Tag: Venezuela

May 11, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg – Middle-Class Doldrums Don’t Add Up to a Crisis – Noah Smith 5/9

  • “The U.S. economy is back to normal again. Unemployment is low. Business investment is up. Wages are slowly rising. The traumatic memories of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis are finally beginning to fade.”
  • “The absence of pressing crises means that it’s a good time to step back and take stock of deeper issues in the U.S. economic system. For several years, there has been a rising outcry over inequality… Adjusted for inflation, wages for production and nonsupervisory workers fell from their peak until the early 1990s, and haven’t yet climbed back to their former heights:”
  • “But the story isn’t quite true. The average American has, in fact, seen modest gains since the early 1970s; the falling wages of production workers don’t tell the whole story.”
  • “What explains the difference between wages and income? Two things. First, wages aren’t the only way Americans make money in the market. Income from assets, like retirement accounts and pensions, is increasingly important, as are nonwage compensation like employer contributions to retirement accounts. Second, the income numbers include government transfers, which have shifted more and more income from rich Americans to those who earn less in the market. These factors are all bigger than in the 1970s:”
  • “Increased redistribution has been helping the poor as well as the middle class. Recent calculations by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that child poverty in the U.S. has fallen to record lows once government assistance is taken into account.”
  • “Meanwhile, gains in income haven’t come from increased toil. Despite women’s increased labor force participation, working-age Americans in 2014 tended to labor little more than their predecessors in the late 1970s:”
  • “In fact, the working hours data makes the 2000s and 2010s look less awful in comparison to the ’80s and ’90s. Gains in those earlier decades came partly from women entering the workforce en masse. But those gains were preserved in recent decades despite Americans working fewer hours on average.”
  • “It was during the early 1970s that total factor productivity growth began to slow down. It accelerated again in the 1990s and early 2000s, only to fall back to a crawl about the middle of that decade.”
  • “It’s therefore possible to interpret the slower growth of Americans’ incomes as the result of slowing productivity. Inequality has certainly contributed as well, but increasing government transfers have helped cancel out some of that. But with slowing productivity growth, there’s simply less to redistribute than if productivity had maintained the torrid pace of the early and mid-20th century.”
  • “Capitalism may not be in crisis, but it’s troubling that a few super-rich individuals have managed to amass vast fortunes even as productivity has stagnated. That is a phenomenon whose cause must be carefully investigated. For the typical American, gains in living standards have continued at a slow, steady pace. Increasing that pace should be a top priority.”

FT – Investors should be cautious of simplistic indices – Kate Allen 5/9

  • “Poland’s upgrade to developed status shines a light on [an] outdated approach to classification.”

Markets / Economy

FT – Daimler leads new investors in SoftBank’s $100bn Vision Fund – Arash Massoudi, Leo Lewis, and Patrick McGee 5/10

  • “Germany’s Daimler and Japan’s three largest banks are set to become investors in SoftBank’s Vision Fund as the Masayoshi Son-led company looks to complete fundraising for its $100bn technology investment fund, according to people briefed on the matter.”
  • “The Mercedes-Benz maker along with MUFG, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp will be among the final investors in the fund, which is the largest ever created in private equity or venture capital, these people said.”
  • “They added that other new investors will include Larry Ellison, the billionaire US co-founder of software group Oracle who is investing personally, and the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain.”
  • “Daimler and the Japanese banks are set to be among the smaller ones in the fund, alongside earlier participants such as Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn and Sharp. About $88bn of the fund comes from SoftBank, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.”
  • “Individuals close to the three Japanese banks said their decision to invest had a twin motivation: the quest for returns in Japan’s ultra low-interest environment and the desire to further strengthen their relationships with what is by far Japan’s most active corporate name.”
  • “All the new investors will be participating under the terms of the fund’s unusual structure, which sees them receive 62% in preferred units paying out an annual coupon of 7% over the fund’s 12-year life cycle, and the rest with equity.”
  • “SoftBank itself is the only investor that has full equity exposure, giving it the most upside to the fund’s investments in addition to the management and performance fees.”
  • “SoftBank outlined on Wednesday in a presentation that it had spent $29.7bn of the Vision Fund since inception. It has placed bets on more than 30 companies including ride-hailing group Uber, shared-office provider WeWork and chipmaker Nvidia.”

Real Estate

Bisnow – California Super-Commuters Are Transforming Sleepy Suburbs Into Busy Metros – Julie Littman and Joseph Pimentel 5/9

WSJ – California Takes Big Step to Require Solar on New Homes – Erin Ailworth 5/9

Energy

FT – US oil producers battle to meet Iran shortfall – Ed Crooks 5/9

  • “Pipeline constraints mean shale cannot come to rescue as sanctions push up prices.”
  • “Inadequate transport capacity in the region is reflected in the soaring discount for oil in Midland, west Texas, compared with US benchmark crude. That discount hit $13 a barrel this week, meaning that while the easier-to-trade West Texas Intermediate was selling for about $70 a barrel, oil in Midland was just $57 a barrel.”

WSJ – Venezuela’s Brewing Oil Shock May Be Bigger Than Iran’s – Spencer Jakab 5/10

  • “The oil headlines this week have all been about Iran, but the slowly unfolding disaster in Venezuela may be even more significant.”
  • “Venezuela faces two risks that, if both come to pass, could cut its oil output by more than the biggest estimates of what could happen to Iran if sanctions were reimposed. The risks stem from Venezuela’s dependence on importing lighter varieties of crude to mix with the heavy oil it produces, and its need for products imported from the U.S. to enable its thick oil to be transported.”
  • “The first situation is playing out in the Dutch-administered islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, where Venezuela’s state oil company owns refining and storage facilities. U.S. producer ConocoPhillips is attempting to take physical control of those facilities after winning an arbitration award against Venezuela for seizing its assets in 2007. Venezuela appears to be telling its suppliers not to ship oil to these facilities for fear ConocoPhillips will seize that too, potentially shutting down refining.”
  • “The second situation would play out if the U.S. halts exports to Venezuela of a product called diluent, which allows the thick oil to be transported. Such a move would imperil half or more of the country’s remaining production. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has already called the presidential election a sham.”

