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Evitar triunfalismos sobre la recuperación

expansion opinion - Sáb, 08/07/2021 - 00:33
Es el momento de consolidar la recuperación y para ello siguen siendo necesarias reformas. Leer

Los Oráculos de la inversión

foro.masdividendos.com latest - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 20:17

Puede que el título sea un poco presuntuoso, incluso lo podrían ustedes tildar de excesivamente sensacionalista, pero si atendemos a la quinta definición de oráculo que ofrece la RAE podrán adivinar por dónde voy:

Persona cuya opinión se estima mucho por su gran sabiduría.

… y es que hace unos días hice un comentario en el divertido post de Vendehumos en las redes que fue cariñosamente retado por el señor @camacho113 , y aquí estamos, iniciando este hilo sobre personas, entidades o cosas que, en la red, son justamente lo contrario a vendehumos, es decir, que nos regalan parte de su sabiduría sobre inversiones, análisis de empresas, etc (la otra parte la acaban cobrando, lo cual considero totalmente lícito).

Por tanto, si hay algún acierto en el inicio de este hilo es totalmente mío y si hay algún fallo es culpa del señor @camacho113 (¿o era alrevés?)

Ahora en serio y para empezar, les pido disculpas por adelantado porque todas las aportaciones que tengo son en inglés y también les aviso que mis conocimientos sobre inversiones y análisis de empresas son, digámoslo así, “bastante limitados”. En fin, aquí va mi primer aporte:

Se trata de Cameron Stewart Cameron es un CFA (analista financiero certificado), que cuelga sus análisis de empresas en youtube. Habla algo rápido, pero se le entiende bastante bien.

Con respecto a sus vídeos, son de 20 a 30 minutos de duración, donde siempre busca sus “5 atributos indispensables” para invertir a largo plazo en una empresa

He de decir que es de lo mejorcito que hasta ahora me he encontrado sobre análisis de empresas, no se hace nada pesado, explica con claridad meridiana lo analizado, dónde “te la están colando”, o porqué le gusta o llama la atención, y para terminar, como guinda, extrapola las posible ganancias anualizadas con respecto al precio de entrada, vamos, todo un lujo.

En fin, espero que les guste y les invito a compartir sus oráculos.

saludos y disfruten de lo que queda de verano

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Starrett Multi-Purpose Band Saw Blades Last Long and Cut a Wide Range of Materials

.cnczone.com News Announcements - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 19:22
“Intenss” Blades Feature “Bi-Metal Unique” Technology

ATHOL, MA U.S.A. (August 6, 2021) - The L.S. Starrett Company, a global manufacturer of precision hand tools and gages, power tool accessories, saw blades and more, offers the newly positioned IntenssTM Bi-Metal Band Saw Blades for general purpose metal sawing of a wide range of materials and shapes.

Featuring a patented process developed by Starrett called bi-metal unique® technology, that provides 170% more weld contact with the teeth, Intenss blades exhibit superior resistance to tooth strippage, significantly reducing fracture and breakage, which enables exceptionally long blade life. Performance is further enhanced by M-42 teeth with a multi-edge tooth design that produces split chips for faster cutting.

“Starrett Intenss is an ideal affordable workhorse blade for general sawing in toolrooms, maintenance shops and fabricating or machine shop applications where one blade cutting a wide range of common materials with different shapes is a good sawing solution,” said Jordan Schimel, Starrett Product Manager – Saws & Hand Tools. “In addition, bi-metal unique promotes long blade life, so fewer blade changes are required.”

Starrett Intenss Bi-Metal Blades are available in 1/2", 3/4" and 1" widths and .025" and .035" thicknesses, featuring bi-metal unique. Blades in 1-1/4" or 1-1/2" widths and .035" and .042" thicknesses are also available, without the bi-metal unique feature. Intenss blades are offered in pitches of 10, 14 or 18, and 2-3, 3-4, 4-6 and 5-8 variable pitches. Coil lengths are available in 100' (30m), 150' (45m) or 250' (75m), depending on blade widths. Starrett Intenss blades are available in stock at Starrett industrial distributors or can be ordered on Starrett Precision Measuring Tools and Saw Blades Since 1880.

For more information, see a video, or request a guaranteed blade satisfaction trial, visit Intenss Band Saw Blades by Starrett.

About The L.S. Starrett Company
Founded in 1880 and headquartered in Athol, MA U.S.A., The L.S. Starrett Company is a leading global manufacturer of precision measuring tools and gages, optical comparators and vision systems and force and hardness testing solutions. Starrett also manufactures laser measurement systems, custom engineered granite solutions, custom gaging, band saw blades, power tool accessory saw blades, workshop tools and jobsite tools. The Starrett brand is recognized throughout the world for exceptional quality and precision. Skilled personnel, superior products, manufacturing expertise, innovation and excellent service and support have earned Starrett its reputation as the "World's Greatest Toolmakers". Starrett has over 1,600 employees worldwide and annual sales exceeding $200 million. The company has six manufacturing locations in the U.S.A., including facilities in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Minnesota and California. Starrett also has three international manufacturing facilities. Plants are located in Brazil, Scotland and China, in addition to distribution centers and offices located worldwide. The L.S. Starrett Company is publicly traded on the NYSE, symbol SCX.

For more information contact The L.S. Starrett Company, 121 Crescent Street, Athol, MA 01331 U.S.A. Telephone: (978) 249-3551, Fax: (978) 249-8495, email: general@starrett.com, internet: (https://www.starrett.com).

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After Afterpay

netinterest.substack.com - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 18:37

Welcome to another issue of Net Interest, where I distill 25 years of experience investing in the financial sector into a weekly email. If you’re reading this but haven’t yet signed up, join over 22,000 others and get Net Interest delivered to your inbox each Friday by subscribing here 👉

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After Afterpay

Well, I said last week that I would be taking some time off over August. But this is a newsletter on financial sector themes, so when the biggest financial sector deal of the year is announced, it’s worth getting off the beach for!

Earlier this week, Square announced that it’s buying Afterpay of Australia in a deal (now) worth US$33 billion. We’ve touched on both companies here before – Afterpay in Online Lending: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly precisely a year ago (Afterpay was the Good) and Square in a write-up of the company (Hip to be Square) just before Christmas. They are both at the vanguard of fintech and share a distinctive feature. Unlike many fintech startups which create a lot of value for venture investors, these two have created most of their value in public. Square came to the market in November 2015 at a US$2.9 billion valuation and has created 98% of its value since; Afterpay came to the market six months later at a US$125 million valuation and has created 99.5% of its value since.

To understand the rationale of the merger, it is useful to delve into the background of Afterpay and the sources of its success. I am helped by the very timely publication of a new book, Buy Now, Pay Later: The Extraordinary Story of Afterpay, by Jonathan Shapiro and James Eyers, which came out not two days after the deal was announced. The authors write in their epilogue: “Writing a book about such a rapidly evolving subject was always going to leave us exposed to the risk that we’d be caught out by a dramatic plot twist.” They were right but it does mean they’ve written a complete account of Afterpay as an independent company, an account that Square shareholders may find very useful.

From eBay to Afterpay

Afterpay is a global pioneer in the growing Buy Now Pay Later market. It was founded in 2014 by Australian neighbours, Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar.

Molnar had grown up in his family’s jewellery business in Sydney. It was a classic offline business with a store in Wynyard Station in the city’s central business district. Seeing the potential of the online market, Nick and his younger brother convinced their parents they could sell stock over the internet to supplement the store’s sales.

“I started to list a few pieces on eBay and it started to move quite well but I was in Year 11,” Simon Molnar told Fairfax. “I handed the keys over to [Nick] and he really ramped it up and became the top seller of jewellery for eBay Australia.”

That was when Nick was in college. He carried on selling throughout but was also attracted by a career in finance. He’d struck up a friendship with his parents’ neighbour, Anthony Eisen, who worked in investment banking. At the time, Eisen was winding down the investment portfolio of Guinness Peat Group, having previously worked as a corporate advisor at a number of firms including Credit Suisse. 

Through Eisen’s contacts, Nick secured an interview at a local venture capital firm. The firm’s founder, Mark Carnegie, was fascinated by Nick’s online jewellery business – so much so that he refused to give him a job, telling him to go away and scale up the business instead, and that they’d talk again next year.

Nick was quick off the mark. He skipped his graduation ceremony to fly to an industry convention in Las Vegas and came back with the franchise to launch Ice Online, America's largest online-only jewellery retailer, into the Australian market. 

However, there were some fundamental differences between buying jewellery online and buying it in a store:

“We realised buying jewellery online was not like buying a dress,” Michele Molnar told The Sydney Morning Herald. “People were getting to the checkout and not confident to complete the transaction. We used to sit around the dinner table and work out how to make the transaction easy.”

Nick observed that only 1 out of 100 visitors to the website would convert at checkout. He toyed with the idea of introducing credit as a mechanism to smooth the process and discussed his ideas with Eisen. 

Buying on Credit

It’s not unusual for retailers to offer credit to facilitate sales. In 1807, a furniture store in New York named Cowperthwait & Sons was the first to allow its customers to pay in instalments: “Liberal credit is granted without extra charge, while cash purchasers receive a ten per cent discount.” Shortly afterwards, Isaac Singer introduced a credit scheme to bolster sales of his sewing machines. According to Harvard Business School, “Singer’s machines were neither the best nor the cheapest products on the market. But the firm’s innovative credit plan, inspired by piano showrooms near company headquarters, tripled sales in just one year.”

Others followed. Department stores introduced cards for their wealthier customers to defer payment and then smaller retailers banded together to form cooperative payment card systems. Visa and Mastercard grew from these roots, as we discussed in our piece on Dee Hock, the founder of Visa. But even twenty years after the launch of the first bank-issued card, Sears had more cards in circulation than Visa and Mastercard combined.

Extending credit to customers hasn’t always gone well. That very first bank-issued credit card –  dropped on the residents of Fresno, California in 1958 – suffered delinquencies of 22%, much higher than the 4% projected. Those losses cost its innovator his job. 

Managing the trade-off between retail sales and credit losses can still be a challenge. In 2014, Texas based furniture retailer, Conn’s, warned of major losses in its credit book. The company finances nearly 80% of its sales through an in-house credit business and deteriorating credit quality placed a drag on earnings. In the five years up to July 2019, Conn’s lost a cumulative $566 million in credit against profits in its retail business of $807 million before tax (a big price to pay compared with the 3% discount rate that merchants typically pay to accept credit underwritten by others).

