Last month, BBC reported that GOSH, a research hospital in the UK, base edited the genome of a 12-year-old girl, Alyssa, suffering from leukemia. She had failed dozens of therapies and had no more options. Seven months later, she is cancer- free. Not many investors know about it.
I believe the Delaware court decision, forcing
#Tesla
to void the March 2018 vote on Elon Musk’s performance-based pay package, is un-American, an assault on investor rights, and an insult to the Board of Directors of one of the most stunningly successful companies in US history.
If inflation is unwinding, as we believe, then we could be heading back to the future, the Roaring Twenties, the last time several general purpose technologies evolved at the same time: telephone, electricity, and the internal combustion engine. The setup is remarkably similar!
In 2008-09, when the Fed started quantitative easing, I thought that inflation would take off. I was wrong. Instead, velocity - the rate at which money turns over per year - declined, taking away its inflationary sting. Velocity still is falling.
Today, $TSLA announced that in the third quarter it sold 241,300 vehicles globally, up 73% year over year (YoY) and 20% quarter over quarter (QOQ). Meanwhile, $GM blamed the ~33% YoY decline in its US sales on chip shortages. What?
#EVs
require 3-5x more chips per car produced!
For those who have been unsettled by the volatility of ARK's strategies in recent months, I would like to share this deeper dive into the thoughts we have been sharing regularly. Remember: truth wins out!
Looking forward to talking with
@elonmusk
today at 5 pm ET on X Spaces! Can't wait to hear his thoughts on the AI space, bitcoin, and so much more. Join us.
1/ Bitcoin critics continue to assert that mining is wasteful and disproportionately damaging to the environment.
Contrary to consensus thinking, we believe the impact of bitcoin mining is a net positive for the environment.
Here's why:
The Delaware plaintiff lawyers did come after us, but brilliant attorney, Jane Kanter, had prepared us, so the big dogs walked away. I have asked my legal team to extract us from Delaware, once was a beacon for entrepreneurs and investors in the US, but now a menace.
In its ruling against
@elonmusk
's pay-for-performance compensation package, Delaware seems to question whether it was fair to all shareholders. Given the results five years later, with $TSLA up ~13-fold from the time of the vote to its peak in November 2021 and still up 9-fold…
Twitter’s product is the global town square. Elon is focused on protecting free speech, transparency, and democracy. Without Starlink, we would have had little sense of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the transparency of which has had magical powers on people at large.
Elon can’t save Twitter. His superpower is bending physics to his will. But Twitter’s product is people, and Elon has no magical powers on people at large.
Predictably, when
@elonmusk
announced at Battery Day last week that $TSLA would cut the price of a Model 3 to $25,000, several financial analysts panicked, downgrading the stock and/or cutting their price targets. In our view, traditional financial analysts have missed the mark.
When we started
@ARKInvest
I understood the 'power of social media', yet little did I know how profoundly it would impact our business. I'm grateful for the entire ARK team, ecosystem of thought leaders, & all who have supported us. In my view, our journey has just begun!
Deflation in the pipeline, heading for the PPI, CPI, PCE Deflator: from post-COVID price peaks, lumber -60%, copper -35%, oil -35%, iron ore -60%, DRAM -46%, corn -17%, Baltic freight rates -79%, gold -17%, and silver -39%.
I am looking forward to joining
@elonmusk
on X Spaces later this week. Please reply with questions and we will ask the best ones as we cover everything from AI to space and beyond!
Thank you
@richardbranson
and team for inspiring our children and grandchildren to aim for the moon, the stars, and Mars! What a great day for the US, the UK, and the space race.
Happily for $TSLA investors,
@tim_cook
missed the reincarnation of $AAPL when
@elonmusk
approached him while experiencing “production hell” with the Model3. An
#EV
is the ultimate mobile device.
$UBER and $LYFT stayed private too long and lost the plot. They could have incentivized their drivers to put sensors on their cars and collect data much faster than even $TSLA. Autonomous is an AI project. The winners will have the most high quality data and the best AI expertise
@CathieDWood
Why isn't UBER a significant part of Ark Invest portfolio? They are suppose to be a big part of the future of transportation, aren't they?