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: DISH Network Bond Price 5/19

Environment / Science

Economist – Climate change will affect developing countries more than rich ones – The Data Team 5/9

Construction

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – PPI Concrete Products 5/10

Asia – excluding China and Japan

Economist – Malaysia’s chance to clean up – Leaders 5/10

  • “Elections in Malaysia are normally predictable. In fact, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and various allies had won all of them since 1955, until this week. Over the years UMNO has resorted to every conceivable trick to remain in power: stirring communal tensions among Malaysia’s ethnic groups, locking up critics, rigging the electoral system in its favor, bribing voters with populist handouts and threatening chaos if it lost. In the run-up to the election on May 9th it did all of that. It was testimony to the awfulness of the government of Najib Razak that the opposition was even in contention. And it is testimony to the good sense of Malaysian voters that the opposition won, convincingly, paving the way for Malaysia’s first ever change of government.”
  • “For a country where politics has always been run along communal lines, the shocking upset holds out the prospect of a more meritocratic form of government. For the region, where rulers with authoritarian instincts have been steadily curbing political freedoms, it is a heartening victory for democracy. And for Mr Najib, who was accused by America’s Department of Justice of personally pocketing $681m looted from a Malaysian government agency, it is a welcome comeuppance.”
  • “Sceptics note that it is led by Mahathir Mohamad, a former five-term UMNO prime minister who pioneered many of the underhand tactics to which Mr Najib resorted in his failed bid to remain in power. Dr Mahathir was also a champion of Malaysia’s odious system of racial preferences, which he expanded to keep Malay voters loyal to UMNO.”
  • “Perhaps the new government will succumb to infighting and fail to get much done. But its very existence is a potent reminder to Malaysians and their neighbors that governments can and should, from time to time, change peacefully. With luck, Cambodians, Singaporeans, Thais and Vietnamese, among others, will begin to wonder if something similar might one day happen to them.”

China

FT – China credit spreads near 2-year highs on default worries – Gabriel Wildau 5/9

“China credit spreads hit their widest level in nearly two years this week following new regulations that undermined long-held assumptions about implicit guarantees on debt linked to local governments.”

FT – Hong Kong’s tycoons: handing over power in troubled times – Ben Bland 5/9

May 7, 2018

Perspective

Economist – Remittances 4/26

Visual Capitalist – A World of Languages – Iman Ghosh 5/5

WP – America is more diverse than ever – but still segregated – Aaron Williams and Armand Emamdjomeh 5/2

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A  Wealth of Common Sense – Schrodinger’s Portfolio – Ben Carlson 4/29

Bloomberg – The Return of the Brick-and-Mortar Store – Conor Sen 5/1

Economist – In China’s cities, young people with rural ties are angry 5/3

Economist – Behind the teacher strikes that have roiled five states 5/3

Economist – Where will the next crisis occur? – Buttonwood 5/3

Mauldin Economics – Us vs. Them – Ian Bremmer 4/25

Pragmatic Capitalism – Three Things I Think I Think – China, Tesla And Weird Stuff – Cullen Roche 5/4

Markets / Economy

FT – Argentina stuns markets as it pushes interest rates to 40% – Cat Rutter Pooley, Adam Samson, and Roger Blitz 5/4

NYT – A Fast-Food Problem: Where Have All the Teenagers Gone? – Rachel Abrams and Robert Gebeloff 5/3

WSJ – Apple Allays iPhone Worries, Adds $100 Billion to Buyback Plans – Tripp Mickle 5/1

  • I count $300 billion in total dividends since 2013…geez.

  • If that wasn’t enough…

Real Estate

BI – Uber and Lyft are changing where rich people buy homes – Sarah Jacobs 5/3

  • “A report released this week from MetLife Inc.’s asset-management business confirmed that the premium cost of apartments near public transit has begun to decline due to services such as Uber and Lyft.”

FT – Priced out of the American dream – Sam Fleming 5/2

Health / Medicine

Bloomberg Businessweek – Silicon Valley Wants to Cash In on Fasting – Tom Giles and Selina Wang 4/24

Automotive

FT – UK to ban most hybrid cars, including Prius, from 2040 – Peter Campbell and Jim Pickard 5/4

  • Nothing formalized at this moment, just be aware of the direction of this effort.
  • “Hybrid cars that rely on traditional engines, such as the Toyota Prius, would be banned by 2040 under clean-air plans being drawn up by the UK government that would outlaw up to 98% of the vehicles currently on the road.”
  • “Three people involved in the decision-making process said the proposed rules would limit new car sales to those that can travel at least 50 miles using only electric power.”
  • “The change would outlaw more than 98% of the vehicles currently sold in Britain and require manufacturers to switch to vehicles predominantly driven by batteries — though they might be able to have petrol engines for back-up or support.”

South America

FT – Venezuela’s oil decline reaches new depths – John Paul Rathbone 4/30

  • “In addition to hyperinflation and a $70bn bond default that has cut off the country from fresh finance, the drop in oil production to 30-year lows has slashed government revenues, making it ever harder for Mr Maduro’s regime to import basic necessities and deploy the patronage he needs to maintain military and political support.”
  • “Caracas has also alienated key allies such as Beijing. Chinese state banks, which extended over $60bn in oil-backed loans between 2007 and 2016, last year made no fresh loans. A two-year grace period on a remaining $19bn debt to China expired last week, Reuters reported, meaning that Venezuelan export revenues will fall further.”

April 30, 2018

This will be the only post this week from me. This week I’m attending the ULI Spring Meeting in Detroit, MI.

Cheers,

Duff

Perspective

WSJ – Why Tech Titans Are Betting on India, in 14 Charts – Newley Purnell, Min Jung Kim, and Rosa de Acosta 4/18

  • Clearly there is some disconnect between showing just this chart and the title. Emphasis less on India and more on the gender split of Facebook users.

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – China Quietly Rolled Out a Very Big Bang – John Micklethwait 4/19

Bloomberg – Latest Climate Threat for Coastal Cities: More Rich People – Christopher Flavelle 4/23

Financial Samurai – Why Households Need To Earn $300,000 A Year To Live A Middle Class Lifestyle Today – Sam

WSJ – Real Estate Stocks Are on Sale but No One Is Buying – Ken Brown 4/27

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Cable TV’s Cord-Cutting Woes Grow, Highlighting Divergence With Netflix – Shalini Ramachandran 4/27

Energy

Reuters – Venezuela faces heavy bill as grace period lapses on China loans – Corina Pons 4/27

Finance

FT – WeWork bond finds home in yield-starved market – Alexandra Scaggs 4/26

  • “This week high-yield bond investors faced a puzzle: how to value a bond sold by an unprofitable company that does not own hard assets or offer a clear outlook for its free cash flow?”
  • “The company in question was WeWork, the office-sharing company that last year attracted a $4.4bn equity investment from Japan’s Softbank. WeWork, which hired JPMorgan to lead the sale but had more than a dozen other banks working as well, attracted enough demand to increase the sale to $702m from $500m.”
  • “Several investors who steered clear of the bond — and one who bought it — said WeWork’s debt was not the type that typically appealed to high-yield investors. But nor was it the first company vowing to disrupt an industry to have found buyers in the junk market. Last year electric carmaker Tesla sold a $1.8bn high-yield bond, and in March, Uber raised $1.5bn in a leveraged loan.”
  • “A combination of low interest rates and shrinking supply has made it harder for money managers to find bonds with attractive yields. WeWork’s bonds were sold at a yield of 7.875%.”

