The Big Shift: The Future of Renewable Energy

Covid-19 is the current global crisis taking center stage and we will prevail. However there is another global crisis that has been decades in the making and that is climate change. Climate change is one of the world’s biggest, if not the biggest problem that we are facing. And it’s coming real soon to a theater near you. Climate change is hard to quantify and with so many variables it’s quasi impossible to predict any events. However we don’t need another study to remind us the “once in a century fire” is now the “once a multiple times a year fire”. The “fire season” is now a permanent part of the calendar. Climate change impacts everything. From the food we have on our plate every day, the air we breathe, our quality of life, and our national security. It’s a generational challenge with no quick fix.

On a more positive note we are closer to responding effectively to it. This post is about the notion that the oil era is winding down and that renewable energy would soak up the bulk of the entire energy industry’s investment dollars. The trend to move away from fossil fuels is real. And it’s renewable energy that’s taking shares of the pie. The global shift to renewable energy is a big step in the fight against climate change. Renewables are a form of “disruption” and I apologized for using a word that has been so overused.

Producing clean energy is not a novel topic. Thanks to innovation we are at a turning point. The technology has improved and cost has fallen. Innovation solves problems. Economics is central. Great innovations see their cost decline over time, creating real demand. The cost to produce renewable energy has fallen dramatically in recent years, to the point where it has become attractive next to fossil-fuel generating assets, particularly coal and oil. According to Lazard, the costs of solar panels and batteries have dropped by more than 89% in the past decade. Solar is substantially cheaper than it was even five years ago. The wind and solar power in Arizona that Fortis generates now costs less than 3 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour.

The Big Four

Here’s my post on the big four U.S. banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America. I go over third quarter results and what’s happen for the big banks.

Reposted from Seeking Alpha. The full article is available here.

Preview:

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The Big Four

Summary

• The big banks are hated. The negative sentiment creates an good entry point.
• Once dividends and buyback restrictions are lifted, the space could attract more investors.

• Q3 numbers suggest that banks are well-positioned to operate in an uncertain environment.
• If the economy improves and the banks can release some of the reserve set aside.

This is a brief article on the four main big U.S. banks and its recent results. Earnings season has come and gone for America’s biggest banks. The results were better than expected but the sentiment is still negative. There’s no love for banks and to be fair they are hard to love. The combination of ultra-low rates, the pandemic, a recession, credit issues, the election, and regulations is not the cocktail that attracts investors. The Feds has also announced that it was extending restrictions on share repurchases and dividends for the largest banks—those with more than $100 billion in assets—for at least one more quarter. Buybacks historically accounted for roughly 70% of the banks’ capital return to shareholders.

The shares of Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) fell after earning release. 2020 hasn’t been a good year for bank investments. The KBW Bank index (BKX) is down 30% year-to-date. To summarize, earnings have surprised to the upside as robust trading activity helped offset lower net-income margins, and profits weren’t crimped by having to add billions to reserves to protect against bad loans. But the problem with banks is often what you don’t see. Trust is important. Insurance companies and banks are often considered black boxes. You don’t know with certainty if you can trust the balance sheet. Accounting and disclosures are opaque. Deutsche Bank (DB) trades at a paltry 0.3 times book value. Accounting can conceal more than it reveals about economic reality. Do bank’s financial statements provide a meaningful clue about its risks?

Banks are integral to how our system functions. Bank results are akin to taking the pulse of the economy. You get a diagnosis on how things are doing. Without getting deeply technical on how a bank functions, they are one of the organs that decide how much money circulates in the economy. When consumers pay down loans, that money gets recycled into new loans. A healthy bank system is core to a healthy economy. Look at Europe. The old continent desperately needs its banks to function better. Despite its flaws, I fundamentally believe the U.S. banking system is the best in the world. They are excellent at their primary function of allocating capital to the most promising opportunities which leads to an overall increase in the standard of living.

Low Interest Rates and Risk Taking

There’s an issue with loose lending standards. There seems to be a pattern. Excessive borrowing and risk taking is encouraged. Then something somewhere blows up and everybody flees and the Federal Reserve has to step in and bail out that market. It happened in the 90s, the 2000s, and now with the pandemic. And yet the lesson doesn’t seem to be learned. We are on the same path as before. The current low interest environment pushes investor towards more risk taking. The main question is how do you restrict the amount of excessive risk-taking occurring at the same time? Is it possible? If yes how would you even do that.

Podcast: Discussing TikTok And Social Media

Here’s my latest podcast on The Intelligent Investing Podcast with Eric Schleien where we discuss Tik Tok among other things (Apple and Microsoft etc…). I tried Tik Tok in August just to get a better understanding of the app and it’s phenomena. I was really impressed with the quality of the app and AI recommendations. I have since deleted the app because the content is not appealing to me. But I understand how sticky it is and how losing an hour of your life feels like 5 minutes.

The podcast was recorded a couple weeks ago. A lot of developments has happened since. Tik Tok and Oracle now have a deal in place and it’s not clear if the government will approve it. The matter will be played out after the elections. A judge ruled Tik Tok won’t be blocked in the US, for now.

You can listen to it here:

Podbean

iOS

Android

If you prefer video: