Year: 2020

On a recent podcast, I was asked, “What are the world’s biggest problems?”
I’m a simple guy, and I could certainly make a big, long list… but then you’d get lost in the size and enormity of the list.
So I said, “Two things: Inertia and a lack of empowerment.”
All Is Not Well
Inertia works two ways, as you know. It says that bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. But the flip side is also true: Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion.
(We don’t think about the latter as often… but if your car brakes fail at a stoplight, you’ll …read more […]

As the world experimented with working from home, U.S. energy firm Phillips 66 Co went the other way: it imposed a “work-from-work” policy for staff at its Houston headquarters in May even as the city became a hot spot for the pandemic. After a brief spike in COVID-19 cases in July, Phillips 66 avoided a major outbreak while remaining nearly fully staffed at its 1.1 million-square-foot Houston campus. The policy also put the company’s white-collar workers on the same footing as refinery staff who were unable to work from home due to the nature of their jobs. …read more […]

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Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk suggested Tuesday that European countries need to stop subsidizing fuel-based vehicles.What Happened: Musk was reacting to a study by TransPerfect DataForce, commissioned by Transport & Environment, a green group, which indicated that leased cars cost European taxpayers $37.7 billion each year — most of which run on petrol- and diesel-based engines.”So crazy to subsidize pollution,” the billionaire entrepreneur said in a tweet. “This is not good for people, especially in dense cities with heavy traffic, where your air intake is jammed up against another car’s exhaust pipe,”The study urged VAT deductions and write-off …read more […]

How do you pick the next stock to invest in? One way would be to spend days of research browsing through thousands of publicly traded companies. However, an easier way is to look at the stocks that smart money investors are collectively bullish on. Hedge funds and other institutional investors usually invest large amounts of […] …read more […]

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Since Britain voted in 2016 to quit the European Union, there has been a fierce debate about the harm this will do to the City of London. Pessimists warned that losing unfettered access to the single market would force banks to move trillions of dollars in assets out of the world’s leading financial hub. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would go, the Cassandras said. The reality has been more difficult to discern. The finance industry’s move to the continent has been piecemeal, and Brexit preparations have been complicated by the onslaught of the pandemic. Indeed, the management …read more […]

At the end of February we announced the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we predicted that the market will decline by at least 20% in (see why hell is coming). We reversed our stance on March 25th after seeing unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus unleashed by the Fed and the Congress. […] …read more […]

Shares of Alteryx jumped almost 24% in Monday’s extended market trading after the data analytics specialist improved its 3Q revenue guidance and announced the appointment of a new CEO.Alteryx (AYX) now estimates 3Q revenue in a range of $126 million to $128 million, representing year-over-year growth of 22% to 24%. The numbers are higher than the previously provided revenue guidance of $111 million to $115 million, issued on Aug. 6. The company is scheduled to report 3Q results on Nov. 5.In addition, the company announced that Mark Anderson, a board member of the company, will succeed Alteryx co-founder, chairman, and …read more […]

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(Bloomberg) — Caught off guard by Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s record-breaking rally earlier this year, Hong Kong’s stock investors are getting well prepared for the next one.For about two months, options traders have consistently shelled out more for bullish three-month contracts on the stock than they’re willing to pay for those protecting against losses, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s kept Tencent’s so-called volatility skew below zero, an unusual quirk for a market that typically sees traders pay more for downside protection than upside speculation.Asia’s second-largest corporation by market value and eighth globally is growing revenue at its fastest pace …read more […]

The U.S. House of Representatives antitrust report on Big Tech firms contains a “thinly veiled call to break up” the companies, Republican Congressman Ken Buck said in a draft response seen by Reuters. The House antitrust subcommittee is expected to publish its report this week on Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Google owner Alphabet Inc. A Buck representative confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the draft response, which was first reported by Politico. …read more […]

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) is the only automaker in Germany experiencing growth so far this year, Electrek reported Monday.What Happened: The Elon Musk-led company is charting ahead of its domestic and foreign rivals in the European country.In the period after Sept. 2019, the Palo Alto, California-based automaker registered 9,000 deliveries, an increase of 24% year-over-year.Data from Electrek indicates that every other automaker in Germany had deliveries shrink in a similar period including giants like Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE: TM), Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (OTC: BMWYY), and Volkswagen AG (OTC: VWAGY).The electric vehicle maker enjoyed a record quarter in Germany with …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — When Sanjay Shah lost his job during the financial crisis more than a decade ago, he was one of thousands of mid-level traders suddenly out of work.Shah didn’t take long to get back into the game, setting up his own fund targeting gaps in dividend-tax laws. Within a few years, he charted a spectacular rise from trading-floor obscurity to amassing as much as $700 million and a property portfolio that stretched from Regent’s Park in his native London to Dubai. He commanded a 62-foot yacht and booked Drake, Elton John and Jennifer Lopez to play for an autism …read more […]

(Bloomberg Opinion) — For the first time since 2011, Apple Inc. didn’t release a version of its flagship iPhone in September. That delay has had a massive ripple effect through its network of vendors, which makes parsing supply-chain data even more challenging than usual.Since at least March, we knew that the next installment of the iconic device would be pushed back due to Covid-19. The pandemic initially hit manufacturing lines in China, but continued to impact the rest of the global lineup of companies that contribute to the product, all the way back to the team that develops it in …read more […]