Environment / Science

LAT – A Hawaiian island got about 50 inches of rain in 24 hours. Scientist warn it’s a sign of the future – Heidi Chang 4/28

Construction

WSJ – Daily Shot: CME Lumber (Jul) 4/26

China

FT – China’s HNA reports debts have soared to $94bn – Lucy Hornby 4/28

Middle East

Visual Capitalist – Knight Frank: A Time-lapse of Dubai’s Astonishing Growth – Nick Routley 4/28

  • Very cool animation.

South America

NYT – ‘Their Country Is Being Invaded’: Exodus of Venezuelans Overwhelms Northern Brazil – Ernesto Londono 4/28

April 27, 2018

Perspective

WSJ – The New Test for Cash-Strapped U.S. States: Teacher Protests – Heather Gillers and Michelle Hackman 4/22

indeed – Teachers in Low-Pay States More Likely to Seek Jobs Outside Education – Andrew Flowers 4/24

Compare cards – Cities Where Credit Card Debt Has Increased and Decreased the Most – Chris Horymski 4/23

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – Americans Are More Eager Than Ever to Put Down Roots – Sophie Caronello and Brendan Murray 4/24

FT – GoPro CEO salary slashed to $1 after poor 2017 – Tim Bradshaw 4/26

  • “Nick Woodman goes from highest paid US boss in 2014 to bottom of the pack.”

Visual Capitalist – Global Population by Region From 1950 to 2100 (Animation) – Simon Kuestenmacher 4/25

Real Estate

BI – WeWork documents reveal it owes $18 billion in rent and is burning through cash as it seeks more funding – Shona Ghosh 4/25

FT – US housing: how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became rental powerhouses – Alistair Gray 4/25

  • “Established to make mortgages more affordable and expand US home ownership — Fannie during the Great Depression and Freddie in 1970 — the Treasury propped them up with about $188bn in bailout funds after the housing market meltdown. While Fannie and Freddie have private shareholders, they send most of their profits to the Treasury.”
  • “Since then, far from being reined in as critics demanded in the aftermath of the crisis, the two ‘government-sponsored enterprises’ remain as important as ever; even more so for commercial real estate markets.”
  • “Fannie and Freddie are best known for their principal role as the leading source of financing for owner-occupied mortgages. But for decades, they have played another role in supporting the market for rental housing, by helping finance property companies that acquire or refinance investments in apartment blocks. This second, lower-profile, part of their business has boomed since the crisis.”
  • “By the end of last year the pair had a financial interest in almost $500bn of commercial mortgages, equivalent to 38% of the total outstanding across the US. That compares with almost $200bn, or 25% of the market, a decade ago. Last year alone, the pair financed almost 1.6m rental units.”
  • “The expansion has raised eyebrows in the industry. Competitors that provide this type of finance — banks, life insurance companies and other institutional investors — say the taxpayer’s backing allows Fannie and Freddie to offer borrowers better terms than they can.”
  • “Supporters say the pair have also helped stave off an affordable housing crisis, especially as a new generation of renters has been locked out of the post-crisis recovery. ‘If they didn’t exist, there would be a major problem for multi-family housing,’ says Shekar Narasimhan, managing partner at the real estate group Beekman Advisors, who was the first chair of Fannie Mae’s advisory committee on this type of housing.”
  • “For critics, the pair have played a central role in financing the boom. Developers have completed about 1.3m rental units in the US over the past five years, according to RealPage data, including a record 365,000 in 2017.”
  • “’Aggressive lending practices by the GSEs this cycle have been an important factor in the degree of over-investment and over-valuation of multi-family properties in certain key markets,’ says Michael Shaoul, chief executive of Marketfield Asset Management.”
  • “’I do not think that the GSEs have been as critical in commercial real estate as they were in traditional mortgages a decade ago — but they have perhaps allowed some of the more marginal projects to minimize equity capital this time around.’”

WSJ – Clouds From the Retail Storm Reach Hawaii Real Estate – Esther Fung 4/24

WSJ – Retail Rents Plunge in Major Manhattan Shopping Districts – Keiko Morris 4/25

  • “In all, first quarter annual asking rents for ground floor retail space declined in 13 out of 16 shopping corridors, and the overall average asking rent for those areas dropped 19.5% from the previous year to $653 a square foot, according to a report from real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc.”
  • “The continued drop in retail asking rents comes as no surprise—as traditional companies reshape their businesses to the growth in online shopping, retailers reduce the number of brick-and-mortar stores they operate. Also, merchants continue to balk at high rents. Between 2010 and 2014, average asking rents in Manhattan jumped more than 100% across the 16 retail corridors, according to an earlier report from CBRE.”

Energy

Reuters – Chevron evacuates Venezuela executives following staff arrests – Alexandra Ulmer, Marianna Parraga, Ernest Scheyder 4/25

  • “U.S. oil major Chevron Corp has evacuated executives from Venezuela after two of its workers were imprisoned over a contract dispute with state-owned oil company PDVSA, according to four sources familiar with the matter.”
  • “The Chevron workers may face charges of treason for refusing to sign a supply contract for furnace parts drawn up by PDVSA executives, Reuters reported earlier this week. The workers balked at the high costs of the parts and a lack of competitive bids.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Gross Crude Oil Exports 4/20

Health / Medicine

Economist – A typical American birth costs as much as delivering a royal baby – The Data Team 4/23

WSJ – Retirees Are Less Confident About Having Enough to Live On – Anne Tergesen 4/24

China

Bloomberg – A $7 Trillion Debt Pile Looms Large Over Chinese Households – Tian Chen, James Mayger, Heng Xie, Ling Zeng, and Emma Dong 4/24

April 25, 2018

If you were only to read one thing…

Bloomberg – These Are the U.S. Cities With the Fastest-Growing Wealth Gaps – Vincent Del Giudice and Wei Lu 4/19

  • “The analysis of Census Bureau data tracks the differences in annual income between household income groups. The rich versus poor gap compared households in the top 20% to those in the bottom 20% by metropolitan area.”
  • “At No. 1 is San Jose, California, the Silicon Valley city where the rich versus poor gap widened by $73,600 to $339,000. At No. 100, with the smallest change among 100 largest metro areas, is the border city of El Paso, Texas, where the gap widened by $2,600 to $131,200.”
  • “Nationally, the rich versus poor gap expanded by $31,000 to just over $197,000. Last year’s measure, using data from 2010 to 2015, showed an increase of $29,500 to $189,600.”
  • “The Bloomberg ranking also shows the change in the gap between the super-rich to middle class which widened in 98 of 100 metropolitan areas, led by Bridgeport, Connecticut, which overlaps entirely with Fairfield County. The gap narrowed in Ogden, Utah and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The super-rich to middle class gap is defined by those in the top five percent of income vs households in the middle 20%.”
  • “A third take of data shows the middle class income span — defined as the gap between those within 30 and 80% of an areas income. The middle class span grew the most in San Francisco where it rose to $140,800 in 2016 from $108,300 five years earlier.”

Perspective

Economist – A study finds nearly half of jobs are vulnerable to automation – The Data Team 4/24

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Economist – The Republican Party is organized around one man – Leaders 4/19

The Irrelevant Investor – How? – Michael Batnick 4/24

  • “How can Netflix be worth nearly as much as Disney?”

Mauldin Economics – China Plays It Cool – John Mauldin 4/20

NYT – We Don’t Need No Education – Paul Krugman 4/23

Pragmatic Capitalism – The Fed is in a Pickle – Cullen Roche 4/24

WP – The craft beer industry’s buzz is wearing off – Rachel Siegel 4/10

  • “A new report by the Brewers Association — a trade association representing small and independent American craft brewers — showed that craft brewers saw a 5% rise in production volume in 2017. Yet with that growth comes an increasingly crowded playing field, leading to more closures of small craft breweries. In 2017, there were nearly 1,000 new brewery openings nationwide and 165 closures — a closing rate of 2.6%. That’s a 42% jump from 2016, when 116 craft breweries closed.”

Markets / Economy

FT – WeWork to test junk bond appetite with $500m sale – Eric Platt, Alexandra Scaggs, and Richard Waters 4/24

  • “WeWork, the lossmaking provider of shared office space, will seek to raise money from debt investors for the first time in a sale that will provide a stern test of sentiment in the junk bond market.”
  • “The $20bn US company has hired more than a dozen banks to pitch a bond sale to US money managers this week, according to five people with knowledge of the planned sale.”
  • “Sales at the company more than doubled to $886m in 2017 from the year before, although its loss also widened to $884m, according to bond documents reviewed by the Financial Times. WeWork said sales had continued to quicken and by last month had reached an annualised pace of between $1.4bn and $1.5bn.”
  • “WeWork has raised nearly $7bn through equity investments over the past seven years. Its ambitions received a big boost in the middle of last year with a $4.4bn injection of cash from SoftBank and the Japanese conglomerate’s Saudi-backed technology fund, laying the ground for more rapid expansion around the world.”
  • “The move by WeWork to tap the $8.8tn US corporate debt market, a vital source of funding for companies, will bring new investor scrutiny to the company at a time when corporate borrowing costs are on the rise.”
  • “The bond offering drew junk labels from the leading US credit rating agencies, underlining the risk of investing in the debt. One person briefed on the sale added that the seven-year bond could price with a yield as low as 7%, although a second added that the final price WeWork pays could be higher.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Existing Home Sales 4/24

WSJ – Daily Shot: NAR – US Existing Homes Months Supply 4/24

WSJ – Daily Shot: NY Fed – US Households average probability of moving 4/24

Energy

FT – US shale groups reach self-financing milestone as oil price rises – Ed Crooks and Nicole Bullock 4/23

  • “Since the shale oil boom began a decade ago, exploration and production companies have needed a steady inflow of capital to pay for drilling and completing new wells but thanks to the rise in crude prices, many can now finance themselves.”
  • “From the time the first shale oil test wells were drilled in the US in 2008-09, the industry’s capital expenditure has exceeded its cash from operations, with producers only able to stay in business by attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in financing from bond and share sales and bank loans. From 2008 to 2017, US exploration and production companies raised $293bn from bond sales, according to Dealogic.”
  • “Another factor that has helped producers turn the corner is the continued improvement in the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which have brought costs down sharply.”

FT – Halliburton writes off investment in crisis-hit Venezuela – Ed Crooks 4/23

  • “Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oilfield services groups, wrote off its remaining investment in Venezuela at a cost of $312m on Monday, highlighting the decline of the crisis-hit nation’s oil industry.”
  • “Halliburton said it would continue to operate in the country ‘at a reduced level’, but would be careful about its future exposure. It last year wrote down $647m for late payment by PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company, and the fall in the value of a promissory note intended to cover some of those bills.”
  • “Venezuela’s crude production has dropped 30% from 2.15m barrels a day in 2016 to 1.5m b/d last month. It is less than half its level when Hugo Chávez, the former president, was elected in 1998.”
  • “Schlumberger, the world’s largest listed oilfield services group, similarly wrote off its investment in Venezuela at the end of last year, taking a pre-tax write down of $938m. It continues to operate a cash business in the country, but that has continued to decline into this year.”
  • “Paal Kibsgaard, Schlumberger’s chief executive, said Venezuela’s oil production was in ‘free fall’.”
  • “Although the rise in oil prices since last year has offered some help to Venezuela, the benefit has been muted because most of the oil PDVSA produces does not generate cash, according to Francisco Monaldi of the Baker Institute at Rice University.”
  • “He argued in a recent report that of the roughly 1.8m b/d that PDVSA produced last November, 400,000-450,000 b/d were used in the domestic market at a huge loss, while about 500,000-600,000 b/d were committed to repaying loans from China and Russia and owed to joint venture partners.”

Finance

Bloomberg – ECB Seen Delaying QE Exit Decision as Trade Concerns Mount – Alessandro Speciale and Andre Tartar 4/19

WSJ – Daily Shot: US – Germany 2yr Government Bond Spread 4/24

Sports

PBJ – MLB prices climb, but Diamondbacks deemed best value in sport – Patrick O’Grady 4/24

China

WSJ – Daily Shot: IIF Global Debt Monitor – YoY Change In Chinese Sectoral Debt 4/24

Japan

FT – Tokyo struggles with worst hay fever outbreak on record – Robin Harding 4/23

April 24, 2018

Perspective

Business Insider – The most disproportionately popular college major in every US state – Mark Abadi and Jenny Cheng 4/16

Tax Foundation – How High are Spirits Taxes in Your State – Morgan Scarboro 3/22

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Trading One Risk For Another – Ben Carlson 4/22

  • “In other words, investing is hard. If it was easy it would just be called earning money, not investing.“
  • “You cannot eradicate risk in a portfolio. You can only choose when and how to accept risk in different variations. Doing so will always involve balance and trade-offs.”