The divergent skills required to navigate retail and credit led many stores to outsource their credit books. For smaller stores, there was also the issue of scale, which is how Visa and Mastercard got their impetus. Larger stores took longer to convince since their own cards incurred no discount fees and stores that allowed customers to finance purchases generated additional interest income, like in the case of Conn’s over the past twelve months where credit losses have stemmed and credit now contributes over 40% of the bottom line.

Dee Hock won over one of the largest stores, JCPenney, as a customer in 1979, but it took some doing. In the year prior, JCPenney’s credit volume amounted to 20% of Visa USA’s entire volume, so it’s not surprising the store came away with an attractive deal, one which precipitated Dee Hock’s exit.

Most stores now outsource credit. Signet, the world’s largest jewellery retailer, was one of the last to fall into line. In its year ended January 2017, it financed 62% of sales in its Sterling Jewelers subsidiary (which includes Kay Jewelers, Jared and smaller regional brands) which it underwrote itself. Since then, it has been selling off its financing business in pieces (amidst sexual harassment allegations and questions from the SEC over how it booked credit losses). In March this year, Signet finalised receivable purchase agreements with third-parties, representing the final step in fully outsourcing its credit offerings and removing consumer credit risk from its balance sheet. 

Growing Afterpay

Nick Molnar registered a new business, Innovative Payments, in May 2014. Six months later he and Eisen changed the company’s name to Afterpay. The idea was to allow customers a choice of two financing options: to pay in full, within 30 days, after receiving delivery of their item, or to pay in four equal installments over six weeks. The experience at Ice Online was that nobody used the pay after delivery option, so that was soon killed.

The pair did a deal with payments company Touchcorp to build the technology at a cost of A$13 million (paid in two cash installments – obviously – plus an equity stake of A$10 million). They hired a credit guy (Richard Harris) and a sales guy (Fabio De Carvalho) and set to work. In July 2015, they raised A$8 million of funding from 41 early investors, valuing the business at A$28 million. 

Early merchant customers liked the proposition. One of the first to sign up was Princess Polly, an online fashion brand. Afterpay soon grew to support one in five of its purchases, increasing its revenues by as much as 15%. General Pants came onboard next followed by Cue Clothing. In its first week on General Pants’ site, Afterpay accounted for 20% of sales. The company has retained a focus on fashion since, where there is greater demand for instant gratification and where ticket sizes are lower than in electronics, say, reducing risk. Merchants that add Afterpay at the checkout typically witness more conversion, larger basket sizes and higher repeat rates. 

Investors liked the proposition too. On a $100 sale, the merchant would pay Afterpay $4. After deducting $0.80 for Touchcorp to process the transaction and around $0.70 lost to bad debts and failed payments, around $2.50 would be left as a transaction margin. Because of the high turnover of loans (they were extended for six week periods) that margin could be earned multiple times over a year. And because Afterpay borrowed its funds – National Australia Bank would go on to provide a warehouse lending facility – the return on equity capital was even greater.

By the end of 2015, Afterpay had run out of funds. Rather than raise a venture round, it went straight to the stock market, listing in May 2016 at a A$165 million valuation. The public offering meant that venture funds didn’t get a chance to invest, with one exception – Matrix Partners, which came in later, in 2018, to finance expansion into the US. Not even Nick Molnar’s former job interviewer, Mark Carnegie, was given a chance to invest, although nor did he put any of his personal funds in. Years later, he was asked by a journalist whether he regretted not putting money into Afterpay. His response: “What do you fucking think?”.

At the time of its IPO, Afterpay had 100 merchants and 38,000 underlying customers signed up. After that, the company grew and grew. Its original pitch deck had projected A$677 million of underlying merchant sales in its third year of operations (2018 financial year); in fact it did A$2.2 billion. In the last financial year to June 2021, it did ten times that – A$21.1 billion – with 98,200 merchants signed up and 16.2 million underlying customers. 

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Along the way, Afterpay merged with its early technology provider Touchcorp (hence its stock ticker APT, as in Afterpay Touch) and expanded into North America and Europe (in Europe under the brand Clearpay because a Dutch company, AfterPay, got there first).

Expansion into the US was especially important given the size of the market – 25 times larger than the Australian market. In order to replicate a startup culture, Afterpay set up a separate company, Afterpay USA Inc, with US$15 million of funding from Matrix Partners in a deal that gave it conversion rights on 10% of the US business. Nick Molnar relocated to take charge. The first retailer to sign up was Urban Outfitters; it was soon followed by Revolve. Within nine months, Afterpay USA had signed up 900 merchants and attracted 300,000 users. And then, on Thanksgiving 2018, the Kardashian team reached out, wanting to onboard that very day to take advantage of Black Friday. 

“We tried every single angle to get in the door there, and one morning they filled out our contact form. They came inbound to us. And we were like, ‘The world is lovely,’” Molnar told The Australian Financial Review.

By the end of March, the number of users in the US had hit 1 million. In February 2020, the US overtook Australia by customer count; the number of users there is now 10.5 million. 

Regulatory Threats

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Afterpay. Between 2017 and 2020, the company faced the glare of regulatory scrutiny; it has also been subject to intense competition. Regulatory scrutiny came in three waves.

First, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission launched an inquiry focused on the industry’s lending practices. Afterpay offers consumer credit yet doesn’t conduct full credit checks of customers as per national lending laws. Doing so would slow down the application process, removing the product’s attractions. The company says that regardless, it rejects 50% of attempted transactions by first-time customers. It has been able to circumvent credit checks because its loans are short duration and don’t incur interest and so fall outside the definition of credit products in the credit laws. When it filed its report in November 2018, the Commission agreed. 

