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.
FDA approves the first portable Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine.
“According to Connecticut-based Hyperfine, their machine will cost $50,000, which is 20-times cheaper than traditional systems, runs on 35-times less power and weighs 10 times less than normal 1.5T MRI machines.“
“We are a creativity organisation, not a technology organisation.”
“The real test is 15 to 20 years from now, when the dust is settled and we look backwards. Then how are we doing?” Teller says. Until then, there will always be more crazy ideas worth chasing. “The world’s got more than enough problems, sadly.”
Citron Research, famed for short selling reports, are recommending long this stock – Schrodinger (SDRG).
They describe it as – “the most disruptive software platform to ever hit the pharmaceutical industry, which also happens to be backed by the world’s most sophisticated investors, has just gone public.“
Looks interesting and is worth investigating. The shares are sadly ca. +100% since IPO already.
As always with investing – this is not a recommendation, do your own work, use common sense.
This is a great read on how to ask good questions and why that is so important.
“Nobel-prize winner, physicist Arno Penzias, when asked what accounted for his success, replied,“I went for the jugular question.”
Still practicing his questioning discipline today, Penzias recently commented at a Fast Company Conference, “Change starts with the individual. So the first thing I do each morning is ask myself, ‘Why do I strongly believe what I believe?’ Constantly examine your own assumptions.”
Interesting post from FT Alphaville about construction.
It discusses a recent IMF note which shows that the construction sector is often a great canary in the coal mine of economic activity.
“An additional percentage point of value-added or employment growth in the construction sector during a boom raises the probability of the boom being bad—followed by subpar economic performance or a systemic financial crisis—by 2 and 5 percentage points, respectively.“
“Strikingly, in our sample, long-lasting booms that featured rapid construction growth never ended well.”
Interesting point that because inflation doesn’t account for housing costs properly the central banks will always be behind the curve.
