Comment of the Day
22nd May 2023
Eoin Treacy
May 23
Eoin personal portfolio: commodity position increased May 19th 2023
One of the questions subscribers ask most often is how to find details of my open trades. To make it easier I will simply repost the latest summary on a daily basis until there is a change.
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Video commentary for May 22nd 2023
A link to today's video commentary is posted in the Subscriber's Area.
Some of the topics discussed include: Japan breaking out, China quiet, speculation in the tech sector spreading beyond AI, gold eases, oil steady, bond yields continue to rebound.
China's $23 Trillion Local Debt Mess Is About to Get a Lot Worse
This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
“Many cities will become like Hegang in a few years’ time,” said Houze Song, an economist at US think tank MacroPolo, noting that China’s aging and shrinking population means many cities don’t have the workforce to sustain faster economic growth and tax revenue.
“The central government may be able to keep things stable in the short term by asking banks to roll over local governments’ debt,” Song said. Without loan extensions, he added, “the reality is that over two thirds of the localities won’t be able to repay their debt on time.”
In Heilongjiang province, where Hegang is located, bond investors are already wary of the risks. The province’s outstanding seven-year bond had an average yield of 3.53%, 18.8 basis points higher than the average nationwide, ranking it among the top four most expensive.
Eoin Treacy's view
The big question for everyone is just how much pain is the Chinese government willing to tolerate? The modest official debt to gdp ratio posted by the government does not include the debt owed by states, counties, or cities; all of which have a quasi-guarantee from the central government. When those debts are included China has one of the highest debt burdens of any major economy.
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New type of quasiparticle emerges to tame quantum computing errors
Thanks to a subscriber for this technical article may be of interest. Here is a section:
The Quantinuum group, meanwhile, made non-Abelian anyons in a different way. Using the Honeywell (NYSE:HON) 32-qubit H2 quantum processor, which holds ytterbium ions in an electromagnetic trap and alters their quantum states using lasers, they created a quasi-one-dimensional chain of interacting trapped-ion qubits.
Here, the anyons correspond to natural excitations of the ground state of the qubit system – which technically means they are not quasiparticles, since quasiparticles must be excited states. “The Majorana zero modes at the end of superconducting wires in the Microsoft experiment and the lattice defects in the Google experiment are non-Abelian defects,” emphasizes Ashvin Vishwanath of Harvard University, who collaborated with the Quantinuum team. “Unlike our experiment, they are not realized on top of true non-Abelian topological order.”
Eoin Treacy's view
There is no doubt excitement in the market around what are bleeding edge technologies is heating up. Commentary on quantum computing’s growth rate several years ago was the first time I heard the term exponential exponential growth. Conventional exponential growth is explained as a doubling; 2,4,8,16,32…. Growing by exponents implies 2,4,16,256,65536… I’m not sure reality has kept up with those lofty goals but the pace of innovation is certainly impressive.
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Why So Many Electric Car Chargers in America Don't Work
This article from Bloomberg may be of interest. Here is a section:
There isn’t a single reason for EV charger failures. Some of the problems, particularly with older machines, can be chalked up to a new technology going through the usual learning curve of improvements, all while sitting outside, exposed to the weather. There have been cycles of needed upgrades, such as replacing modems to deal with 5G wireless internet service. The myriad networks, retail outlets and garage owners who own the machines don’t always stay on top of maintenance. And chargers must communicate with a rapidly expanding variety of cars.
To that end, the precise scope of the problem isn’t known. EV drivers face a complex landscape of competing charging companies, each with its own stations and app, and there is no central repository of data on station performance. One widely cited 2022 study of fast-charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area (excluding Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA).’s Superchargers), found that about 25% of the 657 plugs weren’t working. While J.D. Power doesn’t disclose reliability rankings, Gruber said the worst-performing charging company leaves drivers unable to plug in about 39% of the time.
“With public charging, it’s a bit of the wild, wild West,” he said.
Tesla proved that reliable charging is possible. The all-electric automaker runs a global network of 45,000 Superchargers, which can add up to 200 miles of range in just 15 minutes. Tesla consistently gets the highest customer-satisfaction marks of any charging company in J.D. Power’s surveys, Gruber said. Its drivers report charger downtime of just 3%.
But Tesla has the advantage of keeping everything in-house. Until recently, Superchargers could only be used by Tesla cars, and didn’t need to work with the growing array of other EVs and batteries. Tesla also owns its Supercharger network, whereas many of the public chargers installed over the past decade are owned by whoever owns the parking lot where they’re located. Such property owners, Gruber said, don’t have as strong an incentive to maintain their machines.
Eoin Treacy's view
The challenge with developing a profitable EV market is margins are thin and the market is highly competitive. That suggests not every business model is likely to be successful. Constructing a charging network is capital intensive and the pay back is uncertain until the total penetration of EVs is known.
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© 2023 Eoin Treacy
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