2017 was a big year for Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, already the largest in the world. After surpassing $1 trillion in assets, the fund announced today that it made an annual return of 1,028 billion kroner ($131 billion), the largest amount in the fund’s 20-year history. […]

how many stocks this fund already owns: 1.4% of all listed stocks in the world […] its biggest boost last year came from Apple. It has a 0.9% stake in the US tech company […]

The fund has now made more money in investment returns than was put into it […] since inception in 1997

{ Quartz | Continue reading }

art { Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434 }

You know, someone invented the XIV ETN. And someone invented the VIX, and VIX futures. And when you read the technical specifications for all of those things, it is clear that they are not trivial feats of engineering. Teams of marketers and traders and quants and technologists and lawyers put many hours into getting them just right, so that they would work as intended. They are technologies, highly engineered tools designed to help customers do things that they couldn’t have done before. They are financial technologies, built not out of screens and circuit boards but out of formulas and hedging strategies and legal documents, but that is what you’d expect: Financial firms ought to innovate in financial technology.

Yesterday Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein presented at the Credit Suisse Financial Services Conference, and his presentation is kind of a weird read. The running theme is that Goldman is doing technology stuff to win business. “Engineering underpins our growth initiatives,” says a summary page, and it doesn’t mean financial engineering. In fixed income, currencies and commodities, engineers are 25 percent of headcount, and the presentation touts growth in Marquee (its client-facing software platform) and “systematic market making.” In equities, Goldman touts its quant relationships. In consumer banking (now a thing!), the centerpiece is Marcus, Goldman’s online savings and lending platform. And in investment banking, “Engineering enhances client engagement through apps, machine learning and big data analytics.” […]

Instead of developing new financial technologies, Goldman is developing new computer technologies for its financial clients.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

related { Hedge-fund mediocrity is the best magic trick. Never have so many investors paid so much for such uninspiring returns. }

lithograph { Ellsworth Kelly, Camellia III, 1964–65 }

KODAKOne is a Flawed Concept that Will Never Deliver Promised Benefits. The KODAKCoin Team has Zero Credibility. Kodak KashMiner is a Scam. KODAKOne is a Sham. Below we provide the basis for why we think the equity is worthless.

Kodak Says Scammers Are Already Selling Fraudulent KodakCoins

Most digital currencies are unlikely to survive in their current form, and investors should prepare for coins to lose all their value as they’re replaced by a small set of future competitors, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s global head of investment research

Of all the criticisms aimed at fracking, charges that it might increase the incidence of STDs – specifically gonorrhea – are seldom heard.

Yet there might be a link – according to a new research paper published in the Journal of Public Health Policy. […]

We find that fracking activity is associated with a 20 per cent increase in gonorrhea.

{ Improbable | Continue reading }

Often, damaged works of art end up in the vaults of insurance companies. Once the owner submits a claim on the damaged piece, a team of experts, appraisers, conservators and adjusters offer specialist advice on the artwork’s condition and devaluation. The economics of selling and repairing the work are weighed up, and generally, if the cost of restoring a work is far beyond what it is worth, the work will be claimed as “total loss”. The insurance company will pay out on the policy and, in exchange, retain the broken piece. The “total loss” artwork is effectively declared worthless, unsalvageable by both insurer and owner. From then on it belongs to the insurance company as salvage.

Some of these pieces, though, end up being exhibited by the Salvage Art Institute (SAI), which calls itself a “haven” for written-off works. Conceived by Elka Krajewska, an artist in New York, in 2009 during a chance meeting with a representative of AXA Art Insurance, it took her until 2012 to jump through enough legal hoops to persuade the insurer to donate some of their total-loss works to the SAI. A selection of these works is now on show in “No Longer Art”, a show at BNKR Space, a gallery in Munich.

{ The Economist/1843 | Continue reading }

welded steel, porcelain, wire mesh, canvas, grommets, and wire { Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1980–98 }

…America’s system of government. The bureaucracy is so understaffed that it is relying on industry hacks to draft policy. They have shaped deregulation and written clauses into the tax bill that pass costs from shareholders to society.

{ Economist | Continue reading }

graphite pencil, crayon and collage on paper { Jasper Johns, Green Flag, 1956 }

America’s largest city, 8.5 million strong, is taking decisive action on two separate fronts. We are demanding compensation from those who profit from climate change. And we plan to withdraw our formidable investment portfolio from an economic system that is harmful to our people, our property and the city we love and invest it in more productive ways. This week, the City of New York filed a lawsuit in federal court against the five investor-owned fossil fuel companies: Exxon, BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell and Chevron. We are seeking billions of dollars in damages from these giants because they are central actors in this crisis. We’re proud to join cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Cruz in taking on Big Oil in court.

{ Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York City | Washington Post }

latex, rope, string, and wire { Eva Hesse, no title, 1969–70 }

{ Shares of Eastman Kodak surged 40 per cent to $4.40 on Tuesday after it announced that it had partnered with Wenn Digital to launch a blockchain-based image-rights management platform, KODAKOne, and KODAKCoin }

total $XRP now worth $380 bn…. makes Ripple labs worth $225bn.. tenth largest company by market cap in the world… makes Chris Larsen worth $55bn tying Mark Zuckerburg as 5th richest man in the world…..

At one Point in the 1989 Japanese real estate bubble, the Imperial Palace in Japan was said to be worth more than the entire state of California, things that don’t make sense don’t last….

{ Michael Novogratz‏ | More: CNBC }

The woman, who calls herself Theodora, is a financial dominatrix, which means clients — many of whom never meet her in person — derive sexual pleasure from giving her gifts and money. Exchanges of money can range from several dollars in “tributes,” as they are called, to gifts of more than six figures. Some clients even become a “human ATM,” meaning they give her complete control over a bank account. […] Last year she made over $1 million in cryptocurrency alone.

{ MarketWatch | Continue reading | @TheOnlyTheodora }

Brothers Vincenzo and Giacomo Barbato named their clothing brand “Steve Jobs” in 2012 after learning that Apple had not trademarked his name. […]

The Barbatos designed a logo that resembles Apple’s own, choosing the letter “J” with a bite taken out of the side. Apple, of course, sued the two brothers for using Jobs’ name and a logo that mimics the Apple logo. In 2014, the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office ruled in favor of the Barbatos and rejected Apple’s trademark opposition. […]

While the Barbatos currently produce bags, t-shirts, jeans, and other clothing and fashion items […] they plan to produce electronic devices under the Steve Jobs brand.

{ Mac Rumors | Continue reading }

art { Left: Ellsworth Kelly, Nine Squares, 1977 | Right: Damien Hirst, Myristyl Acetate, 2005 }

There are 1,036 virtual currencies out there, from Bitcoin to — no joke — BigBoobsCoin. The price of almost every single one was down Friday morning.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

I know of an art historian who was asked to authenticate a work by Leonardo, and he was going to, you know, charge the normal kind of fee charged for doing this kind of thing — a low six figures. And the owner said, “No, no, no. We want to pay you a percentage of what it sells for.” Now, what is the chance that any art historian given that particular contract is gonna say, “Oh no, it’s not by a famous artist. It’s by Joe Blow and it will sell for a thousand bucks”?

{ Blake Gopnik | Continue reading | more }

How much water goes into a cup of tea? Somewhere around 30 litres of water is required for tea itself, 10 litres for a small dash of milk and a further 6 litres for each teaspoon of sugar. This means that a simple cup of tea with milk and two sugars could actually require 52 litres of water.

{ ResearchGate | Continue reading }

related { A Corpus Study of ‘Cup of [tea]’ and ‘Mug of [tea]’ | PDF }

oil on canvas { Roy Lichtenstein, Bread in Bag, 1961 }

In a mixed-gender group, when women talk 25% of the time or less, it’s seen as being “equally balanced”. If women talk 25–50% of the time, they’re seen as “dominating the conversation”

[…]

A Californian company called Skinny Mirror sells mirrors that make you look thinner. When installed in the changing rooms of clothes shops, they can increase sales by 18%.

[…]

Twitter has enough money in the bank to run for 412 years with current losses.

