past 95 years.
  • As we have seen it is tough – unexpected inflation is bad for traditional assets (bonds, equities). Commodities do well but depends which ones. Trend following and active equity are the best protection.

103 Bits of Advice

  • Another wonderful list from KK (the previous one is here).
  • A few of my favourites:
  • Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.
  • Ask funders for money, and they’ll give you advice; but ask for advice and they’ll give you money.
  • It is the duty of a student to get everything out of a teacher, and the duty of a teacher to get everything out of a student.

Mega-Cap Tech Growth

  • It may seem simple but often the main thing that makes stocks go up is defying the fade in forecasts.
  • This is true of mega-cap tech stocks.
  • Despite consistent forecast for deceleration they have maintained 20-30% growth for over a decade now.
  • NB solid line is actual revenue growth average for AMZN, AAPL, CRM, FB, GOOG, MSFT, NFLX and the dotted lines are average sell-side forward forecasts at those points in time.
  • Source.

The First Financial Engineer

  • Robert (Bob) Merton is a giant of modern finance science.
  • He is also, as argued by Andrew Lo in this really outstanding talk, the first financial engineer.
  • It is in this combination – being both a scientist and engineer that his true astounding contribution surfaces.
  • I believe that a body of knowledge only becomes a science when a corresponding field of engineering emerges from it.

Jim Grant Interview

  • Jim Grant has been publishing the Interest Rate Observer since 1983 (that is nearly 40 years!).
  • He is a noted contrarian, who has witnessed market booms and busts and all manner of human folly in-between. Always armed with a sharp mind, a wonderful network and a skilled pen.
  • This was a nice recent interview with him on his views especially on the impact of rising interest rates.
  • That’s what we try to do at Grant’s. We try to imagine how a hardened consensuses of opinion could change—how people think that there’s no alternative but the way things are, and how that could change. So yes, there will be trouble ahead, but also a lot of interesting things to do.
WordPress Cookie Notice by Real Cookie Banner