imnotaquant

[Aptos @Aptos]

Aptos DeFi was front & center this week ⭐

ICYMI, the latest Aptos Mega Issue from @ournetwork__ spotlights growth and innovations from the teams at @ThalaLabs, @EchoProtocol_, @KanaLabs, @AmnisFinance, and @emojicoindotfun.

That and everything else you missed in Aptos DeFi 👇

[Yellowbrick Investing @joinyellowbrick]

I collected 743 stock pitches that were posted on X this year.

Here are the 22 best-performing:

[Scott Phillips, O.G. @ScottPh77711570]

Sensible crypto strategies for the stonk guys

High level: Crypto is riskier than stocks and the markets are less efficient

The implications of this are:

Any "risk premia" harvesting will harvest more risk on crypto

Any price inefficiencies are likely to be less competitive

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[Fiscal.ai @Fiscal_ai]

If you're running low on new investment ideas, here's a list to fish from.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Learn With Me

I’m often asked how I quickly synthesize information and form opinions. The value, to me, of doing this can be summarized as follows:

- Be more informed about technology, markets and the economy.
- Improve my situational awareness about trends and competitors.
- Have a clearer picture of how a company or sector is doing over another.
- Make better decisions.

I’ve now systematized this into a product that I can share with you, to the extent you are interested.

Read below for more details…

The world is complex and moves at a rapid pace. One day, climate change is all the news; the next day, it's how AI is on the verge of upending everything we know about everything; then we need to become experts in superconductors because some meaningful breakthrough may be at hand.

Meanwhile, the geopolitical chaos in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia seems to be omnipresent and is constantly challenging the existing world order. Finally, we want to know what all of this means for the economy and the companies we work at or are invested in.

It’s hard to make sense of all of this, especially as the incentives of the mainstream media have become increasingly difficult to understand. So how do I form opinions? How do I learn complex topics quickly, usefully, and then fold that into a usable framework?

I start with consuming content. Everything from news articles to social media to scientific papers to institutional research to YouTube videos.

Most topics I skim and move onwards from, but for certain topics, where it makes sense, I write a quick 1-2 page essay because I feel it may be important. I do this so I can develop a quick point of view and understand the nuances a little bit better.

When something seems super interesting, I select it for a dive deep with my team, where we allocate at least a month or two to thoroughly understand the key drivers and opportunities, and produce a presentation that captures everything we’ve learned.

We then take our work and review it with a set of smart people and key opinion leaders to challenge and refine our views. Historically, these work products have been very educational to me. I suspect they could be educational to others as well.

So, to this point, I have decided to share more of the work that we do at Social Capital so that if you want to, you can learn along with us.

Here’s the plan:

1. I’ll keep posting my daily thoughts and observations on X.

2. I’ll continue to share a summary of the best content that I consumed in the previous week through my weekly newsletter ‘What I Read This Week’.

3. I’ll publish 1-2 quick essays per month on X and on my weekly newsletter ‘What I Read This Week’.

4. Once per month, I’ll host a Spaces to talk about the content we’ve produced, thoughts on the “current thing”, talk to guests and include time for Q&A. This will be the key feature of my Subscription on X. You can subscribe to me on X, and my first Spaces will be in November.

5. Once per month, I will publish a deep dive. This will be a comprehensive slide deck on a topic with an accompanying write-up.

My Deep Dives:

I've structured my deep dives around five primary themes I believe are useful for understanding the world today. These themes will change over time, but it’s important to have a starting point.

1. Deep Tech: I think about “deep tech” as applying science to take things that are scarce and make them abundant, overcoming major scientific and engineering challenges. Such progress often results in significant leaps forward in our capabilities and lays the groundwork for new businesses. It's vital to track these developments to see the potential world in the next decade.

2. Energy Transition: The global energy transition will reallocate trillions in capital expenditure, reorganize U.S. industry, replumb global supply chains, and more. To understand the trajectory of the world and make informed decisions about where to invest your time and efforts, a grasp on energy transition is critical.

3. Healthcare & Life Sciences: Healthcare spending constitutes ~20% of U.S. GDP and shapes the primary demographic shifts influencing economic progress. For example, global GDP diminishes by ~15% due to premature deaths in the working-age population. With new technologies like MRNA and CRISPR, new drugs like GLP1s, and the challenges posed by aging, overweight or sick populations, understanding healthcare and life sciences is as important as it’s ever been.

4. Economic Analysis: In 2021, we saw nearly every business model receive funding. In 2023, capital markets have been much more constrained, and many companies are struggling. Understanding how and why companies receive funding and why certain businesses are valued more than others is important for understanding how technology can be implemented in an economically productive way.

