No new laws = good news

Friday, September 22, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Why the markets are going up despite Trump inability to pass new legislation?

However, the markets have grown deaf to the Trump noise and Tweetstorms and have focused on the comfort that, even if these initiatives are unsuccessful, regulations will not get worse… a sentiment which has provided some semblance of stability.

John Sharko & Frank Zmuda, CCI Tech 


I agree totally with this quote, if government in my country said that there would be no more new laws we would live with the ones we already have (thousands) we would have a massive rally and a pick up in investment. 

Companies don't invest because everybody is afraid of the idioticy of the politicians to try to manufacture happiness & equality.


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View from my Office

Thursday, September 21, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Sun is rising in Lisbon

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This is not normal

Thursday, September 21, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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From Quartz, 

 The UK’s national statistics office recently released the latest data on baby names in England and Wales. It says the following: “Oliver remains as the most popular first name given to baby boys in England and Wales in 2016.” But that’s not really true. In fact, the most common name by far is Muhammad.

When people start to have some money they want to give an education and the costs of education are huge. so people have very few kids. This is a trend difficult to fight because the gap between highly education vs unskilled work is big, however if we compute the costs of education and the marginal taxes the high incomes pay and the years not making any money i suspect the unskilled worker takes more money home in their earning career.

i don't know what is the better track?

make little money every year, pay little taxes and start earning when you are 20

vs

Big money gross+huge taxes+few years making money (start making money on the 30's)+invest 500,000 gaining an education
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Tech Stocks as Career Obsolescence Insurance

Tuesday, September 19, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Tech Stocks as Career Obsolescence Insurance

Joshua M. Brown

When US workers plow their retirement savings into the S&P 500, and in doing so they end up allocating more and more into the very technology companies that are rapidly displacing their jobs, perhaps they are doing something more than just investing.
Perhaps they are buying insurance.

This is a smart insurance, i am doing exactly this! I would short Insurance if it was easy, because people will live longer and longer and the number of accidents with tech will be less & less.

 Besides this i am trying to use tech tools and data to improve my performance in my job.


Technology, productivity and globalization have been the driving forces during my business career. In business, if you don’t lead these changes, you get fired; in politics, if you don’t fight them, you can’t get elected.
Jeff Immelt, GE shareholder letter



Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy. 
Richard Stallman

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Some ideas for the week

Sunday, September 17, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
Agatha Christie

If you are in sales, what’s the difference between making $100,000 and making $25,000? The main difference is learning how to handle rejection so that this fear no longer stops you from taking action. The best salesmen are those who are rejected the most.


Anthony Robbins

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.
Winston Churchill

If you think good employees are expensive try bad employees!


Robots are decades away from displacing skillful human fingers willing to work for dollars a day. Robin Harding, FT


Technology, productivity and globalization have been the driving forces during my business career. In business, if you don’t lead these changes, you get fired; in politics, if you don’t fight them, you can’t get elected.
Jeff Immelt, GE shareholder letter

Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
Norman Vincent Peale 


Lastly don't forget we are in a bull market and in a Bull market you have to participate!
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If you have effective competitors, you are doing it wrong

Friday, September 15, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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From the FT, Robin Harding

 Mr Buffett is completely honest about his desire to reduce competition. He just calls it by a folksy name — “widening the moat”. “I don’t want a business that’s easy for competitors. I want a business with a moat around it with a very valuable castle in the middle,” he said in 2007.He tells Berkshire Hathaway managers to widen their moat every year. The Buffett definition of good management is therefore clear. If you have effective competitors, you are doing it wrong. 


Its obviously very difficult to make money if you have competitors. If you have competitors that want to make money perhaps it's possible but if you have competitors that want market share you are doomed.

Buy your competitors if you can't kill them!


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My oldest boy just got into the Portuguese MIT

Monday, September 11, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 1 Comments

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Difficult to get into IST (the Portuguese MIT) and even more difficult to get out in a decent amount of time! Good luck Manuel. I am proud of you.

These days kids study much more than i did on my time. Of course now i still read and study every day, to be up to date we need to learn something new every day. I think i study more and more each year. 

to study and then work is not the model anymore, now is study forever or don't study at all. Both are good ways to live.

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With UBER now you can go into a strangers car !

Wednesday, September 06, 2017 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The Atlantic, Marc De Swaan Arons

“There was a time, going back at least 70 years, when all it took to be successful in business was to make a product of good quality. If you offered good coffee, whiskey or beer, people would come to your shop and buy it. And as long as you made sure that your product quality was superior to the competition, you were pretty much set… The shift from simple products to brands has not been sudden or inevitable. You could argue that it grew out of the standardization of quality products for consumers in the middle of the 20th century, which required companies to find a new way to differentiate themselves from their competitors……….

These brands created value by lowering “search costs” for consumers. Search costs are the costs incurred by a prospective buyer in trying to determine what to buy. In the case of a consumer packaged good like canned food, toothpaste, or laundry detergent, the search cost for consumers is the cost of trying to determine the quality of the product and weighing this against price differentials prior to purchase. By eliminating this cost for the consumer, companies with a successful brand were able to charge more for their products, even while providing an improved cost/benefit offering to the consumer. The consumer could pay more for their products, because doing so reduced the search costs they were otherwise incurring…………………

But what if a new way of reducing search costs is developed? What happens to the value of these brands?
An alternate way to reduce search costs is for the distributor rather than the product manufacturer to play this role. The success of Costco is in large part built on the idea that any product sold in their stores is of high quality and is a good value. Costco leverages their scale to identify high quality, good value products and deliver them to consumers
But now the internet allows for the reduction of search costs on a global scale………………….. draining value from the Coke, Gillette and Yellow Cab brands because in each case, the online distribution of information radically reduced search costs for consumers.


Of course some brands will resist. luxury and non commoditized products.
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