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.
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.”
