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El populismo es una epidemia contagiosa en épocas de retroceso económico y de desigualdades, de vacilación, de grandes flujos inmigratorios, de bruscos fenómenos climatológicos y de endeble liderazgo. Es el tema de nuestro tiempo y en él se prodigan las teorías conspirativas. Leer

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Escrivá, definitivamente, ha abandonado para siempre -ya lo venía haciendo desde hace tiempo- su anterior perfil técnico. Leer

Imagine creating a timeline of your country’s whole history stretching back to its inception.

It would be no small task, and simply weighing the relative importance of so many great people, technological achievements, and pivotal events would be a tiny miracle in itself.

While that seems like a challenge, imagine going a few steps further. Instead of a timeline for just one country, what about creating a graphical timeline showing the history of the entire world over a 4,000 year time period, all while having no access to computers or the internet?

An All-Encompassing Timeline?

Today’s infographic, created all the way back in 1931 by a man named John B. Sparks, maps the ebb and flow of global power going all the way back to 2,000 B.C. on one coherent timeline.

View a high resolution version of this graphic

Histomap, published by Rand McNally in 1931, is an ambitious attempt at fitting a mountain of historical information onto a five-foot-long poster. The poster cost $1 at the time, which would equal approximately $18 when accounting for inflation.

Although the distribution of power is not quantitatively defined on the x-axis, it does provide a rare example of looking at historic civilizations in relative terms. While the Roman Empire takes up a lot of real estate during its Golden Age, for example, we still get a decent look at what was happening in other parts of the world during that period.

The visualization is also effective at showing the ascent and decline of various competing states, nations, and empires. Did Sparks see world history as a zero-sum exercise; a collection of nations battling one another for control over scarce territory and resources?

Timeline Caveats

Crowning a world leader at certain points in history is relatively easy, but divvying up influence or power to everyone across 4,000 years requires some creativity, and likely some guesswork, as well. Some would argue that the lack of hard data makes it impossible to draw these types of conclusions (though there have been other more quantitative approaches.)

Another obvious criticism is that the measures of influence are skewed in favor of Western powers. China’s “seam”, for example, is suspiciously thin throughout the length of the timeline. Certainly, the creator’s biases and blind spots become more apparent in the information-abundant 21st century.

Lastly, Histomap refers to various cultural and racial groups using terms that may seem rather dated to today’s viewers.

The Legacy of Histomap

John Spark’s creation is an admirable attempt at making history more approachable and entertaining. Today, we have seemingly limitless access to information, but in the 1930s an all encompassing timeline of history would have been incredibly useful and groundbreaking. Indeed, the map’s publisher characterized the piece as a useful tool for examining the correlation between different empires during points in history.

Critiques aside, work like this paved the way for the production of modern data visualizations and charts that help people better understand the world around them today.

Without a map who would attempt to study geography? –John B. Sparks

This post was first published in 2017. We have since updated it, adding in new content for 2021.

The post Histomap: Visualizing the 4,000 Year History of Global Power appeared first on Visual Capitalist.

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Para el conjunto de su año fiscal, Nintendo espera alcanzar una cifra de negocio de 12.350 millones de euros. Leer

In hindsight, it should have been obvious that Robinhood, maker of meme stocks, would have turned into a meme stock. On the first day of trading, Robinhood fell 8.4%, the worst debut of 51 companies that raised as much cash as they did. Investor enthusiasm just wasn’t there on its opening day. According to data from Vanda Track On the first day of listing, HOOD was only the 28th most traded stock on retail platform ...

The post Maker of Meme Stocks appeared first on The Irrelevant Investor.

Goldman, al igual que otros empleadores, tendrá que esforzarse más para atraer y retener a nuevos trabajadores. Leer

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Para Agustí Amorós, director de desarrollo de negocio de AIS Group, “una posible explicación para este incremento es que el volumen global de gastos por hogar se ha reducido en un 10% en el último año, por lo que el peso de los suministros, un bien esencial para el bienestar de las personas, es ahora algo mayor”.

El gasto medio de las familias en los suministros es uno de los indicadores incluidos en ODS Maps. “Se le da mucha relevancia tanto en los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible como en la Agenda Urbana a la hora de lograr la sostenibilidad y combatir la pobreza energética. Por ello, consideramos que es un indicador muy interesante para incorporar a las variables con las que medimos el grado de avance de municipios y regiones hacia las metas marcadas por la ONU y el Gobierno de España”, explica Amorós.