Then there was a Senate committee inquiry into credit and financial services. A focus here was late fees. Afterpay charges consumers a fee if they are late with payments – the only revenue it extracts directly from consumers. However, the fee is capped and so doesn’t compound like interest. The company told the inquiry that only 5% of transactions incurred a late fee in 2018. Since then, the contribution from late fees has been coming down, to ~13% of revenue from ~20% in 2017 and 2018. 

Finally, the Reserve Bank of Australia probed whether Buy Now Pay Later providers like Afterpay should be allowed to stop merchants passing their costs on to customers, as they insist in their contracts. Such restrictions were banned in the credit card industry in Australia in the early 2000s. 

Afterpay argues that its model is increasingly analogous to an internet referral platform like Google rather than to a payments processor like Visa. Indeed, in the year to June 2021, Afterpay drove ~1 million lead referrals per day to its merchant partners, with 55% coming from consumers browsing the home page on the Afterpay mobile app. Since its early days, the company has shifted its focus from merchant-as-customer to consumer-as-customer. The merchant partner finances Afterpay’s customer acquisition, but then gets value back through referrals and repeat business. One analysis shows that leads from Afterpay convert 8x more than leads from Google; lead referral is a growing part of the proposition for merchants. 

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia plainly agreed and in December 2020, indicated that he would not remove the no-surcharge rules that would have put Buy Now Pay Later on equal footing with card processors. 

Together with Square

There’s a widely held narrative that “Buy Now Pay Later companies are particularly popular amongst younger millennial and Generation Z consumers who came of age amidst the Great Recession and have a generally dubious view of credit.” It’s certainly true that Buy Now Pay Later, funded via debit cards (90% in case of Afterpay) is popular in that demographic – the average age of an Afterpay customer is 33. But it’s not clear whether a dubious view of credit is the reason. Robinhood, which we discussed a few weeks ago, has a similar demographic among its customer base (median age 31) yet sells a lot of margin loans (albeit its customers skew male while Afterpay’s skew female). 

Whatever the reason, Buy Now Pay Later is a useful way for merchants to convert debit-sized baskets into credit-sized baskets with no incremental risk and only slightly higher cost. Its popularity has bred a lot of competition. As well as Affirm and Klarna, Apple is launching a Buy Now Pay Later product in partnership with Goldman Sachs, and PayPal is investing heavily. The deal between Afterpay and Square recognises the changing competitive landscape, but it does something more.

As we discussed in our Square write-up, Square has built two independent ecosystems that are approaching critical mass – an ecosystem of merchants (Seller) and an ecosystem of consumers (Cash App). The holy grail is to connect them (the “third horizon” as management puts it) to capture all the value available when the two sides transact. Management tried in the past with Square Wallet, but they went too early, before the sides had critical mass. Looking back, the CFO said: “I think what we learned there and why we shut it down is if you tried to contain what a consumer wants to do, you effectively are removing utility from them.” 

Afterpay provides the glue to mesh the two sides together. As well as bringing in both more merchants and more consumers, Afterpay has proven how to combine them. Like Square, it started out with a focus on merchants but has shifted its focus to the consumer side. It’s also the case that across financial services, lending reflects the largest profit pool, yet growing a lending business while managing risk is hard. 

Combined, Square and Afterpay are worth more than Citigroup, which once harboured a strategy to become a financial supermarket. The modern equivalent is a super app and although that’s not a term Square management likes to use1, that’s what it’s becoming.

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More Net InterestBig Tech Doing Finance

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has been wrestling with how to respond to the incursion of big technology companies into financial services for some time. We highlighted some of the challenges in The Policy Triangle earlier this year. For years, financial regulators have contained themselves to managing the trade-off between competition and financial stability, with stability usually winning out. Big technology companies add a new dimension to the trade-off: privacy. 

This week, senior BIS personnel published a paper, Regulating Big Techs in Finance. They reckon financial regulators have a role to play, given “the potential systemic relevance of big techs and the need to introduce specific safeguards to guarantee sufficient operational resilience. That may be especially relevant for big techs offering systemically important payment services to a significant section of the population.”

Historically, regulators have taken an “activity-based” approach to non-banks entering financial services, i.e. that the specific activities they undertake need to be licensed, be they in credit or in payments or wherever. The scale of its non-banks has forced China to adopt a more “entity-based” approach, holding companies like Ant to higher standards. The BIS wonders if regulators elsewhere need to pivot, too: “[G]iven the unique set of challenges that are thrown up by big techs’ entry into financial services, a purely activity-based framework for regulation is likely to fall short of an adequate response to these policy challenges.”

Financial regulators have big technology companies in their sights. 

European Banks

European banks have had a good earnings season. Most of them have now reported their second quarter earnings and they have beaten Goldman Sachs estimates by 18% at the pre-tax profit level. A lot of the beat comes from lower loan loss provisions, but pre-provision profits beat by 6% with revenues performing 2% better than expected to grow 4% versus the same quarter last year.   

Capital also accumulated over the period, providing the fuel for higher dividends once regulators lift restrictions on 1 October. Last Friday, just after Net Interest went to press, the European Bank Authority released results of its bank stress tests which contained no major negative surprises, providing support for higher payouts. After eighteen months of lockdown, European banks are close to being released. 

