Tag: Health / Medicine

February 20, 2018

Perspective

Tax Foundation – State Corporate Income Tax Rates for 2018 – Morgan Scarboro 2/7

Visual Capitalist – Mapping the World’s Wealthiest Cities – Jeff Desjardins 2/16

WSJ – Daily Shot: Credit Suisse – Timeline of Relative Market Capitalizations Since 1900 2/16

WSJ – Daily Shot: TRACE – NRA Contributions to select political candidates 2/15

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

University of Oxford – Stranded Property Assets in China’s Resource-based Cities: implications for financial stability? – Gerard Dericks, Robert Potts, & Ben Caldecott February 2018

The Atlantic – The Plot Against America – Franklin Foer – March 2018

  • In depth profile on Paul Manafort.

The Atlantic – How WeWork Has Perfectly Captured the Millennial Id – Laura Bliss – March 2018

  • “The company sells a somewhat uneasy combination of capitalist ambition and cooperative warmth.”

WSJ – Growth Is the Missing Ingredient for Kraft Heinz – Aaron Back 2/16

Markets / Economy

FT – Food industry giants struggle to keep up with changing tastes – Anna Nicolaou 2/16

  • “Sales woes at Kraft Heinz, Danone and others force groups to cut costs and eye deals.”

Real Estate

CoStar – Oaktree Becomes Latest Investment Manager to Launch Non-Traded REIT, Looking to Raise up to $2 Billion – Mark Heschmeyer 2/16

  • “Oaktree joins a growing list of major investment firms to expand into non-traded REIT fundraising. The Blackstone Group kicked off the trend in September 2016. So far, other big investors that have followed its lead into the non-traded REIT sector include Nuveen’s TH Real Estate, BGC Partners’ Cantor Fitzgerald, Starwood Capital Group, KKR & Co., and TPG Capital.”

WSJ – New York’s Commercial Property Slump Shows Signs of Slowing – Keiko Morris 2/11

Finance

Bloomberg – Hedge Fund Startups in Asia See Signs of Revival – Bei Hu and Klaus Wille 1/21

WSJ – The Rise of Private Assets Is Built on a Mountain of New Debt – Paul J. Davies 2/15

Cryptocurrency

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 2/15

Tech

FT – SpaceX joins race to make web truly worldwide – Richard Waters 2/15

  • “SpaceX will on Saturday officially enter the race to bring internet access to all parts of the earth’s surface with the planned launch of its first test satellites for a globe-encompassing communications network.”
  • “The latest trial from Elon Musk’s private space company is a world away from last week’s spectacular first launch of Falcon Heavy, the world’s biggest rocket. Undertaken with none of the Tesla chief executive’s usual showman flair — he has not even mentioned it on Twitter — it is an early technical trial for a communications service that could be years from completion.”
  • “If successful, however, SpaceX has said it plans to start launching its first commercial satellites next year, with a constellation of more than 11,000 circling the earth in low-earth orbit by the time the network is complete in 2024.”
  • “SpaceX’s application for approval to test a satellite internet service from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is one of 12 made to the US regulators, highlighting the extent of the potential competition.”
  • “SpaceX plans to connect its constellation of satellites to form a so-called mesh network, passing information among them and blanketing the earth.”

Health / Medicine

FT – Good bacteria can help brain function better – Clive Cookson 2/15

  • “Researchers are discovering remarkable new links between gut bacteria and the brain. Problems from poor sleep to memory loss could be helped by manipulating the microbiome, the trillions of bacteria living inside healthy human bodies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science heard on Thursday.”

 

February 9, 2018

Perspective

Economist – When the prices are too damn high – Daily Chart 2/5

WSJ – Hard Lessons From the Federal Student-Loan Program’s Coming $36 Billion Shortfall – Josh Mitchell 2/4

  • “U.S. officials have long maintained the federal government would make a profit on its $1.4 trillion student loan portfolio or at least break even, but two recent reports suggest just the opposite will be the case. Government lending to college and graduate students could soon become an immense drain on federal coffers, worsening an already deteriorating U.S. budget picture.”
  • “The Education Department’s inspector general, an agency watchdog, in a report released last week said the profitability of the U.S. federal student-lending program is being squeezed because millions of Americans who borrowed heavily in recent years—including many graduate students—are flocking into a program to have substantial portions of their debts forgiven.”
  • “Students who borrowed in the fiscal year ended Sep. 30, 2015, and enrolled in such ‘income-driven repayment’ plans, for example, are expected to pay back $11.5 billion less than they took to pay tuition and other schooling costs.”
  • “The government still earns billions of dollars every year in interest on the loans it has made to 43 million American undergraduates, graduate students and parents of undergrads. But the losses from those not repaying are now projected to mount and could eat up all of the gains. It is hard to get precise estimates, but the Education Department’s annual financial report, released in November, offered a clue. A footnote in the report projected that money coming in for government student loan and guarantee programs will be $36 billion short of what’s needed to cover outstanding debt and accrued interest.”
  • “A year earlier, the department projected the shortfall at $8.4 billion, while in prior years it projected the program would generate billions of dollars in taxpayer surpluses. The latest report explained that one reason for the sharp switch was the rise of income-driven repayment plans. These plans set monthly payments as a share of a borrower’s income and then forgive any balance that remains after 10, 20 or 25 years, depending on the borrower’s work status and loan size.”
  • “While that $36 billion projection doesn’t quite compare to the $4 trillion federal budget, it’s still an immense sum. To put it in perspective, the government ultimately paid $33 billion in its response to the financial crisis through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the Congressional Budget Office.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – The discreet terror of the American bourgeoisie – Edward Luce 2/7

  • “Elites thought they could have it both ways: capital gains and moral certainty.”

Mauldin Economics – Kill the Quants – John Mauldin 2/7: Once Again – “Kill the Quants (and the Levered ETFs and ETNs) Before They Kill Our Markets” – Douglas A. Kass 2/6

Project Syndicate – Justice Without Borders for Venezuela – Ricardo Hausmann 2/7

  • “According to estimates from MIT’s Billion Prices Project, month-on-month food inflation in Venezuela reached 117.6% in January, or the equivalent of 1,130,000% a year. At the same time, the exchange rate depreciated at an annual rate of more than 700,000%, while the real purchasing power of wages – which barely represented 1,400 calories a day in December – was decimated further. A survey published in early January estimated recent out-migration at four million people, nearly as many as from Syria.”

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg – World’s Largest ETF Hit by Biggest Four-Day Outflow on Record – Sid Verma and Dani Burger 2/7

  • “The global market maelstrom spurred money managers to yank a record $17.4 billion from the mighty SPDR S&P 500 ETF over the past four trading sessions. The $8 billion removed on Tuesday alone was the third-largest daily withdrawal in the post-crisis era.”

Real Estate

Bloomberg – HNA Group Puts $4 Billion of U.S. Properties on Market – Sarah Mulholland 2/8

  • “Among the properties on the block is 245 Park Ave., according to a marketing document seen by Bloomberg. HNA bought that skyscraper less than a year ago for $2.21 billion, one of the highest prices ever paid for a New York office building.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger – Andrew Jacobs 2/7

  • “New regulations, which corporate interests delayed for almost a decade, require explicit labeling and limit the marketing of sugary foods to children.”

