This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

How families have changed over 50 years

A “lighter” argument for nuclear power

Howard Marks Memo - I beg to differ

“In 1978, I was asked to move to the bank’s bond department to start funds in convertible bonds and, shortly thereafter, high yield bonds.  Now I was investing in securities most fiduciaries considered “uninvestable” and which practically no one knew about, cared about, or deemed desirable ...and I was making money steadily and safely.  I quickly recognized that my strong performance resulted in large part from precisely that fact: I was investing in securities that practically no one knew about, cared about, or deemed desirable.  This brought home the key money-making lesson of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which I had been introduced to at the University of Chicago Business School: If you seek superior investment results, you have to invest in things that others haven’t flocked to and caused to be fully valued.  In other words, you have to do something different.

“Investing strikes me as being very much like golf, where playing conditions and the performance of competitors can change from day to day, as can the placement of the holes.  On some days, one approach to the course is appropriate, but on other days, different tactics are called for.  To win, you have to either do a better job than others of selecting your approach or executing on it, or both.

“The same is true for investors.  It’s simple: If you hope to distinguish yourself in terms of performance, you have to depart from the pack.  But, having departed, the difference will only be positive if your choice of strategies and tactics is correct and/or you’re able to execute better.”

This week’s fun finds

EdgePointer of the month – July 2022

Geoff Goss

If you're going anywhere with Goss* on his home turf in Halifax, be sure to give yourself some extra time, as he seems to know the whole city. Goss is always ready to share a few words and his trademark grin with friends old and new. The secret to his success is simple – stories. Everyone seems to have a different favourite Goss story, while he seems to have an unlimited supply to tell. We're very fortunate that he's willing to share them during his annual "fireside chats" at our internal partners' meetings. 

Goss is the epitome of work hard, play hard – he's always a threat to start up a dancefloor with “the worm” or a chorus of Hallelujah that can inspire even the shyest singer to hit that secret chord. When he isn't helping to lead the Sales team or busting a move, Goss enjoys overseas cycling trips, sitting back and diving into a suspenseful non-fiction spy novel or playing a round of golf. Goss was the fourth person to join EdgePoint and his passion, both for the company and life, has influenced everyone who's had the fortune to work alongside him.

Prior to joining EdgePoint, he built the wholesaler team at Invesco and worked as a regional director at Brandes Investment Partners. He earned his B.Comm. in Marketing from Mount Allison University.

And a two-part bonus from Goss himself.

First, some of his favourite overseas bike trips:

• France (Provence) – Perfect for anyone who loves the challenge of a steep climb. Mont Ventoux is a personal favourite
• Spain (Mallorca, Sa Calobra) – From mountains to the oceans, Spain trails are incredibly fun
• Italy (Tuscany) – A chance to really appreciate the wineries by biking by them (and having a sip at the end of the day)
  

Second, some of his favourite non-fiction spy novels from Ben McIntyre that seem to be too good to be true:

Operation Mincemeat: A WWII British Deception Operation – The story of how a Spanish fisherman, British intelligence and a corpse with fake correspondence fooled German forces and helped the invasion of Italy

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal – The story of Eddie Chapman, an England-born, but German-trained spy whose loyalty to the British Isles was proven multiple times during World War II

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War – The story of two double agents working on opposite sides during the Cold War – a KGB agent working for MI6, while a CIA agent followed orders from the KGB

* Goss was willing to cede first name rights to Geoff Macdonald since they'd known each other from their PEI little league days (albeit on opposing teams).

Cut the meetings, make more friends

If you are both amazed and horrified by how many meetings are being crammed into our working days — you are not alone. Data from Microsoft research show that since the start of the pandemic, the number of meetings has risen by 50 per cent. It seems that our default on any task is to use that simple button to schedule a virtual meeting — and we are doing this multiple times a day.

As a psychologist who studies work, I could tell you that this highly scheduled way of working is likely to reduce your daily productivity. That’s because you are inadvertently squeezing out the time you need to be disconnected and alone. By doing so, you are limiting your capacity to focus undisturbed on more valuable tasks that require deeper concentration.

By doing so we are losing the opportunity to engage in an activity that can in the longer term bring profound value: the activity of building and sustaining friendships with others. By pressing that scheduling button for our next virtual meeting, we are taking away time from that messy, unpredictable business of making friends.

When we make friends, we strengthen our resilience. We are also making the time we spend at work more pleasurable. Take, for example, Gallup polling which puts “I have a best friend at work” as one of the best predictors of whether you will stay in your current job. This resonates with me.

The Power of Our New Pop Myths

The rise of what might be called “narrative universes,” like “Star Wars,” Marvel and “Harry Potter,” is usually explained in business terms, as a way for media companies to wring extra profits out of valuable pieces of intellectual property. Marvel films have grossed $22 billion at the box office, while the Star Wars franchise has grossed $11 billion and Harry Potter $9 billion, according to 2021 data from Comscore. And that’s before you start counting the toys, videogames and theme parks.

The interesting question, however, isn’t why media companies are so eager to keep supplying the market with new content from the same franchises. It’s why the demand is so insatiable. Why do audiences continue to flock to the 10th Star Wars movie or the 20th Marvel movie? What imaginative appetite or cultural need keeps us coming back for more?

Today’s narrative universes also resemble myths in bringing us face to face with fundamental mysteries of human life. Was I born for a purpose, and if so, how do I discover what it is? Why does evil exist? What am I willing to give my life for? Traditionally, people looked to religious and patriotic stories to answer such questions. In 21st-century America, those kinds of narratives no longer have the power to unite us; they are more likely to ignite suspicion and division. Popular culture has stepped into the gap, offering new myths that are less fraught and easier to share.

This week's interesting finds

EdgePoint Q2 2022 commentaries are now live on the website. This quarter:

• We have met the enemy, and it is us (equity) – Sydney Van Vierzen discusses why investors are the biggest risk to their own long-term returns
• Why I can’t sleep at night (fixed income) – Derek Skomorowski breaks down why he's so excited about today's fixed income opportunities
• Digging deeper (EdgePoint Go West Portfolio) – Frank Mullen talks about why you it’s important to invest in businesses, not just sectors. 

This week in charts

German opinion on nuclear energy by political affiliation 2021 vs. 2022

Family planning during the pandemic in China 

Shopify cancels fall internships, pauses recruiting for further roles amid fallen stock price

In a statement to The Globe and Mail on Friday, Shopify spokesperson Alex Lyons said the “fall internship program will continue with a reduced number of roles, which we have completed hiring for.” Mr. Lyons said Shopify is also evaluating other roles in a bid to focus on immediate initiatives to address the unwavering selloff that is battering the global technology sector.

Many tech companies have significantly scaled back their hiring plans and reduced staff in order to combat economic uncertainty stemming from inflation, rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine and a reversal of pandemic trends. Shopify now joins companies such as Twitter Inc., Coinbase Global Inc. and others that have yanked internship offers to address these global challenges.

Beyond Shopify’s internships, many new hires at the company had already been put in a state of limbo as they await their start date. A number of prospective employees, who were told they were going to be hired, have yet to receive written offers with salary figures apart from those discussed with Shopify recruiters.

Last week, Shopify said it is delaying an ambitious compensation overhaul that would give its employees more choice in how they’re paid. At least 50 people have been laid off since April, and dozens of permanent job offers have been delayed by Shopify while it adjusts that salary framework.

This week’s fun finds

Jack of All Trades, Master of Some

“Mario Kart is a zero-sum game, but real life isn't. In real life, skill development is very much a positive sum game.

“We aren't given 100 'skill points' at birth, that must be distributed across offsetting sliding scales. There is no limit to how many skills you can improve and master, and improvement in one field doesn't necessitate deterioration in another field.

“In fact, skills build on each other. Honing multiple skills is actually a positive sum game, where 1+1 = 3.”

Danish race fans

Two EdgePointers, Diane and Nataliya, were in Copenhagen at the same time the Tour de France started, and they were able to snag a few photos of the race:

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts 

The worst half year for U.S. 10-Year Treasuries since 1788   

The $100 Trillion Global Economy in One Chart

The Next Bear Market

"One of my favorite things about the markets is how confident most investors are (and without this confidence it’s likely the markets wouldn’t function as well as they do). There is near universal agreement that many investors will freak out during the next downturn in stocks yet no one assumes they will be part of this group that panics. 

“Surely, everyone else will become hysterical when stocks get crushed but I’ll stay level-headed and make all the right moves.

"The problem is there have to be losers in the markets for there to be winners. Someone has to capitulate and sell at the bottom of the bear market for someone else to take advantage and buy when there’s blood in the streets. 

"Everyone wants to be greedy when others are fearful but many investors are simply fearful when others are fearful."

Chinese homebuyers across 22 cities refuse to pay mortgages

Across China, homebuyers are refusing to pay mortgages as property developers drag on construction projects, escalating the country’s real estate crisis and risks of bad debt for banks. 

Buyers of 35 projects across 22 cities have decided to stop paying mortgages as of July 12 due to project delays and a drop in real estate prices, Citigroup Inc. analysts led by Griffin Chan wrote in a research report distributed on Wednesday. 

The payment refusals underscore how the storm engulfing China’s property sector is now affecting the country’s middle class, posing a threat to social stability. Chinese banks already grappling with challenges from liquidity stress among developers now also have to brace for homebuyer defaults. 

Now is “a critical time for social stability,” said Chan, adding that “the forgoing of down payments may bring social instability.” 

Decouple podcast – Germany: The Canary in the Coal Mine (1 hr 10 min)

German energy expert Noah Rettberg discusses his country’s energy crisis and how it’s affecting several industries. He looks into some lessons other countries could need as they figure out their own energy transition.   

This week’s fun finds 

Plain English with Derek Thompson podcast (44 min)

Former writer for the Atlantic Derek Thompson goes on a deep dive into current events with an expert, providing relevant details without getting lost in them. Recent episodes include discussions on inflation, Amber Heard and (in the above link) why air travel is frustrating right now. 

Pringles wants to rename a spider because it looks like the company mascot

James Webb Space Telescope

Some photos from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest optical telescope in space. 

Bonus: Some science about the telescope, too.

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

U.S. home equity withdrawals

Brand loyalty dipped during the Financial Crisis

Packaged foods relying on price increases over volume for sales

A tough year for tech workers

Shareholders back away from green petitions in US proxy voting season

“It’s the board’s role to oversee and direct corporate strategy,” said Ben Colton, who heads stewardship at State Street Global Advisors. “As long- term shareholders, we need to be as pragmatic and consistent as possible.”

Proposals asking management to report on several environment-related options drew significantly higher backing than those that sought to restrict management behaviour. Seven resolutions asking for reports on plastic pollution garnered an average of 45 per cent support. However, 10 demands that banks and insurers stop financing new fossil fuel development received average support of just 10 per cent.

“Overall numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole story for this proxy season,” said Merel Spierings, The Conference Board researcher who analysed the numbers. She said that when the most prescriptive proposals are excluded, support for climate-related resolutions was largely unchanged from 2021.

US College Students Are Shunning Oil-Industry Degrees for ESG Future

Historically, however, petroleum schools have seen influxes of new students when oil booms and the sector goes on hiring sprees. But with US crude up more than 30% so far this year, the link appears to be broken.

“Personally, I think we are heading to a bit of a crisis,” said Jennifer Miskimins, who leads the petroleum-engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines, one of the world’s premier oil universities. “As petroleum engineers age, the industry will need to replace a retiring cohort of Baby Boomers. But we are not seeing enough petroleum engineers to fill the demand.”

Germany’s Union Head Warns of Collapse of Entire Industries

Top German industries could face collapse because of cuts in the supplies of Russian natural gas, the country’s top union official warned before crisis talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz starting Monday. 

“Because of the gas bottlenecks, entire industries are in danger of permanently collapsing: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry,” said Yasmin Fahimi, the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB), in an interview with the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. “Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany.”

The energy crisis is already driving inflation to record highs, she said. Fahimi is calling for a price cap on energy for households. The rising costs for Co2 emissions mean further burdens for households and companies, Fahimi added. The crisis could lead to social and labor unrest, she said.  

Keep It Going

“But in training, you tend to build the best athletic machine when longevity is favored over intensity, when your body gets a signal to adapt vs. thinking it’s been temporarily tortured, and when you’re less subject to in jury and mental burnout.

“For the highest levels to be attainable over time, the process has to be sustainable.

“Which is exactly how good investing works too, isn’t it? 

This week’s fun finds

EdgePoint Golf Day 2022 

At the end of June, 16 EdgePoint partners golfed at Granite Ridge Golf Club. Four groups competed for the best round, with the title going to Heather, Greg, Derek and Ryan.

And congratulations to the winners of the longest drive – Ben and Sarah! 

People Are Dating All Wrong, According to Data Science

This may be the most consequential decision of a person’s life. The billionaire investor Warren Buffett certainly thinks so. He calls whom you marry “the most important decision that you make.”

And yet people have rarely turned to science for help with this all-important decision. Truth be told, science has had little help to offer. Scholars of relationship science have been trying to find answers. But a few years ago, a young, energetic, uber-curious, and brilliant scientist, Samantha Joel, aimed to change that. Joel, like so many in her field, was interested in what predicts successful relationships.

After building her team and collecting and analyzing the data, Joel was ready to present the results—results of perhaps the most exciting project in the history of relationship science.

So, as discovered by both a team of 86 scientists and whoever writes Daily Inspirational Quotes, one’s own happiness outside a relationship is by far the biggest predictor of one’s happiness in a romantic relationship. But what else predicts romantic happiness beyond one’s own preexisting mental state? What qualities of a mate are predictive of romantic happiness? Let’s start with the qualities of one’s mate that are least predictive of romantic happiness.

Among more than 11,000 long-term couples, machine learning models found that the traits listed below, in a mate, were among the least predictive of happiness with that mate. Let’s call these traits the Irrelevant Eight, as partners appear about as likely to end up happy in their relationship when they pair off with people with any combo of these traits:

• Race/ethnicity
• Religious affiliation
• Height
• Occupation
• Physical attractiveness
• Previous marital status
• Sexual tastes
• Similarity to oneself

If I had to sum up, in one sentence, the most important finding in the field of relationship science, thanks to these Big Data studies, it would be something like this (call it the First Law of Love): In the dating market, people compete ferociously for mates with qualities that do not increase one’s chances of romantic happiness.

Moreover, if I had to define the qualities that are highly desired even though they don’t lead to long-term romantic happiness, I would call many of them shiny qualities. Such qualities immediately grab our attention. Just about all of us are quickly drawn to the conventionally beautiful, for example. But these attention-grabbing, shiny qualities, the data suggests, make no difference to our long-term romantic happiness. The data suggests that single people are predictably tricked by shininess.

How artists get paid from streaming

Do you ever wonder how much an artist makes when you listen to a song on your favourite streaming service? This article breaks down the math behind the royalties with some fun animation.  

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

U.S. savings back down

Japanese quantitative easing

Netflix Disrupted Entertainment With Binge Viewing. Now Can It Avoid Disruption Itself?

This company that became an outlier when it ditched the conventions of television has become the outlier of the streaming world by sticking to the Netflix way. Bingeing alone doesn’t explain the company’s success over the past decade, but it was the singular phenomenon that distinguished Netflix and revolutionized Hollywood, as streaming television replaced the movie business and music industry as the defining cultural force of our time.

So what happens when the disrupters get disrupted? How do successful companies respond when the conditions of their early success change—and can they? To binge, or not to binge?

These are the fundamental questions facing Netflix as one of the biggest winners in the pandemic economy has become the year’s biggest loser in the ailing S&P 500. The answers might just force this proudly iconoclastic company to swallow its pride.

U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds

“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Dr. Tyler Lark, assistant scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study.

The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.

Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol trade lobby, called the study "completely fictional and erroneous," arguing the authors used "worst-case assumptions [and] cherry-picked data."

Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a law enacted in 2005, the nation's oil refiners are required to mix some 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol into the nation's gasoline annually. The policy was intended to reduce emissions, support farmers, and cut U.S. dependence on energy imports. 

Soaring Global Coal Use Is Obliterating Emission Reductions Achieved in the U.S. Since 2005 

“The surging use of coal around the world shows, once again, that the Iron Law of Electricity remains in force. That law says that people, businesses, and governments will do whatever they have to do to get the electricity they need. The Iron Law matters because the electricity sector is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions. And politicians from China to the Czech Republic are going to do everything they can, including “burning anything” they can find, to avoid blackouts. 

The punchline here is clear: Although the U.S. has been leading the world in cutting its greenhouse gas emissions – in fact, no other country even comes close in terms of absolute reductions -- other countries are not following suit. Furthermore, I’m not arguing that we should quit trying to reduce our emissions. What I am saying is that we must be realistic about the scale and cost of our emissions-reduction efforts and the extent to which those efforts are making a difference in the global scheme. 

I’ll end by repeating the same point I have been making for more than 12 years: renewable energy cannot, will not, be able to meet soaring global energy demand. If the countries of the world are serious about reducing coal use and the emissions that come from burning that carbon-heavy fuel, they need to get serious about N2N: natural gas to nuclear. Both sources are low-carbon, relatively low-cost, scalable, and deployable.”

