Contrasting coronavirus related transcript quotes.
“We began to see the impact of the coronavirus on our business in mid-January with occupancy declines gradually spreading from Wuhan to other markets in the Asia Pacific region. In February RevPAR at our hotels in Greater China declined almost 90% versus the same period last year.” – Marriott International CEO Arne M. Sorenson
“we’re seeing that many of the cities around China, people are actually going back to work. We’re seeing some of the shops in Beijing are opening up. When you’re going on the freeway now, you’re actually seeing traffic jams versus, say, two, three weeks ago, where the roads were pretty empty…we started seeing activity pick up a little bit two weeks ago. And then also, this week, we’re also seeing continued pickup.“- Baidu (BIDU) CFO Herman Yu
Big interesting read from Spiegel on Italy’s economic sluggishness.
A nice ending.
In parting, though, this correspondent nevertheless has hope that the Italians will stay true to their legendary talent for mastering crises with grandezza. The Italians have a wonderful saying for painful moments: “Ballando non duole il piede.” Your feet don’t hurt when you’re dancing.”
Really amazing presentation from Ben Evans and arguably rivals this.
This chart shows for example shows a huge untapped potential for Amazon.
Other amazing stat – Netflix spends more on content than all of UK, Spain, France, Italy and Germany. Bad as it goes direct and doesn’t distribute via others.
“Of all 1,059 5-year rolling cycles observed since 1932, there are only 3 periods with smaller value premiums. The current -6% belongs to the 1% of the weakest periods”
Typically this type of underperformance has led to 14-19% outperformance in the subsequent 5 years.
Interesting long term chart of value and growth outperformance.
“The development of share prices has long vindicated this theory: from 1926 to 2007, Value stocks recorded around 5% higher annual returns than Growth stocks. Over the last five years, Value stocks have underperformed Growth stocks by an average of nearly 6% per year.”
Fascinating article about why viruses, like the current Corona virus outbreak, tend to come from bats.
Why Bats? They are mammals, so sufficiently close to us, not domesticated, and live in huge flocks
Bracken Cave, in Texas, is home to roughly 20 million breeding Mexican free-tailed bats, similar to the (human) population of the Mexico City urban area. In places there are 500 bat pups per square foot on the wall. To a virus that represents a tasty buffet.
