BloombergNEF – Forecasted Electric Vehicle Penetration Rates 10/29/19
Bloomberg – DNV Energy Transition Outlook 2018 10/29/19
Tag: Renewable Energy
It’s oil (and energy) graphics day
WSJ – Daily Shot: Reuters – OPEC Oil Production 9/16/19
WSJ – Daily Shot: Arbor Research – Change Oil Production (select countries) 9/16/19
WSJ – Daily Shot: Statista – World’s Largest Oil Producers 9/16/19
WSJ – Daily Shot: BloombergNEF – Energy Production by Type (various countries) 9/16/19
Bloomberg: IEA – Largest Oil Disruptions 9/16/19
Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
Bloomberg Businessweek – Could Ocean’s 8 Actually Work? – James Tarmy 6/5
- “Why stealing giant diamonds is a terrible, no good, very bad idea.”
FT – Trump is trading on the protectionist mood – Rana Foroohar 6/10
- “When even centrists are circling the wagons, we know we have entered a different world.”
FT – Forecasters have an awful record in predicting energy markets – Nick Butler 6/14
- “Wider uncertainty increases appeal of large, low-cost power projects.”
WSJ – The Stock-Market Price Can Be Wrong. Very Wrong. – Jason Zweig 6/15
- “Researchers have caught investors in the act of wildly – and unnecessarily – overpaying for a stock.”
WSJ – Venezuela’s Long Road to Ruin – Mary Anastasia O’Grady 6/10
- “Few countries have provided such a perfect example of socialist policies in practice.”
Markets / Economy
NYT – Power Companies’ Mistakes Can Cost Billions. Who Should Pay? – Ivan Penn 6/14
- “Utilities say they must be shielded from liability or the electric grid will suffer. Critics say that puts the burden on ratepayers, not investors.”
Real Estate
WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – Value of US Real Estate relative to GDP 6/15
WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Burns Home Value Index 6/15
WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Burns Intrinsic Home Value Index 6/15
Energy
WSJ – Global Investment in Wind and Solar Energy Is Outshining Fossil Fuels – Russell Gold 6/11
Finance
WSJ – Daily Shot: MagnifyMoney – Auto Loan Rates vs. Fed Funds Rate 6/15
WSJ – Daily Shot: MagnifyMoney – Student Loan Rates vs. Fed Funds Rate 6/15
Fishing
Construction
NYT – Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a Housing Squeeze – Conor Dougherty 6/7
- “The global construction industry is a $10 trillion behemoth whose structures determine where people live, how they get to work and what cities look like. It is also one of the world’s least efficient businesses. The construction productivity rate — how much building workers do for each hour of labor they put in — has been flat since 1945, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Over that period, sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and retail saw their productivity rates surge by as much as 1,500%. In other words, while the rest of the economy has been supercharged by machines, computers and robots, construction companies are about as efficient as they were in World War II.”
WSJ – Historic Rise in Lumber Costs Ripples Through Economy – Ryan Dezember 6/5
Education
WSJ – Judges Wouldn’t Consider Forgiving Crippling Student Loans – Until Now – Katy Stech Ferek 6/14
- “For decades, college debt was immune from the bankruptcy process. Judges are actively seeking ways to help debtors.”
Africa
Britain
FT – Average-sized English homes too pricey for average earners – Judith Evans 6/15
China
- “Xiao Jianhua (Tomorrow Group company) said to be detained in Shanghai a year after being seized in Hong Kong.”
Nikkei Asian Review – How Beijing is winning control of the South China Sea – Simon Roughneen 6/13
- “Erratic US policy and fraying alliances give China a free hand.”
- “What China is winning is de facto control of nearly the entire South China Sea, including all activities and resources in it, despite the other surrounding Southeast Asian states’ respective legal rights and entitlements under international law.” – Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea
- “At stake is the huge commercial and military leverage that comes with controlling one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, through which up to $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year.”
Europe
- “The country’s economic output is smaller now than it was in 2004, and employment policies are skewed to protecting jobs, not creating them. The number of Italians registered as living abroad rose 60% from 2006 to 2017, to almost 5 million. Among those who stay, it’s common for unemployed young people to live with their parents instead of starting their own families, which is one reason the country has one of the world’s lowest birthrates.”
