Notes From All Over -- The "NASDAQ Hit A New Record" Edition -- June 23, 2020

NASDAQ:

Of interest, for the archives:

• AAPL: $368; up over $9.21, up 2.6%
• NFLX: $469; up 75 cents, up 0.15%
• IMUX: $14.46; up 25 cents; up 1.75%

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

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US Car Ownership

Earlier I wrote:

Myth: the death of car ownership. See this link. There are so many story lines in this article, I will have to come back to this later.

This story is simply fascinating.

The writer raises several so many issues it's hard "to review."

First issue: the writer says that the "kid on the block," Facedrive, will fix the "ride-sharing model," arguing that the Lyft and Uber models are broken. [The writer does not define "broken."] How is Facedrive different? This is how, according to the writer:

• Facedrive is the first to offer EVs and hybrids;
• Facedrive is the first to plant trees to offset its carbon footprint
• Facedrive has St Greta on its board of directors (okay, that's a joke).

But seriously, does anyone hail a taxi service based on whether the company plants trees to offset its carbon footprint?

Okay, we need to move one.

Second issue: this is a good one, and I had not really thought about it until the writer raised it as an issue. Think about it. When I want to go somewhere, I get in my car, go there, and come back home. It's called a round trip. If I did not own a car, I would arrange for a "taxi" which would drive from somewhere, drive to where I am, drive me to where I want to be, and then drive on to another destination. My round trip now, all of a sudden, turns into a round trip plus another round trip for someone else, the "taxi" driver. The rider actually alludes to this but doesn't say why ride-hail services are not environmentally sound:

Ride-sharing has been anything BUT sustainable. It’s having a hugely negative impact on the environment, with estimates that the average ride-hail results in nearly 70% more pollution than whatever transportation it displaced. 

The question is why the "70%" more pollution?  There are many reasons, but one of the reasons is the extra driving the "taxi" does to provide transportation for my round trip.

Third issue: a derivative of the second issue. Again, "the average ride-hail results in nearly 70% more pollution than whatever transportation it displaced." The writer is alluding to public transportation. And Facedrive will displace/replace a lot of public transportation, even if they do plant more trees. 

Fourth issue: BlackRock has now replaced Goldman Sachs as the most important banking company in the world. The writer cites this source.
  
Fifth issue: I did learn a new type of investing -- ESG investing. I guess I've seen that before but never paid any attention to it. Environmental, social, and governance investing. This is not new. It's been around forever. If you can't come up with examples, think cigarettes.

Wow, this article goes on forever and ever and ever. It never quits. Where was it first printed? Aha -- here it is -- oilprice. That explains everything.

I was reading the article to read what the headline suggested: "The death of car ownership: the trilion dollar trend upending the auto industry."

Do me a favor. Go to the linked article. Here's the link again: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/death-car-ownership-trillion-dollar-230000172.html. Do me a favor. Once you have the downloaded story in front of you, do a word search for that page. Search the word "ownership." Tell me how many times you found that word. "Ownership" shows up twice. Once in the headline and once in the disclaimer. Unless I missed it.

There is nothing in the article about "automobile ownership" in the article -- it's all about pumping a startup, Facedrive.

Clickbait.

Facedrive shares are traded OTC and TSXV.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

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Exhibit A

Less than six hours after writing the above note, I came across this story: