Insights on markets, emergent trends, history, innovation, risk management, global economics, strategy, policy, and other topics that catch our attention. Inspired by ongoing research, conversations and events. Written and edited by Osbon Capital Management and published every Thursday morning.
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2024 will bring more positive novel surprises. New years always do. In 2023, it was the dramatic acceleration in AI, which touches nearly every industry, and the early stages of an answer to the obesity epidemic with GLP-1s. Here is a list of what’s on our minds going into 2024.
Week 36: Keeping Up With Change, Less Inflation, and More Crypto
Briefing: Despite constant headlines of inflation, college tuition costs have barely increased. University tuition inflation is at 40-year lows and trending downward. Ray Dalio’s Pure Alpha fund returned just 1.8% annually for the last 7 years. He’s largely missed the growth of emergent internet and technology trends. El Salvador is taking a bold step forward with Bitcoin by making it…
Week 35: Global Shipping, Return to Work, And So On
Briefing: Global shipping issues are creating delays and pushing prices higher. This is a knock-on effect of the pandemic that will eventually return to normal. Augmented Reality innovation includes a new laser projector small enough to fit into a regular pair of glasses. Working from home… Global Shipping Bottlenecks As the Christmas shopping season approaches, you’ve probably seen warnings that…
Week 34: Numbers Don’t Lie, You Now Own An NFT, Robots
Briefing: Vaclav Smil’s latest book, “Number Don’t Lie,” is a treasure trove of interesting data and stories. | Visa’s $150,000 Crypto-Punk NFT purchase this week is a sign of forward-thinking leadership. It also wasn’t really that costly for the $500B market cap company. | General-purpose robots may be here sooner than you think; Hyundai and Tesla are the first leaders…
Week 33: SPAC Bubbles, The Metaverse, Lumber, Poly Network Hack, and so on.
Briefing: SPACs are allowed to publish future revenue projections when they go public, which is causing some problems. | The Metaverse can be used to train autonomous robots. | Lumber prices are back below pre-pandemic levels after jumping to extreme heights. | Blockchain technology may prove useful in preventing money laundering.
Week 32: Quirks of the S&P 500 & The Power Behind Meme Stock Upside
Briefing: The S&P500 is the biggest brand name in the investment world. It’s known as the index that passively tracks the 500 largest public US companies, but that’s not 100% true and the list of exceptions is growing. The very late addition of Tesla in December of last year is a prime example. | The options market is the driving…
Week 31: Investing In China, Zero G Manufacturing and Cloud Spending
Briefing: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that investing in Chinese companies comes with the risk of intervention by the Chinese government. China is acting as an unpredictable investment partner. | Fiber optics will soon be manufactured in space to reduce imperfections. | Cloud spending continues to grow at a rapid pace, and it’s not done growing yet. Chinese Tech…
Week 30: Buybacks Over Dividends, AlphaFold Breakthrough and The First 3D Printed Bridge
Briefing: This week, three topics caught our attention. Equity yields are higher than reported. The S&P 500 dividend yield is approximately 1.25%, but when you include buybacks the yield is closer to 2.25%. Investors may not appreciate how the buyback yield is positively impacting them from both a tax and income perspective. AI is contributing to real scientific breakthroughs. AlphaFold…
Week 29: Interest Rates, Venture Capital and High Yield Debt
Briefing: Following many decades of incredible success, venture capital investing is aggressively funding the next wave of innovative disrupters. The high yield rate, the rate that investors earn from buying “junk” rated companies, is the lowest it’s been since 2007, which signifies very low bankruptcy risk. Where should future interest rates settle now that the 10 year treasury rate is…
Week 28: The All Electric Future & Battery Technology
GM recently announced strategic plans to convert its entire product line into electric vehicles by 2035. For context, GM sold 6.8m new vehicles last year out of 78.5m total, making them one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world. It’s a bold, but necessary move to create a sustainable and environmentally aware future. Given our increasingly electrified world, battery…
