Hope you all had a fantastic weekend and an amazing holiday. I’m finally writing to you from our new place. I will try to post pictures on Instagram if I ever remember my password, or maybe TikTok … whatever the kids are using these days.
I may never get around to installing the latter, as it seems the U.S. is now considering banning the video-oriented Chinese social media app. According to the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, this is due to Chinese spying on American Citizens who’ve downloaded the app.
It’s not like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter are any better. I’m pretty sure that many apps that we use on a daily basis are infected with malware.
At the same time, we must all be wary of censorship issues. Google’s subsidiary is increasingly removing videos that don’t conform to their worldview, including a lot of crypto content, and we think that’s an issue worth standing for.
Brrrrrrrr.
The age of the brrrrrr is firmly upon us, and we can see it manifesting in the clear inflation of financial assets, especially big tech. All the FAANGM stocks are doing great right now and are clearly detached from the reality of the global pandemic.
One could say that the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, and Microsoft are not negatively affected by the virus, but then you might have trouble explaining why the share prices have all experienced double-digit gains since the start of the year.
I mean, has coronavirus actually improved the outlook for these companies? Or, did their value otherwise grow by that much during this time?
If you think that’s a bit funky, check out Tesla. The stock is up more than 500% in the last year. I don’t think anyone really disputes that this valuation is completely unrealistic. They’d basically need to become the world’s largest car market within the next few years in order to make it a worthwhile investment.
The virus continues to spread, as the number of confirmed cases keeps rising. Different locations are handling it in different ways though. In Melbourne, Australia, a new citywide lockdown has gone into effect for at least another six weeks.
