What's Interesting In Business News: SaaS, Mobile, Corporate Access, Equity Research, MifidII, SEC, Brexit, $TWTR, $SPOT, $DB, Economic Coordination, Aladdin, $AMZN, Books, Media, Paywalls, $FDS
July 1, 2019 | Volume 14
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SaaS valuations are at a seven year high. What is also interesting is that the variance is up big. Likely due to several high profile recent IPOs commanding very high valuations.
The SaaS Valuation Environment in Mid-2019
Mobile time outpacing TV time for U.S. adults.
Survey: Mobile Time Outpacing TV Time for U.S. Adults
For adults under 30... Most go online primarily with a smartphone.
Mobile Technology and Home Broadband 2019
This is groundbreaking. Four large asset managers setting up their own conference for corporate mgmt teams without sell side involvement. If this starts a trend...
Giant Investors Are Coming After One of Wall Street’s Cash Cows
US asset managers are concerned that they are subsidizing research spend for EU asset managers.
US funds call for rule change in response to Mifid II
Surprised to see the SEC limit disclosure and transparency in the corporate bond market
Bond Fight Pits Main Street Against Wall Street
What is happening in the world of financial services with Brexit?
A lot actually.
The Economist sums up the current state of play nicely if you have not been following the details.
London’s reign as the world’s capital of capital is at risk
The fact that Twitter can make a feature like this is indicative of how important the product is as a general communications medium.
New Twitter Label Will Flag Violating Tweets From Trump, Other Word Leaders
Steaming music subscriber numbers:
Spotify 100m
Apple 60m
Amazon 30m
Google 15m
Apple Music Reaches 60M Total Subscribers
A big player in the institutional research space will be cutting back.
Deutsche Bank Plans to Cut Up to Half of Global Equity Jobs
Economic coordination under antitrust law is illegal. Except when it’s legal. Good writeup.
The Double Standard of Antitrust Law
JP Morgan may be planning to compete with Aladdin (maybe)
JPMorgan May Be Building a Competitor to BlackRock’s Aladdin
Barron’s explains why institutional investors don’t care about sell side analyst price targets.
Do Wall Street Stock Price Targets Really Matter? What Investors Need to Know.
By a large margin, the largest shipper for goods sold by Amazon is Amazon.
Why books (and lectures and textbooks) are generally poorly designed for real learning.
A clear writeup explaining what you probably already know.
Good reminder. Do not invest based on mass media news headlines.
Gathering Investment Lessons From the Headlines
If you are a publisher with a paywall that tracks incognito mode and allows for a few free articles per month, then the new Chrome release will make it much easier to bypass it.
This July, Google Chrome will make it easier to bypass paywalls
Higher than expected cancellations, disappointing new product launches, and a large sales team re-org point to some serious headwinds for Factset $FDS and other vendors targeting institutional buy-side.
Perhaps some of that business is going to alt data and expert networks. Or perhaps some of that business is going to new competitors.
A local UWS book shop appeals to key New York government figures to help keep the store open. Perhaps something like the deal that NY offered Amazon.
Book Culture Owner Says He’s ‘In Danger of Closing Soon,’ Asks Government Leaders for Help
Annuities may be coming to 401k plans.
Well executed this could be a great benefit for most workers.
But it could also turn into a monopolistic fee trap with no alternatives.
Will be interesting how this plays out.
BlackRock Examines Ways to Bring Annuities to 401(k)s
Spend a few seconds watching this.
Not science fiction. The first successful brain-to-brain collaborative problem solving system.
Teams of people were able to control Tetris without speaking or seeing each other.
BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Click-farms and payola drive some of the marketing budgets of music labels. Not easy for Spotify to stop it.
Music industry targets troll farms distorting streaming revenues
Interesting that there is no federal law that requires dates on food.
Most of the “expiration dates” are meaningless. Leads to massive food waste.
This man ate ‘expired’ food for a year and found expiration dates are meaningless
Maybe the US regulators can learn the lesson.
GDPR has entrenched Google and Facebook even further in the ad world.
GDPR Has Been a Boon for Google and Facebook
Some interesting color on the formation of the libra ecosystem.
No banks. No Apple or Google. Lots of nervous partners.
Facebook playing the FUD game like a champ.
How Facebook raced to build Libra coin
Google wields tremendous power in the SMB segment of many consumer industries. Like Amazon and Yelp, Google struggles with fraud and does not have the staff to proactively address the rampant exploitation of their platform.
Any startup would be shut down for running a marketplace with these practices. Time will tell how long Google, Amazon, and Yelp will be able to maintain their low touch approach to policing their networks.
Millions of Business Listings on Google Maps Are Fake—and Google Profits
Interesting writeup on how Disney succeeds with Marvel. Worth the long read.