Canada

FT – Canada’s housing market flirts with disaster – Ben McLannahan 2/7

  • “Canada is in the grip of a housing crisis more severe, by some measures, than anywhere else in the world. Household debt now amounts to more than 100% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, one of the highest of any developed nation. House prices have raced ahead of wages for years, boosted by loose lending, low interest rates and lax controls on foreign money.”
  • “For now, the number of home loans in arrears across Canada is still very low, suggesting that people are finding ways to cope with ever-larger debts. But rising interest rates are beginning to bite, while a new stress test for mortgages issued by regulated banks has tightened the supply of credit. This week the Toronto Real Estate board said that sales in Canada’s biggest city dropped 22% in January, the weakest for that month since 2009.”
  • “Bullish observers say fears of a meltdown are overblown. Canada can sustain high house prices, they argue, because they reflect the country’s high levels of net migration, restrictive zoning laws and low unemployment.”
  • “Henry Lotin, a retired diplomat and principal at research group Integrative Trade and Economics, says the same forces that have pushed up prices in global hubs such as New York are now doing the same to the most attractive parts of Canada. ‘Torontonians should be thankful and we should manage it as best we can. We really have to be prepared that demand is going to exceed supply for the foreseeable future’.”
  • “Many also note that mortgage books at the big banks look rock-solid. Royal Bank of Canada, for example, which recently joined the club of the world’s most systemically important banks thanks to years of rapid asset growth, had a Canadian residential mortgage portfolio of an average C$231bn in the year to October. Defined as estimates of losses on impaired loans and losses incurred but not yet identified, provisions for credit losses were just C$33m — or one one-hundredth of 1%.”
  • “Others say pristine loan books are not a good indicator of the stress lurking in the system. For one thing, every homebuyer with a down payment of less than 20% of the purchase price (if less than C$1m) has to buy insurance against default. That has the effect of flattering the banks’ books but shifts the risk of default to insurers such as the state-backed Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.”
  • “CMHC was set up after the second world war to help returning veterans find housing. These days it insures about C$480bn of residential mortgages, or almost one-third of the outstanding stock in Canada, using an automated system to process about two-thirds of applications.”
  • “Meanwhile, the uninsured segment is growing. As the market has barreled upwards in recent years, borrowers have been able to convert insured mortgages into uninsured mortgages simply by buying a property, waiting for the price to rise, then refinancing.”
  • “Uninsured buyers made up about three-quarters of new loans at federally regulated banks in 2017, up from two-thirds in 2014, according to the Bank of Canada. In Vancouver, where the average sales price of condos hit a record of C$1.1m in January, more than double the level a decade earlier, about 90% of new mortgages are uninsured.”
  • “Laurentian Bank, Canada’s seventh-biggest by assets, said in December that it would have to buy back about C$300m of mortgages it had sold to third parties, having found that borrowers had ’embellished’ income and assets. Last month, the Montreal-based bank said the buyback obligations had increased to about C$400m, and it would have to raise more capital.”
  • “That kind of disclosure — in dribs and drabs, each more alarming than the last — has echoes of the beginning of the US mortgage crisis, when terms such as ‘liar loan’ began to enter the vernacular. ‘Trends are developing . . . that we took for granted were not an issue in Canada,’ says Gabriel Dechaine, an analyst at National Bank of Canada. ‘There are puffs of smoke, but I don’t want to yell fire in a crowded theater’.”
  • “More strains could emerge. With interest rates rising — three increases in the central bank’s policy rate since July has left it at 1.25% — many borrowers may be facing a struggle to refinance in a market where almost all mortgages are renewed every five years or less.”
  • “Anecdotal evidence suggests tougher rules on underwriting are also beginning to curb lending. On January 1 the federal banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, introduced a rule requiring all new mortgage applicants to show they could cope with interest rates substantially higher than their contracted rate. Previously, stress tests applied only to insured mortgages.”

China

Bloomberg – Frenzy of Fines for China’s Bank Is Only Just Getting Started – Jun Luo and Alfred Liu 2/5

  • “China’s banking regulator is increasingly showing its teeth, slapping a record amount of fines on financial institutions in the past several months for transgressions such as lax lending procedures and manipulating bad-loan data. Expect the unprecedented frenzy to continue.”
  • “The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) announced 3,452 penalties and confiscations of funds involving 1,877 financial institutions and totaling 2.93 billion yuan ($465 million) in 2017, a 10-fold surge from the previous year, according to official data. Some 270 banking executives were punished, including being banned from the industry for life, according to a CBRC official speaking on CCTV.”
  • “The frenzy continues this year, with an average 16 fines imposed every day of January.”
  • “The biggest of 2018 so far was levied against Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co., fined 462 million yuan for what the CBRC termed ‘a well-organized fraud.’ Last Friday, the CBRC fined Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and 18 other banks’ branches in central China 52.5 million yuan for accepting low-quality gold as collateral for 19 billion yuan worth of loans, resulting in the banks being defrauded.”
  • “After his appointment last year as CBRC chairman, Guo Shuqing embarked on a campaign to root out malpractice in the $39 trillion banking industry, improve implementation of lending policies and curb cross-holdings of financial products.”

 

February 6, 2018

If you were only to read one thing…

Economist – Pyramid schemes cause huge social harm in China 2/3

  • “The authorities call them ‘business cults’. Tens of millions of people are ensnared in these pyramid schemes that use cult-like techniques to brainwash their targets and bilk them out of their money.”
  • “Many countries suffer from Ponzi schemes, which typically sell financial products offering extravagant rewards. They pay old investors out of new deposits, which means their liabilities exceed their assets; when recruitment falters, the schemes collapse. China is no exception. In 2016 it closed down Ezubao, a multi-billion-dollar scam that had drawn in more than 900,000 investors. By number of victims, it was the world’s largest such fraud.”
  • “Chinese pyramid schemes commonly practice ‘multi-level marketing’ (MLM), a system whereby a salesperson earns money not just by selling a company’s goods but also from commissions on sales made by others, whom the first salesperson has recruited. People often earn more by recruiting others than from their own sales. Since 1998 China has banned the use of such methods, although it does allow some, mostly foreign, MLM companies to do business in China as ‘direct sellers’. This involves recruiting people to sell products at work or at home.”
  • “The distinguishing feature of the Chinese scams is the way they combine pyramid-type operations with cult-like brainwashing.”
  • “Many perfectly legal companies try to boost morale by getting staff to sing company songs or organizing awaydays. China’s business cults, however, combine such techniques with violence.”
  • “Business cults seem to be growing. In the first nine months of 2017 the police brought cases against almost 6,000 of them, twice as many as in the whole of 2016 and three times the average annual number in 2005-15. This was just scratching the surface. In July 2017 the police arrested 230 leaders of Shan Xin Hui, a scheme that was launched in May 2016 and had an estimated 5m investors just 15 months later. In August 2017, after the government launched its campaign against ‘diehard scams’, police in the southern port of Beihai, Guangxi province, arrested 1,200 people for defrauding victims of 1.5bn yuan ($223m). One scheme in Guangxi, known as 1040 Project, was reckoned to have fleeced its targets of 600m yuan.”
  • “The scale of the scams worries the government. Their cultish features make it even more anxious. The Communist Party worries about any social organization that it does not control. Cults are especially worrisome because religious and quasi-religious activities give their followers a focus of loyalty that competes with the party.”
  • “The authorities will find it hard to curb the scams for three main reasons. First, in order to encourage cheap loans for industry, the central bank keeps interest rates low. For years they were negative, i.e, below inflation. That built up demand among China’s savers for better returns. With gross savings equal to just under half of GDP, it is not surprising that some of that pool of money should be attracted to schemes promising remarkable dividends.”
  • “Second, it is often hard for consumers to spot frauds. In 2005 China legalized direct selling, arguing that there was a distinction between that practice and the way that Ponzi schemes operate. But Qiao Xinsheng of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law argues that the difference is often ‘blurred’ in the eyes of the public. Scammers can easily pass them themselves off as legitimate. Dodgy companies exploit government propaganda in order to pretend they have official status. For example, they may claim to be ‘new era’ companies, borrowing a catchphrase of China’s president, Xi Jinping.”
  • “Third, argues Mr Li, business cults manipulate traditional attachments to kin. Companies in America often appeal to individual ambition, promising to show investors how to make money for themselves. Those in China offer to help the family, or a wider group. Shan Xin Hui literally means Kind Heart Exchange. It purported to be a charity, offering higher returns to poor investors than to rich ones. (In reality everyone got scammed.) Business cults rely on one family member to recruit another, and upon the obligation that relatives feel to trust each other. This helps explain why investors who have lost life savings continue to support the companies that defrauded them.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Economist – Why sub-zero interest rates are neither unfair nor unnatural – Free exchange 2/3

NYT – Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built – Nellie Bowles 2/4

NYT – Amazon Asked for Patience. Remarkably, Wall Street Complied. – Michael Corkery and Nick Wingfield 2/4

  • “In a business environment that demands, and rewards, quarterly profits and short-term strategic thinking, Amazon showed extraordinary resolve in focusing on long-term goals, somehow persuading investors to go along.”
  • “Over its first decade in existence, including long stretches where it consistently reported losses, Amazon enjoyed a luxury afforded few companies: leeway.”
  • “Amazon has reported an annual profit in only 13 of the 21 years that it has operated as a publicly traded company, according to FactSet, a financial data firm.”
  • “And its profit margins, already low by some measures, have fluctuated from year to year — hardly moving in the straight upward line that Wall Street usually likes to see.”
  • “Yet investors have rewarded Amazon for plowing its profits back into growing its businesses, whether in online retail, cloud computing or, most recently, in grocery stores, with the acquisition of Whole Foods Market.”

