A great presentation and separate post about a huge eCommerce business you probably haven’t heard of, founded only in 2015.
Its success is down to a team buying feature, social integration, gamification and live streaming.
These features have led to a daily active user (DAU) to monthly active user (MAU) ratio, a measure of engagement, of almost 50% – the highest, by some margin, among peers.
How to get attention: If you want to get famous for making big non-consensus calls, without the danger of looking like a muppet, you should adopt ‘the 40% rule’. Basically you can forecast whatever you want with a probability of 40%. Greece to quit the euro? Maybe! Trump to fire Powell and hire his daughter as the new Fed chair? Never say never! 40% means the odds will be greater than anyone else is saying, which is why your clients need to listen to your warning, but also that they shouldn’t be too surprised if, you know, the extreme event doesn’t actually happen.
Recession watch: … So the best approach is to emphasise the dangers of recession but claim this is at least 18 months away. If it happens sooner, you can say you correctly warned about the dangers. If there is no recession you can simply postpone your forecast and hope nobody remembers.
Loeb’s Third Point Capital Q2 Letter – where he discusses adjusting his process/strategy towards more quality compounders – with rationale for recent purchases (BABA, JD, AMZN etc) supporting this.
Klarman’s Baupost Group Q2 Letter – where he discusses his eight impacts of the pandemic on the future.
Is ride-hailing good for the green house gas emissions?
“The answer from several recent studies is straightforward: after accounting for people who would have taken public transport, biked or walked instead, and those who would not have traveled at all, there’s a substantial net increase in estimated vehicle miles traveled and emissions from ride-sharing, possibly as large as 60%-80% compared to a world with no ride-sharing at all”
Charts tell this story – (clockwise) a surge in ride-hailing in the US including NYC coupled with increased emissions per trip and miles travelled compared to the category they replace.
Sourced from this great note on Energy market outlook.
An interactive table of the tech world’s most valuable patent portfolios.
This chart shows the top 20 companies overall. Clicking through it’s possible to rank by industry.
Usual suspects at the top but interesting to see companies like Cirrus Logic and Sonos making it.
For an explanation of how the Pipeline Power score – which takes into account the value rather than the raw quantity of patents in a portfolio – is derived click here.
NB Sadly the data is slightly dated (from 2017) but likely still very relevant.
“With fewer opportunities to profit from connecting buyers and sellers, and a much greater risk of losing money in the meantime, HFT-style market makers pulled back abruptly and in some cases likely shut down entirely. Thus the liquidity they provided dropped to a tiny fraction of its previous peak over the first couple weeks of March“
“A colourful illustration, showing best- and worst-performing assets over rolling four-year periods since the mid-1970s.
From this perspective, the recent outperformance of large-cap growth does not look especially unusual in either duration or magnitude. Diverse assets, including commodities and other types of equities, have enjoyed periods of comparable success.
Moreover, the chart reminds us that recent standouts may swiftly become underperformers as conditions change.”
