Stocks

WeWork in London

  • WeWork impact is interesting.
  • Morgan Stanley (via FT Alphaville) point out a Savills report (here and here) – if WeWork walked away from every commitment they have in London Offices it would raise the months of supply from 12 to 18.5 (City) and 15 (West End).
  • This is below the 20 months considered over supply.
Stocks

Short Positions (redux)

  • We previously told you about short positions disclosure.
  • You can actually find daily updated spreadsheets here for the UK.
  • In the file below we use pivot tables to look at short positions by:
  • Stock (Sheet: Pivot Table Company)
  • Fund manager (Sheet: Pivot Table Position Holder)
  • The latter could be helpful for interviews?
  • The table below shows top 10 shorts in September vs. now.
  • Only three names are the same.
UK Stocks Short PositionsDownload
Stocks

Alcoholic Fizzy Water?

  • There is a fast growing market in the US for alcoholic or hard seltzer (i.e. fizzy water). Biggest brands are White Claw and Truly.
  • It is on trend for a health conscious younger demographic that has shunned beer.
  • So far this has been largely a US phenomenon but is likely to spread to the rest of the world.
  • The big brewers are waking up and bringing in their own brands.
  • Google search trends do suggest it was a summer phenomenon.
Stocks

Asset Management

  • “Just over 20 years have passed since the publication of Mark Carhart’s landmark 1997 study on mutual funds.
  • Its conclusion—that the data did “not support the existence of skilled or informed mutual fund portfolio managers”—was the capstone of an academic literature, which began with Michael Jensen in 1968, that formed the conventional wisdom that active management does not create value for investors.
  • We review the literature on active mutual fund management since the publication of Carhart’s work to assess the extent to which current research still supports the conventional wisdom.
  • Our review of the most recent literature suggests that the conventional wisdom is too negative on the value of active management.“
  • Full paper here.
  • Although fully disclosed this paper was supported by IIA Active Managers Council and hence might be biased.
Macroeconomics

Fed and Climate Change

  • An interesting and novel conference organised by the Fed on Climate Change Economics. Live stream available.
  • “It’s important for us from a monetary policy perspective to know what the potential growth rate of the economy is and if climate events or climate risk is going to shave that off, even if it’s over the long term,” San Fran Fed chief Mary Daly said earlier this week.
  • h/t SeekingAlpha
Macroeconomics

Global Fertility Crash

  • An interesting look from Bloomberg at global fertility rates.
  • In 1960 the global fertility rate was five live births per woman.
  • This is now 2.43, close to the level required to keep the world population stable.
  • Half of all countries are already below this level.
  • This has all sorts of implications for investments in the long run.
  • Each grey line is a country – try to guess which the worst is?
  • h/t FT Alphaville
Stocks

US online takeaway

  • We have posted Snippets about GrubHub before here and here.
  • This is another interesting and long article on how online takeout is turning out to be bad for restaurants as well.
  • The article is rather sensational (and we aren’t convinced the Online Travel analogy is apt).
  • Regardless it is full of interesting stats and analysis.
Stocks

Texas Instruments is the World

  • Texas Instruments, the semiconductor company, is very diverse (largest product is just 0.8% of revenue).
  • Their sales growth therefore largely follows global PMIs.
  • It makes them a great barometer of what is going on.
  • They have now experienced four quarters of revenue decline and are guiding for a fifth (typical semi-cycle is 4-5 quarters).
  • From their recent conference call:
  • “Revenue decreased 11% from a year ago and came in below the midpoint of our guidance as we saw most end markets continue to weaken further …  the weakness we’ve seen in the third quarter was broad-based across all markets and most sectors … We saw weakness across all major customers, regions and technologies … our sense is that customers are just far more cautious than they were certainly a year ago, but even 90 days ago.”
Misc

Biology

  • A fascinating piece from a16z, the US venture capital firm, on biology.
  • They run a $650m Bio fund and invest in many new technologies.
  • “Bio today is where information technology was 50 years ago: on the precipice of touching all of our lives. Just like software—and because of it—biology will one day become part of every industry.” 
  • Lots of links within to articles (written by a16z) on various aspects of how healthcare is transforming.
  • This piece is a shout out to the now famous 2011 article by a16z “Why Software is Eating the World”.
WordPress Cookie Notice by Real Cookie Banner