South America
Other Interesting Links
Tax Foundation – How High Are Beer Taxes in Your State? – Katherine Loughead 5/24
If you were only to read one thing…
Bloomberg Businessweek – How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet – Zeke Faux 3/27
- Affiliate networks (‘affiliates’) = companies/brokers that design advertisements and pay to place them on social media sites on behalf of merchants.
- “Granted anonymity, affiliates were happy to detail their tricks. They told me that Facebook had revolutionized scamming. The company built tools with its trove of user data that made it the go-to platform for big brands. Affiliates hijacked them. Facebook’s targeting algorithm is so powerful, they said, they don’t need to identify suckers themselves—Facebook does it automatically.”
- “The basic process isn’t complicated. For example: A maker of bogus diet pills wants to sell them for $100 a month and doesn’t care how it’s done. The pill vendor approaches a broker, called an affiliate network, and offers to pay a $60 commission per sign-up. The network spreads the word to affiliates, who design ads and pay to place them on Facebook and other places in hopes of earning the commissions. The affiliate takes a risk, paying to run ads without knowing if they’ll work, but if even a small percentage of the people who see them become buyers, the profits can be huge.”
- “Affiliates once had to guess what kind of person might fall for their unsophisticated cons, targeting ads by age, geography, or interests. Now Facebook does that work for them. The social network tracks who clicks on the ad and who buys the pills, then starts targeting others whom its algorithm thinks are likely to buy. Affiliates describe watching their ad campaigns lose money for a few days as Facebook gathers data through trial and error, then seeing the sales take off exponentially. ‘They go out and find the morons for me,’ I was told by an affiliate who sells deceptively priced skin-care creams with fake endorsements from Chelsea Clinton.”
- “In a sense, affiliate scammers are much like Cambridge Analytica. Because Facebook is so effective at vacuuming up people and information about them, anyone who lacks scruples and knows how to access the system can begin to wreak havoc or earn money at astonishing scale.”
- This is not a new game.
- Affiliates are “…applying tricks on Facebook that had been invented by email spammers, who’d in turn borrowed the tactics of fax spammers in the 1980s and ’90s. New forms of media have always been hijacked by misleading advertising: 19th century American newspapers were funded in part by dishonest patent medicine ads. Within days of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, the makers of Bellingham’s Onguent were placing ads claiming the president had used their product to grow his trendy whiskers.”
- “Fake personal endorsements and news reports are still the most effective tricks. Dr. Oz, the Shark Tank judges, and Fixer Upper co-host Joanna Gaines are among the most popular imprimaturs…”
Perspective
howmuch.net – How Much Income You Need to Afford the Average Home in Every State in 2018 – Raul 4/2
WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – US Households with Zero or Negative Home Wealth 4/5
WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Road Quality in the US 4/5
Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
A Wealth of Common Sense – Situational Awareness – Ben Carlson 4/5
Bloomberg Businessweek – The Ancient History of Bitcoin – Peter Coy 3/29
- “Cryptocurrencies may seem brand-new and disruptive, but look to the past and it’s clear they can be regulated.”
Civil Beat: The Associated Press – Hawaii’s Low Unemployment Rate Masks Underlying Problems 4/4
- “In a state with a jobless rate of 2.1%, island residents have work if they want it. But their incomes often don’t pay the bills.”
NYT – Why China Is Confident It Can Beat Trump in a Trade War – Steven Lee Myers 4/5
- “In the political realm, however, Mr. Xi enjoys advantages that may allow him to cope with the economic fallout far better than Mr. Trump can. His authoritarian grip on the news media and the party means there is little room for criticism of his policies, even as Mr. Trump must contend with complaints from American companies and consumers before important midterm elections in November.”
- “The Chinese government also has much greater control over the economy, allowing it to shield the public from job cuts or factory closings by ordering banks to support industries suffering from American tariffs. It can spread the pain of a trade war while tolerating years of losses from state-run companies that dominate major sectors of the economy.”
