Tag: investment proposals

Don’t Give Your Kids An Inheritance, Give This Instead

What Can Be Better Than An Inheritance? A Personal Matching Program

Getting an inheritance can be a good thing – or a bad thing.

While Millennials may wish their inheritance will someday pay for their retirement, that may or may not happen. According to a 2018 Charles Schwab Study, more than half (53%) of young people ages 16-25, “believe their parents will leave them an inheritance, versus the average 21% of people who actually received an inheritance of any kind.”

And, if they do receive an inheritance when they are close to retirement, that may not help them. It turns out that one out of three Baby Boomers who received an inheritance spent it within two years, according to research conducted by Dr. Jay Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer at Boston University Questrom School of Business, based on data from the Federal Reserve and a National Longitudinal Survey funded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that studied the period 1985-2008.

A Better Option: A Savings Program With A Kick

Wouldn’t it be a better option to help youthful members of the family set up a savings program with a kick to it – a match that you arrange to ignite interest, leverage time and boost returns through compounding?

Let’s say your son “Steve” is a 20-year-old college student who lives at home with you. Steve has a part-time job during the school year and works full time over summer breaks.

Steve hasn’t developed a rule set for saving money. He is not eligible for a 401(k) at work. He is not thinking about a far-off retirement, but he believes he might benefit from a nice inheritance, probably just when he might need the money when he retires.

As Steve’s Mom or Dad, you know better. You’d like Steve to learn how to become financially secure in his own right.

Let’s Make A Deal

Here’s how you can help. You make a deal with Steve:

“For every dollar you save, I will match you dollar-for dollar for five years. But there is a catch. My match goes into a retirement plan for you, a Roth IRA, that you must agree not to touch until you retire someday in the far away future.” 

That gives Steve something to think about. If he saved, say $500 a month of his own money, he would have $30,000 of savings in five years. He would also have an additional $30,000 funded by his parents in a Roth IRA that he would agree not to touch. Nothing wrong with that deal. . . But what about the constraint on not using that Roth money until retirement?

Maximizing Roth Limits While Avoiding Gift Taxes

That $500 monthly ($6,000 yearly) figure is magical.

It is the maximum ($6,000) that can be contributed to a Roth IRA per year, the annual limit for funding a Roth, according to the IRS.

It also happens to avoid a gift tax obligation (the parents’ match is a gift). Since $6,000 is well under the $15,000 annual exclusion, Steve’s parents would not be subject to gift taxes for funding the Roth. (Read “IRS Announces High Estate And Gift Tax Limits For 2020.”)

Will Steve Accept The Offer?

For Steve to see the full potential of the matching program, you’ll want to show him what the Roth can accomplish over the decades between now (age 20) and age 65, a period of 45 years. The Roth will need to be invested for long-term capital appreciation potential. The best way to do that is through a simple S&P 500 Index Fund.

What If The 45 Years Turn Out To Be Terrible Markets?

This is where history comes in handy.

For skeptics, we can look at the worst performing 45 year market periods since the 1920s. For the optimists, we can review the best. While history will not repeat itself exactly, history does provide a frame of reference.

Let’s go back in time to see the worst outcome for a five year program of monthly investments in an S&P 500 Index Fund with a 45 year horizon.

That 45-year period ended with the Financial Crisis (1963-2008).

Had Steve started his five-year, $500 a month program ($30,000 invested) at the worst of times, his age 65 value would have grown to $1,192,643, an average annual return of 9%.

What If The Next 45 Years Turn Out To Be Terrific Markets?

If Steve had lucked into the best 45 year period (1946-1991), he would have had $4,368,046 at age 65 (highest 45-year holding period), an average annual return of 12.4%.

What If Returns Are Just Average?

What about the median return (1931-1976)? Steve would have had $2,421,743 at age 65, an average annual return of 10.9%.

What If Steve Wanted Safety Over Capital Appreciation?

If Steve had been very conservative, he may have considered the safest option, a money market fund that tracked 90 day T-Bills. The best 45-year period for money market funds (1956-2001) would given Steve an age-65 retirement nest egg of only $356,519, a 6% average annual return.

You can see these comparisons graphically in the chart below.

The point is this: Steve can’t control what type of market he will experience. But history can give him a frame of reference.

Is Steve Convinced?

To accept his parent’s matching proposal, Steve needs to see the benefit of investing in himself (and having others invest in him through the match). His interest needs to be ignited through the math behind the market, the math that leverages time and boosts returns through compounding.

Your Role As A Parent

As we approach the holidays, there will be opportunities to get together with young adults in your family. Why not impart some sage advice – in fact, not just once, but as often as possible.

Your Advice

Start saving now in a Roth IRA. Fund your 401(k) at work as soon as you become eligible; contribute each payroll period without stopping until you retire; maximize your match. Choose investments based on long-term capital appreciation potential. Take advantage of the math of compounding. And, if a parent or family member is willing to match your savings, go for it.