Vanity Fair – Twitter’s Dirty Secret – Nick Bilton 2/2

  • “Twitter knew about all its fake followers, and always has – eliminating just enough bots to make it seem like they care, but not enough that it would affect the perceived number of active users on the platform.”

WSJ – China Shows How It Will Fight a Trade War – Nathaniel Taplin 2/5

  • “U.S. agriculture will be in China’s crosshairs if a trade war erupts.”

Real Estate

The Real Deal – Everything must go: Chinese investors sell off their foreign RE holdings – Erin Hudson 2/3

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bankrate.com US 30-Yr Fixed Rate Mortgage Rate 2/2

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – Home Equity Loans 2/5

  • “Home equity loan balances continue to slip as Americans remain uneasy tapping this form of credit.”

Finance

Reuters – JGBs pare losses as Bank of Japan offers “unlimited” buying to curb rising yields – Hideyuki Sano 2/1

WSJ – What Markets Are Really Telling Us About Higher Rates – Richard Barley 2/5

  • “Companies are paying slightly more to borrow, but higher risk-free yields haven’t fed through fully. This is significant.”
  • “…the ECB, is still at play. The ECB’s bond-buying actions have a twist: in the first four weeks of January, corporate purchases as a share of government purchases stood at 27%, versus 11.5% when the program was running full-tilt at €80 billion a month, according to Deutsche Bank . In other words, corporates are still getting decent support from ECB purchases.”
  • “One snag is that corporate-bond spreads are already so tight there is little room for error. In Europe, the investment-grade ICE BofAML corporate index yield premium over government bonds is just 0.74 percentage points, its lowest level since August 2007.”
  • “Investors should watch closely if spreads do widen significantly. It would mean either companies are making riskier, top-of-market types of bets or investors are getting concerned about growth and underlying cash flows. For now, the message from higher interest rates is, don’t sweat it.”

Cryptocurrency

FT – ‘Crypto crazy’ Japanese mystified by virtual heist – Leo Lewis and Robin Harding 2/2

  • “The $500m theft of XEM coins by an anonymous hacker is threatening the country’s faith in cryptocurrencies.”

FT – Bitcoin investors find tax demands are not virtual – Ben McLannahan and Vanessa Houlder 2/4

  • “Cryptocurrency traders in many jurisdictions may be liable for hefty capital gains tax bills.”

NYT – Making a Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico – Nellie Bowles 2/2

Reuters – Bitcoin extends slide, falls below $7,000 – Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss 2/5

  • “Digital currency bitcoin BTC=BTSP fell more than 15% on Monday to a nearly three-month low amid a slew of concerns ranging from a global regulatory clampdown to a ban on using credit cards to buy bitcoin by British and U.S. banks.”
  • “On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, bitcoin fell as low as $6,853.53 in early afternoon trading in New York. That marked a fall of more than half from a peak of almost $20,000 hit in December.”
  • “Bitcoin has fallen in six of the last eight trading session.”
  • “The currency, which surged more than 1,300% last year, has lost about half its value so far in 2018, as more governments and banks signal their intention for a regulatory crackdown. Last week bitcoin suffered its worst weekly performance since 2013.”

Tech

NYT – Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built – Nellie Bowles 2/4

Health / Medicine

Economist – A revolution in health care is coming – Leaders 2/1

Asia – excluding China and Japan

WSJ – Samsung Heir Lee Jae-yong Freed From Prison by Appeals Court – Eun-Young Jeong 2/5

China

The Sydney Morning Herald – China said to mull legal gambling on Hainan – Keith Zhai and Daniela Wei 2/4

India

Bloomberg Businessweek – India’s Phantom Flats Leave Homebuyers’ Dreams in Tatters – Pooja Thakur Mahrotri, Upmanyu Trivedi, and Dhwani Pandya 1/30

  • “Across the metropolitan area that surrounds New Delhi, a string of real-estate developers including Unitech, Jaypee Infratech Ltd. and Amrapali Group have been dragged to court by irate homeowners who shelled out payments for apartments that have yet to be completed. Many of these firms took money from a stream of buyers. As sales slumped and the once red-hot market cooled, their businesses unraveled — leaving them grappling with debt.”
  • “The fallouts from the shakeup in the $126 billion property market are reverberating across companies, markets and the broader economy. Unitech, once India’s largest developer, has plunged to a fraction of its previous valuation. Jaypee is in insolvency court. State-owned banks — the lifeblood of the economy — are grappling with a pile up of bad loans from the industry. Indian families, who have long poured their life savings into real estate, are now pulling back.”
  • “Indian real-estate businesses expanded as long as firm were able to draw new buyers for planned projects. But as the economy slowed and demand softened, many firms were left short of cash and struggling to manage their debt. The downturn only worsened last year after the government tightened regulations to protect homebuyers and separately introduced a new services tax across all industries. India’s residential sector appears to have shrunk to a fraction of its size in less than a decade, according to Shishir Baijal, managing director of Knight Frank India.”
  • “Prices dropped 3% on average across the top six cities, according to Knight Frank, with some declining as much as 15% after accounting for developer discounts. And in the capital region, last year’s prices were 9% below their 2015 peak. The outlook remains bleak.”
  • “The property developers are adding to a pile-up of bad loans in India’s banking sector, which is already struggling to manage a spike in stressed assets across several industries.”
  • “India’s government has stepped in to regulate the real-estate industry with new laws, including one that forces developers to use at least 70% of sale proceeds to complete residential projects, rather than funnel money to different jobs. Other measures prevent them from pre-selling apartments before all building approvals are obtained.”
  • “The pain hasn’t been restricted to the North. India’s financial capital, Mumbai, last year witnessed a decline in residential property prices for the first time in a decade. New residential launches across eight Indian cities dropped 41% last year and were down 78% from their peak in 2010, Knight Frank data show.”

South America

Bloomberg Businessweek – Venezuelan Pirates Rule the Most Lawless Market on Earth – Jonathan Franklin 1/30

Economist – China moves into Latin America – Bello 2/1

  • “The Asian giant is taking advantage of other powers’ lack of interest in the region.”

January 31, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Lex in Depth: the case against share buybacks – Dan McCrum 1/29

  • “S&P 500 companies have spent $1.1tn on share repurchase programs over the past two years, as executives struggled to turn modest economic growth into higher earnings. Lacking opportunities to invest, or at least shareholder support to do so, companies have spent money buying their own stock, which provides a boost to the size of profits reported per share.”
  • “Fresh records for buybacks are likely to be set, with changes to the US tax regime expected to trigger a repatriation of profits that have been held offshore for years.”
  • “A string of companies, including Boeing and Honeywell, have announced close to $90bn worth of share buyback programs since the reforms were agreed in December. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that of $1.2tn parked overseas, perhaps half of the post-tax total, or around $450bn, could be devoted to share buybacks.”
  • “Shareholders are going to be banging on doors saying we want some of that money,’ says Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones. No matter that stock markets have set record highs of late, the expectation that spare cash must be returned to its rightful owners is putting managers under pressure.”
  • “They almost have to buy when the stock is high. Timing the market is not something most companies can do,’ adds Mr Silverblatt. But the new flood of dollars raises an old question about whose interest the practice serves.”
  • McCrum does an excellent job of outlining some of the motives and outcomes of the practice. Some highlights:
  • “The only year in the past 14 when big US companies spent less on buybacks than dividends was 2009, when the S&P 500 index hit rock bottom. ‘The best time to do [a buyback] is in a recession, but that’s when everyone is scared stupid,’ says Andrew Lapthorne, a quantitative strategist for Société Générale.”
  • “If a company has more cash than it needs, and nothing better to invest in, it should consider whether buying its own stock is a good investment. Yet the time when companies have plenty of spare cash tends to be when business is good and shares are overvalued.”
  • “Apple has admitted that a primary purpose of its buybacks is to neutralize the impact of stock compensation.”
  • “The company has spent $151bn on repurchasing stock in the past decade, about 17% of its almost $900bn market valuation. The number of shares has dropped by about the same amount — 17%. Yet when Apple started to buy in 2012, the shares could be bought for half today’s price. The difference has been handed to employees.”
  • “Some companies have managed to spend more on buybacks in recent years than the shares are worth today.”
  • “Since 1995 IBM, the consulting and supercomputer group, has spent $162bn to repurchase more than half of its outstanding shares. What is left, for those who did not sell, is a company now valued at $154bn, suggesting the money was spent in the wrong place.”
  • “Any company will wonder what its valuation might have been, were different decisions taken. Prof Lazonick (William Lazonick, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell) points to the example of Cisco Systems, the world’s largest networking company. In two decades it has spent $75bn repurchasing stock, more than three times the total for capital investment in property or equipment. A serial acquirer of other businesses, it has long struggled to grow sales.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Trading activity at retail-focused brokerages 1/29

  • “Retail investor trading activity has accelerated recently. It’s starting to look like the late 90s.”

Real Estate

Bloomberg – Singapore Overtakes China as Largest Asian Investor in U.S. Property – Pooja Thakur Mahrotri 1/28

Bloomberg – Wanda Selling $5.4 Billion Property Unit Stake, to Seek Listing ‘Soon’ – Jing Yang De Morel 1/29

  • More on the Tencent investment below. However, wanted to call attention to…
  • “Separately, Wanda put its last two overseas property developments up for sale, according to people familiar with the matter, in the latest unwinding of a decade-long overseas buying spree that drew scrutiny from Chinese regulators. The group is seeking buyers for a hotel, office and apartment complex in Chicago and a development in Beverly Hills, California, said the people, who asked not to be identified because discussions are private.”
  • Presumably the Beverly Hills site is the “One Beverly Hills,” aka Robinson May, site that was previously purchased by New Pacific Realty Corporation for $33.5m in 2004, sold to the Candy Brothers for $500M in 2007, bought out of foreclosure by Hong Kong based Joint Treasure International for $148M in 2010 and then sold to Dalian Wanda for $420M in 2014.

CNBC – America’s 10 most valuable malls are bringing in billions in sales. Here’s where they are – Lauren Thomas 1/29

NYT – New York’s Hidden Home Buyer Closing Costs: Luxury Boxes and Mint Mojitos – Shane Goldmacher 1/29

Health / Medicine

Economist – America’s opioid epidemic is driven by supply 1/29

  • “A new study shows that economic factors do not fully explain the rising number of drug deaths.”

WSJ – Schools Close as Flu Epidemic Spreads – Tawnell D. Hobbs and Sarah Toy 1/27

  • “Schools in at least 11 states have closed as the worst flu epidemic in nearly a

decade intensifies.”

China

WSJ – Why Tencent’s Latest Property Deal Makes Sense – Jacky Wong 1/30

  • Reminds me of when the Japanese Keiretsu’s were buying stakes in each other.
  • In this instance Dalian Wanda benefits from an association with Tencent and Tencent picks up some real estate equity on the cheap (maybe).

January 30, 2018

Perspective

statista – Super Bowl LII – Felix Richter 1/26

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – The dangers of digital democracy – Rana Foroohar 1/28

FT – What Venezuela’s chaos means for the oil market – Nick Butler 1/28

  • “Anyone looking for an explanation of the recent uptick in the oil price towards $70 a barrel need look no further than the unhappy state of Venezuela. Oil production in the country fell 13% in 2017 (against the 2016 average), with the drop accelerating towards the end of the year. In the last three months alone output has fallen by more than 500,000 barrels a day to a 28-year low of just over 1.6m a day.”
  • “On any normal measure, Venezuela should be one of the world’s richest countries. With proven oil reserves of over 300bn barrels and a wealth of other natural resources, the 30m citizens of the Bolivarian Republic should be the beneficiaries of a secure regional market for oil supplies and of the skills accumulated in the industry over the last 80 years.”
  • “Instead, the country is on the verge of bankruptcy. The government is toying with inventing a currency — the petro — securitized against the contents of an oilfield in the Orinoco basin. But the first requirement of cryptocurrencies is trust and there is little or none of that for the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Inflation rate is running at 1,178%, according to unofficial estimates — the government has stopped publishing inflation data.”
  • “The collapse of Venezuela as a viable state has accelerated over the past six months and its effects have begun to hit the country’s core business — the production of oil. The state company PDVSA is deeply in debt. Including bonds, notes and other loans, it owes around $56bn. Schlumberger the international oil services company, took a write down of $938m last month because of bills the country has failed to pay.”
  • “Cuba, once the closest ally of Venezuela’s hard-left leadership, has taken control of PDVSA’s stake in a local refinery to offset unpaid debts. Russia and China have at times propped up the Maduro government but now the limit of generosity seems to be some relief on repayment terms rather than new loans.”
  • “In the absence of regime change there will be no rescue funds from the International Monetary Fund or anyone else. Meanwhile, the opposition, although vocal, lacks any effective power. In these circumstances, the country’s oil production is likely to stay down, and could well fall further during 2018.”
  • “For Venezuela the situation is a deepening tragedy. For the oil market, and Opec in particular, the loss of production from one of the most important producers outside the Middle East is a source of salvation.”

NYT – The Follower Factory – Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel Dance, Richard Harris, and Mark Hansen 1/27

  • “Everyone wants to be popular online. Some even pay for it. Inside social media’s black market.”

Energy

WEF – We’re getting closer to completing the energy transition – Faith Birol 1/18

Environment / Science

FT – The problem with plastic – Clive Cookson 1/23

  • “Every year an estimated 8 million tons of plastic end up in ocean.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – In Kenya, and Across Africa, an Unexpected Epidemic: Obesity – Jeffrey Gettleman 1/27

China

FT – China faces refinancing crunch with $2.7tn of bonds bearing down – Emma Dunkley and Gabriel Wildau 1/28

  • “China’s $4tn bond market faces a refinancing challenge over the next five years as more than half of the outstanding debt matures, heightening concerns over default risk by some borrowers.”

FT – China’s HNA tries to navigate turbulent times – Lucy Hornby 1/28

  • “In the space of just 12 months, Chinese airline-to-finance conglomerate HNA has morphed from a symbol of the ambition and wealth of China Inc into a cautionary tale of corporate indebtedness.”
  • “About $20bn in US dollar-denominated bonds issued by HNA and its subsidiaries are due to mature in 2018 or 2019. The yields on three of those dollar bonds issued by HNA’s main Hong Kong subsidiary have spiked, doubling this month to more than 18%.”
  • “There are also signs of a cash crunch rippling through the group’s complex structure, which includes 16 listed entities and many layers of shell companies and crossholdings. Several have raised debt from Chinese banks and HNA has also turned to high-interest peer-to-peer loans, making its renminbi-denominated debt harder to quantify.”

Japan

Project Syndicate – The Bank of Japan’s Moment of Truth – Takatoshi Ito 1/25

  • “After years of deflation, Japan’s labor market is the tightest it has been in decades and the Bank of Japan is still providing significant stimulus to the economy. But with inflation still well below target, central bankers are finding themselves between a rock and hard place.”

