Tag: SCHN

By Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Supply and Demand One uncomfortable fact for green investors is that the clean energy transition is going to require a lot more mines.  Lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, graphite, even steel: just name and industrial commodity, and we’re probably going to need a lot more of it. Total mineral demand for clean energy technologies by scenario, 2010-2040   Even worse, it’s not at all clear where all these materials are going to come from.  While there are plenty of all the elements we need in the Earth’s crust, actually mining them all in the next 20 years is not...

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Of the few survivors of the dot com bust, Ebay (EBAY) is a perennial also-ran.  It owned the market for consumer-to-consumer (C2C) transactions in 2000, but has since repeatedly lost market share.  Nevertheless, the company remains a profitable business that enables the sustainable reuse of easy to ship items while returning cash to investors. Note: My supporters on Patreon got an early look at this article.  Want to support my work and get previews of my writing?  Join them here. The Competition for Sellers In the early 2000s, Ebay lost sellers to Amazon's (AMZN) marketplace, which had the...

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA On February 21st, I was helping an investment advisor I consult with pick stocks for a new client's portfolio.  He lamented that there were not enough stocks at good valuations. This is one of the hardest parts of being an investment advisor: a client expects the advisor to build a portfolio of stocks which should do well, but sometimes, especially in late stage bull markets, most stocks are overvalued.  I reminded him, "The Constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to good stock picks."  He agreed, but he still had to tell his client that...