Blackstone

I discussed Blackstone with Zack Fuss on the Business Breakdowns podcast this week – part of the Colossus group of podcasts that also includes Invest Like the Best. David Haber summarised the firm’s essence on Twitter as “Firm > Fund”. That’s exactly right; few firms have historically been able to optimise both. If you enjoyed the primer on the company last week, the podcast is worth a listen.  

1

“I don’t know what you call that combination of all those things, but we call it Cash App, and we think it’s a new definition. We think it’s rather unique, and we’re going to continue to add surface area to it to make it something that people want to use every day.” — Jack Dorsey.

Building The Perfect Ponzi Scheme

zensecondlife.blogspot.com - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 18:16

Today's bullish pundits can take pride in the fact that they have successfully participated in creating human history's biggest Ponzi scheme. All of the fraud and criminality from the past two cycles is rolled into one massive mega bubble. In doing so, they fully exploited the younger generations who have not the slightest clue how this level of fraud ends. They told them they were democratizing markets when all they were doing was democratizing bagholding. Today's ubiquitous sociopathic salesmen succeeded in leveraging a pandemic to create buying panics in everything that can be bought and sold from toilet paper to ammunition to McMansions, crypto Ponzi schemes, Ark ETFs, commodities, SPAC frauds, IPO garbage and of course S&P 500 stonks...





There are few if any pundits questioning this hyper bubble anymore. Skepticism peaked months ago. Why? Because from their point of view this Ponzi scheme is now flawless. It has achieved perfect extreme over-valuation and ALL IN risk positioning. In their minds, this Ponzi bubble has done nothing "wrong". On Twitter, I made the analogy of the Olympics - we celebrate the winners while ignoring the majority losers going home empty handed. It's called survivor bias. One troll asked recently if I ever make money. My response was never in Ponzi schemes. So far I have accurately predicted doom for crypto currencies, gold trades, Ark ETFs, Chinese stonks, and SPAC junk. In addition, I correctly predicted the rollover in bond yields which is something no mainstream pundits saw coming. Of course, the one prediction that remains elusive is that of the collapse of the major averages. Why? Because even as one after another sector dominoes collapse, the averages are seeing constant sector rotation. However, now we are witnessing breadth collapse in BOTH the NYSE and Nasdaq at the same time. And in addition, breadth has failed to rally during this latest "new high" in the S&P. The internals of the market are now the perfect analog for this speculative casino - a handful of winners and a majority of losers:




At this late juncture, central banks have totally lost control over risk asset markets. But they don't know they've lost control. Currently we are in the melt-up out-of-control phase which feels oh so good and is therefore creating a general sense of complacency and inflated optimism. However, this phase will morph into the meltdown out-of-control phase which will pull back the curtain on our Wizards of Oz. Needless to say the Tin Man and Dorothy won't be impressed by the gong show that ensues. 

One thing we've learned in spades is that a society bereft of dignity and virtue will never appreciate dignity and virtue. Instead they flock to all of the various charlatans who will gladly exploit useful idiots to their own means. The definition of "inflation" is that prices can only go higher. Even at this late stage, the specious inflation narrative remains dominant. We have achieved inflation sans middle class. Even the Fed believes it now.  


Here we see the velocity of money peaked twenty years ago when GDP growth and employment peaked in the U.S. The velocity of money measures the speed at which each dollar circulates throughout the economy. In an inflationary economy, the velocity of money sky rockets as consumers dump cash to hoard merchandise.





In summary, the magnitude of this fraud is directly proportional to the moral collapse of a decadent society in late stage self-destruct mode. ALL of the criminality of the past two decades has now been exceeded in this past year. A super Tech bubble with record junk IPO issuance. An even bigger housing bubble. Regulators asleep at the wheel, and of course wanking fucking bankers.

 




   








Can You Change The Way You Feel About Money?

http://awealthofcommonsense.com - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 17:04
CNBC recently highlighted a survey that asked a group of Americans how much money they need to feel financially secure. The average answer was a little more than half a million dollars. According to Federal Reserve data, the median net worth of all families in the United States is a little less than $122,000. So it would make sense that half a million in savings would make most people feel more secure financially. Of cou...

Ticking Bond Bomb

katusaresearch.com - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 15:30

In 2019 I talked a lot about Quantum Economics.

What is Quantum Economics?

It’s the new world we live in. Negative interest rates, high bond prices, strong US dollar, and a stronger gold price.

When I was on a panel at a large resource conference 5 years ago… I stated in the coming years we would have further negative interest rates and higher bond prices. The other panelists and “gurus” stated that was “metaphysically impossible”.

Well, it’s exactly what happened and we are now in an era of Quantum Economics.

Be careful of following a dated “framework” by a dated guru.

For example, did you know that if you bought a French or German 10-year bond, you’d lose money?

Yes – yields on those 10-year government bonds are negative.

Let’s turn to their neighbor, Switzerland. It’s a pretty safe country so you’d think it would be hard to lose money there right?

Wrong. Lock your money up for 30 years and earn -0.192%.

Yes, you’re reading that right…

  • You give the Swiss Central Bank your cash for 30 years, and in 30 years they give you back less than you started with.

The chart below shows the current yields for bonds in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Everything short and medium-term duration is below zero…

  • By keeping interest rates negative, the central banks are trying to create an environment that encourages consumer spending.

Or at least that’s the hope. Given EU inflation can barely get above 2% which would be considered healthy in a normal market, things are not even close to back to normal across the pond.

Financially Transmitted Diseases (FTD’s)

The United States has kept with its Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), even in the face of skyrocketing monthly inflationary numbers.

What was once perceived as an ultra-loose monetary stance is now a disciplined approach compared to Japan and the EU.  And ZIRP and NIRP are critical to keeping the economy going.

Big fiscal stimulus packages and ultra-low interest rates are the new normal both in the US and abroad.

The combination of ultra-low interest rates and inflation leads to negative real interest rates. It is simply the yield on a non-inflation-indexed bond minus the inflation rate.

As you might guess, in today’s world of zero or negative interest rates, once you subtract inflation, you are left with a negative “real” rate of return.

Incredibly there is over $16 trillion in negative-yielding debt these days. The number is almost unfathomable. But that number will increase.

As inflationary pressures on certain sectors of the economy pick up, more and more debt will go negative yield.

In this situation, investors are incentivized to either

  1. Spend the cash immediately, so it doesn’t lose value.
  2. Or buy physical assets which are stores of value (like real estate, art, and gold).
Gold Price vs Real Yields

The next chart paints a very clear picture of the relationship between “real” interest rates and the gold price. This data goes back to 2006, where each dot represents the weekly gold price and associated real interest rate.

While this is only one metric, the relationship is starkly clear…if negative real rates continue, it is likely supportive of strong gold prices.

It’s not just gold that is doing well these days. The commodities boom is at full throttle, recently taking out the old 5 years high in the Bloomberg Commodities Index.

Where it gets exciting is when you take a longer-term view…

Here is the same index back to 2000. As you can see, we are still miles away from old highs.

  • In fact, the index would need to rise by nearly 150% to get back to the old highs.

Commodities investing requires a contrarian strategy. It’s one reason why many on Wall Street shun the sector. Jumping on the meme FOMO bandwagon is a lot easier. These days, commodities relative to stocks, have never been cheaper.

The Chart 60 Years in the Making…

Below is a chart which shows the ratio of the Bloomberg Commodities Index vs the S&P 500 on a total return basis.

It’s a ratio that illustrates the incredible cyclicality of the commodity space. When it’s on you better be involved, and when it’s off, it’s best to keep the powder dry.

I’ve dedicated my entire 20-year career as a professional fund manager to the commodities space, traveling the globe multiple times over. All while building one of the best Rolodexes in the game.

The natural resource sector is as much an investment into the people running the company as it is a bet on the commodity.

I don’t take finders fees, kickbacks, or stock options, and no company can pay to be in my portfolio.

My subscribers and I just started loading up on several of my favorite gold stocks.

Subscribers to Katusa’s Resource Opportunities get to find out exactly what prices I’m willing to buy and sell at before the trades occur.

If you want to give your portfolio an edge, consider becoming a member and giving it a try for yourself.

Regards,

Marin Katusa

The post Ticking Bond Bomb appeared first on Katusa Research.

Esposas de oro en los bufetes de abogados: ¿un pacto con el diablo?

expansion opinion - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 10:18
Aumentar los salarios puede ser racional, pero los líderes de los bufetes de abogados también deben mostrar una visión a más largo plazo. Leer

Marruecos y su guiño a la distensión a España

El Mundo Financiero Exterior - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 09:57

Buena parte de su mensaje ha estado orientado a las políticas de seguridad de futuro en el entorno africano y euromediterráneo. En este sentido ha señalado, apuntando expresamente a Argelia e indirectamente a España, que es su voluntad trabajar las relaciones internacionales basadas en el diálogo, la confianza y la buena voluntad.Buena parte de su mensaje ha estado orientado a las políticas de seguridad de futuro en el entorno africano y euromediterráneo.

En este sentido ha señalado, apuntando expresamente a Argelia e indirectamente a España, que es su voluntad trabajar las relaciones internacionales basadas en el diálogo, la confianza y la buena voluntad. De la misma manera, ha lamentado la imagen que en algunos medios de comunicación se da de la población marroquí como tercermundista, sumida en la pobreza y dedicada, como fuente de su economía, al tráfico de estupefacientes. Más allá del rechazo de tales proyecciones, que se llevan a cabo en determinados ámbitos mediáticos, ¿pretende Mohamed VI inaugurar una etapa de distensión en las relaciones bilaterales con España?

Kosovit mcv mas 1000 year 1997

cnczone.com/ Machinery Manuals / Brochures - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 08:22
hello guys
need some help can anyone share the eletric diagram of the this cnc , we have one at the shop with no manual and we need to solve an eletric issue !
thanks in advance
best regads

Visualizing the Gravitational Pull of the Planets

visualcapitalist.com - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 08:18

    Visualizing the Gravitational Pull of the Planets

    Gravity is one of the basic forces in the universe. Every object out there exerts a gravitational influence on every other object, but to what degree?

    The gravity of the sun keeps all the planets in orbit in our solar system. However, each planet, moon and asteroid have their own gravitational pull defined by their density, size, mass, and proximity to other celestial bodies.

    Dr. James O’Donoghue, a Planetary Astronomer at JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) created an animation that simplifies this concept by animating the time it takes a ball to drop from 1,000 meters to the surface of each planet and the Earth’s moon, assuming no air resistance, to better visualize the gravitational pull of the planets.

    Sink like a Stone or Float like a Feather

    Now, if you were hypothetically landing your spacecraft on a strange planet, you would want to know your rate of descent. Would you float like a feather or sink like a stone?

    It is a planet’s size, mass, and density that determines how strong its gravitational pull is, or, how quick or slow you will approach the surface.

     Mass (1024kg)Diameter (km)Density (kg/m3)Gravity (m/s2)Escape Velocity (km/s) Mercury0.334,8795,4273.74.3 Venus4.8712,1045,2438.910.4 Earth5.9712,7565,5149.811.2 Moon0.0733,4753,3401.62.4 Mars0.6426,7923,9333.75.0 Jupiter1,898142,9841,32623.159.5 Saturn568120,5366879.035.5 Uranus86.851,1181,2718.721.3 Neptune10249,5281,63811.023.5 Pluto0.01462,3702,0950.71.3

    According to Dr. O’Donoghue, large planets have gravity comparable to smaller ones at the surface—for example, Uranus attracts the ball down slower than on Earth. This is because the relatively low average density of Uranus puts the actual surface of the planet far away from the majority of the planet’s mass in the core.

    Similarly, Mars is almost double the mass of Mercury, but you can see the surface gravity is actually the same which demonstrates that Mercury is much denser than Mars.

    Exploring the Outer Reaches: Gravity Assistance

    Knowing the pull of each of the planets can help propel space flight to the furthest extents of the solar system. The “gravity assist” flyby technique can add or subtract momentum to increase or decrease the energy of a spacecraft’s orbit.

    Generally it has been used in solar orbit, to increase a spacecraft’s velocity and propel it outward in the solar system, much farther away from the sun than its launch vehicle would have been capable of doing, as in the journey of NASA’s Voyager 2.



    Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter for reconnaissance, and for a trajectory boost to Saturn. It then relied on a gravity assist from Saturn and then another from Uranus, propelling it to Neptune and beyond.

    Despite the assistance, Voyager 2’s journey still took over 20 years to reach the edge of the solar system. The potential for using the power of gravity is so much more…

    Tractor Beams, Shields, and Warp Drives…Oh My!

    Imagine disabling an enemy starship with a gravity beam and deflecting an incoming photon torpedo with gravity shields. It would be incredible and a sci-fi dream come true.

    However, technology is still 42 years from the fictional date in Star Trek when mankind built the first warp engine, harnessing the power of gravity and unlocking the universe for discovery. There is still time!

    Currently, the ALPHA Experiment at CERN is investigating whether it is possible to create some form of anti-gravitational field. This research could create a gravitational conductor shield to counteract the forces of gravity and allow the creation of a warp drive.

    By better understanding the forces that keep us grounded on our planets, the sooner we will be able to escape these forces and feel the gravitational pull of the planets for ourselves.

    …to boldly go where no one has gone before!

    The post Visualizing the Gravitational Pull of the Planets appeared first on Visual Capitalist.

30% of social media use is due to lack of self-control

klementoninvesting - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 08:00

One of the eternal questions to me is how much of our life is spent with useless and unproductive things. This is not to say that we should always be productive. There is a time for fun and my Friday posts are one such exercise in writing about economics and finance without it necessarily being useful. But what bugs me is if companies exploit their customers through unfair means. For example, I have written in the past that there are some experiments that show that Facebook and other social media sites are addictive like tobacco.

This obviously begs the question of how addictive they are and how much time is lost to us users succumbing to our social media addiction. In my previous post, the researchers tried to get to the bottom of it by asking people how much they would be willing to pay to get access to social media for a week or a month. Now, a group of researchers from Stanford University and Microsoft have done another set of experiments. They asked people if they think they are using social media and other apps too often and too much. And indeed, most people are aware that they use these apps too much. Asked about how much time they would spend doing other things if these apps weren’t readily available on their phones and computers, people expected that they would spend about 20% less time on Facebook, about 10% less time gaming, and about 5% less time with YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.

Then these people were restricted in their social media use for several weeks either by having a limiter installed on their phones that limits the amount of time they can spend or by being offered a bonus if they reduced their social media use below a certain number of hours per week. Note that even in the limiter case, users could decide themselves, what limit they wanted to set themselves and they could change that time limit daily, so it is not an enforced limit.

What happened afterward shed some light on how addictive social media apps are. First, people reduced their social media use substantially more than they expected when they were offered a limiter or a bonus. But once that restriction was removed again, they again underestimated how much they would reduce their social media use if they could. In other words, people are aware that they are using social media too much and they substantially reduce their usage if they are incentivised to do so. But they systematically underestimate the amount of excess use they have on social media. If that sounds like an alcoholic who is aware that he drinks too much but only by a little, or a smoker who is aware that smoking is bad he only smokes a few cigarettes a day, then this is no coincidence. It is classic addictive behaviour that is observed with social media.

And the experiments provide a hint at how much social media is due to addictive overuse. In the case of Facebook, about 20 minutes per day, or roughly 30% of daily use. Imagine what you could achieve in your life if you could reduce your time on social media by 30% each day. You wouldn’t miss out on any of the fun, and become more productive at the same time.

Reduction in social media use under self-imposed restrictions

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Source: Allcott et al. (2021).

El injustificado ataque a la fiscalidad de Madrid

expansion opinion - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 00:37
Los beneficios de los impuestos bajos en Madrid revierten en otras comunidades autónomas. Leer

What We're Reading

collabfund - Vie, 08/06/2021 - 00:28

Status:

I refer to “increasing status” in the positive sense: accomplishing something impressive or contributing to others in a way that increases their estimation of you. That’s the only way that works, anyway. Paraphrasing Taleb: anything done with explicit intent to improve one’s status likely *won’t *improve one’s status. After all, the most respected people achieved their status as a byproduct of doing something great, like pursuing ambition, honor, and integrity!