Situación por regiones

Según el estudio, algunas provincias de Castilla La Mancha, Aragón y Castilla y León, son las que en los últimos años han superado de manera más pronunciada la media nacional de gasto familiar en suministros. Así, según los últimos datos disponibles en ODS Maps, relativos a 2019, los territorios donde el peso de esta partida era mayor a nivel porcentual eran Ciudad Real (6,1%), Toledo (5,88%), Cuenca (5,78%), Teruel (5,71%) y Albacete (5,69%).

Por otra parte, las familias que pagaron más por estos suministros fueron las de Huesca, que desembolsaron una media de 1.654€. Tras ellas, las de Teruel (1.647€), Ciudad Real (1.617€), Navarra (1.615€) y Madrid (1.614€). En el lado opuesto de la tabla, están las familias canarias, con un gasto medio en agua, luz y gas por debajo de los 870€ anuales, lo que supone el 3,2% del total de sus gastos.

La electricidad, principal gasto

La electricidad es la que se lleva la mayor porción del presupuesto destinado a suministros del hogar de los españoles. Casi el 60% de lo que pagamos se va a la factura de la luz. Unos 800€ anuales de media. Si bien en comunidades como Andalucía, Murcia, Canarias y Baleares supera al 70%.

Hablando de euros, según ODS Maps las familias que registraron un gasto medio más elevado fueron las de Baleares (985€) y las de Murcia (960€). También por encima de los 900€ se quedaron las familias de Castellón (907€) y Ciudad Real (902€).

Las provincias canarias son de nuevo las que muestran el gasto medio en electricidad más bajo de España, 622€ en Las Palmas y 625€ en Tenerife. Justo por encima están Álava, donde el promedio de los hogares en luz fue de 668€, Palencia (669€) y Valladolid (686€).

Gas y agua

En lo que concierne al gas, ODS Maps revela que si bien el gasto medio a nivel nacional supera ligeramente los 275€, familias residentes en territorios como Madrid destinaron una media de 510€. Las navarras, unos 495€ y las riojanas, cerca de 475€. Completan el grupo de los que mayor desembolso realizan en gas, las provincias vascas que están entre 395€ y 400€.

Por el contrario, son las provincias canarias y las del sur peninsular las que presentan una inversión más baja para el pago de su recibo del gas. Apenas unos 45€ en Tenerife y Las Palmas, y algo menos de 110€ en provincias andaluzas como Cádiz, Málaga y Jaén.

Respecto al agua, es en Baleares donde la media de gasto es más elevada, casi 270€. A cierta distancia está Madrid, rondando los 250€, Murcia (235€) y Barcelona (215€). De hecho, las provincias del levante y los archipiélagos son en general las que presentan un gasto superior a la media española, que se sitúa ligeramente por encima de los 180€.
En este caso, el presupuesto más bajo lo registran las familias de provincias aragonesas, gallegas y castellanoleonesas. Por ejemplo, los hogares de Lugo, Zaragoza, Soria, Ávila y Ourense, gastan en agua corriente de media menos de 100€ al año.

The Covid shock has been extraordinary in so many ways. It clearly has been the most severe shock to the revenues of companies in almost all sectors and can truly be called a black swan event. Especially in the leisure and retail sectors, companies had to cope with revenue declines of 30% or more and struggled to survive. Thank goodness, government and central banks acted swiftly and decisively to help many of these companies survive. 

But government support is running out in many countries in the next few months and we may not have seen all the fallout from the pandemic on the corporate front, yet. Nevertheless, both corporate executives and investors should use the coming months to assess how to deal with the next big shock to the system. Because this time, the government was there to help since it was a global shock that affected all of society, but next time, it could be a shock that affects only a specific industry or an individual company. And these shocks become more frequent across all industries. The chart below shows the share of companies in different sectors with revenue drops of 30% to 90% year-on-year (red) and 50% to 90% year-on-year (green).

Share of companies with extreme revenue drops

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Source: Christie et al. (2021).

