My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
• The story of cheaper batteries, from smartphones to Teslas: In 2010, a lithium-ion battery pack with 1 kWh of capacity—enough to power an electric car for three or four miles—cost more than $1,000. By 2019, the figure had fallen to $156. The average cost of a kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery capacity should fall below $100 by the mid-2020s. (Ars Technica)
• Tech Workers Are Living the American Dream—in Canada: The short-sighted immigration policies of the US administration is driving top talent north of the border. (Wired)
• Investors wonder if the 60/40 portfolio has a future: Mix of equities and bonds that has served savers well for decades now strikes some as unsafe (Financial Times)
• Sounding good or Doing good? A Skeptical Look at ESG: Do companies perform better because they are socially conscious (good) companies, or do companies that are doing well find it easier to do good? (Damodaran) but see How One Fossil Fuel Free ETF Proved Oil Doesn’t Pay: Five years ago, State Street started a new, green fund. The world hasn’t been the same since. (Bloomberg)
• How Much Lifestyle Creep is Okay? Once you spend more than 50% of your future raises, then you start delaying your retirement. (Of Dollars And Data)
• Music piracy hasn’t gone away – it’s just changed shape: Music piracy is very much still alive and kicking, and that stream-ripping is now responsible for a mammoth proportion of the overall piracy problem. (Music Business Worldwide)
• Nassim Taleb — and Universa — Versus the World: Why does everyone hate tail-risk hedgers? (Institutional Investor)
• How Did Alts, a Jumble of Different Things, Get So Popular? In a time of liability-driven investing and other de-risking, they seem less risky than stocks, yet offer decent returns. (CIO)
• Inside the Biden campaign’s surprising influencer strategy: During a pandemic that’s made in-person campaigning a public health hazard, influencers aren’t just fun. They’re a campaign necessity. (Vox) see also How to guard your social feeds against election misinformation: Preparing for misinformation might mean decluttering your feed, or making some suggestions to your friends and family. (Vox)
• Networks Are Prepping for the Craziest Fall Season in the History of Broadcast TV: This year, the pipeline of multicamera comedies and salty police detectives has all but run dry. Production on scripted programs shut down in March and is only now slowly resuming. As a result, this fall the networks will be scrambling to fill airtime in novel ways. (Bloomberg)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Doug DeMuro, one of the most popular YouTube car reviewers. His channel videos have been streamed more than 1.1 billion times, averaging 2 million views each. He is also the co-founder of the auction site Cars & Bids, and the author of “Plays With Cars,” and “Bumper to Bumper.”
Tech IPOs are popping. A lot.
Source: Protocol
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