What we’re reading (7/8)
“How the Second Half of 2020 Could Be Even ‘Messier’ Than the First” (New York Daily News). The incremental $600 weekly unemployment benefit under the CARES Act expires and TBD if Congress will extend it. Mortgage delinquencies are rising fast and protections for borrowers/renters are running out. And then, among other worrying economic trends, you have additional social volatility ahead in election season. Looks like it will be as important as ever to have a sound stock-selection approach.
“China is Storing an Epic Amount of Oil at Sea. Here’s Why” (CNN). China has 73 million barrels of oil floating on 59 different vessels—three-quarters of global oil demand. Apparently, for the same reason wildcatters far and wide were getting into the oil game in 1H 2020: unprecedentedly low crude prices.
“Sequoia Capital Sails Through Fundraising to Close on $7.2 Billions” (Wall Street Journal). It usually gets tougher for asset managers to raise capital when the portfolios of the typical investors (“Limited Partners” or “LPs”) in those funds have taken a nosedive, but it seems that has not been the case for top venture funds like Sequoia recently. Apparently, LPs care about experience, and have some vague notion that experience and resilience are correlated (even though they are not as a well-document empirical fact in nature, and probably also in business, as this article we discussed a few days ago points out).
“Goldman Sachs Created a New Metric to Measure How US-China Tensions Impact Stocks, and Said That There's Still Money to be Made from the Conflict” (Business Insider). GS kindly made a “relations barometer” to help “investors” bet on and profit from the unraveling of the U.S.-China relationships. Seems like a very “vampire squid” thing to do…
“Here is Pedophile Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book” (Gawker). Dershowitz, Clinton, Courtney Love, Alec Baldwin, Ted Kennedy, David Koch, Courtney Love. It’s a big book. Take a look yourself here.
