Climate Change Economic Impact

  • Fascinating read about who stands to benefit in the very long run from a warming world.
  • Draw a line around the planet at the latitude of the northern borders of the United States and China, and just about every place south, across five continents, stands to lose out.
  • Incredible growth could await those places soon to enter their prime. Canada, Scandinavia, Iceland and Russia each could see as much as fivefold bursts in their per capita gross domestic products by the end of the century so long as they have enough people to power their economies at that level.

The Analyst Academy

  • Learning how to invest is a life long journey but as a start one needs to acquire technical knowledge.
  • Exams like the CFA cover a lot of material but tend to be broad and not deep.
  • We have recently come across an outstanding course – The Analyst Academy – on how to be a professional investment analyst.
  • The course is the closest to the real thing we have seen and is run by Stephen Clapham, who has a wealth of experience and even written a book on stock picking.
  • There are other specialist courses – primarily on forensic accounting, balance sheet analysis and valuation.
  • If you enter the code YURI10 you will get a 10% discount exclusive to Snippet Finance readers (Affiliate link, please read our disclaimer).

Chip Wars

  • There is a lot being written about China’s push for self-reliance.
  • One of the biggest parts of this story over the next decade is likely to be the battle for semiconductor technology of all kind.
  • The electronic design automation (EDA) industry is controlled by three firms and are all US. China is now making first moves into this industry., crucial for semiconductors.
  • Europe is also getting involved and has just signed a €145bn declaration to develop a next generation processor and 2nm technology.

Content Business

  • A great piece of analysis applying Helmer’s 7 powers to the content business in order to establish if content has ability to maintain profitability and resist competition.
  • Scale is one such power – this chart shows there is a slight positive linear correlation between size of budget and eventual box office returns.
  • Network effects are also interesting – given the social dynamics of shared experience and discussing content. Franchises really shine here.

e-commerce Marketplaces

  • A brilliant long read on the state of e-commerce marketplaces in 2020.
  • Amazon marketplace, which “added eBay’s worth of sales to its GMV this year“, is a key topic.
  • The nature of sellers there has evolved, including the new trend of capital raised to roll-up (i.e. acquire) sellers.
  • The review also covers other winners like Walmart and Etsy.

Real Options and Valuation

  • A fascinating read about the use of real options in valuation analysis by Mauboussin and Callahan.
  • They argue it applies to a subset of companies – namely those with adept management, strong competitive position and high asset volatility.
  • They also show why 2020 had characteristics (like decoupling of volatility and equity risk premium) that made this type of analysis more attractive.

Taiwan

  • An investigation by Reuters suggests China is using “gray-zone” warfare to subdue Taiwan via military exhaustion.
  • The risk of conflict is now at its highest level in decades. PLA aircraft are flying menacingly towards airspace around Taiwan almost daily, sometimes launching multiple sorties on the same day. Since mid-September, Chinese warplanes have flown more than 100 of these missions, according to a Reuters compilation of flight data drawn from official statements by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.” 
  • Something to watch carefully.

Vanderbilt

  • Business lessons from a man who at one point commanded one in every nine dollars in the United States.
  • Vanderbilt’s legacy provides timeless and universal lessons in business success. He thrived in an era of enormous technological change as railways revolutionised the American economy. Yet his approach to business is evident in many of the successful businesses we see today; tapping new markets through lower prices, respecting shareholders, sharing scale advantages and sacrificing short term profits for long term gains.

JPM Outlook 2021

  • Good outlook piece by JPM Asset Management.
  • Some amazing stats on the state of US federal finance – debt levels are about to hit World War II peaks (as % of GDP), and the projected 2020 deficit (at 16% of GDP) is the largest since 1945.
  • This interesting chart shows the fall in the corporate effective tax rate for large cap stocks over the years.
  • Under Biden’s plan – which will raise $2.2trn by raising and broadening corporate taxes (vs. $700bn Trump corporate tax cuts) – this trend could reverse (costing 10% of S&P EPS).
  • Lots of other interesting observations inside.

Corporate Climate Goals

  • Bloomberg analysed how well companies fared against their 2020 climate goals (set in 2015).
  • The good news is that most of these pledges—138, so far—have already been met or appear on track by year-end, in part because many companies set modest goals.
  • Worryingly, data disclosure remains a big issue as many companies either don’t report or do so unevenly.
  • Looking forward many are now making stand out statements.
  • Microsoft has not just committed to going carbon negative (by 2030) they will, by 2050, remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975.
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