Month: March 2020

Online marketplaces have been around for a long time. Amazon and eBay headlined the first generation. Those companies began in the mid-1990s. They offered thousands of products in hundreds of markets and turned into digital behemoths.
The second generation began at the turn of the century. StubHub appeared in 2000. LinkedIn started in 2002. Zillow in 2004. YouTube in 2005. These companies were more specialized.
Today, Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates are the top-ranked startup/private marketplace companies according to venture capital firm a16z and data analytics firm Second Measure. Second Measure, which analyzes billions of purchases to track real-time consumer behavior, ranked …read more […]

One of my favorite quotes comes from internationally renowned author and management consultant Oren Harari: “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.”
Harari’s quote has some parallels with the evolution of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to electric vehicles.
EVs don’t just use battery power instead of gas. The way their engines operate is completely different.
And the manufacturers creating these next-generation vehicles are revolutionizing the semitruck market.
Dirty, Money-Sucking Engines
ICE vehicles physically ignite fuel to create repeated explosions. The explosions force pistons to turn a crankshaft. Power is then routed through a mechanical transmission that moves the vehicle.
The …read more […]

One of my favorite quotes comes from internationally renowned author and management consultant Oren Harari: “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.”
Harari’s quote has some parallels with the evolution of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to electric vehicles.
EVs don’t just use battery power instead of gas. The way their engines operate is completely different.
And the manufacturers creating these next-generation vehicles are revolutionizing the semitruck market.
Dirty, Money-Sucking Engines
ICE vehicles physically ignite fuel to create repeated explosions. The explosions force pistons to turn a crankshaft. Power is then routed through a mechanical transmission that moves the vehicle.
The …read more […]

Employees at the largest U.S. oil companies have lost around $5 billion in retirement savings since the end of 2018 because of outsized bets on their own slumping stock, according to a Reuters analysis of company disclosures, a trend exacerbated by the recent crash in oil prices. The losses spread across the 401(k) plans of some 66,000 workers underscore the dangers facing employees that do not diversify their retirement investments. The issue is most pronounced at big blue-chip corporations that have historically matched worker retirement contributions in shares and whose stocks have track records of stable growth. …read more […]

Many investors, especially beginning investors, are surprised to receive a letter in the mail telling them of an impending stock split. The first question is usually, what is a stock split? The second question naturally follows: is a stock split good?
If you’ve received such a letter or hear rumblings about a stock split pertaining to a security in your portfolio, it’s important to know what’s happening.
What is a stock split?
A stock split is aptly-named, because it involves a company splitting its existing shares. Usually, stock splits occur at a 1:2 ratio, where every existing share becomes two. However, stock splits …read more […]

This week’s oil price rout had become inevitable and cutting oil output has ceased to make sense because it is unclear how deep the impact of the coronavirus on demand will be, Russia’s deputy energy minister said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday. Last week, Saudi Arabia failed to secure Moscow’s support for deeper output cuts at a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+. Following the disagreement, Saudi Arabia has threatened to flood the market with oil. …read more […]

Federal Aviation Administration chief Steve Dickson confirmed Wednesday the agency has rejected Boeing Co’s proposal to leave wiring bundles in place on the grounded 737 MAX. Last month, Boeing told the FAA it did not believe it needs to separate or move wiring bundles on its grounded 737 MAX jetliner that regulators have warned could short circuit with catastrophic consequences. Dickson told reporters after a hearing on Capitol Hill that the agency has “not approved” the Boeing proposal and the next step is up to Boeing. …read more […]

Coronavirus is probably the 1 concern in investors’ minds right now. It should be. On February 27th we published this article and predicted that US stocks will go down by at least 20% in the next 3-6 months. We also told you to short the market ETFs and buy long-term bonds. Investors who agreed with […] …read more […]

Investment bank JPMorgan has cast a careful eye on current market conditions, and lays out the likely scenarios for investors to consider. According to the firm’s analyst team, the spreading COVID -19 epidemic will likely continue to disrupt markets, mainly through increased volatility this year. In the short term, JPM sees the US Federal Reserve’s 50 basis point rate cut as a net positive, mainly because it increases the relative upside for equity assets.In JPM’s view, investors should understand that governments will provide policy support in the first half of this year to mitigate virus-related losses, while the global epidemic …read more […]