5. Socio-Political Trends: This is the overlay that ties everything together, from the demographic trends that drive consumption habits, to political trends that can act as a headwind or tailwind to economic growth.

I’ll be publishing our first deep dive on December 1st for free, starting with a teardown of the global energy transition. The full content calendar for the next year is outlined below, however, subscribers will be able to comment on what they want to be covered in future months. I’ll make sure to announce next month’s topic in advance so you know exactly what’s coming up.

You should expect beautifully formatted, easy to understand presentations that assume no prior knowledge, with accompanying write-ups that will get you up to speed quickly on each of these topics.

If you are interested, subscribe to my Substack (link in bio) where I will be enabling paid subscriptions in the coming month.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed above are current as of the date of this document and are subject to change without notice. Materials referenced above will be provided for educational purposes only. None of the above will include investment advice, a recommendation or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or investment products.

[Freda Duan @FredaDuan]

China's Robotaxi Status Check (vs. the West)

Consumers globally want cheaper, safer transportation. It's notable that $Waymo and $BIDU have achieved utilization rates that rival traditional ride-hailing services.

Traditional ride-hailing faces disruption - $BIDU is targeting 30% of the taxi and ride-hailing market by 2030.

Self-driving is a massive market with room for multiple winners. $TSLA, as a "catfish," will accelerate global adoption.

▶️BOM Will Drop Significantly

I was shocked to see $BIDU's RT6 costing only US$28k (RMB 200k, incl. lidars!!), 50-60% cheaper than RT5.

Lidar prices fell 90%+ in 4 years to ~US$500/unit. Even with 7 units (in the case of https://t.co/EHRrVhyF3K), the lidar BOM is only US$3000.

$Waymo's Hyundai partnership should also bring significant BOM reductions.

▶️Pricing Will Be Cheaper than Ride-Hailing

Self-driving rides can be 20-40% cheaper than traditional ride-hailing, easily.

$BIDU offers 50-70% lower pricing today (vs. $DIDI) to acquire customers and targets breakeven by FY25, even with a 40% discount.

$Waymo currently prices at parity with $Uber/$Lyft but could cut prices 20-40% while staying profitable as it scales.

▶️Fleet Ramp-Up Will Be Faster Than Expected

$Waymo and $BIDU both operate ~1,000 cars today; $BIDU and $Pony.ai target 40k (!) by 2030.

$Waymo's Hyundai partnership should accelerate its fleet growth.

All L4 companies are targeting major cities only; If $BIDU can already be on highway, there is no reason $Waymo can't do that.

▶️Unit Economics

Breakeven (in select cities) seems to be the first target for all players.

$Waymo is likely at/near breakeven in SF; $BIDU guides for FY25 breakeven.

$BIDU needs ~3,000-5,000 cars per city to achieve breakeven.

▶️Safety Drivers: A Gray Area with a Lot of "Dark Secrets"

There is speculation that some robotaxis are entirely driven remotely via teleoperation by safety drivers. I think the reality likely lies somewhere in the middle - safety drivers definitely still play a role in operations.

Driver-to-car ratios: $BIDU: 2-3; https://t.co/EHRrVhyF3K: ~5; $Waymo: Likely ~5
Long-term, this ratio must improve significantly for viable unit economics.

▶️Operations: A Long-Term Pain Point No One Wants Responsibility For

Globally, L4 companies all seem keen to offload operational responsibilities long-term - "asset light" is the ultimate dream.

▶️Charging vs. Battery Swaps

$BIDU's RT6 uses battery swaps, which I find to be interesting - this should reduce labor intensity for charging.

▶️Burn Rates: Chinese are Pretty Cost Effective
$BIDU burns ~US$700M p.a. on self-driving (sell-side estimates).

Comparatively, $Waymo ( $Google "Other Bets") burns a few $B (?), and Cruise burns $2B/year ($7-8B cumulative).

▶️Regulatory Challenges: Painful Everywhere

China’s approval process is also fragmented, with city/town-level approvals and no clear federal playbook.

Federal/country-level approval would be a game changer for scalability.

h/t Goldman Sachs analysis on $BIDU robotaxi's UE:

[Arena.ai @arena]

Exciting News from Chatbot Arena!

@GoogleDeepMind's new Gemini 1.5 Pro (Experimental 0801) has been tested in Arena for the past week, gathering over 12K community votes.

For the first time, Google Gemini has claimed the #1 spot, surpassing GPT-4o/Claude-3.5 with an impressive score of 1300 (!), and also achieving #1 on our Vision Leaderboard.

Gemini 1.5 Pro (0801) excels in multi-lingual tasks and delivers robust performance in technical areas like Math, Hard Prompts, and Coding.

Huge congrats to @GoogleDeepMind on this remarkable milestone!

Gemini (0801) Category Rankings:
- Overall: #1
- Math: #1-3
- Instruction-Following: #1-2
- Coding: #3-5
- Hard Prompts (English): #2-5

Come try the model and let us know your feedback!
More analysis below👇

[Bojan Tunguz @tunguz]

I think about this a lot.

[Garrison Lovely @GarrisonLovely]

🚨I’m in the New York Times!!🚨

AI is weird. Many of the people who pioneered the tech, along with the leaders of all the top AI companies, say that it could threaten human extinction. In spite of this, it’s barely regulated in the US.

Whistleblower protections typically 🧵

[Tung Ngo @tungngonyt]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Vietnamese Prime Minister enjoyed Hanoi street food, chicken feet, fermented pork rolls, tofu with scallions, and beer following their announcement of partnership. Photo credit: VnE/Giang Huy - Luu Quy

[NilssonHedge @nilssonhedge]

Wrapping up 2023:
An exceptional feature of Global Investment Report's annual survey of the Top 50 hedge funds is that it tracks the subsequent performance of the latest featured funds while discussing evolving macro and industry trends.
https://t.co/uf93mYh2sW

[sysls @systematicls]

Some thoughts on what it means to compete against a being that is bigger, has more resources and can infinitely attrite you.

--
Be Aggressive
Incumbents have more experience, more resources, and perhaps most advantageously, more time. In games of attrition, all else being equal, the party with more resources will inevitably prevail. It means the onus is on the disruptors to drive action, so that it becomes a game of innovation, rather than a game of attrition - it is on the disruptor to be aggressive, or the incumbent wins by default.

Dare Greatly
Disruptors will need to be bold and dare greatly, to recognize their competition's overwhelming might, and still have the optimism and belief that they can earn a seat at the table and compete. Disruptors have little space for pessimism because it will kill their will to fight, and without the will to fight, all is lost.

Focus Singularly, Iterate Quickly
All the features that allow incumbents to function, processes, redundancies and failsafes - are bugs to the disruptors. Disruptors need to strip themselves to the essentials and focus all of their efforts onto a singular focus, and iterate quickly if that focus proves to be wrong.

Break The Stick
Don't try to beat incumbents at their own game. As Peter Thiel succinctly puts it, "competition is for losers". It's well worth it to figure out how to frame the problem into a game they don't quite understand, or to look for territory that is uncharted - it will prove to be grounds that are easier to defend.

[qm @quantymacro]

self studying, reading hard papers, going through unfamiliar equations/concepts, are all skills. they’re absolutely trainable. and just like other skills, they’ll go away if you don’t use them

not getting frustrated when you dont grasp something for the Nth time is a superpower

[Gappy (Giuseppe Paleologo) @__paleologo]

There is a new version of "The Element of Quantitative Investing" at https://t.co/QONPL5hq2Q (first bookmark). A few typos were fixed, but mostly, I added three sections:

- Adding, Estimating, and Trading a New Factor
- Factor Portfolios from Sorts
- Trading in Idio Space [changed]

The results in these sections are neat:
1. how do you include an extra factor?
2. how does the covariance matrix change
3. And the optimal portfolio?
4. And why not portfolio from sorts?

Enjoy, and send comments.

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Fascinating business model

[Gappy (Giuseppe Paleologo) @__paleologo]

I don't remember if I posted it already, but here are the slides of the talk I gave at MSCI a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully short.

I enjoyed the visit. MSCI/Barra is to Factor Modeling what the Sumerians were to writing. And they keep doing research.

https://t.co/Cvf6715Sg5

[Cameron Hight @CameronHight]

In 2023, optimal continued to outperform the average client, with the average client up +13.1% versus +17.8% for the average optimal portfolio. 

Read more in our 2023 Year in Review: https://t.co/MDgxi9pb6A

#pricetargets #portfoliomanagement

[Investing by the Books Podcast @IB_Redeye]

Summer giveaway!

We are giving away 3(!) signed copies of ‘Quality First Investing’, the latest edition of our CEO’s great book, along with three branded gym bags. To participate:

📚Like & Retweet
📚Follow us (so we can contact you)

The winners will be announced on June 28

[Hidden Value Gems @HiddenValueGems]

An insightful piece by @mjmauboussin on Market Concentration.

"Many investors have a sense that concentration is too high because it has risen sharply from a much lower level. But perhaps we should ask whether concentration was too low before."

Key points 🧵👇🏽

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[Niklas Sävås @NiklasSavas]

All Swedish serial acquirers have now reported their first quarter results and we are out with our latest update on the sector. As always a joy to compile it with my colleague Christian. https://t.co/aF5tglbnbg