Survey Question

After reading this post, what is the likelihood that you will make a Roth matching proposal with your child, grandchild, niece or nephew? I’d like to know what you think. Click here to take a quick survey.

Look for my next post on what happens when someone in Steve’s position starts contributing to his 401(k) at work.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Julie Jason, JD, LLM

I got my start on Wall Street as a lawyer before moving to money management more than 25 years ago. My firm, Jackson, Grant Investment Advisers, Inc. (www.jacksongrant.us) of Stamford, CT, is a fiduciary high-net-worth boutique specializing in managing retirement portfolios. I approach investing with a blend of optimism (everyone can do something to improve their financial situations) and a dose of healthy skepticism (don’t invest unless you understand what can go wrong). These themes describe my “voice” whether on-air (NBC Nightly News, CNBC, NPR) or presenting (AARP, AAII, BetterInvesting) or in print. I began writing in earnest in 1996 (You and Your 401(k), an investor’s view of 401(k)s). Recent books are: Retire Securely (2018), offering concise action-oriented insights for retirees, pre-retirees and Millennials (Excellence in Financial Literacy Award “EIFLE”); The Retirement Survival Guide (2009/2017), a comprehensive tool chest for all financial levels and ages (EIFLE Award); and Managing Retirement Wealth (2011/2017), a guide for high net worth individuals (EIFLE Award). I’ve written over 1,000 weekly columns (Clarion Award, syndicated by King Features). When the time is right, I comment on SEC rule proposals.

Source: Don’t Give Your Kids An Inheritance, Give This Instead

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This is Stock Market For Beginners 2019 edition video! This video should help out all beginners in the stock market who want to know how to invest in the stock market in 2019. I try to do a stock market for beginners video each year and this is the 2019 edition. We will discuss how to buy stocks, where to buy stocks, how much money do you need to buy stocks, how to invest in the stock market, what is the best brokerage for buying stocks and so much more. I hope you get a tremendous amount of value out of this stock market for beginners video today. Enjoy! Learn How I pick Stocks in this course linked below. Enjoy! https://bit.ly/2DT5ER9 Learn How To Make Money From Trading Stock Options Here https://bit.ly/2QaHSX6 To join my private stock group click below. https://bit.ly/2OSUMDS * My Instagram is : FinancialEducationJeremy Financial Education Channel Sign Up to Get The Top 5 Investing Apps I Use And How I Use Them http://bit.ly/jeremystop5

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Education

Silicon Valley Investors Are Bonkers For European Startups

Index Ventures partner Danny Rimer always planned to move back to London from Silicon Valley. But when Rimer returned to England a year ago after seven years establishing Index’s U.S. foothold with stakes in companies like Dropbox, Etsy and Slack, he had company: investors from U.S. venture capital firms Benchmark, NEA and Sequoia were also appearing at startup dinners, leading deals and even looking to open offices.

“We’ve always been surprised at how our U.S. peers flew over Europe,” says the Canada-born and Switzerland-raised Rimer, 49, who opened Index’s London office in 2002. As a full-time European resident again, he debuts at No. 3 on the 2019 Midas List Europe, thanks to multi-national investments including Discord, Glossier, Farfetch and Squarespace. Rimer says he watched as investors flocked to pour money into India, China, and Latin American countries, instead. “A very successful Welshman talked about Europe being a museum,” says Rimer, alluding to billionaire investor Michael Moritz, the Sequoia partner and Google and Yahoo investor who moved from Wales to Silicon Valley decades ago. “Now his firm is all over the geo looking.”

More money is flowing into European tech than ever, and it’s increasingly coming from venture capital’s elite U.S. firms. European startups are likely to receive a record $34.3 billion in investments this year, according to investment firm Atomico, with 19% of funding rounds including an American firm, double the portion when Atomico started tracking in 2015. Those American investors will account for about $10 billion, or nearly one-third, of the total amount invested.

American interest in European companies isn’t new: Palo Alto, California-founded Accel opened a London office nearly twenty years ago, and other firms followed suit. But many retreated in subsequent economic down cycles, says Philippe Botteri, No. 6 on Midas List Europe. Botteri, a French citizen, started his venture career at Bessemer Venture Partners in San Francisco and joined Accel in London in 2011. The years leading up to the U.S. firms’ return witnessed a global economic crisis, while access to customers, engineering talent and programs like startup accelerator Y Combinator drove a host of European founders, such as Stripe’s Collison brothers, to relocate to the U.S. Considered a splintered market with regional regulations and languages, Europe faced a fresh hurdle with “Brexit,” when the United Kingdom voted in a 2016 referendum to leave the European Union, a process still ongoing. Its ruling body, the European Union, has made an anchor policy of challenging big tech companies on how they use data.