{ Fluxx | Continue reading }

photo { Blaise Cepis }

Stock trading strategies: competition is so stiff that there are only two ways to succeed: (1) insider trading, e.g. you try to obtain job interviews with small publicly traded companies, then based on information glanned during the interview, perform trades and (2) use trading strategies that professional traders will never use, e.g. stay “all cash” for several years on your trading account, and when the right event occurs, massively trade major indexes for a couple of days, then go dormant for another few years. You need sophisticated statistical models to succeed in this, with good back testing, walk-forward and robustness based on state-of-the-art cross-validation.

{ analyticbridge | Continue reading }

art { Rochelle Goldberg, The Cannibal Actif, 2015 }

The first column shows that the sun setting one hour later within a location reduces nighttime sleep by roughly 20 minutes per week. […] The second column shows that daily sunset time also affects earnings in a location. A sunset time one hour later reduces earnings by a significant 0.5%, on average.

Our analysis demonstrates that workers experiencing an earlier sunset get more sleep. […] In the short run the additional sleep largely comes at the expense of leisure, while in the long run it comes at the expense of both work and leisure. Insofar as these changes in other time uses impact worker productivity, our instrumental variables estimate of the effect of sleep on wages will also contain those effects. […]

We show that increasing short-run weekly average sleep in a location by one hour increases worker wages by 1%. Increasing long-run weekly average sleep in a location by one hour increases wages by 4.5%.

{ Time Use and the Labor Market: The Wage Returns to Sleep | PDF }

photo { Marton Perlaki }

Why so many of America’s sushi restaurants are Chinese-owned

The influx of low-wage Chinese immigrants — China recently eclipsed Mexico as the largest source of immigrants to the United States — has created fierce competition to provide cheap food. At the same time, Japan’s wealth and economic success helped its cuisine gain a reputation as trendy and refined. So for many entrepreneurial Chinese immigrants looking to get ahead, Japanese food has often become the better opportunity.

“Chinese entrepreneurs have figured out that this is a way to make a slightly better living and get out of the . . . world of $10, $5 food at the bottom end of the market,” says Krishnendu Ray, who leads New York University’s food studies program. […]

“Japanese food has more prestige and seems to, if you just look at a menu, have greater economic opportunity attached to it, because people are conditioned to pay more for rice and protein when it’s presented as sushi than rice and protein when it’s presented as a stir fry,” said Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Sushi Economy.” […]

“I can tell you it is easier to do than a Chinese restaurant,” says Kin Lee, the owner of Love Sushi in Gaithersburg, Md., “and the profit margins are better.”

{ Washington Post | Continue reading }

In 2012, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist Albert Hu was convicted of a financial fraud that stretched from Silicon Valley to Hong Kong. Today, he is locked up in the minimum security wing of Lompoc federal prison—inmate #131600-111—without access to the Internet. But, somehow, his bogus investment firm has come back to life.

On the surface, Asenqua Ventures appears to be legitimate. It has a website. It has a working voicemail system and lists a Northern California office address. It has distributed multiple press releases via PRNewswire, which were then picked up by reputable media organizations. It is included in financial industry databases like Crunchbase, PitchBook, and S&P Capital IQ. Its senior managers have LinkedIn profiles.

One of those profiles belonged to Stephen Adler, who earlier this week sent out hundreds of new Linkedin “connect” invitations (many of which were accepted). Among the recipients was Marty McMahon, a veteran executive recruiter who just felt that something was a bit off about Adler’s profile. So he did a Google reverse image search on Adler’s profile pic, and quickly learned that the headshot actually belonged to a San Diego real estate agent named Dan Becker.

McMahon called Dan Becker, who he says was stunned to learn that his photo was being used by someone who he didn’t know. Then McMahon did another image search for the LinkedIn profile pic of Adler’s colleague, Michael Reed. This time it led him to Will Fagan, another San Diego realtor who often works with Dan Becker.

{ Fortune | Continue reading }

Two hedge fund “quants” have come up with an algorithm that diagnoses heart disease from MRI images, beating nearly 1,000 other teams in one of the most ambitious competitions in artificial intelligence.

{ Financial Times | Continue reading }

Qi Liu and Tencia Lee, hedge fund analysts and self-described “quants,” didn’t know each other before they won the competition, beating out more than 1,390 algorithms. They met each other in a forum on the Kaggle site, where the competition was hosted over a three-month period.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }