This Excel trick helps you find exactly what you're looking for in a heap of data | ||
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Conditional formatting in Excel allows you to format cells based on a set of rules. This will draw attention to the data you want to highlight and make your spreadsheets more user friendly. Produced by Sara Silverstein Follow BI Video: On Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Tech investors have started saying there is no bubble because 'it's different this time' — which is one of the key indicators that there *is* a bubble | ||
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Benedict Evans, the respected tech analyst at the big Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, just published a fascinating dissection of the current state of tech investing which concludes that tech is not in a bubble because "it's different this time." Basically, Evans says, while some measures of tech investing clearly show a boom, a whole bunch of important indicators are nowhere near their 1999 dot com bubble peaks. You can read his slideshow here. The in-joke in Evans' presentation is that one of the most infamous anecdotal indicators that you're in a bubble is when people start rationalising the bubble by saying "it's different this time" or "this time it's different." Evans isn't literally saying "it's different this time." Rather, as his deck says, "it's always different!" Nonetheless, for those of us on tech bubble watch, you can argue that Evan's presentation provides as much evidence for the bubble as it does against. I have three issues with the deck:
First, as a note from Credit Suisse said last week, one of the signs of a bubble is when serious people start arguing that there has been some sort of paradigm shift that makes it different this time. The Barron's contra-indicator is flashing the same way, too. At a facile level, that is literally what Evans' presentation says: Tech IPOs are at a much smaller level than they were in the 1999 bubble because companies are staying private, taking longer, later rounds of investment, and the returns on those investments are staying private, too. (Uber is the ur-example of this — it has a $41 billion valuation after taking 10 rounds of investment totalling $5.9 billion.) This is the new funding paradigm for tech startups, although Evans does not use that term. To be clear, this is not Evans' argument. It is my interpretation of his argument, and I suspect he will disagree with the way I have restated it. But still, a cynic can now say that we have a noted analyst in the field saying there is no bubble because the economics of tech are in a new paradigm and "this time it's different." Those are mere optics, but not they're not good optics. The interest rate question is much more serious. Central banks currently have interest rates set at zero percent. That means any investment that returns more than zero looks good right now. For investors, cash in the bank at 0% interest has been a waste of money. So money has poured into tech startups via venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. Any startup that can return greater than zero looks valuable in this environment. When the US Federal reserve, the ECB and the Bank of England raise those rates, all the marginal business ideas that return just a few percent in profits will be wiped off the map — because no one will fund them. That big incoming tidal wave of tech investment money, which started in 2002, may suddenly disappear. It looks like this, according to PwC:
After all, why take risks in tech if the bank suddenly starts paying interest on cash, and governments and corporations start offering even more interest on bonds as a result? The corollary of this is what happens to tech valuations if the funding environment moderates downward. This is what Evans says the funding environment looks like now:
Clearly, a funding peak was reached in 2014 that was bigger than the 2000 dot com crash. But, Evans argues, that money has simply shifted from IPOs to private equity investments:
Again, note the 2014 peak is bigger than the one before the 2000 crash. The thing with private equity is that it is difficult to sell. You can't just call up a broker like Fidelity or Hargreaves Lansdown and yell "sell!" down the phone. You have to know someone else who wants to buy it from you in a private transaction. It involves lawyers. It is usually easier to sell a house than to sell private equity privately. So that big wave of money, that big runup since 2000, has gone into a largely illiquid set of investments. As the world found out in 2007, when mortgage-backed securities suddenly became illiquid because no one wanted to buy them, that is a pretty good way to structure a market so that it will be more likely to crash. And that's why I worry that the insiders who think tech is in a bubble are actually the ones who are right. One final note. Just to give Evans the proper level of credit — and to demonstrate that his analysis isn't unreasonable — here is that PwC data on tech funding deals with a longer timeframe than the one I showed above. You can see that, in fact, we aren't yet at the height we reached in 2000. But we're getting there ...
