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EIEIO…Fast Facts
Entrepreneurship: >10,000 – The number of companies that apply to participate each quarterly Y Combinator batch. (Y Combinator)
Innovation: 1.02 petabits per second – The record-breaking internet speed achieved in Japan, fast enough to download the entire Netflix catalog in one second. (World of Statistics)
Education: 94% – The percentage of of C-suite women who played sports at some point in their lives. (EY)
Impact: >75% – The percentage of countries on earth that will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain population size by 2100. (NFX)
Opportunity: 40x – The growth of the population of Frisco, TX since 1990 (6,000 people to 240,000). (Robert Sterling)
“When a young person dies, we are left not only with grief, but with questions that have no answers. In the face of senseless loss, sometimes all we can do is hold each other close and remember that love, though cut short, is never wasted.” –Unknown
It’s impossible to understand the sudden loss of life that happens in a natural disaster such as a flooding, earthquake or tornado. It’s especially jarring when the victims are the young and innocent.
Most of the time when you read about such an event, it almost doesn’t seem real and often the tragedy happens in a far off place like a city you’ve never heard of in China or South America. While awful, it’s not visceral.
9/11 had the opposite effect on me. I had been in the World Trade Centers too many times to count and knew a number of people who died that day, including my friends at Fred Alger Asset Management. Moreover, I lived on planes with United and American Airlines sending me birthday cards.
In other words, it could have easily been me. You get up expecting just another normal day and it turns out to be your last.
The Texas floods on July 4th that took at least 129 lives including 27 from Camp Mystic have shaken me and my new Dallas Community to the core. The stories of the young girls who were killed while attending this hundred-year-old Christian summer camp are heartbreaking.
As is true in many tragedies, there are also examples of heroism and faith. Scott Ruskin is 26-year-old rescue swimmer for the Coast Guard who saved 165 girls at Camp Mystic. Long time Camp Mystic Director Dick Eastman lost his life while saving many campers as did camp counselor Chloe Childress.
As a small yet deeply meaningful gesture of solidarity, thousands of trees in Dallas have green ribbons tied around them as tribute to the girls in their memory.
While we can’t begin to understand, we can pray to bring peace and hope. God bless the victims and their families.
Market Performance
Market Commentary
Stocks were mixed last week using President Trump’s tariff threats as an excuse to take a pause. Even though all major indices were down for the week, the NASDAQ and S&P 500 hit record highs on Thursday. For the week, NASDAQ inched down .1%, the S&P was off .3% and the Dow fell 1%.
NVIDIA became the first company in history to achieve a $4 trillion market cap and chip rival AMD also had a good week. This comes on the heels of Taiwan Semiconductor announcing revenue growth in the second quarter of 39% removing any fears that the AI Revolution was slowing down. Alleviating any concern that the animal spirits have calmed down at all, Bitcoin closed above $118,000.
CoreWeave, which has increased over 360% since its IPO in March, fell 10% after announcing it was buying Core Scientific in a $9 billion all-stock deal (NVIDIA invested $350 million in CoreWeave pre-IPO). Tesla shares also fell last week 7% after Elon Musk announced the creation of a new political party.
Interesting in the World of education, Dartmouth said it was raising $450 million of debt which follows a growing trend amongst Ivy League institutions. Also, the Department of Education said it would start collecting interest from the 7.7 million former students whose payment had been in limbo from the Biden Administration edicts. Also interesting to us, Bumo, a child care marketplace raised $10 million in venture financing.
While it feels like earnings season just ended, the beginning of second quarters earnings begin in earnest this week. Financial companies such as Blackrock, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan report Tuesday. Other companies that are of interest to Wall Street that are reporting this week include Netflix and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC just released revenue last week). Overall, expectations are for 3.5% revenue growth and 5% EPS growth…seemingly pretty low bars to clear.
We continue to be optimistic on the outlook for stocks and emerging growth companies in particular. With a 22.5x multiple on forward earnings, stocks aren’t “cheap” but believe that many growth companies have room to run. Moreover, a woken up IPO market will add fuel to the fire, in my opinion.
Need to Know
READ: AI Is a Boon to ‘High Agency’ People | WSJ
WATCH: Perplexity Launches Comet | Aravind Srinivas
LISTEN: How to Spend Your 20s in the AI Era | Lightcone Podcast
GSV’s Four I’s of Investor Sentiment
GSV tracks four primary indicators of investor sentiment: inflows and outflows of mutual funds and ETFs, IPO activity, interest rates, and inflation.
#1: Inflows and Outflows for Mutual Funds & ETFs
#2: IPO Market
#3: Interest Rates
#4: Inflation
Charts of the Week
Maggie Moe’s GSV Weekly Rap
Chuckles of the Week
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Connecting the Dots & EIEIO…
Old MacDonald had a farm, EIEIO. New MacDonald has a Startup…EIEIO: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Education, Impact and Opportunity. Accordingly, we focus on these key areas of the future.
One of the core goals of GSV is to connect the dots around EIEIO and provide perspective on where things are going and why. If you like this, please forward to your friends. Onward!
Make Your Dash Count!
-MM