- “’The American agricultural sector is quite influential in the Congress,’ said Wang Yong, a professor of economics at Peking University, explaining why China has targeted farm products such as soybeans with possible retaliatory tariffs. ‘China wants the American domestic political system to do the work.’”
WSJ – Even After a Tumble, the Stock Market’s Price Isn’t Right – Spencer Jakab 4/4
WSJ – At Quarter End, Tesla Suddenly Got Busy – Michael Rapoport 4/4
Markets / Economy
howmuch.net – How Vulnerable is Each State to a Trade War – Raul 3/27
Real Estate
WSJ – Daily Shot: LendingTree – Home Mortgage Purchase APR by Credit Score Range 4/5
Energy
FT – Alphabet becomes biggest corporate renewable energy buyer in US – Leslie Hook 4/4
- “Alphabet bought enough renewable energy last year to match the power needs of all its data centers and global operations, making it the biggest corporate buyer of renewable power in the US.”
- “The company has secured 3GW of renewable energy, making it the largest corporate buyer of renewable power, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, while Amazon and Apple are in second and third place.”
- “Amazon has pledged that its cloud computing business will be 50% matched by renewables in 2017, while Apple has promised to source four gigawatts of renewable power by 2020, and has been trying to reduce the emission footprint of its supply chain.”
Finance
WSJ – Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Faces Wave of Investor Redemptions – David Benoit 4/5
Cryptocurrency / ICOs
WSJ – Daily Shot: Barchart.com – Bitcoin 4/4
Automotive
WSJ – Car Makers Step Back From Cars – Mike Colias and Christina Rogers 4/4
- “GM to stop production of the Chevrolet Sonic, Ford plans to end U.S. sales of Fiesta and Taurus amid Detroit’s broader exodus from passenger cars.”
China
Perspective
Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
- Visually stunning interactive income-mobility graphics.
Markets / Economy
WSJ – Wall Street Bankers Get Biggest Raise in Four Years – Telis Demos 3/26
Visual Capitalist – Wealth 101: Visualizing the Extraordinary Power of Compound Interest 3/28
Real Estate
WSJ – Retail Landlords Sell Assets to Raise Cash – Esther Fung 3/27
- “Shares of real-estate investment trusts have underperformed the broader equity market for the third year running, in part because of rising interest rates, which cause these dividend-paying stocks to lose some of their appeal.”
- “Because it would be difficult to issue new shares if REITs continue to trade at discounts, some are now compelled to sell assets to raise cash to help them reposition their remaining assets or fund share buybacks.”
- “REITs could sell individual assets, sell stakes in assets to other institutional investors and enter joint ventures where they also could earn some management fees, or be acquired entirely and privatized by an investor.”
- “Industry insiders noted that while there are more for-sale signs popping up, these sales aren’t driven by the need to reduce debt because REITs have been more disciplined since the financial crisis, so property prices aren’t likely to fall drastically.”
- “Listed REITs have been net sellers of assets since 2015, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. From January to March 23 of 2018, there were $6.91 billion in disposals, compared with $5.38 billion in acquisitions.”
- “Disposals topped acquisitions in 2017 and 2016, $60.9 billion to $56.1 billion and $71.4 billion to $48.4 billion respectively, Real Capital said.”
Energy
FT – Subsidy-free renewable projects on ‘cusp of breakthrough’ – Sylvia Pfeifer 3/27
- “In a few months’ time, if all goes to plan, designs will be drawn up for a wind farm that will be built 22km off the Netherlands’ coast. Once up and running in 2022, Hollandse Kust Zuid will be able to call itself Europe’s first offshore wind farm built without government subsidies.”
- “The wind farm, expected to be fully operational in 2023, will boast around 90 turbines that will deliver up to 750MW of power — enough to produce renewable electricity for up to 2m homes.”
WSJ – China Tries to Lift Yuan’s Profile With Oil Futures – Mike Bird 3/26
Finance
Investment News – Real estate fraudsters to repay $30 million to investors – Jeff Benjamin 3/28
- “SEC settles with McKinley Mortgage, which promised secure investments and 6% returns.”
WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – 5-trading day ETF Flows by category 3/28
Cryptocurrency / ICOs
WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 3/28
WSJ – Daily Shot: Charlie Bilello – Cryptocurrency Returns 3/28
Australia
FT – China academics divided over Australia influence crackdown – Jamie Smyth 3/27
- “Canberra’s proposed crackdown on Chinese government influence in Australia has prompted a bitter split among academics, following claims the policy is driven by racism and is stigmatizing Chinese Australians.”
- “A group of 35 China scholars based in Australia signed an open letter on Wednesday defending the Australian government’s efforts to identify and wind back Chinese Communist party (CCP) influence in the country.”
- “Canberra is proposing to ban foreign political donations and target covert, deceptive and threatening actions by foreign groups and individuals in response to alleged interference by the CCP in the country’s internal affairs and in Chinese diaspora communities.”
- “The letter said accusations of racism were a tool used by the CCP to silence the debate over foreign influence and drive a wedge between Chinese communities and the rest of Australia.”
China
- “After a two-year wait, Chinese regulators have revived a program allowing global asset managers including JPMorgan Chase to raise funds from Chinese onshore clients for investment in offshore hedge funds.”
- “The easing of capital controls shows how Chinese regulators are increasingly relaxed about cross-border capital flows amid a stable Chinese economy and persistent dollar weakness.”
- “JPMorgan Asset Management has received a new quota for the program, and several other asset managers are expecting similar allotments, according to three people familiar with the situation. JPMorgan received a $50m quota in January, one of those people said.”
Perspective
WP – Have your representatives in Congress received donations from the NRA? – Aaron Williams 2/15
Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
WSJ – The Big Shift Driving Tech Profits – Dan Gallagher 2/19
- “Big tech companies learning to look past the initial sale as subscriptions build an important base of recurring revenue.”
Real Estate
Bloomberg – Is America in a Retail Apocalypse? Ask Yelp – Patrick Clark 2/13
WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – US National Housing Permits 2/19
WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Burns Affordability Index 2/19
Energy
Fishing
FT – China seeks bigger catch from far-sea fishing fleet – Tom Hancock 2/19
- “China plans to increase the catch from its far-sea fishing fleet as it clamps down on fishing in its own heavily depleted waters, in a move likely to heighten maritime tension with other coastal nations.”
- “The state-subsidized long-distance fleet is targeting an increase in its annual catch from 2m tons in 2016 to 2.3m tons in 2020, according to the agriculture ministry. Some 90m tons of wild fish were caught globally in 2016, according to the UN.”
- “China’s far-ocean fleet increased its catch by nearly 50% over the five years to 2016, according to China’s agriculture ministry. The haul — often sold to Chinese fish processors that then export to Europe and the US — has fueled international concerns over dwindling fish stocks and illegal fishing in territorial waters.”
Europe
Bloomberg – ‘No Cash’ Signs Everywhere Has Sweden Worried It’s Gone Too Far – Amanda Billner 2/18
South America
NYT – In Colombia Border Town, Desperate Venezuelans Sell Hair to Survive – Joe Parkins Daniels 2/17
Perspective
NYT – Nothing Divides Voters Like Owning a Gun – Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy 10/5
Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
A Wealth of Common Sense – Good Advice vs. Effective Advice – Ben Carlson 10/5
WSJ – Income Investors: It’s OK to Be Sad, But Don’t Get Desperate – Jason Zweig 10/6
- “Old bull markets don’t produce new ideas. They just produce new ways for investors to hurt themselves with old ideas.”
- “With stocks at record highs and the income on bonds not far from record lows, circumstantial evidence suggests investors are getting restless — if not desperate.”
- “Chasing ‘yield,’ or trying to get higher investment income, is one form of desperation. Last month, $1.6 billion in new money poured into exchange-traded funds holding high-yield corporate bonds, according to FactSet.”
- “A recent survey of 750 individual investors by Natixis Global Asset Management found that they ‘need’ returns of 8.9%, after inflation, to reach their financial goals. In the same survey last year, investors said they needed a mere 8.5%. Since 1926, the return on U.S. stocks after inflation has averaged about 7% annually, according to Morningstar.”