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 cool tricks your iPhone can do with the latest iOS update  | ||
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THE PEER-TO-PEER PAYMENTS EXPLAINER: Why tech companies and banks are offering a service that doesn’t make money | ||
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A lot of money gets passed around informally every day — when we pay someone back for dinner, pay a babysitter, or pay a roommate for rent. Now a bunch of different tech companies and banks are offering apps that can make this process easier and all but eliminate the need for cash and checks. The problem: there's no money to be made from facilitating these transactions. So why are so many businesses clamoring to get into this space? The answer is different depending on the company — for banks it's critical to keep up with consumers' account needs while for social messaging apps it's a broader play for the e-commerce market. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we explore the market for P2P payments, how they work, and the types of businesses that are offering these services and why. Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Trial Membership Today >> Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
In full, the report:
To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a 14-day trial here. Members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts and datasets, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 cool tricks your iPhone can do with the latest iOS update  | ||
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Egyptian shroud set for rare auction in Paris | ||
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Paris (AFP) - A rare ancient Egyptian burial cloth more than 3,000 years old is to go under the hammer on Thursday in Paris, an exceptional sale of an artefact usually found only in museum collections. The small square of vividly painted fabric is among roughly 20 known to exist in the world, the majority of which are on display at museums like the Louvre and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to Piasa, the auction house hosting the sale, it is difficult to set a price estimate, given the unique nature of the item. The 29-by-21 centimetre (11-by-8 inch) shroud, which would have been placed on the deceased's sarcophagus, bears the likeness of a man named "Ta-nedjem" or "Gentle Land", who died some 3,400 years ago and who is unknown to researchers. Its path to the auction block is remarkable, passing through the hands of an American billionaire, his unhappy wife and finally his mistress. The final step toward auction came when Piasa's director Henri-Pierre Teissedre found the cloth while doing an inventory of the home of respected French writer and publisher Jeanne Loviton, who died in 1996 after leading a life that could have been torn from a novel. The shroud is made from the same type of cloth used to produce the bandages that wrap mummies and dates from the New Empire, between 1,400-1,300 B.C., a period experts consider a high point of Egyptian civilisation. "Ta-nedjem" is shown in profile, sitting on a black chair with curved back and animal legs. His clothes and ornaments, like the richness of the furniture, show he was a man of status. In the background are two columns of hieroglyphics reading: "Offering of all things good and pure for the Ka (vitality) of Ta-nedjem of just voice." This cloth "carries numerous similarities with the one on display at the Louvre, same painter but a different scribe," said art expert Christophe Kunicki.
- Gift to his mistress -
While the shroud itself has experts excited, the fact it was discovered at the home of Loviton has raised a few eyebrows in France as well. She was the mistress to some famous men, including poet and philosopher Paul Valery as well as American billionaire Arthur Sachs. Loviton was also renowned for work in French literature, including being the publisher of the writing of Louis-Ferdinand Celine who is best known for his novel "Journey to the End of the Night." The shroud was a gift to Loviton from Sachs, part of the Goldman Sachs financial dynasty. He initially bought the shroud in 1927 as a gift for his wife and she kept it in their bathroom, but she grew tired of it and returned it to her husband. He in turn gave it to his mistress, Loviton, who still had it in her home when she died. The chain ownership prior to Sachs includes an antique dealer named Lucien Lepine who bought the cloth in Egypt and later sold it to a Parisian antique dealer. How the ancient work of art came to be on the market is a mystery lost to the passage of time. Still, experts believe there is little doubt as to the shroud's authenticity. "This would have to be the work of an extremely talented forger and great Egyptologist, who would have had to use special pigments. That seems impossible," said Annie Gasse, an expert with France's National Centre for Scientific Research. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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What are traders chatting about this morning? Greece sending stocks lower ... (DIA, SPX, SPY, QQQ, TLT, IWM) | ||
