2025 Cymbria annual report
This year’s annual report is now available on the Cymbria website.
A few charts worth discussing
“Cumulative telecom default rate hit 74% after the Tech Bubble. We'll see if AI hardware can beat it.”
“Despite economic downturns, coffee demand has remained largely resilient, trending steadily upward over the long term.”
Other charts worth pointing out
High yield bonds – % of market rated BB
Market rallies following 10% and 20% declines – bear markets vs. corrections
Global central bank reserves – gold vs. U.S. Treasuries
Major crypto sell offs since 2017
European energy production – German nuclear power generation & U.K. North Sea oil & gas production
Change in toy sales by category – 2025 vs. 2024
Change in toy sales by category – 2025 vs. 2021
401k equity allocation by age group
S&P 500 Index performance during World War 2
Bathhouses to rice crackers: Japan’s small businesses suffer Iran war energy crunch
A surge in oil prices because of the US-Israel war on Iran and Tehran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, an international shipping chokepoint, has strained supplies of refined petroleum products. Japan sources more than 90 per cent of its crude from the Middle East.
Thousands of businesses are grappling with a commodity price shock that is threatening factory closures, raising prices for consumers and halting wage rises that help drive consumption growth.
Some have already been forced to take drastic measures. In the northern city of Aomori, Masayoshi Yamaguchi is planning to shut the Katsuragi Onsen, a sento or public bathhouse, after 27 years at the end of May. The conflict in the Middle East was “the biggest factor” in the decision, he said.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi pledged to ease cost of living pressures ahead of her landslide election victory last month. On Tuesday, she vowed to step up emergency measures to tackle the energy crisis by conducting a review of supply chains using petroleum products.
But economists said that in addition to its reliance on imported energy, Japan’s highly fragmented economy made it difficult to weather the storm, while its panoply of smaller businesses lacked the heft to exert pricing power.
Unlike larger companies, which sell into foreign markets and often perform strongly when the yen is weak, Japan’s smaller companies behave more similarly to households and are hit hard when the domestic economy is under pressure.
Takaichi at the start of the week increased funding for emergency fuel subsidies by ¥800bn ($5bn) to cap petrol prices at ¥170 per litre. But the Nomura Research Institute estimates the subsidy budget will be depleted by early July.
Toribe said the commercial fuel users were not feeling the benefits, expressing “distrust” towards the suppliers.
Meanwhile local TV news is flooded with stories of petrol stations suspending operations, saying they cannot supply customers at an affordable price.
The reported inquiries, which are viewed in the market as a form of verbal intervention, would represent part of authorities’ efforts to protect households and businesses from the double impact of surging energy prices and the weak yen, which is currently trading at around ¥158.5 against the dollar.
Finance minister Satsuki Katayama said this week that the government was ready to take “all possible measures, at all times and on all fronts”. Japan is set on Thursday to start releasing national oil reserves that amount to 254 days worth of demand, when also factoring in private stockpiles.
The cost of heavy fuel oil used to heat industrial boilers is causing pain even in some hot spring or onsen resorts that can draw on naturally warm water. Many onsen hotels, inns and bathhouses use oil or gas to heat water to bathing temperatures while also having to keep often poorly insulated buildings warm.
This week’s fun finds
Baseball’s math problem: Filling all those innings in an era when less is more for starting pitchers
Bubic grew up in California and idolized Clayton Kershaw. He attended a school with a celebrated baseball program — Stanford University — and was drafted in the first round. He advanced quickly, skipping two levels of the minors and arriving in the majors in 2020. Three years later, he had Tommy John surgery. Now he strikes out a batter per inning.
He also has never pitched more than 130 innings in a major-league season.
Every morning at spring training, Bubic and his teammates stretch in the shadow of a giant mural with images of the Royals’ Hall of Famers. Among them are seven starting pitchers — Dennis Leonard, Bret Saberhagen and so on — who all logged multiple seasons of at least 230 innings. This was only natural: They were very good, so they pitched a lot.
Bubic said he trains hard and does all he can to stay strong through the season. But his story underscores a harsh reality: While the MLB schedule has been fixed at 162 games since 1962, the nature of pitching has changed immensely. Teams must fill the same number of innings as they did when Warren Spahn was an All-Star, yet their pitchers are engineered for a very different game.
