3 charts for you today:
At the end of last year, many people might have expected the tech sector to be a top performing sector in 2021 — having gained literally trillions of dollars in market value in 2020.
But, so far, this year has been the year of the energy company, as rising oil prices, coal prices and gas prices have translated into rosier outlooks for US energy giants. Tech is up 18% this year. Energy is up more than 50%.
Big energy
After a year of living (and often working) digitally, the energy crises emerging in Europe, China, India and pretty much everywhere else are a good reminder of the real-world physical supply chains that underpin our economy that we often take for granted.
Some people are hoping that the shortages act as a catalyst for greener, more reliable, energy sources. Maybe that glass-half-full view will turn out to be true, but in the short term, energy crises aren't great. They often hit the poorest the hardest, and with the price of coal literally going up 500%, it's hard to make a coherent argument why anyone would mine less coal now than they did a year ago.
Thousands and thousands of philanthropic donations — mostly from wealthy alumni — have turned Harvard university's endowment fund into a truly enormous investment vehicle, which this week passed $50bn in value for the first time ever.
The majority of the $11bn+ gain in the endowment's value was down to a 34% return on the fund's investments, helped along by the bull market in public equities, private equities, real estate values... and pretty much everything else you could feasibly invest in.
The crimson economy
Every year Harvard taps the endowment to help pay for the university's operating expenses, usually around 5% of the fund's value in the previous year.
In the most recent year that translated into a check for about $2bn, which is almost 40% of Harvard’s annual operating expenses — or equivalent to completely paying for Harvard's biggest expense — salaries and wages.
Although its endowment fund is the biggest, Harvard isn't the only university with a huge pile of cash. All the universities you might suspect — like Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT and others — have multi-billion-dollar endowments, as do other elite universities around the world.
For those institutions they've found themselves in a virtuous circle: offer an elite education or brand > produce / attract wealthy alumni who donate > offer an even more elite education. For poorer institutions, it's a lot harder to compete if most of your income is just from students. Harvard's share of its income from students? Just 17%.
An interesting analysis of census data from Pew Research Center reveals the changing makeup of American households.
The decline in marriage rates across the US — and many other countries — has been well documented. In 1990, 67% of the US population aged 25-54 were living with their spouse. Today that number is 53%.
But what's interesting is that, although there are more people living with partners than before, they don't explain the total drop in the married population. Indeed, the number of "unpartnered" adults — those not married nor living with a partner — has gone up, to almost 40% of the population of the 25-54 demographic.
1) Microsoft is going to pull LinkedIn from China, where the company has more than 50 million users, as internet regulations and operating restrictions continue to tighten.
2) Scientists have broken the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in a lab, equivalent to -273.15°C.
3) Banksy's self destructing painting has sold for over $25m, roughly 18x what it sold for the first time round - before it was half-shredded.
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5) Goldman Sachs is the latest investment bank to report a huge rise in earnings, with revenue jumping 26%.
6)HTC has been caught Photoshopping its new VR headset onto a stock image of a woman sitting on a sofa eating popcorn, instead of just taking a photo of someone wearing it.
7) Mentions of the phrase "supply chain" on company earnings calls are spiking.
**This is a sponsored snack.