The chart is taken from a study of all companies in the Compustat database globally that investigated how many companies are subject to such extreme revenue shocks, which ones survive, and what drives the chance of survival. So here is the good news. The vast majority of companies (77%) that experience a revenue decline of more than 30% year-on-year survive. Only 23% of listed companies exit the market by being acquired, filing for bankruptcy, or other means. Of the 77% that survive, 44% show positive revenue growth the following year and 33% continue to experience declining revenues. But amongst those companies where revenues rebound the following year, the rebound tends to be weak. Only 13% experienced a strong rebound of 75% or more of lost revenue. 

Extreme revenue shocks are typically not a short-term phenomenon but the fallout stays with a company for a long time, even if it survives the direct hit.

The fate of companies after a revenue shock

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Source: Christie et al. (2021)

From a corporate perspective, there are basically three ways to cope with such extreme shocks and survive both the immediate impact as well as the following years. A company can have enough cash and liquidity reserves, it can have a high equity capital ratio and increase borrowing, or it can change its operations and become more flexible and leaner.

And when it comes to these three levers, the historical evidence seems pretty clear cut. The only thing that helps a company survive these extreme revenue shocks is access to cash. Companies that either had lots of liquidity at hand or could tap into existing credit lines to increase their cash at hand were more likely to survive and recovered more quickly. 

Companies that had low financial leverage and a high equity capital ratio may want to borrow money to raise cash but once the revenue hit has come, banks and bond markets prove remarkably reluctant to extend any new credit to these companies. It’s the classic tale of banks willing to give a man an umbrella when the sun shines but asking for it to be returned when it starts to rain. 

That an abundance of equity capital does not increase the chance of survival and that cash at hand does should also be a warning to investors in private equity. LBOs and other private equity strategies rely on an increase in leverage to improve profitability and accelerate a return of cash to investors. But that makes these companies extremely vulnerable to adverse market shocks – more so than listed companies. In essence, many private equity firms optimise their holdings for a sunny day and reduce the resilience of their portfolio companies to a thunderstorm. 

Personally, I think this is what we will see in the aftermath of the pandemic as well. If I look at the publicly listed leisure companies in the UK, I find that so many of them are flush with cash. Many of them could survive a full year or more without any revenues. Meanwhile, so many restaurant chains and coffee shops owned by private equity firms had to enter into voluntary arrangements (the UK version of chapter 11 bankruptcy) because they simply didn’t have the liquidity to continue to operate and couldn’t get any new lines of credit.

But what about the third lever available to companies: Making the company leaner and increasing its operating flexibility. This is what so many private equity firms pride themselves on and what so many executives of listed companies try to do as flanking measures besides raising cash.

Well, it turns out that these efforts have hardly any impact on the chance of survival at all. In many cases, increasing operational flexibility takes a long time to achieve, often too long to be a meaningful help for a company struggling to survive. And making the company leaner aka cutting costs aka firing people has its own problems. Typically, it helps a company survive in the short run but reduces its ability to bounce back from the shock in the medium term. By firing lots of people, the company loses institutional knowledge and cuts into the very growth initiatives that could ensure a rebound after the crisis (often, “nice to have” growth projects are the first to face the chopping board in a crisis).

It’s not what managers learn in business school, but cutting costs is in the best case, useless and in the worst case puts a company on a path of continuous decline. Just look at companies like IAG, American Airlines, GM, US Steel, GE, Deutsche Bank, etc. Compared to their international peers and local challengers, they have cut their costs right into a bankruptcy or into market losers. 

Let's talk about three lessor known Dividend Kings. These are relatively unknown companies with more than 50 years of dividend growth.

The post 3 Lessor Known Dividend Kings appeared first on European Dividend Growth Investor.

La mayoría de las personas están enamoradas del drama particular de su vida. Su historia es su identidad. El ego gobierna su vida. En este artículo te hablé del egoísmo como algo positivo. No malinterpretes lo que vas a leer a continuación como una contradicción de lo anterior. El egoísmo es malo cuando se convierte ... Leer más

La entrada PENSAMIENTO Y EGO se publicó primero en SIGMADIEZ.

Hello,

I Need explanation for entering new tools information on fusion 360 library.
Some of my bit have only number on the side (no brand, no library online then)
I just dont know what the number on the side mean and how to enter every information about these tools on the library.

Thanks in advance.