More on energy

• Germany, Canada in talks over LNG terminal for export to Europe

• Can Saudi Aramco Meet Its Oil Production Promises? 

• An Esoteric Oil Gauge Has Spiked to an Unprecedented Level

• OPEC+ Oil Output Is Half a Billion Barrels Behind on Supply Deal 

• Libya Halts Oil Exports From Key Ports Amid Political Crisis 

• U.S. authorities make checks on oil tanker arrived from Russia 

• Rich Nations Favor LNG Investment in U-Turn Amid Energy Crisis 

• U.S. power companies face supply-chain crisis this summer 

• US gas generators brace for record summer demand as coal exports, prices surge 

• Rishi Sunak cooling on windfall tax on UK electricity generators 

• India Forced to Ship In Gasoline, Diesel as Shortages Arise 

• Denmark launches energy saving campaign; European gas supply 'under pressure'

This week’s fun finds

Summer 2022 reading and listening lists – “Trying to forget about inflation” edition

If you’re looking for something to read by the water (whether at a cottage or the public pool because of gas prices), the Investment team book club has some suggestions for you. The two books contain commentary letters that are perfect bite-sized reads in between refills of iced tea or your favourite cold beverage. Although they’re a trip back in time that covers the first 15 years of the millennium, the lessons are timeless.

Don’t turn D-I-Y into D-I-Why?!?

So 12345 isn’t a good password?

 

This week's interesting finds

What hit our inboxes this week

What helps us sleep at night – part 7

When investors are particularly pessimistic about what the market may do (or is doing), we’re often asked how we sleep at night. Over the years, we’ve put together some things we think about as we try to get some shut eye. Here’s our version of a cup of chamomile tea. 

In the seventh version of the What helps us sleep at night series, Tye, Jeff, George and Claire discuss five businesses held in EdgePoint Global Portfolio and why we believe they are well-positioned to help us ignore the current short-term volatility. 

Europe Still Imports Huge Volumes of Russian Diesel as War Rages

So far this month, the continent has received close to 14 million barrels of diesel-type fuel from countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, according to Vortexa Ltd. data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s a relatively limited drop-off from pre-war levels earlier this year and the vast majority, if not all, of that fuel originated in Russia.

That may come as a surprise to some, given how many European leaders and oil companies have criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Less than a week after President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Kyiv in a show of support for Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the data show the biggest buyer of the Russian fuel is France, closely followed by Germany.

How Singapore Got Its Manufacturing Mojo Back

Singapore has aggressively wooed highly automated factories with tax breaks, research partnerships, subsidized worker training and grants to local manufacturers to upgrade operations to better support multinational companies, among other enticements.

There’s a caveat: Singapore’s success has come by automating away many jobs. It has more factory robots per employee than any country other than South Korea, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

The Rich World’s Climate Hypocrisy

The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports.

Britain, Germany push G7 for halt to biofuel mandates to tame food prices

Officials from some G7 countries, including Germany and Britain, will push for temporary waivers on biofuels mandates to combat soaring food prices when leaders from the group of wealthy nations meet on Sunday, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

It’s not clear whether there’s broad-based support to temporarily waive biofuel mandates across the G7 members which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the world’s largest biofuel producer, the United States. Surging oil and gas prices have also increased the demand for energy sourced from crops.

Goldman Sachs Facing SEC Probe of ESG Funds in Asset Management

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the investigation of Goldman Sachs. The SEC hasn’t yet put rules in place covering ESG requirements, so the probe may focus on whether Goldman’s disclosures to clients didn’t accurately describe its investment practices, the Journal reported.

The SEC has been warning money managers not to mislead investors about the standards and methods they use for classifying funds as ESG. Behind the scenes, the agency’s staff has been pressing financial firms to show that they’re making good on their promises.

In last year’s first half, the agency set up a task force of enforcement lawyers whose focus includes ESG disclosures. Around the same time, the regulator released a report showing many funds describing themselves as ESG weren’t doing enough to ensure that their marketing rang true.

Timeless Lessons From the 2020-2022 Cycle

Speculation is as old as the hills. Every modern technological innovation has one thing in common — they cause people to lose their minds thinking about how the world is going to change going forward and thus, a financial asset bubble is formed.

Everything is cyclical. Nothing fails quite like success in the stock market and this environment is a perfect example of that. Nothing works always and forever.