Blossom Capital founder Ophelia Brown says she was met with incredulity when, as a young investor at Index Ventures between 2012 and 2016, she visited West Coast counterparts and described the opportunity in European tech. “Everyone would push back: Europe was a little travel, a little ecommerce, a little gaming,” she says. “They felt there was nothing of substance.” In 2017, when she set out to raise Blossom’s first fund, many U.S. investors told her the opportunity for new firms seemed greater in the U.S. and China. Just two years later, Brown says she now hears from institutions asking how to get more exposure to Europe’s startup scene.

What’s changed: A mix of high-profile public offerings such as Adyen and Spotify and a maturing ecosystem that’s made it a much easier draw for U.S. firms, facing intense competition at home, to risk millions in Europe. Spotify, the Stockholm-based music streaming service that went public via direct listing in April 2018, and Adyen, the Amsterdam-based payments company that went public two months later, have created nearly $50 billion in combined market value. The IPOs of Criteo in Paris and Farfetch in London have also produced a network of millionaires primed to write “angel investor” personal checks into smaller tech companies. Today there are 99 unicorns, or companies valued at one billion dollars or more, compared to 22 in 2015, according to Atomico’s data.

“The question used to be, can Europe generate a $1 billion outcome, and then you had Spotify and Adyen creating tens of billions of market cap,” says Botteri, who notes that winners are also coming from a broader base of cities in Europe – 12 hubs, not all from London and Tel Aviv. (As on the Midas List Europe, European investors often include Israel’s tech-heavy startup scene.) “Now the question is, can Europe generate a $100 billion company? And my answer is, just give it a few years.”

For startups in far-flung places like Tallinn, Estonia, where Pipedrive was founded in 2010, or Bucharest, where UiPath got its start, the influx of U.S. venture capital counts for more than just money – it means access to former operators who helped scale businesses like Facebook, Google and Slack, introductions to customers in New York or executive hires in San Francisco. And with their stamps of approval comes buzz that can still kickstart a startup’s brand recognition, investors say.

But they also come with a risk: heightened pressure to deliver, board members who may be 5,000 miles away, and potentially overheated valuations that can prove onerous should a founder misstep. Sarah Noeckel, a London-based investor at Dawn Capital and the publisher of women-in-tech newsletter Femstreet, has tracked a number of recent seed-stage deals in which a U.S. investor swooped in with an offer too rich for local alternatives to match, for companies that sometimes haven’t sold anything yet. “I think there’s little validation at this point how it actually plays out for them,” she says.

For the U.S. investors, there’s a clear financial incentive to “swoop in.” On average over the past year, one dollar’s worth of equity in a European startup in a Series A funding round would have cost $1.60 in the U.S. for a comparable share, according to the Atomico report. Investors insist that for the most in-demand companies in Europe, such as London-based travel startup Duffel, which raised $30 million from Index Ventures in October, prices already match Silicon Valley highs.

All the more reason that as U.S. investors hunt in Europe like never before, they’re doing so quietly. Though Lightspeed Venture Partners announced its hiring of a London-based partner, Rytis Vitkauskas, in October, other U.S. firms have been on the ground without advertising it publicly. Leaders from NEA, with $20 billion in assets under management, passed through London in recent weeks on a venture capital tour as the firm plans to invest more heavily in Europe moving forward, sources say. Sequoia partners Matt Miller and Pat Grady, meanwhile, have been spotted around town meeting with potential job candidates. (Sequoia’s never employed a staffer in Europe before.) NEA and Sequoia declined to comment.

“Everyone would push back: Europe was a little travel, a little ecommerce, a little gaming. They felt there was nothing of substance.”

Blossom Capital founder Ophelia Brown

Many more U.S. investors now pass through London; some even stretch the meaning of what it means to visit a city through months-long stays. “I always used to have to travel to the West Coast to see friends that I made from the show,” says Harry Stebbings, who has interviewed hundreds of U.S. venture capitalists on his popular podcast, ‘The Twenty Minute VC.’ “Now, every week I can see three to five VCs in London visiting.” For the past several months, longtime Silicon Valley-based Accel partner Ping Li has lived in London with his family. Asked if he’d moved to the city without any public announcement, Li demurred – “I would argue that I’m spending a lot of time on British Airways,” he says – before insisting he plans to return to California in three to six months. “I don’t think you can actually be a top-tier venture capital firm without being global,” he says. Firms without plans for a permanent presence in London are creating buzz among local investors, too. Kleiner Perkins investors Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman have been active in Europe recently, they confirm. Benchmark, the firm behind Snap and Uber, invested in Amsterdam-founded open-source software maker Elastic, which went public in 2018, and more recently London-based Duffel and design software maker Sketch, based in The Hague. “Europe’s just more in the spotlight now,” partner Chetan Puttagunta says.

Against the backdrop of Brexit, the inbound interest can feel like a surprise. London-based investors, however, appear to be shrugging off concerns and hoping for the best. “In and of itself, it means nothing,” says Index Ventures’ Martin Mignot, a French and British citizen investing in London and No. 7 on the Midas List Europe. “The only real question is around talent, whether it’s going to be more difficult for people to come and work in London, but how difficult that is remains to be seen.” Or as his colleague Rimer quips: “Having spent seven years in the U.S., I don’t exactly think the political climate of the U.S. was necessarily more welcoming.”

When Rimer attended the Slush conference, a tech conference of 25,000 in Helsinki in November, he brought along a guest: Dylan Field, the CEO of buzzy San Francisco-based design software maker Figma. If Field were European, Index would be leading him around Silicon Valley; instead, with 80% of Figma’s business outside of the U.S., Rimer wanted Field to experience the energy of Europe’s tech community first-hand. Explains Rimer: “It’s just a reflection of the reality today.”

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Alex Konrad

I’m an associate editor at Forbes covering venture capital, cloud and enterprise software out of New York. I edit the Midas List, Midas List Europe, Cloud 100 list and 30 Under 30 for VC. I’m a Fortune Magazine and WNYC alum. My tech focus would’ve perplexed my college self, as I studied medieval history and archaeology at Harvard University. Follow me on Twitter at @alexrkonrad and email me at akonrad@forbes.com. Securely share tips at https://www.forbes.com/tips/

Source: Silicon Valley Investors Are Bonkers For European Startups

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A interview with Venture Capitalist and Co-Founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen In this interview, Marc discusses how Silicon Valley works and why it is so hard to replicate. Marc also talks about what he looks for in investments and gives advice to students. 📚 Marc Andreessen’s favourite books are located at the bottom of the description❗ Like if you enjoyed Subscribe for more:http://bit.ly/InvestorsArchive Follow us on twitter:http://bit.ly/TwitterIA Other great Venture Capitalists videos:⬇ Marc Andreessen: Venture Capital Investment Philosophy:http://bit.ly/MAndreessenVid1 Billionaire Chris Sacca on Investing, Venture Capital and Life:http://bit.ly/CSaccaVid1 Billionaire Peter Thiel on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Competition: http://bit.ly/PTheilVid1 Video Segments: 0:00 Introduction 1:58 Something you really screwed up? 3:09 How does Silicon Valley work? 6:33 Why has Silicon Valley never been replicated? 10:24 Where does the value of cryptocurrency come from? 12:46 Is it going to disrupt governments? 14:26 What makes a fundable company? 19:23 What do you see in the future? 22:48 Advice to students? 24:52 How do you get rid of fear? Marc Andreessen’s Favourite Books🔥 Life: The Movie:http://bit.ly/LifeTheMovie Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:http://bit.ly/ConfessionsEconomic And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street:http://bit.ly/MoneyKeptRolling Last Call:http://bit.ly/LastCallMA Startup Rising:http://bit.ly/Startuprising Interview Date: 29th March, 2018 Event: Udacity Original Image Source:http://bit.ly/MAndreessenPic1 Investors Archive has videos of all the Investing/Business/Economic/Finance masters. Learn from their wisdom for free in one place. For more check out the channel. Remember to subscribe, share, comment and like! No advertising.

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Education

Borderless Investing: Eduardo Saverin And Raj Ganguly Grow B Capital

Eduardo Saverin and Rajarshi “Raj” Ganguly are two of the three cofounders of B Capital Group, a venture capital firm with close to $800 million, split between a first and a second fund (still being raised). The third cofounder is legendary investor Howard Morgan. Brazilian Saverin, 37, is based in Singapore and best known for being the cofounder of Facebook – whose shares in it give him a net worth estimated at about $10 billion.

Americans Ganguly, 43, and Morgan, 73, come from diverse backgrounds. Ganguly, based in Los Angeles, spent his early career at Bain Capital, overseeing a number of investments. Morgan, based in New York, helped start ARPAnet, the internet’s precursor, in the 1970s, and later was president of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.

B Capital has dual headquarters in Los Angeles and Singapore, as well as offices in New York and San Francisco, with a total of 40 full-time staff. B Capital focuses on companies already in series B or C rounds, generally over $10 million in revenue, and looks to invest roughly $20 million. The trio would like to keep the total number of companies in each fund to about 20.

The firm has the slogan “innovation without borders,” reflecting the founders’ belief that innovation can originate anywhere, not just in Silicon Valley. B Capital also uses global consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to help it grow startups and match them with larger firms. Saverin and Ganguly sat down with Forbes Asia in an exclusive interview in September at Singapore’s Shangri-La hotel to discuss their goals for B Capital.

Today In: Asia

Forbes Asia: How are you deploying your capital into startups?

Eduardo Saverin: Primarily we focus on companies that have an existing level of traction. There are a lot of places where you could invest in technology, but you need to have an edge and focus. For us, together with our relationship with BCG, it’s about accelerating growth. Most companies we invest in have a B2B angle. When the company is still an idea on a napkin, it’s hard for us to introduce them to some of the largest companies in the world. So we tend to invest where there’s a particular amount of value that we can bring through those corporate introductions and value acceleration, which means they tend to translate to series B and beyond. But frankly the staging is fungible. It’s about traction.

