Circle of Competence Issue #121

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"If the whole goal is to avoid negative impacts in the economy by virtue of monetary of stimulus, that creates zombie companies and doesn't allow resources to be reappropriated by value creating businesses over time." - Neil O'Donnell

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Episode #09 - Neil O'Donnell - SPACs Galore and the Federal Reserve's response to Covid-19 (Link)

This week, I caught up with good friend Neil O'Donnell on all things SPACS and monetary stimulus. We discussed typical terms around SPACs for founders as well as investors, what is driving the recent explosion in SPAC popularity, our thoughts on two SPACs in particular, and the macro environment in general.

Resources mentioned:

O'Shaughnessy Asset Management White Paper - Upside-Down Markets

Ray Dalio's global change series

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Invested by Charles Schwab

Traction: How to Get a Grip on Your Business

SPAC Notes:

Altimeter Capital's tech SPAC Altimeter Growth Corp. files for a $450 million IPO (Nasdaq)

Palihapitiya finds next '10X idea' with $4.8B SPAC deal for real estate startup Opendoor (CNBC)

Richard Branson's latest SPAC S-1 (SEC Filing)

Oaktree Capital SPAC

Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus' SPAC

Paul Ryan's SPAC

Apollo's SPAC

LINKS

Investing

The new 'blank check' barons are coming for Wall Street (Bloomberg)

The makings of a multibagger (Alta Fox)

Paolo Delgado on 4th generation Filipino pioneering innovation in logistics and agriculture (Business of Family Podcast)

Technology

A deep dive on Snowflake (Hypergrowth)

NVidia's integration dreams (Stratechery)

Oculus founder's Ghost 4 military drones use AI for surveillance and attack (CNet)

InFarm raises another $170M to scale vertical farming globally (TechCrunch)

Its electric grid under strain, California turns to batteries (New York Times)

Apple commits to largest onshore wind turbines in the world in Denmark (Apple)

Real Estate

Chris Powers on Fort Capital's Class B Industrial real estate thesis (Fort Capital Podcast)

Geopolitics

The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits (Milton Friedman)

Ray Dalio's latest chapter on world changes: the big cycle of China and its currency (Ray Dalio)

Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Covid experiment (Financial Times)

Welcome to the turbulent twenties (Noema Mag)