This week’s highlights: Growing Up Wealthy, Why is Lyft Public?, The $35 Computer
Photo by Nout Gons on Pexels.com
Issue 326
As we do each quarter, my firm published this week our quick take on the market in the first quarter of 2019 – Wet Ground, Sunny Markets! – April 2019 – Market Commentary – I think you will enjoy this thoughtful, accessible, and brief piece.
Happy Friday,
David
Food for Thought:
Top Read(s) of the Week: TheCut – What It’s Like to Grow Up With More Money Than You’ll Ever Spend
Why It Matters: Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney, talks in great length about the benefits and challenges in growing up in an iconic family. Her comments are measured and thoughtful, full of great wisdom. One great line – “This is the weird thing about my life: I am usually excited to meet someone in direct disproportion to how excited they are to meet me.”
Consider as well:
- NYT – Winning the War on Poverty According to recently released data, between 2015 and 2017, Canada reduced its official poverty rate by at least 20 percent.
- The74 – New Numbers Show Low-Income Students at Most of America’s Largest Charter School Networks Graduating College at Two to Four Times the National Average
- NYT – Keeping Up With the Kardashian Cash Flow Are Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie America’s savviest C.E.O.s?
- VF – The Dirty Secret of El Chapo’s Downfall. As the Mexican cartel leader’s trial draws to an end, one thing is clear: drug kingpins reign as long as they make their partners money. When they stop, they end up in jail.
Business/Economics:
Top Read of the Week: NYMag – Why Should Lyft Be a Public Company?
Why It Matters: “The point of the public equity markets is supposed to be that they are an efficient source of capital for large, known companies. Why weren’t these companies eager to access that source? Had something gone wrong with the markets?”
Consider as well:
- Economist – Japan toys with shareholder capitalism just as the West balks Activist investors are taking a ninja-like approach to stodgy companies
- Forbes – Andreessen Horowitz Is Blowing Up The Venture Capital Model (Again)
- CFAI – GARP Investing: Golden or Garbage? If Value creates positive excess returns, as the research demonstrates, then Growth does largely the opposite, which would seem to cast doubt on GARP’s underlying logic. So how do GARP strategies perform in the US stock market?
- Bridgewater – Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Part 1)
Culture/Tech/Science:
Top Read of the Week: Forbes – How Sony Sped Up A Factory With These Tiny, $35 Computers
Why It Matters: This is disruptive innovation at its core. Factories are using cheap and small Rasberry Pi computers to help with automation. When the cost of innovation falls from a couple million dollars to implement a technology to a couple of thousand, interesting things can begin to happen.
Consider as well:
- Nautilus – A Magician Explains Why We See What’s Not There Our brain is constantly picturing what the future should be.
- SwitchedOnPop – Comeback Kids: The Jonas Brothers are Back Nate and Charlie, the hosts of podcast Switched On Pop, do what they do best with this great episode deconstructing the Jonas Brother’s new track and perhaps uncovering the secrets to a chart topper in 2019.
- NYT – How A.S.M.R. Became a Sensation The brain-tingling feeling was a hard-to-describe psychological oddity. Until, suddenly, it was a YouTube phenomenon.
- Economist – Scientists discover the chemicals behind the unique Parkinson’s smell