Skip to main content

No Alpha Left in Public Markets

2 months ago
Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok, writing in a blog post There are fewer public companies to invest in, and firms that decide to do an IPO are getting older and older. In 1999, the median age of IPOs was five years. In 2022, it was eight years, and today, the median age of IPOs has increased to 14 years. The rise in the age of companies going public is not only a result of the Fed raising interest rates in 2022, but also the consequence of more companies wanting to stay private for longer to avoid the burdens of being public. Combined with the domination of passive investing, failure of active managers and high correlation in public markets, and high concentration in a few stocks, the reality is that there is no alpha left in public markets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

msmash

US Tech Companies Enabled the Surveillance and Detention of Hundreds of Thousands in China

2 months ago
An Associated Press investigation based on tens of thousands of leaked documents revealed Tuesday that American technology companies designed and built core components of China's surveillance apparatus over the past 25 years, selling billions of dollars in equipment to Chinese police and government agencies despite warnings about human rights abuses. IBM partnered with Chinese defense contractor Huadi in 2009 to develop predictive policing systems for the "Golden Shield" project, AP reports, citing classified government blueprints. The technology enabled mass detentions in Xinjiang, where administrators assigned 100-point risk scores to Uyghurs with deductions for growing beards or being aged 15-55. Dell promoted a laptop with "all-race recognition" capabilities on its WeChat account in 2019. Thermo Fisher Scientific marketed DNA kits as "designed" for ethnic minorities including Uyghurs and Tibetans until August 2024. Oracle, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Intel, NVIDIA, and VMware sold geographic mapping software, facial recognition systems, and cloud infrastructure to Chinese police through the 2010s. The surveillance network tracks "key persons" whose movements are restricted and monitored, with one estimate suggesting 55,000 to 110,000 people were placed under residential surveillance in the past decade. China now has more surveillance cameras than the rest of the world combined.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

msmash