FT – US companies count costs and benefits of Trump tax law – Rochelle Toplensky, Patrick Mathurin, and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson 4/22

  • “A Financial Times analysis of how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has affected the accounts of the US’s 100 largest listed companies shows the truth of that sentiment, for Citigroup and most of its big business peers.” 
  • “In all, the FT analysis shows, 61 of the top 100 quoted companies have reported an initial net income tax expense, amounting to a combined $168bn. The remaining 39 have reported one-off net tax benefits worth a total of $150bn, meaning that the biggest overhaul of the tax code for a generation has cut $18bn from the current book value of its leading public companies.”
  • “The charges differ widely from company to company, depending on the tax provisions they had made before the reforms. The most significant adjustments reflect a revaluation of deferred tax balances under the new, lower headline rate. A company that had deferred taxes on past profits would record a gain because it will now pay the new lower rate; conversely, a group carrying forward previous losses to offset against future tax bills would book a hit to its value.” 
  • “The biggest one-off benefit of $28bn was to Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s holding company, which will pay the lower tax rate on decades of unrealized capital gains — if he ever sells his investments. While the accounting gains ‘did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire’, they were nonetheless real, Mr Buffett assured shareholders.” 

NYT – Public Servants Are Losing Their Foothold in the Middle Class – Patricia Cohen and Robert Gebeloff 4/22

Markets / Economy

Visual Capitalist – BoAML – Top Asset Class of 2018 So Far – Jeff Desjardins 4/23

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – US Home Equity Loans 4/23

WEF – Berlin has the world’s fastest rising city property prices – Rob Smith 4/16

Energy

eia – Technically Recoverable Shale Oil and Shale Gas Resources – June 2013

Forbes – Who Is Buying U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas? – Jude Clemente 4/17

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Barchart – Bitcoin 4/23

  • “With last week’s breakout sustained, Bitcoin is approaching $9k (the blue line is the 200d moving average).”

Britain

Bloomberg – U.K. Consumers Stay Under Pressure Even as Pay Squeeze Nears End – David Goodman 4/17

Europe

NYT – Smothered by Smog, Polish Cities Rank Among Europe’s Dirtiest – Maciek Nabrdalik and Marc Santora 4/22

  • “Poland has some the most polluted air in all of the European Union, and 33 of its 50 dirtiest cities. Not even mountain retreats are immune.” 
  • “The problem is largely a result of the country’s love affair with coal… Some 19 million people rely on coal for heat in winter. In all of the European Union, 80% of private homes using coal are in Poland.” 
  • “Coal, commonly referred to as “black gold,” is seen as a patriotic alternative to Russian gas in this country, which broke away from Soviet control three decades ago and remains deeply suspicious of its neighbor to the east. Burning coal is part of daily life.” 
  • “Some 48,000 Poles are estimated to die annually from illnesses related to poor air quality. Greenpeace estimated that 62% of Poland’s kindergartens are in heavily polluted areas.” 

South America

Reuters – Under military rule, Venezuela oil workers quit in a stampede – Deisy Buitrago and Alexandra Ulmer 4/16

Other Interesting Links

Civil Beat – Hawaii Businesses Are Making Billions Off The Military – Nick Grube 4/23

April 18, 2018

If you were only to read one thing…

FT – Venezuela’s imploding economy sparks refugee crisis – Gideon Long and Andres Schipani 4/15

  • “While the eyes of the world have been on the Syrian refugee crisis and the exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Venezuela’s humanitarian disaster has gone relatively unnoticed.”
  • “But the sheer number of people now fleeing the country is changing that. The UNHCR says 5,000 migrants are leaving every day: at that rate, 1.8m people, more than 5% of Venezuela’s population, will depart this year.“
  • “It was not always like this. For decades, Venezuela was a net importer of people, luring Europeans with lucrative oil jobs. A generation ago, it was the wealthiest country in Latin America.”
  • “’We are potentially facing the biggest refugee crisis in our hemisphere in modern history’ says Shannon O’Neil, senior fellow for Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.”
  • “Many are heading west to Colombia which, emerging from a long civil conflict of its own, is ill-equipped to receive them. There are now more than 600,000 Venezuelans in Colombia, twice as many as a year ago. Thousands have poured over the footbridge that separates the Venezuelan town of San Antonio from the Colombian city of Cúcuta. Walk the streets of Cúcuta and you find Venezuelans everywhere, selling cigarettes at the traffic lights, working as prostitutes, sleeping rough.”
  • “The collapse of the Venezuelan health system has prompted a resurgence of long-vanquished diseases. The government no longer provides reliable medical data and when the health minister revealed last year that the number of malaria cases had jumped 76% in a year, pregnancy-related deaths had risen 66% and infant mortality had climbed 30%, she was promptly sacked. A recent opposition-led survey suggested 79% of Venezuelan hospitals have little or no running water. The days when the Chávez government prided itself on decent medical care for the poor are long gone.”
  • “Measles, eradicated in much of Latin America, has returned. Of the 730 confirmed cases in the region last year, all but three were in Venezuela. As people flee, they are taking the disease with them. In the first months of this year, there were 14 confirmed cases in Brazil and one in Colombia. All 15 victims were Venezuelan migrants.”
  • “’The infant mortality rate is on a par with Pakistan and the poverty rate of 85% in on a par with Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa,’ says Dany Bahar of the Brookings Institution in Washington. ‘People are fleeing because if they stay, they die. They die because they don’t get enough food to eat, they die because they get malaria and can’t get treatment, they die because they need dialysis and can’t get it’.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Teachable Moment – Three Ways to Fail Slow – Anthony Isola 4/16

Civil Beat – What Honolulu Rail Officials Know They Don’t Know – Randall Roth and Cliff Slater 4/17

FT – Norway snub turns up heat on private equity fee model – Javier Espinoza 4/16

  • “Industry costs for investors are high and hard to track.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Homebuilding Isn’t Keeping Up With Growth, Development Group Says – Laura Kusisto 4/16

  • “Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have built too little housing to keep up with economic growth in the 15 years since 2000, resulting in a total shortage of 7.3 million units, according to research to be released Monday by an advocacy group for loosening building regulations.”
  • “California bears half of the blame for the shortage: The state built 3.4 million too few units to keep up with job, population and income growth.”
  • “There is growing awareness that the housing shortage is widespread and it affects states not often thought of as being especially anti-development. Home prices nationally rose 6.2% in the year that ended in January, roughly twice the rate of incomes and three times the rate of inflation, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.”
  • “Arizona and Utah are among the states that have built too little housing in the 15-year period, according to the report. The shortage in these places likely reflects strong demand as they become top destinations for retirees and people priced out of the Northeast and California.”
  • “At the same time, it is becoming more difficult to build all across America due to shortages of land, labor and materials.”
  • “Economists who have reviewed the report caution that measuring the present need for housing by extrapolating from past production is imperfect. Western states that were sparsely populated 60 years ago and experienced huge building booms in the latter half of the 20th century may not need to build at such a rapid clip today.”
  • “Housing shortages also are difficult to measure because most people will find somewhere to live by doubling up with family or roommates or moving to areas where homes are abundant but jobs may be scarce.”
  • “Nonetheless, the data underscore what economists say is a clear trend. ‘We have a housing deficit,’ said Chris Herbert, managing director at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. ‘I think we can all agree we should be building more.’”

Energy

FT – China to miss shale production target by ‘considerable margin’: report – Edward White 4/16

Finance

Bloomberg – How Hedge Funds Are Winning Back Investors – Katia Porzecanski 3/6

China

WSJ – Daily Shot: China Government Bond Yields 4/17

  • “Bond yields are falling, especially on the shorter end of the curve. Sensing a slowdown, Beijing is pulling back from its “deleveraging” campaign.”

March 28, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Gadfly – Users Built Facebook’s Empire, and They Can Crumble It – Nir Kaissar 3/26

FT – It is Venezuela’s crisis that is driving the oil price higher – Nick Butler 3/25

  • “While the Maduro-military alliance holds, output is likely to fall further.”

NYT – Live in a Drainpipe? Five Extreme Ideas to Solve Hong Kong’s Housing Crisis – Austin Ramzy 3/26

NYT – Repeal the Second Amendment – John Paul Stevens (retired associate justice of US Supreme Court) 3/27

NYT – New Leadership Has Not Changed Uber – Steven Hill 3/26

  • “The problem with Uber was never that the chief executive had created a thuggish ‘Game of Thrones’-type culture, as Susan Fowler, an engineer, described it in a blog post. The problem was, and still is, Uber’s business model: Its modus operandi is to subsidize fares and flood streets with its cars to achieve a transportation monopoly. In city after city, this has led to huge increases in traffic congestion, increased carbon emissions and the undermining of public transportation.”
  • “Most customers who love Uber don’t realize that the company subsidizes the cost of many rides. This is likely a major factor in Uber’s annual losses surging from 2.8 billion in 2016 to $4.5 billion in 2017. This seemingly nonsensical approach is actually Uber’s effort to use its deep pockets to mount a predatory price war and shut out the competition. That competition is not only taxis and other ride-sharing companies, but public transportation.”
  • “Ridership on public transportation is down in nearly every major American city, including New York City (which recorded its first ridership dip since 2009). This is hurting the revenue that public transportation needs to sustain itself. Uber passengers and public transportation users alike now find themselves stuck in heavy traffic for far longer because of what’s been called ‘Uber congestion.’ In Manhattan, there are five times as many ridesharing vehicles as yellow taxis, which has caused average speeds to decline by 15% compared with 2010, before Uber.“
  • “Ride-sharing services could potentially add something positive to our transportation options, but only if they are regulated properly.”
  • “First, regulators should limit the number of ride-sharing cars. Traditional taxis already have a sensible limit to minimize congestion. A balance must be found between having enough taxi-type vehicles but not so many that the streets are choked with traffic. Fix NYC, a panel appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, has called for all Ubers, Lyfts and taxis to be outfitted with GPS technology to track congestion and to charge a fee on for-hire vehicles that could help reduce traffic and generate hundreds of millions of dollars for public transportation.”
  • “Second, Uber should be prohibited from subsidizing its fares. It should be required to charge at least the true cost of each ride. If Uber refuses, a ‘fairness fee’ should be added to each fare.”
  • “Third, ride-sharing companies and their vehicles should be required to follow the same laws as traditional taxis, especially in terms of background checks for drivers and insurance requirements.”
  • “Fourth, Uber should be required to share its data with regulators, including information about its drivers and their contact information, so that members of this ‘distributed work force’ can more easily contact one another and organize collectively if they choose.”
  • “Finally, regulations should ensure that Uber treats its drivers fairly. Mr. Khosrowshahi asserts that drivers’ wages are adequate, but according to one study, more than half of Uber drivers earn less than the minimum wage in their state, and some even lose money once the costs of driving are taken into account. That helps explain why, according to Uber’s own internal study, half of its drivers leave after a year.”

WSJ – Turkey Is the One to Watch for Emerging Markets Risk – Richard Barley 3/26

WSJ – How a Tiny Latvian Bank Became a Haven for the World’s Dirty Money – Drew Hinshaw, Patricia Kowsmann, and Ian Talley 3/26

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Libor’s Rise Accelerates, Squeezing Short-Term Borrowers – Ben Eisen and Chelsey Dulaney 3/27

  • “The three-month London interbank offered rate climbed to 2.29% in the U.S. on Monday, its highest since November 2008. Libor measures the cost for banks to lend to one another and is used to set interest rates on roughly $200 trillion in dollar-based financial contracts globally, from corporate loans to home mortgages.”
  • “Libor has been rising for the last 2½ years as the Federal Reserve lifts its key policy rate, but recently the pace has picked up. It has climbed nearly a full percentage point in the last six months—outpacing the Fed—and could rise further with the approaching end of the quarter, typically a time of elevated demand for short-term funds in the banking sector, analysts say.”
  • “Demand for dollars at the end of the first quarter could send Libor up an additional 0.2 percentage point in the coming days, market analysts say, as investors rebalance their portfolios and banks rein in their balance sheets. The end of March also marks the finish of Japan’s fiscal year, potentially compounding the moves as big investors bring money back to Japan.”
  • “Libor has already sprinted ahead of the rates indicated by central bank policies, an acceleration that has baffled economists and traders. That widening gap has alarmed those who watch it as a signal of stress in the financial system. Others have pinned it on a series of technical factors, such as rising short-term debt sales by the U.S. government and new corporate tax policies.”
  • “Other markets that can be tapped for dollars—including through the swaps market and liquidity lines maintained by global central banks—aren’t yet showing a big dollar squeeze.”

