There aren’t that many trillion-dollar industries left where technology isn’t already shaking things up. One of the last dinosaurs to be hit by the asteroid of technological disruption is the insurance game. Specifically, we’re talking about property and casualty (P&C) insurance, which represents $1.6 trillion in premiums and accounts for about one-third of the entire […]
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. That’s the title of a book by economist Milton Friedman that business school professors expect you to read as part of your bee school experience. It’s a dreadfully boring book that you can skip by simply pondering what it says on the tin. The saying “there ain’t […]
While special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) in their current form have been around since the 1990s, these shell corporations that acquire and merge with private companies have surged in popularity in the last couple of years. There have been more than 600 SPAC filings and about $170 billion raised since last year, according to the […]
If you can figure out what motivates someone, you’re in a much better position at the negotiation table. In the case of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), you have three stakeholders at the table – the sponsor who gets paid millions if any deal gets done (sponsors have seen average returns of +958%), the company […]
Perhaps you’ve heard the old story about how JFK’s father, Joe Kennedy, decided to get out of the stock market when the shoeshine boy started giving him stock tips. It seems like every market crash has been preceded by a period of mania where investors have been replaced by speculators who will buy just about […]
Only a few movie sequels ever truly succeed. One exception is “The Empire Strikes Back,” which every Star Wars fan knows is the best film of the series. The investors who backed the film would also agree, as it grossed about $550 million worldwide in 1980. In today’s greenbacks, that’s more than $1.7 billion when […]
For retail investors, the biggest barrier to entry for investing in any technology thesis is the availability of pure-play stocks. That usually changes when a startup becomes publicly traded. At that time, lots of the industry’s main players will be privately held, so it’s challenging to figure out how threatening the competition is. Then, you […]
“Free of IPO constraints, SPACs can make ‘absurd’ financial projections – and this hedge fund manager says the fallout is coming.” That was the title of a recent article by Institutional Investor that warns about how the SPAC market often contains “pump and dumps” where investors who participate are buying “incredibly overvalued companies.” We can’t […]
People will often talk about how children are our most important resource. That’s bollocks. Go a few days without water and you’re dead. You don’t have to Google for very long before you find a bunch of depressing statistics about all of the ways our freshwater systems are under pressure. You may remember back in […]
Last year, we got a glimpse of what the world would look like without us – no crowds, no traffic, no nonsense. That led to the biggest drop in greenhouse gas emissions since World War II. Of course, all good things must end. Traffic in many areas is returning to pre-pandemic levels or even higher, […]