Given the accelerated consumer preference shift toward electric vehicles, used car prices and the residual value of all gas powered autos are likely to plummet, causing serious losses in the $1 trillion auto debt market.
Used vehicle index is now down on a year over year basis.
Wholesale used-vehicle prices (on a mix, mileage, and seasonally adjusted basis) decreased 3.0% in September from August. The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index declined to 204.5 and is now down 0.1% from a year ago.
Based on deeper research into Tesla’s
#battery
technology, its
#AI
breakthroughs, and its
#ride
-hailing possibilities,
@TashaARK
has pulled together and updated our $TSLA model with great input from
@skorusARK
and guidance from
@wintonARK
. Thank you for your tireless research!
The Fed seems to be worried more about its legacy than the economy: it is ignoring deflationary and dangerous signals. Relying on lagging inflation indicators like the CPI, Fed Governor Waller is calling for another hike of 0.75% in July.
With gratitude to our incredible analysts
@ARKInvest
led by
@wintonARK
, our DoR, as well as our first-in-class marketing and compliance teams, I hope that you enjoy the very big ideas in Big Ideas 2021!
Companies disrupting the traditional world order - like $TSLA and $SQ - are wise to hedge their fiat reserves with $BTC. Other companies in harm’s way because of disruptive innovation should be investing their cash in new technologies to avoid creative destruction.
Companies buying
#Bitcoin
: "They don't know how else to mitigate risk."
@elerianm
talks inflation fears, Fed expectations, and the timing mismatch between public/official sector $BTC adoption.
"It's part of the distortion of financial markets that we're seeing more generally."
GDP statistics evolved during the Industrial Age and do not seem to be keeping up with the digital age. Thanks to productivity, real GDP growth probably is higher and inflation lower than reported, suggesting that the quality of earnings has increased significantly.
Bitcoin is backed by the largest computer network in the world, a network orders of magnitude larger than the combined size of the clouds that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have built over the last 15-20 years.
Bitcoin's hash rate hit an all time high 500 exahashes/s this month.
To highlight the enormity of this number:
- For every star in our galaxy, the Bitcoin network is calculating 5 billion computations per second.
- It would take ~2000 years for the entire global population,…
To his credit, Michael Burry made a great call based on fundamentals and recognized the calamity brewing in the housing/mortgage market. I do not believe that he understands the fundamentals that are creating explosive growth and investment opportunities in the innovation space.
Our confidence in the equity bull market and innovation’s place has increased as fears of long-term
#inflation
- which we believe will prove unfounded - have escalated. We see three powerful sources of
#deflation
evolving: good deflation, bad deflation, and cyclical deflation.
Did you miss our May
#mARKetUpdate
webinar? Now, you can catch the replay!
Watch as
@CathieDWood
,
@wintonARK
and our analysts weigh in on inflation, interest rates, the equity bull market, ARK’s latest research on Impact Investing and more.
Now that supply chain bottlenecks are diminishing,
#Tesla
can cut prices in line with battery cost declines, driving demand while limiting the impact on profitability. According to Wright’s Law, battery costs drop 28% for every cumulative doubling in unit production!
Human error accounts for ~85% of of auto accidents and fatalities. We believe that data will convince regulators that human-driven vehicles are weapons of mass destruction. They cause 35-40,000 deaths per year in the US and more than 1.25 millions deaths globally.
@CathieDWood
@TashaARK
@skorusARK
@wintonARK
I think you are accurate in all but autonomous ride sharing revenue. I’m bullish on their tech but bearish in government regulations. I’d say it’s <10% chance Tesla is approved for full autonomy ride sharing in significant world markets by 2025.
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s - as telephone, electricity, and the automobile were emerging - the US equity market cap relative to GDP appears to have been 2-3 times higher than it is today. We need to verify this difficult-to-get data but, if true, I have a hypothesis.
The bond market seems to be signaling that the Fed is making a serious mistake. At -80 basis points (as measured by the 10 year vs 2 year Treasury yields), the yield curve is more inverted now than at any time since the early ‘80s when double-digit inflation was entrenched.
While the US banking system was seizing up in response to bank runs threatening regional banks, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto networks didn’t skip a beat. Instability in the banking system threatened stablecoins, the on-ramps to DeFi, in stark contrast to regulator rhetoric
Despite the USDC (and DAI) de-peg, the Maker protocol remained over-collateralized and fully operational through the weekend
DAI in circulation is up $1 billion (+25%)
Demand for more transparent, more auditable, and more decentralized financial services has never been higher.
The Bitcoin blockchain didn’t skip a beat during the crisis caused by opaque centralized players. No wonder Sam Bankman Fried didn’t like Bitcoin: it’s transparent and decentralized. He couldn’t control it.
Despite market volatility associated with FTX’s demise, the supply held by long-term holders—or the supply last moved 155 days ago or more—closed flat for the month of November. Find out what we believe this datapoint indicates in our new Bitcoin Monthly.
In a research collaboration with $SQ,
@yassineARK
,
@wintonARK
, and
@skorusARK
debunk the myth that
#Bitcoin
mining is damaging the environment. Instead, as crypto mining, energy storage, and AI technologies converge, the adoption of renewable energy is likely to accelerate!
Most bears seem to believe that inflation will continue to accelerate, shortening investment time horizons and destroying valuations. Despite what we believe has been a supply-chain related/short term burst in inflation, both equities and bonds have appreciated since March➡️
.
@ARKInvest
has been concerned the impact of declining residual values on the $1+ trillion auto loan market. Most of these loans back gas-powered vehicles.
@GuyDealership
explains that the crisis is underway. The consumer preference shift toward EVs will exacerbate this crisis.
Because the risk of inflation has grabbed headlines and increased investor fears of a bear market in equities, especially innovation-based strategies, we would like to share
@ARKInvest
’s differentiated point of view.
In our view, the rotation from growth into value stocks has broadened & strengthened the bull market significantly, preventing another tech & telecom bubble & setting the stage for another leg up in innovation-based strategies.
New blog by
@CathieDWood
!
If the Fed does not pivot, the set-up will be more like 1929. The Fed raised rates in 1929 to squelch financial speculation and then, in 1930, Congress passed Smoot-Hawley, putting 50%+ tariffs on more than 20,000 goods and pushing the global economy into the Great Depression.
Passive funds prevented many investors from enjoying a 400-fold appreciation in $TSLA from a $1.6 billion market cap at its IPO in June 2010 to ~$650 billion when it entered the S&P 500 ten years later in December 2020.
@pegobry
@pmarca
Exactly. Right before he died, Jack Bogle (of Vanguard fame) said index/passive funds were too great a percentage of the market and he really knew what he was talking about!
There should be a shift back towards active investment. Passive has gone too far.
Giving is a choice.
Honesty is a choice.
Optimism is a choice.
Happiness is a choice.
Forgiveness is a choice.
Spoken words is a choice.
Teaching others is a choice.
Respecting others is a choice.
Showing gratitude is a choice.
To live a recommendable life, make better choices.
Larry Summers seems to be leading the Biden administration astray with his conviction that inflation is intractable, with the ‘70s as his guide. The ‘70s inflation started in 1964 with the Vietnam War and the Great Society and burgeoned for 15 years.
Deflation in the pipeline, heading for the PPI, CPI, PCE Deflator: from post-COVID price peaks, lumber -60%, copper -35%, oil -35%, iron ore -60%, DRAM -46%, corn -17%, Baltic freight rates -79%, gold -17%, and silver -39%.
FYI | EP94 is live! In this episode, ARK's CEO/CIO,
@CathieDWood
, and Director of Research,
@wintonARK
, break down our latest Big Ideas Report, discuss which companies are likely to thrive in the coming years (and why), and much more. Listen!
This study seems to suggest that most auto manufacturers will lose money in the electric vehicle space if they try and compete with $TSLA on technology (range, performance, etc.) AND price. I wonder if their brands, born in the ICE age, will help them overcome their challenges.
1/Reading an old paper on cost declines and thinking about electric vehicles:
In an industry where everyone is on the same cost decline curve, market share matters.
Tesla seems to understand that China would like local champions to dominate electric vehicles (EV) sales inside the country but is pleased that Tesla is exporting from China high-quality/high-end EVs, especially to Europeans whose standards for fit-finish-design are quite high.
In our view, US equity markets today are 180 degrees away from those in the tech and telecom bubble in the late nineties. Unlike the case then, the technologies are ready and the costs are low enough for prime time. Investors chased the dream then. Now, they are running away. 🤔
China is exporting deflation in a more profound way than I believe many economists and strategists appreciate. All else equal, the 15% depreciation in the yuan relative to the dollar in the last year should have increased its PPI inflation rate by 15%. Instead it has dropped 4%.
Auto sales in the US have dropped nearly 30% from 18.5 million at an annual rate in February to 13.1 million in August. While the auto manufacturers are blaming chip shortages - which are real - I believe that auto buyers are abandoning gas powered vehicles in favor of electric.
The bear market last year suffocated this news, even though it made a splash at ASH, the American Society of Hematology conference. While one cure does not a trend make, few analysts are discounting any possibility that gene editing might cure cancer.
They bought their first homes, put their children through college, and added to their retirement nest eggs, thanks to $TSLA. Tesla’s story epitomizes why people have flocked to America. The Delaware court’s decision is an embarrassment to our country’s ideals and a travesty.
Inflation has flared in response to COVID-related supply chain bottlenecks and oil supply constraints but, IMHO, the powerful and converging deflationary forces associated with AI, energy storage (EVs!), robotics, genomic sequencing, and blockchain technology will bend the curve.
Bitcoin is the world’s digital monetary system, and Lightning is Bitcoin’s payments layer. Coinbase’s integration with Lightning will give its 100 million users an on-ramp to faster and cheaper bitcoin transactions. Hats off to Coinbase!
The team did a great job digging into this, and we've made the decision to integrate Lightning. Bitcoin is the most important asset in crypto and we're excited to do our part to enable faster/cheaper Bitcoin transactions. Will take some time to integrate so please be patient.
They should have been all over the crisis that was looming in plain sight: asset and liability duration mismatches as short rates soared 19-fold in less than a year and deposits in the banking system were falling on a year-over-year basis for the first time since the 1920s!
If you are correct, Congressman, then the FDIC and others will prevent the US from participating in the most important phase of the internet revolution. Like you, I believe regulators are using crypto as a scapegoat for their own lapses in oversight of traditional banking.
Today, I sent a letter to FDIC Chairman Gruenberg regarding reports that the FDIC is weaponizing recent instability in the banking sector to purge legal crypto activity from the U.S. 👇
Typically, an inverted yield curve is pointing to a recession and/or lower than expected inflation than expected. In our view, deflation is a much bigger risk than inflation. Commodity prices and massive retail discounts are corroborating this point of view.
The equity market does not seem ever to have discounted 0.5%, 1%, 2%, or 3% yields on the 10 year Treasury bond. The PE on the S&P 500 has topped out at 20-25X regularly since the tech and telecom bust, even as 10-year Treasury yields have declined from 6%.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention how scarce exponential growth opportunities are likely to become as
#artificialintelligence
creates more winner-take-most opportunities like autonomous taxi networks!
I have known Robyn Denholm, Chair of Tesla’s Board, professionally for 17 years since she was named Juniper Networks CFO in 2007. Robyn was and is an independent Director on Tesla’s Compensation Committee.
Working with
@ARKInvest
’s General Counsel, who analyzed the 200+ page Delaware Court decision, I have concluded that legal nuances and the controversial interpretation of them have missed the forest for the trees, spectacularly and unfairly.
.
@ARKInvest
’s research suggests that the Model 3 will generate cash flow of $10,000 per year at a minimum on an
#autonomous
taxi platform.
@TashaARK
and
@skorusARK
have done the research. We are happy to share it!
“Buying a car today is an investment into the future. I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset – not a depreciating asset (due to the self-driving AI)."
@elonmusk
Government statistics do not seem to be capturing how weak the economy is. Many companies are reporting shockingly weak revenues. UPS’s US delivery volume growth is worse today than in 2007-2009. After falling for nearly two years, it dropped another ~11% last quarter.
Equities and bonds seem to be warning the Fed that its policy measures could cause an economic and/or financial crisis: equities are swooning and the yield curve is nearly negative territory.
Tesla’s Board incentivized
@elonmusk
with a Herculean task that most analysts and auto manufacturers did not believe possible. Based on our research centered on Wright’s Law, we believed that Tesla could meet the performance goals, but only with brilliant execution.
Here’s our new computer vision system achieving state of the art results in image segmentation, without needing any labeled training data. This new model was trained on random, unlabeled data, but quickly achieved state-of-the-art results. It’s awesome.
#Square
business model illustrates that vertical integration can create moats, or barriers to entry, and deliver superior financial results. $TSLA business model is doing the same thing, giving it a lead in the
#EV
/AV market that will be difficult for others to catch.
Square's transaction margin is rising as closed-loop transactions take more share of GPV.
While this makes up a small part of Square today and Square/fintech co's make up small part of payments today, it offers a glimpse of the value of controlling both ends of the transaction.
Shocking! In Q1, 3M organic local currency sales - a gauge of global nominal GDP - dropped 5.6% YOY with US up 0.4%, Europe down 3.9%, and Asia down 16.7%. Consensus nominal GDP growth for US is +7% YOY. When will the Fed and economists start responding to the real world?
Many teams at
@ARKInvest
played a role in bringing ARK’s Big Ideas 2020 to life: research, marketing, compliance, and distribution. With thanks to them all, I hope that you enjoy our Big Ideas!
ARK's Big Ideas 2020 deck is here—a year of research packed into 80 slides covering AI, robotics, autonomous, genomics, bitcoin, and more.
Download:
Here are 5 slides that really hit it home. Thread:
US Space Force Major urges Defense Department to adopt Bitcoin as an 'offset strategy' Lowery suggested that Bitcoin and its underlying PoW technology could serve as contemporary tools in an offset strategy, potentially redefining the landscape of cyber warfare and defense.7…
As Chair of the Fed from February 2014 to February 2018, Yellen was on policy watch as bitcoin soared from ~$1,000 to ~$20,000 in 2017. The fact that this week she focused on the risk of potential nefarious actors instead of the risk to US monetary sovereignty is reassuring.
3/ I’d be more concerned if Yellen denounced Bitcoin as a threat to monetary sovereignty. To criticize Bitcoin for facilitating criminal activity is to criticize one of its fundamental value propositions: censorship-resistance.
On behalf of our clients,
@ARKInvest
voted for Elon Musk’s compensation, as did ~80% of shareholders. Nearly five years later, a Delaware judge has overruled the Board and shareholders, the latter whom had the benefit of ample debate about the incentive plan’s probability.
Robyn is a professional of unquestionable integrity with a no-nonsense, objective, truth-wins-out philosophy. In 2014, when Tesla named her to its Board, I remember thinking that she would add a fresh pair of eyes and enhanced rigor to every part of the process she touched.
In fact, we were thrilled to learn in February 2018 that Elon Musk and the Board were aiming so high, reaching for our bull case price target in 2023 of $4,000, or ~$265 on a split adjusted basis, a ~13-fold increase from roughly $21 when I announced our price target on CNBC.
Today, we learned that, in November, retail inventories rose more than 2%, the fastest pace since the 90’s, while imports jumped 4.7% and exports dropped 2%. Moreover, real consumption (including services) was flat and the saving rate dropped to 6.9%, below pre COVID levels.
Thanks to Elon’s ingenuity and dogged determination, Tesla hit our bull case target price in 2021, two years earlier than we anticipated. Since then, many shareholders have shared stories with us about how our research inspired their investment in $TSLA and changed their lives.
Thank you, Hal Finney, for your important role in transforming the financial world.
@ARKInvest
must have been moved in part by your spirit as we penned our first
#bitcoin
blog in 2014 and our first white paper, Bitcoin: A Disruptive Currency, in 2015.
Charlie Munger and many on Wall Street do not understand that passing along the lower costs associated with technologically-enabled innovation, in
#Tesla
’s case batteries and drivetrains, will cause a boom in unit demand, discrediting the Keynesian/Fed’s Phillips Curve model.
Charlie Munger on why he prefers an investment in BYD over $TSLA: "That's easy, Tesla last year reduced its prices in China twice while BYD increased its prices. BYD is so ahead of Tesla in China it's almost ridiculous. If you count all the manufacturing space BYD has in China to…
Ironically, as crypto assets soared during the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, this administration suggested that investors in regional banks - equity and bond holders - should prepare to be “wiped out” in the aftermath of an unprecedented 20-fold increase in the Fed funds rate.
There are 2 kinds of companies in the world:Those who originate their own AI successfully, and everyone else. The top companies are AI dominate and running away from their Non-AI competitors. AI's competitive advantage is exponential, but nowhere to be seen on a Balance Sheet.
Gold was not the only commodity to soar after regulators approved the gold ETF. In fact, gold underperformed many other commodities. The Fed stoked broad based commodity price inflation by easing aggressively in response to the implosion of Long Term Capital Management in 1998…
Look at what happened when the gold ETF launched back in 2004.
Looks like a big run up going into it, then a cool down consolidation period, then a huge melt up?
This could happen with
#Bitcoin
.
A big difference of course is after that the gold ETF launched (there was more…
Agreeing to no salary during those five years, Elon also would have received much less performance-related compensation if he had achieved less than the lofty milestones associated with our bull case. Instead, he shocked and delighted shareholders.
Based on our
#AI
research,
@ARKInvest
bought $NVDA in 2014 at ~$5 when most investors were valuing it as a PC gaming chip company. After more than a 150-fold gain, we continue to take profits, grateful to
#Nvidia
for the companies that are leveraging upon its amazing success.
Whenever the economy is in crisis I call Art Laffer, seeking his wisdom and economic expertise. Instead of keeping this "brainstorm" private, we wanted to share it with all of you. We hope you find this conversation about
#banking
&
#crypto
illuminating.
Tesla’s Cybertruck is the sleeper that could destroy the pricing structure of light duty trucks, the lifeblood of most traditional auto companies in the US.
In cars Tesla is delivering transformative margins in vehicle segments where traditional manufacturers can barely tread water
Tesla could opt for similar margins in trucks and by doing so push all of its incumbent domestic competitors onto its Cybertruck blade.
The disconnect between valuations for innovative companies in the public vs. private markets is as wide as I ever have seen. The arbitrage opportunity is enormous.
Pretty remarkable transparency from Acorns - "Given market conditions, we will be pivoting to a private capital raise at a higher pre-money valuation as we continue on our path to 10 million paid subscribers saving and investing for a better future."
Tesla’s goal has been to drive prices down and increase
#EV
adoption. At Investor Day (3/1), Elon could announce a step-function drop in pricing, much like he did for the Model 3, to ~$25,000 for the next gen EV. Gas-powered vehicles boomed at that price point.
Tesla's margins, superior drivetrain efficiency and low battery costs should make it one of the best positioned to weather any cyclical slowdown for autos. As it has done in the past, it can be the first to lower prices, which puts pressure on other automakers.
What might a post-pandemic market look like? What might the future hold for crypto? Don’t miss
@CBOE
’s
#ExchangePerspectives
on March 25 where ARK CEO/CIO
@CathieDWood
joins Jan van Eck and Kevin O’Leary to weigh in on these topics and more!
Register:
If you would like to track the history of our research, please search for Tesla on .
@TashaARK
and
@skorusARK
, and
@wintonARK
have done amazing work to help our clients on this journey.
As first mover, Apple still generates the bulk of profits in the smartphone space globally. In our view, Tesla could do the same in the
#autonomous
space, certainly in the US and perhaps elsewhere as well.
.
@ResearchARK
agrees that truth will earn the trust of the people. Pursuing the truth requires openness, honesty, and transparency. Pursuing the truth will defuse FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt - and ultimately build trust.