- “Such hankering for unrealistic returns can prompt investors to take imprudent risks. Just about any get-rich-quick story can look tempting.”
- “This past week, an obscure Nasdaq-listed company called Bioptix, which had been licensing fertility hormones for cows, horses and pigs, announced that it was getting into the cryptocurrency business and changing its name to Riot Blockchain. The stock nearly doubled over its levels a week earlier.”
- “This reminds market veterans of the dozens of companies that changed their names to include ‘Internet’ or ‘.com’ in 1998 and 1999. They outperformed comparable firms by an average of 53 percentage points in the five days surrounding the announcement of a name change, a study found in 2001.”
- “Consider, too, Strategic Student & Senior Housing Trust, Inc., a firm in Ladera Ranch, Calif., looking to raise $1.1 billion to buy properties that serve college students and the elderly around the U.S.”
- “Strategic’s prospectus for the offering, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 26, says the firm will seek to ‘provide regular cash distributions to our investors’ and to sell out, merge with another company or go public within three to five years.”
- “In the meantime, public investors are being asked to pay up to $10.33 for shares that the company has been selling to a select group of private investors for $8.50. Commissions and fees can exceed 10%, depending on the class of shares.”
- “Strategic, which commenced operations only on June 28, is a ‘blind pool,’ meaning that the firm hasn’t yet determined what it will invest the proceeds of the offering in. Investors thus can’t ascertain the quality of the assets their money will buy. Strategic’s prospectus also says: ‘There is currently no public market for our shares and there may never be one’.”
- “At times like these, reaching for yield and taking bigger risks might pay off for a few speculators in the short run. Investors, however, should hoard their cash and remember that in the long run it doesn’t pay to chase returns greater than the markets can realistically provide.”
Bloomberg View – A Volatility Trap Is Inflating Market Bubbles – Alberto Gallo 10/5
FT – Puerto Rico’s recovery depends on debt forgiveness – Gillian Tett 10/5
- “Either way, the saga should be a wake-up call to investors. Yes, hurricanes may be rare. But Puerto Rico is not the only arena in which asset managers have chased after high yields with scant regard for risk. Just look at emerging markets and the high yield corporate bond world. If the tragedy in Puerto Rico shakes investors out of their complacency, that would be a thoroughly good thing — and long overdue.”
Markets / Economy
Yahoo Finance – U.S. economy loses jobs in September for first time 2010 – Myles Udland 10/6
Bloomberg Businessweek – Warren Buffett and Truck Stops Are a Perfect Match – Tara Lachapelle 10/3
Energy
- “Solar power grew faster than any other source of fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead.”
- “The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar powered by photovoltaics, or PVs, grew by 50%, with almost half of new plants built in China.”
- “The IEA expects about 1,000 gigawatts of renewables will be installed in the next five years, a milestone that coal only accomplished after 80 years. That quantity of electricity surpasses what’s consumed in China, India and Germany combined.”
- “The surge of photovoltaics in China is largely due to government support for renewables, which are being demanded by a population concerned about air pollution and environmental degradation that has led to deadly smogs. The country is seeking to reduce its reliance on coal and has become the world’s largest market for renewables, particularly solar.”
- “’The solar PV story is a Chinese story,’ said Paolo Frankl, head of the IEA’s renewable energy division. ‘China has been for a long time the leader in manufacturing. What’s new is the share in the market. This year, it was equivalent to the total installed capacity of PV in Germany.’”
- “The U.S. and India are among other nations pushing renewables. They along with China are projected to make up two-thirds of the clean-energy expansion worldwide. Despite President Donald Trump’s vow to bolster coal’s position in the power market, the U.S. is expected to be the second-largest market for renewables.”
Finance
WSJ – Daily Shot: Evercore ISI – US Corporate Debt as Percentage of GDP 10/6
VC – The Trillion Dollar Club of Asset Managers – Jeff Desjardins 10/6
Health / Medicine
NYT – As Overdose Deaths Pile Up, a Medical Examiner Quits the Morgue – Katharine Q. Seeyle 10/7
Other Links
VC – U.S. Interstate Highways, as a Transit Map – Jeff Desjardins 10/6
