Highlights from our flagship publication — “What I Learned This Week”
The obsession with managing by numbers, the rise of winner-take-all-ism, and the surest way to go broke in America (continued).
The following is a summary of the July 27, 2017 issue of “What I Learned This Week.” To learn more about 13D’s investment research, please visit our website.
“It is just as important to have studied men, as to have studied books.” — Baltasar Gracian
“If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.” — Abraham Lincoln
“Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“It’s no trick to fool a man who thinks himself clever, but a plain, honest man — that can be a challenge.” — 19th-century European Diplomat
“We do not know one-millionth of one percent about anything.” — Thomas Edison
01 Are the industrial metals and their equities ready to take-off again? (continued).
02 The obsession of managing by the numbers is having a devastating long-term impact on America’s business competitiveness and economic vitality.
03 The economy has rarely been better for the top-1%, but the challenges are mounting for the average consumer. Market action supports the increasingly-strained position of the U.S. consumer.
04 If Quantitative Easing (QE) is inflationary in theory, but deflationary in practice, will Quantitative Tightening (QT) have the opposite effect? One could argue that QT will trigger a weaker U.S. dollar, which should put upward pressure on consumer price inflation.
05 The surest way to go broke in America today is to get sick. And the surest way to understand the breakdown of trust in America is to study the business of healthcare (continued).
06 Capital is concentrating in Chinese large-capitalization and value-style stocks, as investors continue to pull money out of growth shares. A “mean-reversion” is taking place in the Chinese stock market, with the SSE 50 Index becoming more popular than the ChiNext.
07 New 3D-printer technology is up to 1,000 times faster and 100 times lower in cost than prior models — and will help close
the gap with standard injection molding and established metal-processing technologies. Huge new winners and losers will be created.
08 “The richest man in the world? No, once again the answer is no; he is the poorest and most unfortunate beggar in the world, he is a broken man.”
09 The cultural rise of winner-take-all-ism in America has reached a dangerous and self- defeating extreme. Can the nation once again come together in a common interest or is divisiveness too great?
10 “Forget about Republicans versus Democrats: It’s a growing backlash against higher education.” The future of college appears to be up for grabs. Who will seize it?
This article was originally published in “What I Learned This Week” on July 27, 2017. To subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit 13D.com or find us on Twitter @WhatILearnedTW.