finance

IPO’s cluster bomb model

I don’t know wether the cluster bomb model is appropriate, maybe a better analogy is the virus shedding, so IPO’s would be shedding capital in the economy, infectious innovation model

in Europe this does not happen and indeed the startup scene in Europe is sort of depressing, let alone Italy where it dead

while in Israle the model worked perfectly, Waze IPO shed seed capital which sprouted in 50 unicorns less than 10 years later https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3884893,00.html

going back to Branko Milanovic homoploutis, which he found increasing in the US, will it increase in the same way in Europe? The startup capital shedding model seems a big contributo though he does not mention it in his book, in his paper it is ecluded from the data but claerly reinforces the trend http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/806.pdf

shareholder value

investigating the mantra of management a cavallo of the last 2 centuries

it all started with this paper in 1976 Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure

which welcomes the thesis expressed by Milton Friedman in 1970 in The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits

(originally published in NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html)

It was 50 years from the day Friedman’s paper was published last september 2020, it took some time but by the early 80’s shareholder value took hold in the the corporate world, fuelled a rally in stocks and became one with the Reagan era

I started from here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/business/dealbook/milton-friedman-doctrine-social-responsibility-of-business.html

and here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/business/dealbook/milton-friedman-free-markets.html

20 years on

does it make any sense to link a post on a platform like Linkedin? Fucking platforms https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaeljacksonvc_shopify-just-made-a-2-billion-windfall-on-activity-6755251513330933760-CG_6

in case here is the screenshot

and this is the article, there an IPO that doubles immediately, there’s a six-month old partnership that is worth a 2-billion windfall, there’s a member of the paypal mafia

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/shopify-makes-2-billion-on-affirm-ipo-six-months-after-partnership.html

then in email I get one of those nice newsletters full of screen grabs, this is about the market piling up call otions, therefore being bullish above its means (and the dealers getting short gammma) from the dailyshot https://dailyshotbrief.com/the-daily-shot-brief-january-13th-2021/

citizen investor

Homoploutia is the situation where the same people (homo) are rich (ploutia) in terms of both labor and capital income. We measure it by the share of top decile capital-income earners who are also in the top decile of labor income.

First finding: Homoploutia has increased considerably since 1950, from about 10% to 30%, most notably in the past 35 years.

Second finding: The rising labor income inequality during the 1970s and 1980s fueled the increase in homoploutia. Either through higher saving leading to higher capital income, or higher incentives to participate in the labor force for the capital-income rich.

Third finding: in turn, rising homoploutia acted to increase (total) income inequality, accounting to 2 percentage points (or 20%) of the rising top 10% income share from 1986 to 2020. It may have played a bigger role in increasing US inequality than the capital share.

Interesting 3d here https://twitter.com/bermanjoe/status/1340008088892547072

related, K shaped recovery in Coronatimes, where educated people with stock holdings are doing well, while no-degree workers in hospitality type works with no savings take the brunt of it all

also related, the growing importance of startups, unicorns etc which give options at early stages making both well paid and capital rich employes

The idea would be to teach pupils about savings, investments, taking and managing risks, using all the tools to buy and sell financial isntruments which are readily available today. The citizen investor, teaching kids to a better economic and financial position in the world.

Related, in 1948 this movie was shown to high school freshmen https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1340758766896041984

This movie was shown to seniors about judging and discernment https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1340738021058990080

shaky foundation of economics

still on the issue of the cancelled singularity

a dinner chat between a physicist and an economist on the physical limits to infinite growth , the infinite growth postulated by economists in their models.

I got there from this tweet on ergodicity economics https://twitter.com/DrCirillo/status/1201782869712146432

and gave another read to Ole Peter’s Nature paper which sinks deeper in my reasoning on economics.

It all started because some economist on Facebook complained that some other economist had opposing views, but this is not the point, he started with an “in science, no economic theory …” science and economics so close in one sentence got me thinking about epistemics

a comprehensive article on “is economics a science?” lots of quotes so probably it isn’t you would not need so many instead

EDIT: I found today Noah Smith arguing that economic policy today seems limited to “Give poeple money” without any attempt to ground the directive in theory, unlike what happened in 2008 crisis where economists resorted to theory and in course they wrecked the economy even more. So the state of economics, macroeconomics I mean, is dismal https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-new-macro-give-people-money

efficient markets, or not

on askblog I read of Fama efficient market hypothesis and monetary policy https://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/finance-theory-and-the-fed/

he says that “Actually, the central banks don’t do anything real. They are issuing one form of debt to buy another form of debt. If you are an old Modigliani–Miller person the way I am, you think that’s a neutral activity: You’re issuing short-term debt to buy long-term debt or vice-versa. That’s not something that should have any real effects“

I should study the Efficient Market hing. It also prompted me to punt on reading list Mandelbrot The (Mis)Behavior of Markets https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/665134.The_Mis_Behavior_of_Markets

things to grow

Fad chasing pigs

the story of Soros and Druckenmiller (was it at quantum fund?) taking opposite sides on the dotcom boom

Money Machines and useless money in Covid times

2 money machines like no other are no more in times of Coronavirus

Renaissance down

Blitzscaling done for good?

In coronavirus times it’s loud the lack of blockchain solution to pandemia problems, like contact apps. The silence is loud we are used to being pitched all sorts of blockchain solution to real world problems we did not know we had, or we did not think we could not solve with othee means

And this is refreshing, why you have to make a money useful to be money ? Value and purchasing power aren’t enough. Really, sometimes I have used 10 Lire to open the batteries lid of RC caes but that’s it, it’s not what gives value to my coin

words and acronyms

spread, like spread the virus, spred Bund-BTP, spread the goodness of the web GNUtella. Just because I want to talk about Fold@home that reminds me of SETI@home that was alive at the time DIvX Napster and Indymedia were born (GNUtella followed suit, once Napster was killed)

PEEP and PEPP, easy to confuse, both actual now:

PEEP some parameter in ventilators, the reason you can’t hack together a mechanichal ventilator, PEEP must be managed by some electronics and specific mechanics

PEPP is some Pandemic Emergency something  created by the ECB, which will buy bods for 750 billions, it already started buying Italy’s Btp and that should allow Italy to stay comfortably in 5% deficit for 2020, BOTs have already a buyr, Over that level,  check twice

Farmer’s fable (ergodicity economics)

sharing is actually maximizing profit https://www.farmersfable.org/ a cartoon that show how sharing to reduce fluctuation leave both parties better off (on a random walk)

Screenshot 2020-02-13 at 15.44.36

 

Homo Ergodicus https://glandfried.github.io/post/homoergodicus/

“Multiplicative process offers a concrete physical advantage in favor of cooperative behavior”

Also, Warren Buffet’s 3 rules in light of ergodicity  (St. Peterburg’s Paradox explained) https://sinaas.blogspot.com/2020/02/warren-buffetts-rules-nr-12-and-3-in.html