January 24, 2018

Perspective

A Wealth of Common Sense: 180 Years of Stock Market Drawdowns – Ben Carlson 1/22

  • “A reader sent me a link to a video of a presentation given by former hedge fund manager and quant Robert Frey (whose firm was actually bought out by legendary hedge fund manager Jim Simons in the 90s) called 180 Years of Market Drawdowns.”
  • “Frey discusses the many changes that have taken place in the stock market over the years — the creation of the Fed, monetary policy, fiscal policy, the end of the gold standard, tax rates, valuations, the industry make-up of the markets and a number of other things.”
  • “But there has been one constant going back all the way to the early 1800s — risk. More specifically, drawdowns or losses. Frey presented a couple of different charts on the market to make his point. First, here’s the long-term growth of the stock market with losses shaded in red:”
  • “Now here are those losses visualized in another way without the benefit of a log scale chart:”
  • “Obviously, the crash during the Great Depression stands out here, but look at how consistent losses have been over each and every decade or economic environment. Losses are really the one constant across all cycles.”
  • “Frey says in his talk that in stocks, ‘You’re usually in a drawdown state’.”
  • “Stocks don’t make new highs every single day, so most of the time you’re going to be underwater from your portfolio’s high water mark. This means there are plenty of chances to be in a state of regret when investing in stocks.”
  • “This makes sense when you consider that stocks are positive just a little over half the time when looking at returns on a daily basis, but it can be difficult to wrap your head around this fact.”
  • “I used monthly total returns on stocks for these numbers and found that an investor would have been down from a prior peak over 70% of the time. The majority of your time invested in stocks could be spent thinking about how you coulda, shoulda, woulda sold at that previous high price (which of course gets taken out to the upside eventually).”
  • “Over the last 90 years or so the market have been in a bear market almost one-quarter of the time. Half the time you’re down 5% or worse. It’s difficult to appreciate this fact when looking at a long-term log scale stock chart that seems to only go up and to the right.”
  • “This is why stocks are constantly playing mind games with us. They generally go up but not every day, week, month or year.”
  • “No one can predict what the future returns will be in the market. No one knows what the future holds for economic growth. And we certainly can’t predict how investors will decide to price corporate cash flows at any given point in time out into the future.”
  • “But predicting future risk is fairly easy — markets will continue to fluctuate and experience losses on a regular basis. As an investor in stocks you will spend a lot of time second-guessing yourself because your portfolio has fallen in value from a previously seen higher level.”
  • “Market losses are the one constant that don’t change over time — get used to it.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Teachable Moment – A Goon Squad of Charlatans, False Prophets and Mercenaries – Anthony Isola 1/23

NYT – What if a Healthier Facebook Is Just … Instagram? – Kevin Rose 1/22

Markets / Economy

FT – No stealth taper from Bank of Japan – Robin Harding 1/23

  • “BoJ governor says bank has not started thinking about exit from monetary easing.”

FT – High-spirits as Bacardi swallows Patron tequila for $5.1bn – Jude Webber 1/22

Energy

FT – Trump’s 30% tariffs on solar imports anger global sector – Ed Crooks 1/23

  • “The Solar Energy Industries Association said it expected the tariffs to cost about 23,000 jobs, based on modeling by IHS Markit, the research group. That is about 9% of the estimated US solar workforce of about 260,000.”

FT – Trump raises temperature with new tariffs in China trade battle – Shawn Donnan and Ed Crooks 1/23

  • Beijing and Seoul are not happy.

Finance

FT – Private equity: flood of cash triggers buyout bubble fears – Javier Espinoza 1/22

  • “The buyout sector is on a tear as investors hunt for higher returns. But as competition and valuations increase, some fear a dangerous new cycle.”

Cryptocurrency

Bloomberg Businessweek – Startups Are Raising Billions Using Initial Coin Offerings – Yuji Nakamura 1/22

FT – The $3bn ICO question – Don Weinland 1/23

  • “Where has the $3bn raised in ‘initial coin offerings’ over the last year and a half actually gone?”
  • “A group of academics led by experts from the University of Luxembourg and the European Banking Institute, have been pondering that very question for months. And what they found out could alarm investors who have been buying into companies using an instant digital ledger (aka blockchain) and cryptocurrencies instead of investing on the stock markets with hard cash.”
  • “On the crucial question of who is ‘behind’ an ICO, the researchers found that 21% of the 300 ICO deals in their database ‘failed to convey any information at all about the issuing entity’. About 52% of the issuers did not provide valid postal addresses.” 
  • “The authors stress that they have only looked at 300 ICOs, and therefore their findings should not be taken as ‘any more than very broadly indicative, given that the total universe of ICOs’ is more than 1,000.”
  • “Regulators around the world have found ICOs’ rise troubling, especially since the rewards promised by ICO issuers are often obtuse and can range from use of their product (in exchange for the tokens investors buy) to a share in profits. In some cases, investors hold on to the tokens hoping for a Bitcoinesque rise in value.” 
  • “Despite the high level of regulatory uncertainty, most issuers have so far done little to make things clearer for buyers.”
  • “Nearly 83% of the ICOs give no regulatory status for the offerings, the report says. That means the buyer does not know under what laws the ICO is regulated, or what their legal rights are after making a purchase. The researchers could not determine in what jurisdiction 93 of the ICOs, were based.”

WSJ – The Programmer at the Center of a $100 Billion Crypto Storm – Paul Vigna and Jim Oberman 1/23

  • “How a top source of bitcoin data contributed to a sudden plunge in digital currencies.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 1/22

Tech

FT – WeChat launches alternative to Apple App Store – Yuan Yang 1/9

  • “WeChat, China’s most frequently used mobile app, today started offering ‘miniprograms’ within the app from third-party developers. Users can now book a shared ride with Didi, order a gift from JD.com, or rent a bicycle from Mobike — and use over 100 other ‘apps within the app’ — without leaving the WeChat platform.”
  • Note that WeChat now has over 580,000 apps within its universe – up from 100 when it started.
  • “The new miniprogram function makes WeChat, or Weixin in Chinese, the first big platform to provide an alternative to the App Store from Apple, which has tightly controlled what programs can be installed on an iOS device.”
  • “The miniprograms can be used almost instantly and provide stripped-down functions compared to the original full apps.”
  • “Rather than the 30% cut that Apple takes from App Store purchases, developers have not been asked to give any cut to WeChat, according to Matthew Brennan of the tech consultancy ChinaChannel.”
  • “In addition, miniprograms are ‘device-neutral’, meaning they will run in exactly the same way on Android and iOS.”
  • “WeChat’s captive audience makes it a more plausible candidate to crack open in-app app distribution. The platform accounts for 35% of all time spent on mobiles in China, according to QuestMobile, the tech research lab. More than 750m people log into WeChat daily, and half of them use it for more than an hour and a half each day.”
  • “’Tencent is winning the mobile war. Miniprograms will come to have a material impact on Apple’s App Store revenues; around 15% of China’s mobile market are iOS users. Tencent is Apple’s number one source of income from the App Store globally,’ said Mr Brennan.”

Health / Medicine

WSJ – Why Our Mental Health Takes a Village – Elizabeth Bernstein 1/22

  • “Different people can help us manage different moods. Psychologists explain how to build a portfolio of supportive allies.”

China

NYT – China’s Housing Market Is Like a Casino. Can a Property Tax Tame It? – Keith Bradsher 1/22

  • “Now the Chinese government is considering adopting something that, while familiar to homeowners in the United States and elsewhere, could dramatically reshape the world’s second-largest economy: a property tax.”
  • “Living in a place without property taxes may sound appealing, but a growing number of experts and policymakers in China say the absence of one has helped destabilize a vast and crucial part of the Chinese economy.”
  • “Many investors snap up homes — in China, they are mostly apartments — hoping to ride a price surge. In the biggest cities, property prices on average have at least doubled over the past eight years. But vast numbers of apartments in many cities lie empty, either because the buyers have no intention of moving in or renting out, or because speculators built homes that nobody wants.”
  • “A property tax could have a profound impact on a crucial part of the nation’s economy. Real estate makes up nearly three-quarters of the assets of Chinese households, according to the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance, an academic institute in Chengdu, in southwestern China. That compares with a bit more than one-third for United States households. Roughly a fifth to a quarter of China’s annual economic output comes from property and related industries, like furniture making.”
  • “But housing is also the source of some of the country’s biggest booms and busts. Local investors — many of whom do not trust the country’s stock markets and are forbidden by Beijing to move most of their wealth abroad — simply throw money at housing. Real estate broker fees, often as low as 1%, are a small fraction of the typical 6% in the United States. Mortgage lending has leapt over the past two years, adding to the potential for financial turbulence.”