Real Estate

The Big Picture – WeWork: Manhattan’s 2nd-biggest Private Office Tenant – Barry Ritholtz 3/27

FT – House prices falling in two-fifths of London postcodes – James Pickford 3/26

  • “House prices are falling in two out of five London postcodes, according to research that underlines the growing divergence between prices in southern English cities and those elsewhere in the UK.”
  • “The average annual rate of price growth in the capital has slowed to 1%, down sharply from 4.3% a year ago, meaning it is at its lowest level since August 2011, according to research by Hometrack, a housing market analyst. This stands in contrast to UK-wide average house price growth of 5.2% in the year to February 2018, up from 4% a year ago.”
  • “Prices are under greatest pressure in central London, where owners of the most expensive types of property began cutting prices in 2015 responding to the impact of higher taxes. In the past year, however, the trend has deepened in areas beyond the prime zones of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. The boroughs that saw the greatest drop in value were the City of London, Camden, Southwark, Islington and Wandsworth, according to Hometrack’s research.”
  • “Hometrack is predicting that the number of areas of the capital experiencing falling house prices will multiply during this year as trapped sellers reduce their asking prices to drive through transactions. ‘The net result will be a negative rate of headline price growth for London by the middle of 2018,’ the research said.”
  • “Outside southern England, house prices are more likely to be rising, in some places at a substantial pace. Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leicester, Birmingham and Manchester are adding more than 7% a year to their average house price, Hometrack found, with Leeds, Nottingham and Sheffield pegging rises of 6% or more.”
  • “The laggards in the 20-city index were Aberdeen (down by 7.7%), Cambridge (down by 1.5%) and Oxford (up by just 0.5%).”

NYT – Grocery Wars Turn Small Chains Into Battlefield Casualties – Michael Corkery 3/26

WSJ – Homeowners Ditch Refinancings as Mortgage Rates Rise – Christina Rexrode 3/26

  • “Last year, 37% of mortgage-origination volume was because of refinancings, according to industry research group Inside Mortgage Finance. That is the smallest proportion since 1995, and the number of refinancings is widely expected to shrink again this year. In 2012, refinancings were 72% of originations.”
  • “While purchase activity has climbed steadily from a post-financial-crisis nadir in 2011, growth in 2017 wasn’t enough to offset a $366 billion decline in refinancing activity. The result: The overall mortgage market fell around 12%, to $1.8 trillion, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.”
  • “What’s more, there are fewer homeowners eligible to refinance because of rising rates. The number of borrowers who could benefit from a refinancing is down about 37% from the end of last year, estimates Black Knight Inc., a mortgage-data and technology firm. At 2.67 million potential borrowers, this group is at its smallest since 2008.”
  • “Home-purchase activity has so far been holding up. Sales of previously owned homes in February rose 1.1% from a year earlier, countering worries that a downturn the previous month signaled a peak for the market.”
  • “Still, rising interest rates, a shortage of housing inventory and higher home prices are all long-term threats to purchase activity.”
  • “For refinancings, rising rates are a more immediate worry. Freddie Mac said last week that the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.45%, up from 3.95% at the beginning of the year.”
  • “The Mortgage Bankers Association expects mortgage-purchase volume to grow about 5% in 2018 but refinancing volume to drop 27%. Refinance applications fell 5% in the week ended March 16 from the prior one, according to the group.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

Bloomberg – Fewer Americans Hold Cryptocurrencies Than You Probably Think – Olga Kharif 3/16

  • “More than 90% of American adults don’t own cryptocurrencies – and most have a lot of concerns about the coins, a new survey from Finder found.”

Fishing

Bloomberg – Maine’s Lobster Tide Might Be Ebbing – Justin Fox 3/23

  • “The numbers came in earlier this month on Maine’s 2017 lobster harvest. By historical standards, the 110.8 million-pound, $434 million haul was pretty spectacular. But it was a lot lower than 2016’s 132.5 million-pound, $540 million record, and it was another sign that the Great Lobster Boom that has surprised and delighted Maine’s lobster fishermen since the 1990s — and brought lobster rolls to diners from coast to coast — may be giving way to … something else.”
  • “The lobster boom does not seem to be the result of overfishing; Maine’s lobster fishermen figured out a set of rules decades ago that appear to allow them to manage the catch sustainably. There are just lots and lots more lobsters off the coast of Maine than there used to be. Why? In a column last spring, I listed four reasons that I’d heard during a trip to Maine:”
    • “Warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Maine.”
    • “A collapse in the population of cod, which eat young lobsters.”
    • “Reduced incidence of a lobster disease called gaffkemia.”
    • “Increased effort and efficiency on the part of lobstermen, who go farther offshore and can haul in more traps in a day than they used to.”
  • “Given how quickly the lobster harvests grew, though, especially from 2007 through 2012, it’s hard not to wonder whether they might not eventually collapse. They already have in several states farther down the Atlantic coast. Lobster landings were still on the rise as of 2016 (data aren’t available yet for 2017) in New Hampshire and Massachusetts but peaked in Rhode Island in 1999, Connecticut in 1998, New York in 1996 and New Jersey in 1990.”
  • “So that’s some evidence for the warming-ocean-temperatures theory of the lobster boom. This would imply that eventually even the oceans off Maine will get too warm, although it doesn’t give much of a hint as to when.”
  • Canada has been benefiting as well.

 

March 22, 2018

Perspective

NYT – The Population Slowdown in the Outer Suburbs of the East and Midwest – Robert Gebeloff 3/21

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Headline Risk – Ben Carlson 3/21

Bloomberg Gadfly – The Saudi Aramco IPO Math Problem: Cash > Barrels – Liam Denning 3/15

  • “Getting to a $2 trillion valuation requires some heroic assumptions.”

Bloomberg View – Before You #DeleteFacebook, Try Taking Control – Barry Ritholtz 3/21

  • “A precept from the 1970s, said originally about television (back when TV was free), is applicable to technology and media: If you are not paying for a product, then you are the product.”

FT – Hard-headed deterrence is the antidote to Putin’s poison – Philip Stephens 3/14

FT – The low-paid workers cleaning up the worst horrors of the internet – Gillian Tett 3/16

  • “A new film (The Cleaners) tracks outsourced workers in grim little cubicles watching the depravity that exists online.”

NYT – Trump Hacked the Media Right Before Our Eyes – Ross Douthat 3/21

  • “…the business model of our news channels both assumes and heightens polarization, and that it was ripe for exploitation by a demagogue who was also a celebrity.”