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Via Dave Lutz at JonesTrading, here's what traders are talking about before the market open on Tuesday. Good Morning! Global Futures are under pressure, thanks to the Greek Circus (Top 6 stories on Bloomberg all Greece this AM – nothing new, but rhetoric from both sides is growing increasingly acrimonious). While the S&P is off 30bp, it continues to outperform its German counterpart, as the DAX drops 1% to 4M+ lows, led by a retreat in Materials and Banks. Volumes are slightly higher than normal, with Euro-Stoxx trading 130% normal. Athens is off 3.5% and resting on Lows, as Banks continue to get destroyed - Athens has lost 13% in 3 sessions. A sea of red over in Asia, as China was under pressure early on IPO concerns ($1B in deals this week?) – However headlines that the HK-Shenzen Connect Start Date Announcement was delayed caused heavy selling in the afternoon session. Nikkei 225 declined 0.6%, while in Australia the S&P/ASX 200 eased 0.1% – while the KOSPI lost over 1% as MERS concerns continue The Greek prime minister overnight has publicly insisted that he will not be presenting any new compromise proposals at the Thursday meeting – so we have a sharp bid in Bunds and Treasuries, albeit yields are off their lowest from the overnight. The US 10YY bounced off 2.31%, yesterday’s lows, while the US 30YY nears a 3% test. Greek Debt is getting whacked, with their 10YY out 70bp to Bunds – and the growing prospect of a Grexit intensified the selling of government debt from peripheral nations. The DXY is higher, making gains against Yen and Euro (there was a Sharp drop in German Confidence) –causing a headwind for commodities. All the metals are red, including Gold despite a sharp pickup in Indian Imports. The Crude complex is slightly higher ahead of US inventory data tonight, while a big is developing in all the softs. We get Housing Starts and Permits for May at 8:30am. Only thing scheduled until 4:30 API data. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women  | ||
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This Excel trick helps you find exactly what you're looking for in a heap of data | ||
| | ||
Conditional formatting in Excel allows you to format cells based on a set of rules. This will draw attention to the data you want to highlight and make your spreadsheets more user friendly. Produced by Sara Silverstein Follow BI Video: On Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 10 slowest economies in the world | ||
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Some countries bounced back relatively quickly after the global financial crisis, but others aren't doing so hot. "Worryingly, the stalled recovery in some high-income economies and even some middle-income countries may be a symptom of deeper structural malaise," Kaushik Basu, the World Bank's chief economist and senior vice president, wrote. "What is critical is for nations to use this window to usher in fiscal and structural reforms, which can boost long-run growth and inclusive development." We compiled a list of 10 countries with the slowest projected annual growth rate, or CAGR, from 2014 through 2017 based on the forecasts from the World Bank's Global Economic Prospects. 10. Yemen 2015 GDP: -2.80% 2016 GDP: +2.80% 2017 GDP: +3.40% 2014-17 GDP CAGR: +0.90% Economy: Yemen's energy-dependent economy was burned by 2014's oil crash, and the country is in the middle of a civil war. "Yemen continues to face difficult long-term challenges, including declining water resources, high unemployment, severe food scarcity, and a high population growth rate," according to the CIA Factbook. Source: World Bank, CIA World Factbook 9. Croatia 2015 GDP: +0.50% 2016 GDP: +1.20% 2017 GDP: +1.50% 2014-17 GDP CAGR: +0.70% Economy: Croatia is one of the better off former Yugoslav republics, but its economy never fully recovered after 2008. GDP slipped by an estimated 0.4% in 2014, and the country is plagued by "stubbornly high" unemployment rate, uneven regional development, and continued reduced foreign investment. Source: World Bank, CIA World Factbook 8. Brazil 2015 GDP: -1.30% 2016 GDP: +1.10% 2017 GDP: +2.00% 2014-17 GDP CAGR: +0.47% Economy: Brazil's government attempted to pump up economic growth through targeted tax cuts for industry and incentives to fire up household consumption over the past few years. But the country's fiscal and current account balances have disintegrated. On top of that, the 2014 World Cup was a huge strain on the economy. Source: World Bank, CIA World Factbook See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Chris Christie's local newspaper says he'll start World War III if he's president | ||
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Here's something you don't want to see if you're Gov. Chris Christie. The editorial board of New Jersey's most important and largest newspaper, The Star Ledger, is questioning whether Christie will cause World War III if he's elected president. Here's a sample of the editorial: Gov Chris Christie says that if he were president, he'd be blunt with Russia and Iran. He told this to a room of more than 150 Iowa Republicans last Thursday. If he decides to run, and wins, he said, the "bluntness and directness, and straightforwardness" he's known for would steer foreign relations. This is a scary picture. Can't you just hear him telling Vladimir Putin to "sit down and shut up"? Calling the Ayatollah "numb nuts?" The idea that all America really needs is a Jersey guy who tells it like it is — or, some might say, a chest pounder — could very well put us on the brink of nuclear war. Christie is currently New Jersey's governor, so this is pretty rough coming from the home crowd. While other Republicans are formally announcing their entry into the presidential race on a daily basis, Christie hasn't formally announced anything yet. He's said he'll make a decision about running for president sometime in June. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 11 mindblowing facts about North Korea  | ||
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10 things you need to know before the opening bell | ||
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Here's what you need to know. Capital controls might be coming to Greece. Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reports that European governments will push for capital controls to prevent money from leaving Greek banks if a deal is not agreed to this week. The capital controls would limit the amount of cash that could be taken out of ATMs, as well as abroad, and be similar to those imposed on Cyprus in 2013. Greece's two-year yield is higher by 76 basis points at 29.67%, a fresh cycle high. The EU's top court defended Mario Draghi's 2012 bond-buying plan. The EU Court of Justice ruled ECB head Mario Draghi's 2012 Outright Monetary Transactions program didn't reach beyond the central bank's authority. The program was part of Draghi's pledge to do "whatever it takes to preserve the euro." According to the court, the program was announced during a "special situation" and "is intended to rectify the disruption of the European System of Central Banks' monetary policy, which arose as a result of the particular situation of government bonds issued by certain" countries. Germany's ZEW survey disappointed. Economic sentiment in Germany slumped to its lowest level since November as the strong euro and worries over the Greek debt drama weighed. Tuesday's reading of 31.5 marked a sharp decline from May's 41.9 and was well below the 37.1 that economists were forecasting. The euro is lower by 0.3% at 1.1249. The UK exited deflation. Consumer prices ticked up 0.1% in May, matching the consensus estimate. Core inflation quickened to up 0.9% from up 0.8% the prior month, but it missed the 1.0% print that was anticipated. The British pound is down 0.1% at 1.5580. Belgium is going after Facebook on privacy. Belgium's state privacy watchdog is suing Facebook over its tracking practices, and EU states approved a draft that would allow national governments to have authority over such matters. The Wall Street Journal suggests, "At issue for the Belgian regulator is how Facebook tracks internet users on external websites through the use of 'like' and 'share' buttons, raking in data that could be used for targeted advertising, for instance." Gap is closing stores and laying off workers. The retailer announced plans to close 140 stores and lay off 250 corporate workers during this fiscal year. Over the "next several years," the number of stores closed is expected to climb to 175. "Customers are rapidly changing how they shop today, and these moves will help get Gap back to where we know it deserves to be in the eyes of consumers," CEO Art Peck said. European auto sales grew at the slowest pace in 6 months. Sales rose 1.4% in May to 1.15 million. According to Bloomberg, "Concerns about unemployment and the Greek sovereign debt crisis held back demand at Volkswagen AG and Renault SA." Deep discounting across the industry helped provide support. Honda is recalling a ton of cars. The automaker is recalling 1.39 million Accords and Civics because of faulty front-passenger-side Takata air bags. The announcement does not increase the total number of recalls from 6.3 million, because the vehicles had already been recalled to replace their driver-side air bags. Reuters reports, "Honda said its dealers have been replacing air-bag inflators at a rate of 50,000 per week and that the pace of air-bag inflators replaced will accelerate." Stock markets fell around the world. China's Shanghai Composite (-3.5%) saw heavy selling to pace the decline in Asia, and Spain's IBEX (-1.5%) leads the way lower in Europe. S&P 500 futures are down 9.75 points at 2065.75. US economic data flows. Housing starts and building permits are due out at 8:30 a.m. ET. The US 10-year yield is lower by 4 basis points at 2.32%. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 scientifically proven features men find attractive in women  | ||
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Tech investors have started saying there is no bubble because 'it's different this time' — which is one of the key indicators that there *is* a bubble | ||
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Benedict Evans, the respected tech analyst at the big Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, just published a fascinating dissection of the current state of tech investing which concludes that tech is not in a bubble because "it's different this time." Basically, Evans says, while some measures of tech investing clearly show a boom, a whole bunch of important indicators are nowhere near their 1999 dot com bubble peaks. You can read his slideshow here. The in-joke in Evans' presentation is that one of the most infamous anecdotal indicators that you're in a bubble is when people start rationalising the bubble by saying "it's different this time" or "this time it's different." Evans isn't literally saying "it's different this time." Rather, as his deck says, "it's always different!" Nonetheless, for those of us on tech bubble watch, you can argue that Evan's presentation provides as much evidence for the bubble as it does against. I have three issues with the deck:
First, as a note from Credit Suisse said last week, one of the signs of a bubble is when serious people start arguing that there has been some sort of paradigm shift that makes it different this time. The Barron's contra-indicator is flashing the same way, too. At a facile level, that is literally what Evans' presentation says: Tech IPOs are at a much smaller level than they were in the 1999 bubble because companies are staying private, taking longer, later rounds of investment, and the returns on those investments are staying private, too. (Uber is the ur-example of this — it has a $41 billion valuation after taking 10 rounds of investment totalling $5.9 billion.) This is the new funding paradigm for tech startups, although Evans does not use that term. To be clear, this is not Evans' argument. It is my interpretation of his argument, and I suspect he will disagree with the way I have restated it. But still, a cynic can now say that we have a noted analyst in the field saying there is no bubble because the economics of tech are in a new paradigm and "this time it's different." Those are mere optics, but not they're not good optics. The interest rate question is much more serious. Central banks currently have interest rates set at zero percent. That means any investment that returns more than zero looks good right now. For investors, cash in the bank at 0% interest has been a waste of money. So money has poured into tech startups via venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. Any startup that can return greater than zero looks valuable in this environment. When the US Federal reserve, the ECB and the Bank of England raise those rates, all the marginal business ideas that return just a few percent in profits will be wiped off the map — because no one will fund them. That big incoming tidal wave of tech investment money, which started in 2002, may suddenly disappear. It looks like this, according to PwC:
After all, why take risks in tech if the bank suddenly starts paying interest on cash, and governments and corporations start offering even more interest on bonds as a result? The corollary of this is what happens to tech valuations if the funding environment moderates downward. This is what Evans says the funding environment looks like now:
Clearly, a funding peak was reached in 2014 that was bigger than the 2000 dot com crash. But, Evans argues, that money has simply shifted from IPOs to private equity investments:
Again, note the 2014 peak is bigger than the one before the 2000 crash. The thing with private equity is that it is difficult to sell. You can't just call up a broker like Fidelity or Hargreaves Lansdown and yell "sell!" down the phone. You have to know someone else who wants to buy it from you in a private transaction. It involves lawyers. It is usually easier to sell a house than to sell private equity privately. So that big wave of money, that big runup since 2000, has gone into a largely illiquid set of investments. As the world found out in 2007, when mortgage-backed securities suddenly became illiquid because no one wanted to buy them, that is a pretty good way to structure a market so that it will be more likely to crash. And that's why I worry that the insiders who think tech is in a bubble are actually the ones who are right. One final note. Just to give Evans the proper level of credit — and to demonstrate that his analysis isn't unreasonable — here is that PwC data on tech funding deals with a longer timeframe than the one I showed above. You can see that, in fact, we aren't yet at the height we reached in 2000. But we're getting there ...
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 cool tricks your iPhone can do with the latest iOS update  | ||
| |
THE PEER-TO-PEER PAYMENTS EXPLAINER: Why tech companies and banks are offering a service that doesn’t make money | ||
| | ||
A lot of money gets passed around informally every day — when we pay someone back for dinner, pay a babysitter, or pay a roommate for rent. Now a bunch of different tech companies and banks are offering apps that can make this process easier and all but eliminate the need for cash and checks. The problem: there's no money to be made from facilitating these transactions. So why are so many businesses clamoring to get into this space? The answer is different depending on the company — for banks it's critical to keep up with consumers' account needs while for social messaging apps it's a broader play for the e-commerce market. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we explore the market for P2P payments, how they work, and the types of businesses that are offering these services and why. Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Trial Membership Today >> Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
In full, the report:
To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a 14-day trial here. Members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts and datasets, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 cool tricks your iPhone can do with the latest iOS update  | ||
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