Communication:

Your truth and *the *truth are not always the same thing. *The *truth is a fact. Your truth is just an opinion. Nobody values somebody who is honest about their opinions if their opinions always suck. Knowing when to offer your truth and keep your mouth shut is a rare quality. The line between thoughtful dialogue and disrespectful disagreement is razor-thin.

Different world:

“Thriving” at a new record:

Have a good weekend.

Other People’s Mistakes

collabfund - Jue, 08/05/2021 - 22:30

George Carlin once joked how easy it is to spot stupid people. “Carry a little pad and pencil around with you. You’ll wind up with 30 or 40 names by the end of the day. It doesn’t take long to spot one of them, does it? Takes about eight seconds.”

Like most comedy it’s funny because it’s true.

But Daniel Kahneman mentions a more important truth in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow: “It is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own.”

I would add my own theory: It’s easier to blame other people’s mistakes on stupidity and greed than our own.

That’s because when you make a mistake, I judge it solely based on what I see. It’s quick and easy.

But when I make a mistake there’s a long and persuasive monologue in my head that justifies bad decisions and adds important context other people don’t see.

Everyone’s like that. It’s normal.

But it’s a problem, because it makes it easy to underestimate your own flaws and become too cynical about others’.

I try to stop myself whenever my explanation for other people’s behavior – financial or otherwise – is “well, they’re not very smart.” Or greedy. Or immoral. Yeah, sometimes it’s true. But probably less than we assume. More often there’s something else going on that you’re not seeing that makes the behavior more understandable, even if it’s still wrong.

A few things make it that way.

1. When judging others’ poor behavior it’s easy to underestimate your own susceptibility to the power of incentives.

The worst behavior resides in industries with the most extreme incentives. Finance, where scams are everywhere. High-end art, where counterfeits proliferate.

But it’s important to ask: Are immoral people attracted to industries where there are big rewards for bad behavior? Or do big rewards for bad behavior cause good people to slide into immorality, justifying their decisions along the way?

I think so often it’s the latter.

It helps explain things like the 2008 financial crisis. Was it caused by greedy bankers? Maybe here and there. But the huge majority of it was good, honest people who wanted to do the right thing but whose definition of “the right thing” is instantly warped when they’re paid $8 million a year to sell subprime bonds.

Incentives are almost like a drug in their ability to cloud your judgment in a way you would have found unthinkable beforehand. They can get good people to justify all kinds of things.

That doesn’t excuse bad behavior. But it’s hard to know what you’d be willing to do until you’re exposed to an extreme incentive, and that blindness makes it easy to criticize other people’s mistakes when you yourself may have been just as tempted if you were in their shoes.

2. It’s hard to tell the difference between boldness and recklessness, greed and ambition, contrarian and wrong.

The same traits needed to be hugely successful are often the same traits needed to spark a catastrophe. Not always, but a lot of the time.

A low-probability bet that works makes you look like a genius.

A low-probability bet that fails makes you look like a … failure, maybe even an idiot, in the eyes of others.

But the difference between the two may have been minuscule. It could have been the same person doing the exact same thing ending up on the fortune or unfortunate side of luck.

Everything worth pursuing has a less than 100% chance of working. And a lot of terrible ideas have at least some chance of working. So you can make good decisions that don’t work, bad ones that do, and everything in between.

The hard thing is that when the probability isn’t easy to determine, the path of least resistance is to put your own failures in the “good bet that unfortunately didn’t work” category and other people’s failures in the “that was clearly a bad idea” one.

When judging others you want a simple story – did it work or did it not? And when judging yourself you want a comforting story – “my actions were worthwhile and I’m a good person.”

But those are just the easy explanations, not necessarily the right ones. So you may not be as great, and other people may not be as bad, as it looks.

3. Not all relevant information is visible.

My brother in law, a social worker, recently told me, “All behavior makes sense with enough information.”

It’s such a good point.

You see someone doing something crazy and think, “Why in the world would you do that?” Then you sit down with them, hear about their life, and after a while you realize, “Ah, I kind of get it now.”

Everyone is a product of their own life experiences, few of which are visible or known to other people.

What makes sense to me might not make sense to you because you don’t know what kind of experiences have shaped me and vice versa.

The question, “Why don’t you agree with me?” can have infinite answers.

Sometimes one side is selfish, or stupid, or blind, or uninformed.

But usually a better question is, “What have you experienced that I haven’t that would make you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?”

It’s the question that contains the most answers of why people don’t agree with each other.

But it’s such a hard question to ask.

It’s uncomfortable to think that what you haven’t experienced might change what you believe because it’s admitting your own ignorance. It’s much easier to assume those who disagree with you aren’t thinking as hard as you are – especially when judging others’ mistakes.

KDA 3.2-150-A00 MANUAL

cnczone.com/ Machinery Manuals / Brochures - Jue, 08/05/2021 - 21:01
Hello,
I have one spindle drive with fault on display N-NCMD WHILE run command give to drive, but motor does not rotate, I check all auxiliary voltage ok.
Any one help me please. I don't have it's manual to find this fault
So please help me
Precisioncontrolsystem@gmail.com

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