Be careful who you take financial advice from. You cannot blindly follow someone’s financial advice simply because they have name recognition or a lot of followers. Do your own homework before taking anyone’s financial advice.

Successful investment plans need to survive down markets too. Every successful investment plan requires some combination of balance, durability and common sense to survive in the long run. And that long run includes both good markets and bad.

Investing is hard. If the markets felt too easy in the latter half of 2020 it’s because they were. Investing can be mind-numbingly simple if you want it to be but it’s never going to be easy.

Why is China’s inflation rate low compared to the US, Europe and Britain?

Chinese officials and academics have attributed the divergence to Western stimulus measures, notably the unprecedented money printing used to save economies battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Authorities have not disclosed the weighting of China’s CPI basket, which was changed in 2021. However, Huang Wentao, an analyst with China Securities Co, estimated the weighting for food increased to 18.4 per cent, versus 7.8 per cent in the US. For clothing, China’s weight is 6.2 per cent versus 2.8 per cent in the US, according to Huang. Rent accounted for 16.2 per cent, about half the US weighting at 32 per cent, while transport was 10.1 per cent in China, lower than 15.1 per cent in the US, he said.

In addition, the US economy relies heavily on imports of consumer products, whereas China’s massive industrial capability means it has more room to deal with the price hikes for global commodities. Retail sales continued to contract by 6.7 per cent in May, but the pace was slower than the steep fall of 11.1 per cent in April. Pork prices have played a big role in consumer inflation cycles, with an estimated weight of 2.4 per cent in the CPI basket. Prices for pork, the staple meat on Chinese tables, fell 37 per cent from a year earlier in the first five months of 2022.

This week’s fun finds

100 pennies = $4.99

Walmart rubbing it in

The importance of the percentage sign

Exposure vs. mastery

In the world of Zen, Tao and the martial arts, there is a phrase, “Beginner’s Mind.”  The beginner is humble, curious, completely open, trusting, willing, and without criticism.  The beginner tries, fails, then tries again… endlessly.

Somewhere, in that endless repetitive trying, failing and making small progress, something we might call “Mastery” begins to appear…

Not even perhaps, to the practitioner, but to those who witness the evolution.

That is why “Mastery” is never announced by the student, but recognized and awarded by the teacher.

This week's interesting finds

This week in charts

Consumer spending

A shortage of workers?

Inflation – Canada vs. the world

Canadian housing affordability 

ESG 

Microsoft Poised to Sit Out TV’s Upfront Market

The technology giant has been telling TV networks and media buyers that it intends to bypass TV’s annual haggle for commercial inventory, according to four executives familiar with recent discussions. The company behind such products and services as Windows, LinkedIn, the Halo video games and Surface tablets instead favors taking its chances in what is known as TV’s “scatter” market, the purchase of ad time bought closer to run date.

Microsoft seems to feel that it needs to be cautious in trying to sell consumers expensive hardware and other tech goods at a time when the stock market is churning, according to two of these executives, and when people may be fretting about loosening their purse strings. Each year, as part of the upfront, U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory in advance, and advertisers who do so can lock in prices in case they rise later in the year.

Microsoft spent around $294.8 million on TV advertising in 2021, according to Kantar, a tracker of ad spending. Of that amount, the bulk — around $164.2 million — went to broadcast TV, with another nearly $128 million earmarked for cable TV. Microsoft spent around $2.7 million on Spanish-language TV in 2021, according to Kantar. One media buyer suggested any decision by Microsoft to bump spending would likely affect TV’s sports-advertising market, where the tech giant is a regular customer.

This week’s fun finds

If the world was made up of 100 people, what would the breakdown be?

A Stanford Psychologist Says He’s Cracked the Code of One-Hit Wonders

Berg compiled a data set of more than 3 million songs released from 1959 to 2010 and pulled out the biggest hits. He used an algorithm developed by the company EchoNest to measure the songs’ sonic features, including key, tempo, and danceability. This allowed him to quantify how similar a given hit is to the contemporary popular-music landscape (which he calls “novelty”), and the musical diversity of an artist’s body of work (“variety”).

“Novelty is a double-edged sword,” Berg told me. “Being very different from the mainstream is really, really bad for your likelihood of initially making a hit when you’re not well known. But once you have a hit, novelty suddenly becomes a huge asset that is likely to sustain your success.” Mass audiences are drawn to what’s familiar, but they become loyal to what’s consistently distinct.