What we’re reading (12/13)
“US Small-Cap Stocks Trade At Historic Discount To Corporate Titans” (Financial Times). “Smaller US-listed companies are trading at a steep discount compared with their larger peers, highlighting how corners of the market remain relatively inexpensive despite the big rally from the depths of the coronavirus crisis. The S&P 600 gauge tracking the smallest stocks by market value on the index provider’s composite US equities barometer is priced at 14.5 times expected earnings over the next year, according to FactSet data. The valuation is well below the 21.3-times for the benchmark S&P 500 index, which tracks America’s corporate behemoths such as Apple, Facebook and Tesla.”
“‘We’re Starting To See’ Venture Capital Shift From Silicon Valley, AOL Co-Founder Explains” (Yahoo!Finance). “In 2021, more than $13 billion of Silicon Valley venture capital dollars flowed to regions outside of the Bay Area, New York, and Boston. That's the first time in a decade that less than 30% of venture capital has gone to Silicon Valley startups. As recently as 2017, that figure was above 50%. The report's authors found that the share of seed- and early-stage venture capital dollars going to startups in the Bay Area and the other two major tech hotspots has been declining over the past decade.”
“Vox Media, Group Nine Media In Advanced Talks To Merge” (Wall Street Journal). “The companies are discussing an all-stock transaction that would give Vox Media 75% ownership of the combined company, with the remaining 25% going to Group Nine Media, the people said. Vox Media Chief Executive Jim Bankoff would helm the company, the people said…[d]igital media executives say the industry is primed for consolidation. Many players believe they need more scale to compete effectively for online ad dollars and expand further in areas such as e-commerce, events and podcasting.”
“The Top 0.1% Got A Nearly 10% Percent Raise In 2020 — That’s Five Times More Than The Bottom 90%” (Insider). “ the top 1% of Americans earned 13.8% of wages in 2020, according to EPI's analysis of Social Security Administration data. Meanwhile, everyone else earned 60.2%. That was wage growth of 9.9% for the top 0.1% alone, compared to 1.7% for the bottom 90%. It's the latest acceleration of a trend that kicked off in 1979. Since then, the top 1% has seen their wages grow by 179.3%. And, if you're one of the few in the top 0.1%, your wages have gone up by 389.1% over the past four years alone.”
“Facebook: It’s Not Our Fault People Want COVID Misinformation” (Vanity Fair). “Speaking in an interview Sunday with Axios on HBO, longtime Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth brushed off responsibility for the platform’s role in allowing misinformation about public health and politics to proliferate, claiming that lies and conspiracy theories were problems with society and individuals rather than the company. ‘Individual humans are the ones who choose to believe or not believe a thing,’ Bosworth said. ‘They are the ones who choose to share or not share a thing.’”
