Pizza Drone, Anyone?

Posted on August 30, 2016 by BarkerReport

Hello faithful readership, after a well deserved summer break, I am back!

Last week I saw footage of the first successful drone pizza delivery in New Zealand.  Domino’s Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) delivered a piping hot pizza to a picnic blanket in a park.  This got me thinking about the drone delivery system on a bigger scale, and how will this apply to more mundane deliveries.
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Let’s face it, whether you like the idea or not, it is pretty cool to have anything delivered to you by drone.  From a pizza delivered to your favorite picnic spot, to a bottle of sports drink delivered to the middle of your hike in a mountain top.  There are also very practical measures, you can have a package dropped within your fence or even in your back yard, while you are away, hence reducing the chance of it being stolen if left at your doorstep and avoiding the dreaded card in your letterbox.

The way I see it, there are two types of deliveries:  urgent deliveries, and everything else.  An urgent delivery is classified as something that has to get to the consumer within a very short period of time or it better not get there.  This applies to hot food delivery, pizza, Chinese, fried chicken or anything other meal that has to arrive hot.  It also applies to life saving events – delivery of blood or organs.  Everything else, whether you need it within a day or a week can be classified as non-urgent.

The reason I make this distinction, is because urgent deliveries are generally done one at a time by one person (in car, bike or motorcycle),. where other deliveries are done in a truck.  And it is there where the crux of the debate lies: Continue reading →

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Fixed Income?

Posted on July 12, 2016 by BarkerReport
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Traditionally, fixed income was a boring asset class; limited to widows, orphans, and the elderly who are looking for a steady income that they could rely on.  Over time, investment banks turned it into one of the most exciting asset classes in the market.  Today I wonder if the term “fixed income” is at all appropriate to describe an investment that costs you money instead of earning you some. Continue reading →

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Driverless Cars?

Posted on July 6, 2016 by BarkerReport

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While UK politics are in turmoil, with all major parties having leadership crises, and no major steps in the pursuit of economic stability – bar a lukewarm indication to eventually lower corporation taxes some time in the future – are being taken, I thought it wise to give Brexit a rest, and my faithful readership a break from it.  Today we are going to discuss driverless cars.

Bill Gates when still at the helm of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), was reportedly quoted having a go at General Motors (NYSE: GM) at a computer expo, by saying “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.” At the time I laughed it off by saying that such car would, while in the middle of the highway, turn the windscreen blue and ask you to abort, retry or fail…

But jokes aside, the technology for driverless cars is there.  I have no doubts that any major car manufacturer could produce a fully automated driverless car on a moment’s notice.  So what is holding them back? Continue reading →

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Brexit, Schmexit! Part 5: The Aftermath

Posted on June 28, 2016 by BarkerReport
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What a week! The Brexit win took everybody by surprise, including yours truly. Even those who voted leave were surprised at the result.  I thought it to be a done deal – especially after hearing Nigel Farage concede defeat the night before, went to sleep and when I woke up, the wold was collapsing around me…

Pound Sterling at 30 year lows; Asian, European, and American indices significantly lower; gold hitting 52-week highs; and to spice things up a bit, throw in a Prime-Ministerial resignation, an opposition coup, and threats from Scotland and Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom. And it all happened within 24 hours of the polls closing.  But how come nobody called it? Continue reading →

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Brexit, Schmexit! Part 4: Europe

Posted on June 21, 2016 by BarkerReport

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So, four months have passed since the British Prime Minister, David Cameron announced the in-or-out referendum from the EU.  Over that period of time, the Pound Sterling has been all over the place, first dropping to lows not seen since the height of the sub -prime crisis in 2008/09, recovered all of its losses and then some, dropped back to the $1.4 level on fears that the leave camp was gaining on the remain side, only to bounce yesterday back to $1.46.  The uncertainty is not confined to the Pound, but also pushed the FTSE 100 has also had a roller-coaster ride.

On the previous blog posts in the Brexit, Schmexit series  Brexit, Schmexit! Part 1: The Pound, Brexit, Schmexit! Part 2: The Banks, and most recently Brexit, Schmexit! Part 3: The Economy I took a deep look at the effects that a potential Brexit could have on the UK currency, its banks and economy.  However, what to many seems to be UK-centric affair, is in yours truly’s humble opinion, going to affect Europe more that it will affect Britain in the longer run.  This seems like a pretty bold statement, so let’s analyze it in detail.

For starters, Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Mateo Renzi, Mario Draghi, Christine Lagarde, Wolfgang Schäuble, have all endorsed the remain camp… wonder why? Continue reading →

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Brexit, Schmexit! Part 3: The Economy

Posted on June 14, 2016 by BarkerReport
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When I started The Barker Report, I made a conscious decision to keep it a financial/economics blog, and to steer clear from politics, but the upcoming EU referendum is hardly an economic decision on its own.  Over the last few months politicians from both ends of the spectrum have said the most outrageous things about the fate of the UK in the aftermath of the referendum: High pound, low pound; inflation, deflation; war, peace; more money, less money; businesses staying, businesses leaving; more expensive vacations, cheaper vacations… you get the idea.

The fact that the vote on the 23rd is as much a political decision as it is economical is undeniable; what needs to be decided is who’s telling the truth, and who is lying.  Seeing through the noise and zeroing in what really matters to each one of us, is the hardest part. Continue reading →

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Emerging Markets: 30 Years of Crisis. Part 3: The 2000s and beyond

Posted on June 7, 2016 by BarkerReport

The 2000s

Dollarization

After several failed attempts of convertibility and currency pegging in Latin America and Asia, a new attempt at FX stability was taking place in Ecuador, out of all places.

The main reason that convertibility had failed in Mexico, Brazil, and several times over in Argentina was that while the currency was pegged to the US dollar, the central banks had not lost their ability to print money, and the international reserves could get depleted faster than the authorities could suck dollars out of the economy.  Central banks often gave into the temptation to print out more money creating implicit devaluations to a point where they could not cope and were forced to devaluate. Continue reading →

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Emerging Markets: 30 Years of Crisis. Part 2: The 1990s

Posted on May 31, 2016 by BarkerReport
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The 1990s

Hyperinflation and Mega-Devaluations of the Early 90s

The first years of the 90s saw several center or right-of-center Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties take power (Carlos Salinas de Gortari in Mexico, Cesar Gaviria in Colombia, Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Sixto Duran-Ballen in Ecuador, Patricio Aylwin in Chile, and Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil), the exceptions were Argentina, where Carlos Menem was part of the populist Peronist party; and Bolivia, whose president Jaime Paz was part of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement.

Despite this political shift to the right the economic problems dragged on from the 80s were still hurting the economy: empty treasury coffers, hyperinflation, negative trade balances, fiscal deficits and collapsing GDPs, which resulted once again in mega-devaluations seeing Peru devaluate its currency by 1 million, Argentina by a further 10,000 and Brazil by an eye-watering 2.75 million in two different devaluations. Continue reading →

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Emerging Markets: 30 Years of Crisis. Part 1: The 1980s

Posted on May 24, 2016 by BarkerReport

The recent news of Argentina’s deal with holdout hedge funds has prompted me to put together a three-part series on Emerging Markets, and analyze this crises struck asset class.  Enjoy!

Sovereign Debt

In the 70s, international organization such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WM), International Development Banks (IDB), and other bilateral or multilateral development organization began lending money to third world countries in order to develop infrastructure projects, and thus began the Sovereign Debt Market for developing economies.  Of course, sovereign debt didn’t quite start in the 70s; war bonds were issued by countries like Britain and the US to finance conflicts in their own soils or abroad, as well as allowing Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain to finance purchases of new territories during the colonial expansions of the XVI to XIX centuries.  But the sovereign debt market brought with it a new type of investment: local market risk on hard currency.  In one swift motion, the sovereign debt market had disposed of the foreign exchange risk while keeping the regional risk on the books.  This worked fine until it stopped working Continue reading →

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A Submerging Economy

Posted on May 10, 2016 by BarkerReport

I attended an Emerging Markets conference in London in 2011, and one of the topics was the Greek crisis du jour.  During the presentation, the speaker (whose name I can’t remember to save my life), wondered why Greece was being discussed at an emerging markets conference, since it wasn’t an emerging economy at all, but a submerging economy.

Fast forward 5 years from that conference, and 7 years since the first Greek crisis struck, and we haven’t moved an inch in either direction.
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Countries and multilateral organizations keep pouring money over to Greece in the hope that they might eventually pay back their debt. Continue reading →

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