Raj Ganguly: As we build the firm we want to be really conscious of being able to invest into some companies really early, probably smaller amounts of capital, and as some of those companies scale and grow, we want to bring larger amounts of capital to those companies. Then finally for some of the companies that really continue to go into highly accelerated growth mode, we would actually not just double-down, but we would take outsized ownership stakes. As we’re growing the capital, we’re increasing our ability to invest across multiple stages. The best use of our capital, rather than finding a new investment, is finding a company in our portfolio where we can see the trajectory of the company before an outsider can see it.

What is the value-add you want to bring to your entrepreneurs?

Ganguly: We focus on doing three things really well ourselves and then partnering with BCG and others for everything else. We focus on helping make introductions and really helping get that growth flywheel going. The second part is we are focused on hiring key C-level talents into companies once we invest into them. We find that every single time we make an investment, if we can help them with one or two better hires on the margin, it fundamentally changes the direction of the company. And third, we help them raise strategic capital. We think, while it’s great to have other venture capital firms and folks like that, there are so many large enterprises sitting on over $1 trillion of capital and many of them want to invest and partner with startups. They could be much more strategic in the capital and the value that they bring.

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Juliana Tan for Forbes Asia

Can you give an example of this value-add to a portfolio company?Saverin: One of our early investments was in a company in the clinical trials space called Evidation Health. It’s a perfect example of a business where they can develop all the technologies that they would like. The truth is, success will come from adoption of virtual clinical trials from the largest pharma companies in the world. When we first met the business, it was working with a lot of smaller biotech firms, which are the traditional early adopters of such technologies. But leveraging our partnerships, including BCG, we had a chance to meet with some of the largest pharma companies in the world.

Through those discussions we understood that, unlike traditional tech innovation cycles where things over time get a little bit cheaper and faster, in the pharma world, you were seeing kind of a reverse innovation cycle where it was getting more expensive and taking longer to get to market.

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Juliana Tan for Forbes Asia

And one of the largest pharma companies in the world took one of their existing trials that they had already done, and then just replicated it through a virtual standpoint, and saw both the speed, the cost effectiveness, and the depth of the data. That gave us conviction to invest, because we knew there was a real appetite for experimentation. Today, that business has most of the largest pharma companies in the world as customers. Some of them have become investors.

Ganguly: It just announced, a few weeks ago, a landmark partnership in dementia with Apple and Eli Lilly. We’ve been a part of helping make some of those connections.

What’s unique about B Capital’s approach to investments?

Ganguly: There are four key parts of our model. It’s about global thematic investing, one single team leveraging global data. It’s about deep local expertise in each market that we invest in. It’s about being the single highest value-add investor in every company and having the capital through partnerships with our investors and through our own capital to fund the growth of these companies as they scale. Our risk model is a lower risk model than early stage, which is about investing in ideas on a napkin, and having one of 20 companies that you know will drive your whole returns. Our model is about backing companies that have customer traction, that have a founding team that has high potential. We are looking for large potential customers and large potential partnerships that further mitigate risks. We believe our approach has upside because we’re investing in companies that are growing at 100% plus a year.

Saverin: The VC game is an information edge game. You need to leverage it not just in the first investment, but across the lifecycle of the company. Our model is about rolling up our sleeves and getting deeply involved, where entrepreneurs want us to, and where we can tremendously add value.

You believe in innovation without borders, can you expand on that idea?

Saverin: Companies are becoming global increasingly by design. There’s no border to where innovation can be received and used. Whether you start a company in Silicon Valley or in Africa or any part of the world, there really is the increasing impetus to go beyond your existing borders. When you start thinking about the evolution of innovation, some of it is the enablers, including the engineering talent. When you go to Silicon Valley, that’s actually one of the hardest places in the world to get engineering talent because of the massive competition. In other parts of the world you can ask is there enough raw talent, even though it’s not as competitive? So we’ll see a broader equalization. It would be hard for me to believe that as tech enablement becomes a big part of much larger industries, that all that innovation will come from one place. If that were to happen, I’d do anything I can to change it because the truth is the whole world is consuming technology.

What opportunities do you see in Southeast Asia?

Ganguly: We understood early that e-commerce was being inhibited in the region because e-commerce companies had to do their own delivery. That’s what really convinced us that we wanted to invest in all the picks and shovels around e-commerce, but no longer invest in e-commerce, or at least not focus on e-commerce. So today we’re investors in Ninja Van, BlackBuck, Mswipe and Bizongo, all companies that enable e-commerce.

Given WeWork’s pulled IPO, have valuations gotten overdone?

Ganguly: Where we are in the cycle and when it changes, that’s not our business. We don’t time the market, but we fundamentally take a long-term perspective. There are times when you’re in a cycle and you have to pay a little bit more for that. But if you have the right time horizon, we think it’s still far better to do that than to be looking for value plays where you’re looking at the second- or third- or fourth-best company. We always say that you might sleep better if you have a value play, but you won’t sleep very well when you exit because the valuation differential is even more stark when you exit a lower-tier player. It used to be that you were forced to go public because you had to pay out early investors. That’s no longer the case. You can now continue to stay private, and have access to very large amounts of private capital. Your early investors can cash out because later stage investors are willing to buy them out. There’s a very active secondary market. What’s changed is I think there’s no longer this belief that going public is something that you have to do. There are a lot of questions about whether going public drives long-term value. While it’s worked for some companies, it hasn’t worked for others.

What would be the process if a portfolio company might fit with Facebook?

Saverin: We are trying to facilitate introductions with any enabler, hopefully a win-win on both sides. So Facebook of course would be part of that equation, and parts of its strategy that converge with some of our focus areas, especially in financial services. Many companies will already have some type of relationship with Facebook, given where Facebook is today, through WhatsApp or otherwise. The innovation ecosystem touches Facebook all the time, so it’s just a question of extent.

Where is B Capital going to be in 10 years?

Saverin: That’s an important question. I usually think about it in two ways. We are incredibly ambitious, and we want to have an institution that will outlive us, so we are always thinking of the very long term. One thing I say every single day, whether in our partner meetings, or when we speak to our entrepreneurs, is to always push focus. Focus on what you’re doing today, that’s how you’re going to get to a bigger vision ten years from now, and even a vision well past our lifetimes. But at a really top level what I want us to do is to enable technology to get into the hands of consumers faster by leveraging the existing distribution networks of the largest companies in the world. Push intrapreneurship, it doesn’t necessarily need that push, but enable them to not only think of disruption but a positive win-win transformation. It’s not about the top ten tech companies that will take over a market by themselves, but the enablement of every company in the world with technology in collaborative innovation.

What do you mean by collaborative innovation?

Saverin: This is a really high-level idea, that can be seen in the platform technologies, such as Facebook, WeChat and others. They have created massive innovation acceleration by enabling other businesses to come on top of their platforms to gain distribution and engagement. What we are looking for is a win-win using the distribution assets of the largest companies in the world to ultimately get API-ed to the innovation ecosystem. If we get even 0.5% of the way in driving that, we will be doing the right thing for ten years from now. I think it’s not always a success when a startup out-innovates and massively disrupts a big company, when it could have leveraged a big company’s distribution, the licenses, the regulatory know-how, and so on, so that consumers could get the advantages of technology much faster.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Pamela Ambler

Pamela covers entrepreneurs, wealth, blockchain and the crypto economy as a senior reporter across digital and print platforms. Prior to Forbes, she served as on-air foreign correspondent for Thomson Reuters’ broadcast team, during which she reported on global markets, central bank policies, and breaking business news. Before Asia, she was a journalist at NBC Comcast, and started her career at CNBC and Bloomberg as a financial news producer in New York. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo, USA Today, Huffington Post, and Nasdaq. Pamela’s previous incarnation was on the buy side in M&A research and asset management, inspired by Michael Lewis’ book “Liar’s Poker”. Follow me on Twitter at @pamambler

Source: Borderless Investing: Eduardo Saverin And Raj Ganguly Grow B Capital

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Eduardo Saverin, Co-Founder, Facebook & Co-Founder at B Capital Group alongside Raj Ganguly, Co-Founder at B Capital Group discuss how global trends in innovation and venture capital can be leveraged to benefit entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley. Fore more news and insights visit SuperReturn365: https://goo.gl/9nEbXA

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Travel & Events

 

How’s the Consumer Doing? Financial Sector Earnings Next Week Could Help Tell Us

Key Takeaways:

  • Big banks to kick off reporting season the week of October 14
  • Earnings for sector expected to fall slightly, analysts say
  • Brexit, trade, consumer health on topic list for Financial earnings calls

During Q2 earnings season, Financial sector results helped renew investor confidence in the U.S. consumer.

The question heading into Q3 is whether banking executives still see the same kind of strength, and if they think it can continue amid trade wars, Brexit, and signs of weakness in the U.S. economy.

Over the last three months, as the broader stock market rallied to an all-time high, slammed the brakes, and then re-tested earlier peaks, consumer health arguably did much of the heavy lifting. It felt like every time stocks pulled back, they got a second wind from retail sales, housing or some other data or earnings news that showed consumers still out there buying.

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The banks played a huge role in setting the stage by reporting better-than-expected Q2 results that showed signs of strong consumer demand even as some of the banks’ trading divisions took a hit. Next week, six of the biggest banks come back to talk about their Q3 experience and what they expect for Q4. Analysts expect Financial sector earnings to drop slightly in Q3.

That said, most of the major banking names have done an excellent job keeping costs in check as they wrestle with fundamental industry headwinds like falling interest rates and slowing revenue from their trading divisions. This time out, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more of the same, and you can’t rule out a bit more vigor from the trading business thanks to all the volatility we saw in the markets last quarter.

Earnings growth may not be there for Financials this time around, or it could be negligible. At the end of the day, though, Financial companies are still likely to be remarkably profitable considering a yield curve that remains relatively flat and global macroeconomic concerns, according to Briefing.com. This sector knows how to make money, but it might just not make as much as it did a year ago. Earnings will likely show large banking companies still in good financial condition with the U.S. consumer generally in decent shape for now, as the U.S. economy arguably remains the best-kept house on a tough block.

Investors have started to pick up on all this, judging from the S&P 500 Financial sector’s good health over the last month and year to date. The sector is up 3.4% from a month ago to easily lead all sectors over that time period, and up 15% since the start of 2019. The 15% gain is below the SPX’s 17% year-to-date pace, but it’s an improvement after a few years when Financials generally didn’t participate as much in major market rallies.

What to Listen For

No one necessarily planned it, but it’s helpful in a way that banks report early in the earnings season. Few other industries have larger megaphones or the ability to set the tone like the biggest financial institutions can. The other sectors are important, too, but they often see things from their own silos. Combined, the big banks have a view of the entire economy and all the industries, as well as what consumers and investors are doing. Their positive remarks last quarter didn’t really give Financial stocks an immediate lift, but it did apparently help reassure investors who were nervous about everything from trade wars to Brexit.

Going into Q3 earnings, those same issues dog the market, and bank executives have a front-row seat. How do they see trade negotiations playing out? Can consumers hold up if trade negotiations start to go south? How’s the consumer and corporate credit situation? Will weakness in Europe spread its tentacles more into the U.S.? And is there anything bank CEOs think the Fed or Congress can do to fend off all these challenges?

On another subject closer to the banks’ own business outlook, what about the shaky initial public offering (IPO) situation? That’s getting a closer look as a few recent IPOs haven’t performed as well as some market participants had expected. One question is whether other potential IPOs might get cold feet, potentially hurting businesses for some of the major investment banks.

All the big bank calls are important, but JP Morgan Chase (JPM) on Tuesday morning might stand out. Last time, CEO Jamie Dimon said he saw positive momentum with the U.S. consumer, and his words helped ease concerns about the economic outlook. More words like that this time out might be well timed when you consider how nervous many investors seem to be right now. On the other hand, if Dimon doesn’t sound as positive, that’s worth considering, too.

While few analysts see a recession in the works—at least in the short term—bank executives might be asked if they’re starting to see any slowdown in lending, which might be a possible sign of the economy putting on the brakes. Softer manufacturing sector data over the last few months and falling capital investment by businesses could provide subject matter on the big bank earnings calls.

Regionals Vs. Multinationals

While big banks like JPM operate around the world and might be particularly attuned to the effects of trade, regional banks make most of their loans within the U.S., potentially shielding them from overseas turbulence.

Regional banks also might provide a deeper view into what consumers are doing in the housing and credit card markets. With rates still near three-year lows, we’ve seen some data suggest a bump in the housing sector lately, and that’s been backed by solid earnings data out of that industry. If regional banks report more borrowing demand, that would be another sign pointing to potential strength in consumer sentiment. Refinancing apparently got a big lift over the last few months, and now we’ll hear if banks saw any benefit.

One possible source of weakness, especially for some of the regional players, could be in the oil patch. With crude prices and Energy sector earnings both under pressure, there’s been a big drop in the number of rigs drilling for oil in places like Texas over the last few months, according to energy industry data. That could potentially weigh on borrowing demand. Also, the manufacturing sector is looking sluggish, if recent data paint an accurate picture, maybe hurting results from regional banks in the Midwest. It might be interesting to hear if bank executives are worried more about the U.S. manufacturing situation.

Another challenge for the entire sector is the rate picture. The Fed lowered rates twice since banks last reported, and the futures market is penciling in another rate cut as pretty likely for later this month. Lower rates generally squeeze banks’ margins. If rates drop, banks simply can’t make as much money.

The 10-year Treasury yield has fallen from last autumn’s high above 3.2% to recent levels just above 1.5% amid fears of economic sluggishness and widespread predictions of central bank rate cuts. The long trade standoff between China and the U.S. has also contributed to lower yields as many investors pile into defensive investments like U.S. Treasuries, cautious about the growth outlook.

Another thing on many investors’ minds is the current structure of the yield curve. The 10-year and two-year yields inverted for a stretch in Q3, typically an indication that investors believe that growth will be weak. That curve isn’t inverted now, but it remains historically narrow. Still, some analysts say the current low five-year and two-year yields might mean healthy corporate credit, maybe a good sign for banks.

Q3 Financial Sector Earnings

Analysts making their Q3 projections for the Financial sector expect a slowdown in earnings growth from Q2. Forecasting firm FactSet pegs Financial sector earnings to fall 1.8%, which is worse than its previous estimate in late September for a 0.9% drop. By comparison, Financial earnings grew 5.2% in Q2, way better than FactSet’s June 30 estimate for 0.6% growth.

Revenue for the Financial sector is expected to fall 1.6% in Q3, down from 2.6% growth in Q2, FactSet said.

While estimates are for falling earnings and revenue, the Financial sector did surprise last quarter with results that exceeded the average analyst estimate. You can’t rule out a repeat, but last time consumer strength might have taken some analysts by surprise. Now, consumer strength in Q3 seems like a given, with the mystery being whether it can last into Q4.

Upcoming Earnings Dates:

  • Citigroup (C) – Tuesday, October 15
  • JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) – Tuesday, October 15
  • Wells Fargo (WFC) – Tuesday, Oct. 15, (B)
  • Goldman Sachs (GS) – Tuesday, October 15
  • Bank of America (BAC) – Wednesday, October 16
  • Morgan Stanley (MS) – Thursday, October 17

TD Ameritrade® commentary for educational purposes only. Member SIPC.

JJ Kinahan

I am Chief Market Strategist for TD Ameritrade and began my career as a Chicago Board Options Exchange market maker, trading primarily in the S&P 100 and S&P 500 pits. I’ve also worked for ING Bank, Blue Capital and was Managing Director of Option Trading for Van Der Moolen, USA. In 2006, I joined the thinkorswim Group, which was eventually acquired by TD Ameritrade. I am a 30-year trading veteran and a regular CNBC guest, as well as a member of the Board of Directors at NYSE ARCA and a member of the Arbitration Committee at the CBOE. My licenses include the 3, 4, 7, 24 and 66.

Source: How’s the Consumer Doing? Financial Sector Earnings Next Week Could Help Tell Us

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News & Politics

Ever Thought Of A 100-Year Green Bond? French Railway Firm Is Pitching The World’s First

It seems green bonds, sometimes referred to as climate bonds, are becoming ever so popular by the day with issuance tipped to reach record levels in 2019. However a French railway firm has notched industry trend setting way up the charts by launching the world’s first 100-year green bond.

Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Réseau (SNCF Réseau), France’s state-owned railway network management firm, which has already raised €2.8 billion ($3.10 billion) in green bonds in 2019 alone, confirmed Friday (August 23) that it has launched its 100-year product.

The near €100 million in book value raised would be used to finance green projects meeting its eligibility criteria for improvement, maintenance and “energy optimization” of railways. Some of the funds would also be allocated to sustainability components of new route and track extensions, the company said.

In total, SNCF Réseau has so far raised €5.4 billion in green bonds, nearly doubling the figure this year. Following the latest investment round in its green bond program, the French company now ranks seventh in the global green bond issuance market.

Green bonds are typically asset-linked and backed by the issuer’s balance sheet, earmarked to be used for climate and environmental projects. According to rating agency Moody’s, issuers brought $66.6 billion of green bonds to market globally the second quarter of 2019, propelling first-half issuance to a record $117 billion up 47% on an annualized basis compared to the first six months of 2018, and compared against the 11% year-over-year growth for the same six month periods of 2017 and 2018.

However, there has been criticism over the criteria for green bonds. On paper such bonds allow firms to raise finance for low carbon and climate-friendly projects thereby offering a promising solution to those looking to go green via climate initiatives.

But there have been instances of companies using the proceeds of green bond issuance to pay of other debts. Some issuers offer green bonds targeting specific projects, but often fail to outline a clear, long-term strategic environmental goal.

For its part, SNCF Réseau’s 100-year bond and previous issuance drives strictly comply with the European Commission’s green bond standard. The French railway network operator now takes over the title of the world’s longest maturing green bond from Energias de Portugal (EDP) and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg (EnBW) whose bond had a maturity of 60 years.

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Gaurav Sharma

I am a UK-based oil & gas sector analyst and business news editor/writer with over 20 years of experience in the financial and trade press. I have worked on all major media platforms – print, newswire, web and broadcast. At various points in my career, I have been an OPEC, Bank of England and UK Office for National Statistics correspondent. Over the years, I have provided wide-ranging oil & gas sector commentary, including pricing, supply scenarios, E&P infrastructure, corporations’ financials and exploration data. I am a lively commentator on ‘crude’ matters for publications and broadcasting outlets including CNBC Europe, BBC Radio, Asian and Middle Eastern networks, via my own website, Forbes and various other publications. My oil market commentary has a partial supply-side bias based on a belief that the risk premium is often given gratuitous, somewhat convenient, prominence by cheeky souls who handle quite a few paper barrels but have probably never been to a tanker terminal or the receiving end of a pipeline. Yet having done both, I pragmatically accept paper barrels [or should we say ‘e-barrels’] are not going anywhere, anytime soon!

Source: Ever Thought Of A 100-Year Green Bond? French Railway Firm Is Pitching The World’s First

10 years ago, the World Bank Treasury issued the first green bond then laid out the first blueprint for sustainable fixed income investing, transforming development finance and sparking a sustainability revolution in the capital markets. Learn about the revolution.

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