NYT – Fox News Analyst Quits, Calling Network a ‘Propaganda Machine’ – Michael M. Grynbaum 3/20

NYT – Toys ‘R’ Us Case Is Test of Private Equity in Age of Amazon – Michael Corkery 3/15

Pragmatic Capitalism – Why are Money Managers Paid so Much? – Cullen Roche 3/20

  • “Salesmanship. The answer is salesmanship. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that asset management is mostly about selling the hope of superior returns in exchange for the guarantee of high fees.  The problem for the average person is that they don’t actually know enough about the asset management business to quantify whether their investment manager is worth the fees they pay. And in fairness, a big part of that is due to the fact that you have to compare yourself to a counterfactual that doesn’t exist since paying 1.6% per year to invest in a crappy active mutual fund is probably a better result than sitting in cash all the time because you’re too scared to get fully invested. Investment managers, as expensive as they are, at least keep you in the game and you need to be in the game to score any goals.”

Rational Radical – Royal commission shatters housing bubble façade – Matt Ellis 3/21

  • Commentary on the Australian Housing market (read bubble)

The Verge – China will ban people with poor ‘social credit’ from planes and trains – Sean O’Kane 3/16

  • “Starting in May, Chinese citizens who rank low on the country’s burgeoning ‘social credit’ system will be in danger of being banned from buying plane or train tickets for up to a year, according to statements recently released by the country’s National Development and Reform Commission.”
  • “With the social credit system, the Chinese government rates citizens based on things like criminal behavior and financial misdeeds, but also on what they buy, say, and do. Those with low ‘scores’ have to deal with penalties and restrictions. China has been working towards rolling out a full version of the system by 2020, but some early versions of it are already in place.”
  • “The new travel restrictions are the latest addition to this growing patchwork of social engineering, which has already imposed punishments on more than seven million citizens. And there’s a broad range when it comes to who can be flagged. Citizens who have spread ‘false information about terrorism,’ caused ‘trouble’ on flights, used expired tickets, or were caught smoking on trains could all be banned, according to Reuters.”

Wolf Street – Then Why Is Anyone STILL on Facebook? – Wolf Richter 3/20

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Nomura – Valuations of FANG-type stocks 3/20

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bianco Research – Breaking Down US Household Retirement Assets 3/21

Energy

WSJ – Daily Shot: Venezuelan Crude Oil Output 2/28

Finance

FT – John Paulson takes an axe to his struggling hedge fund – Robin Wigglesworth 3/16

  • “Struggling hedge fund magnate John Paulson has taken an axe to his once-imperious firm, with several top executives departing in a ‘rightsizing’ this week after a string of heavy losses.”
  • “Mr Paulson rose to fame after the crisis, when Paulson & Co made billions of dollars from predicting the US housing crisis and astute bets on complex credit derivatives. The hedge fund firm’s assets under management hit a peak of $38bn in 2011.”
  • “But since then Paulson & Co has suffered a string of losses across most of its hedge funds, with its flagship merger arbitrage fund — Mr Paulson’s specialty — losing 18.1% and 23% in 2016 and 2017, respectively, according to the performance update of a mirror fund offered by Schroders.”
  • “Paulson & Co’s assets have now shrunk to about $9bn, of which two-thirds is Mr Paulson’s own money, and this week the hedge fund manager let a string of employees go.”
  • “Since making one of the biggest financial hauls in the industry’s history — Mr Paulson personally made almost $4bn from the financial crisis — the firm has made a series of ill-fated investments, such as on healthcare stocks, banks and gold and by betting against German bonds.”
  • “The most high-profile recent mis-step was a big bet on drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Paulson & Co is the drug maker’s single biggest shareholder, but the stock has tumbled from a high of $262.50 in 2015 to just $16.80 this week — a loss of more than 93% over the period.”
  • “Paulson & Co’s biggest public holdings, according to regulatory filings, are pharma companies Mylan, Shire, Valeant and Allergan, as well as an exchange-traded fund that tracks the price of gold. The gold ETF has lost about 32% of its value since the hedge fund’s investment peaked at $4.6bn in 2011.”

Health / Medicine

WSJ – Daily Shot: AEI – Geographic Variation in the Cost of the Opioid Crisis – Alex Brill 3/20

Other Interesting Links

FT – Wine’s Wild West: a tasting tour of Arizona – Horatia Harrod 3/16

  • “In Scottsdale’s bars and out on the state’s grassy uplands, an industry wiped out by Prohibition is being revived.”

March 7, 2018

Perspective

Bloomberg Businessweek – Asian Cities Dominate Expat Salary Rankings – Andy Hoffman and Zoe Schneeweiss 2/26

US Census Bureau – Stats for Stories – Academy Awards 3/4

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg Businessweek – Anbang Out With a Whimper – Nisha Gopalan 2/22

FT – How the Middle East is sowing seeds of a second Arab spring – Andrew England and Heba Saleh 3/4

NYT – State Dept. Was Granted $120 Million to Fight Russian Meddling. It Has Spent $0. – Gardiner Harris 3/4

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg Businessweek – KFC’s Big Screw-Up Left Restaurants Without Chicken – Christopher Jasper and Eric Pfanner 2/28

WSJ – Big Banks Enter Branch Warfare – Aaron Back 3/5

  • “Banks are entering a new period of growth, bolstered by healthy capital levels, less burdensome regulation and higher interest rates. Branch openings will remain a key competitive tactic for banks. As for Wells Fargo, with the Federal Reserve capping its growth and new sales controversies still emerging, it looks like a sitting duck to rivals.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: BofAML – Genworth Mortgage Insurance: US First-time homebuyers 3/6

WSJ – Daily Shot: BofAML – NAR: US Home Affordability and Mortgage Payment Components 3/6

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Home Price Relative Values 3/6

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns RE Consulting – Changes in American Debt 3/6

Environment / Science

Economist – The known unknowns of plastic pollution 3/3

Economist – Only 7% of the world’s plastic is recycled – Daily Chart 3/6

WEF – The Arctic is sending us a powerful message about climate change. It’s time for us to listen – Jennifer Francis, Jeremy Wilkinson, and Gail Whiteman 3/5

Automotive

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Car of the Future Will Sell Your Data – Gabrielle Coppola and David Welch 2/20

  • “As smarter vehicles become troves of personal information, get ready for coupon offers at the next stoplight.”

China

WSJ – China Spends More on Domestic Security as Xi’s Powers Grow – Josh Chin 3/6

South America

Bloomberg – Venezuelans, Go Home: Xenophobia Haunts Refugees – Ezra Fieser and Matthew Bristow 3/5