Ramblings On A Thursday Night -- September 26, 2024

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Tag: private finance

When I listen to the talking heads on "Fast Money" and similar CNBC I am always negatively impressed with how little they seem to "tap into" the huge amounts of money .... there's no way anyone can get their heads around this immense amount of wealth. A lot of its paper wealth -- market value  -- electronic entries in someone's spreadsheet x (times) number of shares. But a lot of it is also cash flow, free cash flow and otherwise.

My dad loved investing. He was in the market during the 80s and 90s and absolutely loved it, but the companies that were in the news then had market values (I suppose) in the hundreds of millions and maybe late in his life in the hundreds of billions, but never trillions. 

And yet analysts are trying understand companies that are so unlike "traditional" companies in so many ways, not least of which their market value. 

I don't even care about the investing story: I'm simply fascinated by what we're seeing. An average congressman or US senator can't fathom what's going on. Readers get irritated with Nancy Pelosi in the market, and we're talking one million, five million, ten million dollars, whatever, and she's investing in companies with a market value of $3 trillion. 

These companies are going to build data centers that will require so much energy they're going to go nuclear. We have simply never seen anything like this before. 

First Industrial Revolution. Real.

Second Industrial Revolution. Real.

Third Industrial Revolution. A book. AKA, The Information Age. Onset: development of the transistor: 1947.

Fourth Industrial Revolution. Real. Current. Now. 

Klaus Schwab. 2016. Rapid technological advancement in the 21st century: AI, gene editing, advanced robots, blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.

What comes next? 

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Trillions

Investors have never seen anything like this before.

Market value today:

• AAPL: $3.46 trillion
• NVDA: $3.04 trillion
• AMZN: $2.01 trillion
  
• META: $1.44 trillion
  

• BRK (A&B): $0.980.6 trillion

 

• LLY: $0.864 trillion
  
• AVGO: $0.832 trillion
• TSLA: $0.797 trillion
  
• WMT: $0.642 trillion
• XOM: $0.501 trillion
  
• ORCL: $0.466 trillion
• COST: $0.400 trillion
  
• QCOM: $0.192 trillion

• DIS: $172 billion -- parks
  
• PFE: $164 billion -- retail pharmacy
  
• SBUX: $110 billion -- coffee
  
• GM: $51 billion -- cars
• RIVN: $11 billion -- vans
  
• US Steel: $8 billion -- specialty steel
  

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Existential Questions

Why hasn't Russia, in Ukraine, gone nuclear yet?

Why hasn't Iran gone nuclear yet?

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Presidential Politics

No matter who the next US president is, it's going to be the most interesting US administration the world has ever seen. Neither candidate has a moral compass nor a Jeffersonian vision.

Never has this been more concerning: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

And unless it's an "obvious" electoral landslide, we may not know for weeks, even months after November 5th. We have any number of circuit courts that could get involved. And the US Supreme Court may not get involved until the lower courts rule. The requirement to hand count all ballots in Georgia  is  insane ... and then the recounts. Unless, of course, it's a landslide. This, too, will be fascinating. 

And, of course, the polling and the reporting on the polling, is a joke. The Hill says Trump leads in Georgia; tied in North Carolina. The lead in Georgia? One point. And that's a poll.