January 18, 2018

Perspective

Visual Capitalist – Over the Next Year, Germany Will Hit a Scary Demographic Milestone – Jeff Desjardins 1/16

WSJ – Daily Shot: Amerisleep – The State of Sleep 1/17

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Mauldin Economics – The Fed Has Put Itself Out of Business, Where to Now? – John Mauldin / Lacy Hunt 1/16

Pragmatic Capitalism – Will Centralized Entities Ruin the Decentralized Party? – Cullen Roche 1/15

  • “One of the key aspects of the crypto boom that keeps bothering me is the inherent conflict between centralized entities and decentralized entities.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Reuters – Dow Double 1/16

  • “It took just over five years for the Dow to double.”

Energy

Reuters – U.S. oil industry set to break record, upend global trade – Liz Hampton 1/15

  • “Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.”
  • “And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.”
  • “The economic and political impacts of soaring U.S. output are breathtaking, cutting the nation’s oil imports by a fifth over a decade, providing high-paying jobs in rural communities and lowering consumer prices for domestic gasoline by 37% from a 2008 peak.”
  • “U.S. energy exports now compete with Middle East oil for buyers in Asia. Daily trading volumes of U.S. oil futures contracts have more doubled in the past decade, averaging more than 1.2 billion barrels per day in 2017, according to exchange operator CME Group.”
  • “The United States now exports up to 1.7 million barrels per day of crude, and this year will have the capacity to export 3.8 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas. Terminals conceived for importing liquefied natural gas have now been overhauled to allow exports.”

Cryptocurrency

FT – Investors face barriers trying to turn bitcoin profits into pounds – Kate Beioley 1/16

MarketWatch – 5 key reasons bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies have lost a stunning $400 billion in 10 days – Mark DeCambre 1/17

  1. South Korea
  2. Russia
  3. China
  4. Bitconnect $BCC
  5. Bitcoin futures

WSJ – Bitcoin Extends Rout, Dipping Below $10,000 – Paul Vigna and Gregor Stuart Hunter 1/17

  • “Bitcoin fell as low as $9,966, down around 6% on the day and nearly half from its Dec. 17 record of $19,783.21, according to data from CoinDesk. A day earlier, the cryptocurrency plunged as much as 25%. Later in the U.S. morning, the price bounced back above the $10,000 mark.”
  • “Wednesday’s drop spread quickly to other major digital currencies. Ether was down as much as 33%. XRP was down 47%. Litecoin was down 35%. Newer tokens like Cardano, EOS and Monero were down 35% or more.”
  • “’We have very fast-moving weather systems in the crypto world,’ said Charles Hayter, the chief executive of research firm CryptoCompare. ‘One moment it’s absolute exuberance, and then it’s pure fear and panic, running for the exits. It’s quite interesting’.”
  • “’This is what you’d expect in a nascent market with a lot of misinformation,’ said Mr. Hayter.”
  • “For all the volatility, bitcoin prices remain in a general uptrend, measured by technical analysis. ‘Suggestions that this is the start of the demise of cryptos is very premature,’ said Fawad Razaqzada, a market analyst at Forex.com.”
  • “The first of Cboe’s (Chicago Board Options Exchange) futures contracts expired on Wednesday, prompting a flurry of trading as market makers rushed to settle transactions and roll over some contracts into next month. Futures traders make a profit if the value of prices and futures diverge when they expire.”
  • “But the assumption that opening a path for bitcoin to institutional buyers would accelerate that momentum hasn’t happened. In fact, the ability to short bitcoin appears so far to be a winning bet. Bitcoin touched its record high the day before futures began trading on Dec. 11 and has been falling since then.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Ripple 1/16

WSJ – Daily Shot: Capital Economics – Bitcoin Mining Locations 1/17

Health / Medicine

NYT – After a Debacle, How California Became a Role Model on Measles – Emily Oster and Geoffrey Kocks 1/16

Agriculture

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg Agriculture Subindex 1/16

  • “Bloomberg’s agriculture index continues to hit cycle lows. As a result, US net farm income is down by over 50% since 2013 (according to the USDA).”

Education

MyinTuition – Quick College Cost Estimator – Content below by David Leonhardt at the NYT 1/17

  • “Many people believe that college costs more than it actually does.”
  • “Average net tuition at community colleges is less than zero — seriously — once financial aid is taken into account. Average in-state tuition at public colleges will be just $4,140 this year. And many elite private colleges cover much of their sky-high list-price tuition through scholarships.”
  • “Yet many middle-class and low-income families believe tuition will cost them tens of thousands of dollars a year. This misperception has a serious downside. It keeps some people from attending college, even though the financial (and nonfinancial) benefits of a degree are enormous.”
  • “Fortunately, a growing number of colleges are starting to take tuition misperceptions seriously. Sixteen top colleges are announcing this morning that they’re joining an effort called MyIntuition — an online calculator that lets people answer just a few questions, anonymously, and receive an estimate of how much attending each college would cost.”
  • “The 16 include Boston College, Brown, Davidson, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, St. Olaf and Yale. They’ve joined 15 others that already participate. The calculator was created by Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College.”

China

FT – China infrastructure projects fall foul of debt concerns – Tom Mitchell 1/16

  • “Costly projects abandoned after Beijing focuses on meeting ‘needs of the people'”

January 5, 2018

Happy New Year!

I hope that you had a safe and enjoyable transition and I wish you a prosperous 2018.

While I wasn’t planning a post today, I don’t want to deluge you with too much content first thing Monday, so here is a mid-day post.

Cheers,

Duff

Perspective

NYT – Rise of Bitcoin Competitor Ripple Creates Wealth to Rival Zuckerberg – Nathaniel Popper 1/4

  • “The virtual currency boom has gotten so heated that it is throwing the list of the world’s richest people into disarray.”
  • “Consider what has happened to the founders of an upstart virtual currency known as Ripple, which has seen its value skyrocket in recent weeks.”
  • “At one point on Thursday, Chris Larsen, a Ripple co-founder who is also the largest holder of Ripple tokens, was worth more than $59 billion, according to figures from Forbes. That would have briefly vaulted Mr. Larsen ahead of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg into fifth place on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people.”
  • “Other top Ripple holders would have also zoomed up that list as the value of their tokens soared more than 100% during the last week — and more than 30,000% in the last year. The boom has turned Ripple into the second largest virtual currency, within striking distance of the original behemoth, Bitcoin.”
  • “While most of these currencies were worth nearly nothing a year ago, many are now responsible for creating billionaires — albeit with rapidly fluctuating fortunes. If this is a tulip fever, the fever has spread to chrysanthemums and poppies.”
  • “Ripple, whose tokens are known as XRP, is far from the only virtual currency being fueled by the hysteria. In 2017, there were 29 tokens — including Einsteinium and Byteball — that rose more than Bitcoin’s remarkable 1,600% jump, according to OnChainFx, a data provider.”
  • “Nearly 40 virtual currencies are worth more than $1 billion — when all the outstanding tokens are counted at their current value — despite many of them not having been used in any sort of transaction other than speculative trading.”
  • For perspective, “… all the outstanding Ripple tokens were worth $140 billion on Thursday, while all Bitcoin were worth $250 billion.”
  • “Mr. Larsen was Ripple’s chief executive from 2012 until he stepped down last year to become the company’s executive chairman. During his tenure, Ripple focused on helping banks use its software to shift money between different foreign currencies, something that most banks currently do through a cumbersome process involving separate accounts in every country where they operate.”
  • “Ripple has said it has signed up more than 100 banks to use the company’s technology, including American Express and Banco Santander.”
  • “But banks do not need to use Ripple tokens for Ripple’s software to transfer dollars, euros and yen. That point appears to be lost on many small time investors who are buying Ripple tokens.”
  • “Most of the buying and selling of Ripple tokens is happening in South Korea, according to data providers that track virtual currency exchanges, where ordinary investors have thrown money at a wide array of virtual currencies.”
  • “…Even virtual currency analysts who believe in Ripple’s software have said there is a big difference between Ripple the company being successful, and Ripple the token gaining enough traction to justify current prices.”
  • “’An impossibly long list of things already needs to go right for XRP to become a reserve currency for banks,’ Ryan Selkis, a virtual currency analyst, wrote in a post on Thursday.”
  • “But, Mr. Selkis added, that doesn’t mean Ripple’s price won’t keep ascending. Why? ‘Because this is crypto, and everyone in the industry is now slinging crack crypto cocaine to retail addicts,’ he wrote.”

WSJ – The Cashless Society Has Arrived – Only It’s in China – Alyssa Abkowitz 1/4

  • “Though the U.S. saw $112 billion of mobile payments in 2016, by a Forrester Research estimate, such payments in China totaled $9 trillion, according to iResearch Consulting Group, a Chinese firm.”
  • “For Alibaba and Tencent, the payoff isn’t just the transaction fees they make from merchants, typically 0.6%. It’s also the consumer data collected, which can transform their apps into marketing platforms for an expanding array of services, from bike sharing to travel.”
  • “Conditions in China made it ripe for this innovation. Credit cards never caught on in a big way. Discretionary spending wasn’t an option for most people until recent years, and there has long been a cultural aversion to debt in China. On top of that, the government made it tough for Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. to set up shop.”
  • “The rise of tech companies as financial powers has dealt a blow to traditional banks. China’s state-owned banks lost nearly $23 billion in fees in 2015 they might have collected from card fees, according to a November 2016 report from EY (formerly Ernst & Young) and Singapore’s DBS Bank. The report projected the annual fee loss could widen to $60 billion by 2020.”
  • “The larger problem for banks might be that Alibaba and Tencent often know more about their customers than they do. If a Beijing car dealer uses a bank debit card for a business trip to Shanghai, the bank knows what airline he or she flew, as well as the hotel and restaurants patronized. ‘But if the ‘customer interface’ is happening elsewhere, the bank has zero visibility over transactions,’ said James Lloyd, Asia-Pacific FinTech Leader at EY. ‘That’s not a good situation to find yourself in’.”
  • “Tencent and Alibaba say they have no plans to push their payment platforms to U.S. consumers. Many Americans don’t see the need for mobile payments, since their plastic cards and cash are welcomed and some merchants still accept checks.”
  • “’Any new way of paying has to prove itself to be incrementally better than any other options you have,’ said James Wester of research firm IDC Financial Insights. In the U.S., ‘plastic is convenient, widely accepted and understood by the customer’.”

Visual Capitalist – China’s Digital Wallets Offer a Glimpse at the Future of Payments – Nick Routley 12/30

NYT – Three Months After Maria, Roughly Half of Puerto Ricans Still Without Power – Frances Robles and Jess Bidgood 12/29

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – When Things Don’t Make Any Sense – Ben Carlson 1/4

  • Some perspective on the cryptocurrency boom.

FT – Fed risks massive hangover as it begins ‘great unwind’ – Michael Hassenstab (CIO – Templeton Global Macro) 12/27

  • “Only a strong economy can stop damage in Treasuries spreading to equities and credit.”

FT View – A healthy economy is a risk for stock markets 12/29

  • “If the big US tax cut that brought 2017 to a conclusion has its intended consequences, then capital expenditures will start to rise in the next year, as will wages. With consumer confidence high, that should lead to higher consumption. It would also lead to monetary policy at the tightest end of what currently seems probable. The European Central Bank and Bank of Japan would indeed desist from their asset purchases, the Federal Reserve would reduce its balance sheet, and liquidity would flow out of world markets. The Fed could be expected to raise rates four times.”
  • “This would be a consummation devoutly to be wished, vindicating both the belated fiscal stimulus that the US has just administered and the desperate muddle-through strategy that preceded it. But significantly higher rates and lower liquidity would be bad news for equity markets, which look historically expensive. High valuations can be justified while rates are historically low. Future earnings can be discounted at a low rate and the cash yields on stocks look attractive. But if all goes according to the US Republican party’s plan, interest rates will need to be significantly higher a year from now, and valuations will come under pressure.”
  • “The alternative scenario is that the tax cut achieves no meaningful stimulus, and is merely put towards higher corporate dividends and expensive mergers and acquisitions. The synchronized global economic recovery of the past year peters out, as other brief post-crisis recoveries have done. In this situation, the Fed tightens far less aggressively, other central banks blink and keep buying assets, and bond yields stay where they are, or even fall. On this gloomy prognosis, the legacy of the tax cut would be no more than greater inequality. But equity markets would enjoy much the same benign conditions they have had this year.”
  • “Amid Wall Street’s bullish prognoses for 2018, an inverse relationship is becoming clear. Those who are more optimistic for the economy tend to be more pessimistic about the prospects for risk assets. Some say they are so bullish they are bearish.”
  • “This is realistic. If monetary stimulus really does give way to a successful fiscal stimulus, investors should expect much higher volatility, and probably outright price falls, from equity markets.”

The Guardian – The sugar conspiracy – Ian Leslie 4/7/16

WSJ – China’s Bid to Dominate Oil Pricing Will Fail – Nathaniel Taplin 12/26

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg Quint – World’s Wealthiest Gain $1 Trillion in ’17 on Market Exuberance – Tom Metcalf and Jack Witzig 12/28

FT – Uber’s rise triggers financial crisis at taxi lenders – Alistair Gray 12/30

  • “Credit unions at risk of failure as loan losses mount.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: UBS Estimates – US Retail Store Closures 2017 – 1/5

FT – Brookfield moves into private rented sector for fresh profit – Aime Williams 12/29

  • “Fund manager to keep 1m sq ft space in Canary Wharf Group towers.”
  • “Brian Kingston, chief executive of Brookfield Property Partners, said property prices in London had ‘always been high’, but were now ‘very high’.”
  • “’You would always have people starting out renting, but they would graduate to owning,’ said Mr Kingston. ‘But in New York and London, you could be a fairly well-compensated individual and you could still not afford to buy’.”

Tech

FT – Travis Kalanick to sell part of his Uber stake for first time – Tim Bradshaw 1/4

  • “Deal will earn ousted chief over $1bn in sale to SoftBank as part of their tender offer.”

Entertainment

FT – China’s Hollywood romance turns sour – Matthew Garrahan and Charles Clover 12/26

China

NYT – China’s New Lenders Collect Invasive Data and Offer Billions. Beijing Is Worried. – Alexandra Stevenson and Cao Li 12/25

FT – China share pledges soar as founders seek new borrowing tools – Gabriel Wildau and Yizhen Jia 12/26

  • “Chinese stockholders are ramping up borrowing against shares, driving revenue for securities houses but creating risk of a chain reaction in the event of a sharp market downturn.”
  • “Shareholders in 317 Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed companies had pledged shares worth at least 40% of those companies by December 18, up from 224 companies on the same date a year earlier, according to Wind Info.”
  • “Share-pledging is especially common for small and mid-cap companies, where a single shareholder often owns a large stake. Controlling shareholders sometimes reinvest the proceeds into company projects or buy additional company shares on the secondary market to boost the share price.”
  • “In September China’s two main bourses published draft rules that would tighten regulation on share pledging. One provision caps the value of loans secured by shares at 60% of the market value of the pledged shares, ensuring a buffer that will protect the lender in case a share price falls.”
  • At least the mainland exchanges require that such pledges be disclosed, unlike the Hong Kong exchange, where other shareholders can be surprised.

Reuters – China’s lenders fret over debts lurking in shadow banking system – Engen Tham, Matthew Miller and David Lague 12/28

December 19, 2017

Perspective

WSJ – Daily Shot: Credit Suisse – US Household Net worth by quantile 12/15

WSJ – Daily Shot: Credit Suisse – US Household Ownership of Equities by quantile 12/15

Bloomberg – He Stole $100 Million From His Clients. Now He’s Living in Luxury on the Cote d’Azur – Liam Vaughan 12/17

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Seeing Both Sides – Ben Carlson 12/17

Economist – Why is America more tolerant of inequality than many rich countries? – C.K. 12/18

  • “Ignorance about the scale of the problem is part of the answer.”

Huffpost – Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression – Michael Hobbes 12/14

  • A summary of the numbers provided by Erica Pandey of Axios on 12/17:
  • “300% more student debt than their parents, on average.”
  • “1/2 as likely to own a home as young people — ages 25–34 — were in 1975.”
  • “One in five of young adults live in poverty.”
  • “2.9% average annual returns on 401(k) plans, compared to 6.3% returns for baby boomers.”
  • “Many millennials will have to work until the age of 75, based on an analysis of federal data.”
  • “A typical 2009 college graduate could earn up to $58,600 less than a typical 2007 college graduate over a decade, based on current trends.”
  • “The American racial wealth gap is widening, with the median white household projected to have 86 times more wealth than the median black household by 2020.”

NYT – World’s Most Expensive Home? Another Bauble for a Saudi Prince – Nicholas Kulish and Michael Forsythe 12/16

NYT – What Is Bitcoin Really Worth? Don’t Even Ask. – Robert Shiller 12/15

Project Syndicate – Complacency Will Be Tested in 2018 – Stephen S. Roach 12/14

  • “Alas, there is an important twist today that wasn’t in play back then –central banks’ swollen balance sheets. From 2008 to 2017, the combined asset holdings of central banks in the major advanced economies (the United States, the eurozone, and Japan) expanded by $8.3 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. With nominal GDP in these same economies increasing by just $2.1 trillion over the same period, the remaining $6.2 trillion of excess liquidity has distorted asset prices around the world.”
  • “Therein lies the crux of the problem. Real economies have been artificially propped up by these distorted asset prices, and glacial normalization will only prolong this dependency. Yet when central banks’ balance sheets finally start to shrink, asset-dependent economies will once again be in peril. And the risks are likely to be far more serious today than a decade ago, owing not only to the overhang of swollen central bank balance sheets, but also to the overvaluation of assets.”

The Reformed Broker – Sometimes it’s not complicated – Joshua M. Brown 12/15

Vanity Fair – Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1% – Joseph Stiglitz, May 2011

Markets / Economy

FT – Wildfires in California add to ‘horrific year’ of disaster losses – Alistair Gray and Oliver Ralph 12/17

  • “String of catastrophes expected to drive insurance prices higher.”

Real Estate

MarketWatch – We’re still building the wrong kind of homes for renters – Andrea Riquier 12/14

  • “11 million Americans spend more than 50% of their income on rent.”

NYT – The Next Crisis for Puerto Rico: A Crush of Foreclosures – Matthew Goldstein 12/16

  • “About one-third of the island’s 425,000 homeowners are behind on their mortgage payments to banks and Wall Street firms that previously bought up distressed mortgages. Tens of thousands have not made payments for months. Some 90,000 borrowers became delinquent as a consequence of Hurricane Maria, according to Black Knight Inc., a data firm formerly known as Black Knight Financial Services.”
  • “Puerto Rico’s 35% foreclosure and delinquency rate is more than double the 14.4% national rate during the depths of the housing implosion in January 2010. And there is no prospect of the problem’s solving itself or quickly.”
  • “At the moment, dealing with a mortgage lender about a missed payment may be a distant concern for many of the 3.4 million people in Puerto Rico. They are literally still picking up the pieces, struggling to live without electricity or trying to get insurance companies to pay claims to repair their homes. More than 100,000 people are believed to have left to go live with friends and family on the mainland.”
  • “Residents won a reprieve when the federal government imposed a temporary moratorium on foreclosures, which stops banks and investors that bought mortgages at cut-rate prices from evicting delinquent borrowers or starting new foreclosures. Many lenders also have agreed to waive missed payments during the moratorium.”
  • “But that moratorium is scheduled to expire in early 2018, and lawyers and housing counselors expect that to trigger a surge in foreclosures.”

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Investing.com – Bitcoin 12/18

  • “The cryptocurrency is gunning for $20k as it hit another record high over the weekend.”

Health / Medicine

WP – ‘We feel like our system was hijacked’: DEA agents say a huge opioid case ended in a whimper – Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham 12/17

South America

NYT – As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger – Meridith Kohut and Isayen Herrera 12/17

December 13, 2017

Perspective

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market – Olga Kharif 12/8

  • “Among the coins people invest in, bitcoin has the least concentrated ownership, says Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital. The top 100 bitcoin addresses control 17.3% of all the issued currency, according to Alex Sunnarborg, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Tetras Capital. With ether, a rival to bitcoin, the top 100 addresses control 40% of the supply, and with coins such as Gnosis, Qtum, and Storj, top holders control more than 90%. Many large owners are part of the teams running these projects.”

WEF – This is every US state’s biggest trading partner – Andy Kiersz 11/16

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – What Happens When the Government Uses Facebook as a Weapon? – Lauren Etter 12/7

  • “Internet.org was just one part of a decade-long campaign of global expansion for Facebook. In countries such as the Philippines, the efforts have been so successful that the company is able to tout to its advertisers that its network is, for many people, the only version of the internet they know. Repressive governments originally treated Facebook, and all social media, with suspicion—they saw how it could serve as a locus for dissidents, as it had in the Arab Spring in 2011. But authoritarian regimes are now embracing social media, shaping the platforms into a tool to wage war against a wide range of opponents—opposition parties, human-rights activists, minority populations, journalists.”
  • Maria Ressa, co-founder of the country’s leading online news site “recalled that she started as a journalist in the Philippines in 1986, the year of the People Power Revolution, an uprising that ultimately led to the departure of Ferdinand Marcos and the move from authoritarian rule to democracy. Now she’s worried that the pendulum is swinging back and that Facebook is hastening the trend. ‘They haven’t done anything to deal with the fundamental problem, which is they’re allowing lies to be treated the same way as truth and spreading it,’ she says. ‘Either they’re negligent or they’re complicit in state-sponsored hate’.”

Bloomberg Businessweek – Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance – Zeke Faux 12/6

  • “The concept is centuries old: Inmates of a New York debtors’ prison joked about it as early as 1800, in a newspaper they published called Forlorn Hope. But systematic schemes to collect on fake debts started only about five years ago. It begins when someone scoops up troves of personal information that are available cheaply online—old loan applications, long-expired obligations, data from hacked accounts—and reformats it to look like a list of debts. Then they make deals with unscrupulous collectors who will demand repayment of the fictitious bills. Their targets are often poor and likely to already be getting confusing calls about other loans. The harassment usually doesn’t work, but some marks are convinced that because the collectors know so much, the debt must be real.”
  • “Americans are currently late on more than $600 billion in bills, according to Federal Reserve research, and almost one person in 10 has a debt in collectors’ hands. The agencies recoup what they can and sell the rest down-market, so that iffier and iffier debt is bought by shadier and shadier individuals. Deception is common. Scammers often sell the same portfolios of debt, called ‘paper,’ to several collection agencies at once, so a legitimate IOU gains illegitimate clones. Some inflate balances, a practice known as ‘overbiffing.’ Others create ‘redo’ lists—people who’ve settled their debt, but will be harassed again anyway. These rosters are actually more valuable, because the targets have proved willing to part with money over the phone. And then there are those who invent debts out of whole cloth.”

The Guardian – Former Facebook executive: social media is ripping society apart – Julia Carrie Wong 12/11

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – Prime-age male labor-force participation 12/11

Real Estate

FT – New Zealand looks to ban foreigners from buying houses – Jamie Smyth 12/9

FT – Unibail-Rodamco sees €100m annual synergies in $24.7bn Westfield takeover – Jamie Smyth 12/11

FT – Hong Kong investors go defensive in $3bn property auction – Henny Sender 12/11

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 12/11

  • “Bitcoin’s volatility is on the rise as the cryptocurrency hit new highs.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity – Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel 12/11

  • “Mexico began lifting tariffs and allowing more foreign investment in the 1980s, a transition to free trade given an exclamation point in 1994, when Mexico, the United States and Canada enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Opponents in Mexico warned that the country would lose its cultural and economic independence.”
  • “But few critics predicted it would transform the Mexican diet and food ecosystem to increasingly mirror those of the United States. In 1980, 7% of Mexicans were obese, a figure that tripled to 20.3% by 2016, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Diabetes is now Mexico’s top killer, claiming 80,000 lives a year, the World Health Organization has reported.”

China

WSJ – China’s Clean Energy Future Has a $1.2 Trillion Problem – Nathaniel Taplin 12/11

  • “China’s enormous coal-power debt overhang limits its ability to shift rapidly to cleaner fuels.”

Europe

WEF – Which countries feel they’ve benefitted from the EU? – Niall McCarthy 11/6

Other Interesting Links

Bloomberg Businessweek – This Crowdfunding Site Runs on Hate – Adam Popescu 12/4