Synthetic biology is probably the single most exciting technology theme we cover. Nature is the most powerful technology known to man, and we’re not only on the cusp of harnessing it but making it better by using technologies like gene editing. But for investors, synbio has been anything but exciting. Over four years ago, we […]
A great interview question to ask a fresh-faced MBA goes something like this. “Take the most sophisticated financial concept you know and explain it to me like I’m your grandmother.” It’s an elegant way to find out just how well a candidate understands the dreadfully boring financial concepts they’re forced to memorize, while simultaneously probing […]
Nanotechnology was supposed to change the world until it didn’t. Carbon nanotubes and graphene resulted in a big nothing sandwich, at least from the perspective of investors who tried to invest in these nanomaterials. Back in 2016, we posited that the emergence of synthetic biology and gene editing were nanotechnology under a different name. In […]
There’s always a delicate balance between being too hands on with a stock and not paying close enough attention to how its business evolves. Revenue growth is the one metric that cuts through all the noise and distills it down to what’s most important for a disruptive technology stock. Is a company able to monetize […]
Pumping and dumping a stock is illegal. Perhaps the most entertaining – and extremely accurate – portrayal of stock promotion was the movie Boiler Room in which a bunch of BSDs fleece the middle class before finally getting taken down by the SEC. Today, pumping seems to be the cool thing to do. Meme stocks […]
One thing you learn in risk management class is that risk can be defined as the volatility of returns. It’s a way of not thinking about up or down, but rather the stability of a stock price. From that you can infer that stable stock prices are more desirable. So, when volatility gets introduced to […]
If you decide to bare your investing decisions for the world to see, you better do so with conviction. Unless your thesis changes, you should never sell a stock. When additional information becomes available that threatens your thesis, you ought to examine it objectively and act accordingly. That’s why when activist short-seller Scorpion Capital released […]
There’s a popular saying that goes something like this: Some people eat to live and others live to eat. Our globe-trotting MBAs definitely fall into the latter category, which is one reason why we’ve been so tepid on the whole greentech push towards plant-based foods and alternative protein markets. More objectively, we’re skeptical that these […]
We’ll often see people leave comments on our articles like “I’m up +420% on stock X.” Without a timeframe and a benchmark, it’s impossible to know if that’s good or bad, but most people don’t recognize that paper returns mean nothing unless you sell and take profits. Plenty of investors watch their stocks rack up […]
Fake it until you make it applies to the startup world as well. Oftentimes, a company will set out doing “business plan A” and end up finalizing on “business plan E.” That’s fine when you’re growing a new business, but not so good when you’re a publicly traded stock (cough, Organovo, cough). Sometimes you’ll have […]