1) The Earth is burning
Major
wildfires are burning all over the world right now.
More
than 21,000 square miles of forest have gone up in flames in Siberia this month, putting Russia on track for its worst year on record for
wildfires.
a
wildfire in the Canary
Islands forced more than
8,000 people to flee. Over the weekend, new fires ignited in Alaska, extending what’s already been an unusually long fire
season for the state. Last week, Denmark dispatched firefighters to Greenland combat a wildfire approaching inhabited areas. If not extinguished,
officials are worried the blaze would burn through the winter, further driving
up the already massive ice melt Greenland has
experienced this year amid record heat.
But
perhaps even more alarming are the wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest
tropical forest. It’s an area
with torrential rain that almost never burns on its own, yet the blazes have
burned for more than two weeks, growing so intense that they sent smoke all the
way to São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city.
2) Mosquitoes - the greatest killer in history
Malaria laid waste
to prehistoric Africa to such a degree that people evolved sickle-shaped red
blood cells to survive it. The disease killed the ancient Greeks and Romans—as
well as the peoples who tried to conquer them—by the hundreds of thousands, playing
a major role in the outcomes of their wars. For much of military history,
deaths caused by mosquitoes far outnumbered, and were more decisive than,
deaths in battle.
Globalization is
helping to spread a new generation of mosquito-borne illnesses once confined to
the tropics, such as dengue, perhaps a thousand years old, and chikungunya
and Zika, both of which were first identified in humans only in 1952.
Meanwhile, climate change is dramatically expanding the ranges in which
mosquitoes and the diseases they carry can thrive. One recent study estimated
that, within the next fifty years, a billion more people could be exposed to
mosquito-borne infections than are today.
3) What if the cost of capital never rises again?
When the cost of
money is low (or, effectively zero) as it is today, intellectual property and
brand, intangible assets become more highly valued by investors than physical
assets are because they are weapons that corporations can use to nullify the
moats and assets of the incumbent corporations that they are competing with for
customers, revenue and market share.
The implications of
a world in which equity capital is flowing while interest rates on credit never
rise to the level of being a serious roadblock for innovation are fascinating
to consider. What if every new idea that comes along, no matter how world-altering
and disruptive, no matter how unproven or risky, can get overnight funding
without much of a problem? Masayoshi Son’s Vision Fund has been investing based
on this premise. Massive pools of capital from sovereign nations and university
endowments and gigantic corporations like Google’s moonshot division are
investing this way as well.
There are no asset
managers who represent their strategy to clients as “We buy the most expensive
assets, and add to them as they rise in price and valuation.” That’s
unfortunate, because this is the only strategy that could have possibly enabled
an asset manager to outperform in the modern era. It’s one of those things you
could never advertise, but had you done it, you’d have beaten everyone over the
ten-year period since the market’s generational low.
4) A brief economic history of Independent India
The 73 years after
India got its independence can be broadly sliced into three phases: The three
decades post-1947 till the 70s was when Jawaharlal Nehru and, then, his
daughter Indira Gandhi went about the task of institution and nation-building.
The 80s was arguably a lost decade, with Indira pursuing her gambits of
nationalising banks and loan melas when she should have been ushering economic
reform and deregulation. That eventually came in the 90s when the country’s
coffers had dried up. The last three decades have transformed India, made a
fraction of Indians richer, but poverty and inequality are still fetters in the
eighth decade after India became a free country.
The first three
decades may be a distant memory, but to assume that they are gone forever would
be a mistake. We still have not fully abandoned some of the mindsets and
approaches of that era.
5) Amazon's Prime Now service may be delivering your
next meal
Amazon India has
long been eyeing the food delivery business in India. People aware of the
company's plans told The Times of India that Prime Now, Amazon's two-hour
grocery delivery platform, could be the primary vehicle for its foray into food
delivery business in India.
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