Headlines -- December 11, 2023

Locator: 46277HEADLINES.

Note: the interview at the top of the hour, 3:00 p.m. ET, "Closing Bell" was excellent / awesome. The line that caught my attention: 2023 was a great year for investors, but a lot of investors are very unhappy, and/but if they are unhappy it's because they held too much cash in 2023. The 60/40 paid them 3x cash and it's going to be even worse in 2024.  In other words, if you like cash, stick with bonds. If you want to get rich ... exhibit A: AVGO (Broadcom) is up almost 10% today.

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.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.

Billionaires

The ten billionaires who saw their wealth grow the most in 2023. Link here. The list appears to be ranked by "increase in value (dollars)," not "increase by percent. If by percent, Jensen Huang might have led the list with Zuckerberg still coming in second, but I'm not sure about the math. By dollars:

• top of the list: Elon
• second: Mark Zuckerberg
• third: Jeff Bezos
• rest: Steve Balmer, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Elison, Jensen Huang, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell

By percent, increase y/y (needs to be fact-checked):

• Huang: 200%
• Zuckerberg: 160%
• Musk: 63%

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Sports

More on Ohtani here. 

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Dogs Of The Dow

Link takes you to a newsletter subscription site. Maybe later I can find a better source.

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NY Chips

Link here.

New York state is joining chip companies to invest $10 billion in a semiconductor research facility at the University at Albany that is set to include some of the most advanced chip-making equipment in the world.

NY Creates, a nonprofit that oversees the Albany NanoTech Complex where the facility is to be built, will coordinate its construction.

It will also use state funds to acquire chip-making equipment from ASML Holding ASML, a Dutch company whose machines can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and are key to making the most advanced chips possible.

Once the machinery is installed, the project and its partners will begin work on next-generation chip manufacturing there.

The partners include tech giant IBM, memory manufacturer Micron Technology MU, as well as chip-manufacturing equipment makers Applied Materials AMAT, and Tokyo Electron.

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Vietnam EVs

VinFast, link here.

When electric-car startup VinFast Auto VFS was looking to build a factory in the U.S., one state caught its attention in particular: North Carolina.

For years, officials there had been trying to get an automobile manufacturer to set up shop in rural Chatham County. More than a billion dollars of incentives got them the Vietnamese upstart with huge ambitions but a limited record.

VinFast, just six years old, has licensed technology from BMW, hired former General Motors and Ford Motor executives, and worked with Italian designers to develop a modern-looking car. It plans to one day take on Tesla and other American auto giants on their home turf.

Meanwhile, F and GM have put their plans on hold.

For investors, EVs:

• EVs: link here. Scorecard. 
• cash burn
  
• graphite
• not for me. "Energy transition is dead" is followed here.
  
• EVs charging. 

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The Book Page

The link takes you to an app subscription site. I have not subscribed.

About $10 / month, "summarizes 6,500 books and podcasts."

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The Book Page

I continue to really, really enjoy this book:

The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011.

It's best to skip around in this book, read the foreword, introduction, and preface first and then read each of the chapters in any order based on one's interests in Shakespeare's plays.

It's a beguiling book and at first, it seems to "playful," that one does not realize how much depth this book has. One has to be "ready to read" this book and then read it closely. It works best to have the Shakespeare play in your reach while reading the book, and perhaps a map of the village, city, country, or region where the play is set. 

But wow, you need to read it slowly and carefully. One is tempted to take notes, but that would be overwhelming and interrupt the reading.

Unfortunately, what this book needs is a very, very good index which it does not have -- an index. After I've finished reading it, I may construct my own index for the book. 

The ten-page bibliography includes sources one does not usually find in books about Shakespeare and/or his plays. 

My copy is from the library. I will order my own from Amazon. 

My notes will be posted here.

Recommend:

• read wiki's summary of the play;
• and, then this: "Shylock's Pound of Flesh" by Adam Roberts.

And then, this is really, really cool. I have an idea how to introduce Shakespeare to Sophia.