Return Dispersion in Venture Capital

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In price, there's knowledge.”

— Alan Shaw

Research

This paper highlights the importance of manager selection within venture capital. The chart below shows the dispersion of performance between and across quartiles relative to other asset classes.

You don’t want to miss Ben Hunt’s recent piece on higher education.

“Academics aren’t fake; they are our best. But they are trapped in a system that sucks that positive energy right out of their souls, that fakes learnedness and virtue at scale, that perverts and diminishes their work, yes, but even more so them.”

Facts & Figures

Users earned more than $1 billion in Daily Cash from spending on Apple Card last year. Link

In 2023, McDonald's bought 2 billion eggs from agribusiness giant Cargill. Link

Spotify is now the #2 provider of audio books behind Audible. Link

As of February 1, 2024, Novo Nordisk is 70.6% of Denmark's stock market. Link

“Nvidia's market cap is now over $200 billion higher than all of the companies in the S&P 500 Energy sector ... combined. Meanwhile, the total net income of the Energy sector is $147 billion vs. $19 billion for Nvidia.” Link

The Energy sector weight in the S&P 500 is hovering around an all-time low. Link

As of February 13, 2023

Big Oil returned more cash to shareholders last year than ever before. Link

Data through 12/31/2023

Vanguard passed BlackRock in equity ETF asset market share. Both have ~30% of total assets under management. Link

Source: Bloomberg. As of February 5, 2024

The Magnificent 7 combined make more profit per year than all non-US countries listed companies besides China & Japan.

Magnificent 7 includes Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Tesla, Google, Amazon and Nvidia. As of February 13, 2023

US auto insurance rates increased by 21% over the past year, the largest 1-year spike since 1976. Link

As of January 2024

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