In Search of the Perfect Investment

This piece has been floating around the Internet. No one knows who actually wrote it. It’s close to what Mercedes has on its web site. But who cares? It’s worth reading, then mulling on. I agree with its predictions:

In a recent interview, the “Head” of Daimler Benz (Mercedes Benz) said their competitors are no longer other car companies, but Tesla (obviously), and now, Google, Apple, Amazon ‘et al’ are..

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the U.S., young lawyers already can’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.

So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 times more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s license and will never own a car.

It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies will probably go bankrupt. Traditional car companies will try the traditional approach and try to build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will take the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla..

Auto Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, car insurance will become much cheaper. Their car insurance business model will slowly disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, and now you can now see the burgeoning impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can’t last. Technology will take care of that strategy.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kwh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don’t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health innovations: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample, and you can breathe into it.

It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free. Goodbye, medical establishment.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes..

Some common spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to keep in the past.

At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoes at home.

In China, they already 3D printed and built a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: “In the future, do you think we will have that?”, and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish that produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore.

There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called “moodies” which can already tell in which mood you’re in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it’s being displayed when they’re telling the truth and when they’re not.

Bitcoin may even become the default reserve currency … Of the world!

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it’s 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So, we all might live for a long time, probably way more than 100.

Education: The cheapest smart phones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smart phone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education.

Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child needs to learn at school in First World countries. There have already been releases of software in Indonesia and soon there will be releases in Arabic, Swahili, and Chinese this summer. I can see enormous potential if we give the English app for free, so that children in Africa and everywhere else can become fluent in English. And that could happen within half a year.

Are you ready for all this?

OK. Now we’ve read this. Where are the takeaways?

+ Don’t stick with your investments for too long. Look what’s happening to suburban malls. They’re all being amazoned. Things are changing very quickly. Values are dropping. Your investments are disappearing. Faster than ever before.

+ Make sure your kids can code software. Make sure you understand what’s happening in computing. Study it.

+ Stick this article in a file on your computer called “To read every six months.”

One day soon, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the thought, “What the world really needs is …”

And then you’ll have your own new Slack, your new Apple, your new Google, your new Square, etc.

It’s an idea. It’s enthusiasm. It fills a need for somebody somewhere. And maybe lots of people later.

I do like technology. It’s scaleable. Technology is improving daily, as we see with the Internet (faster), chips (faster, more reliable), and, of course, the cloud, which makes it all those delicious new ideas easily startable and growable.

Make sense?

Prilosec pills

This box of 42 pills costs $22.98 at Amazon, $23.88 online at Walmart, and $33.99 retail at Duane Reade, which is part of Walgreens and $71.91 online eBay.

Why I love New York

Biking back from tennis late yesterday afternoon, here’s the view west from the 65th Street Transverse, which goes through Central Park. Notice the cranes. The city is reaching for the sky, again.

Fun cartoons I found on the Internet

Realistically and Potentially

A young boy went up to his father and asked him,
“Dad, what is the difference between ‘potentially’ and ‘realistically’?”

The father thought for a moment, then answered,
“Go ask your mother, then your sister, and finally your older brother if they’d sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars. Come back and tell me what you learn from that.”

So the boy went to his mother and asked,
“Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?”
The mother replied, “Of course, I would! We could really use that money to fix up the house and send you kids to a great university!”

The boy then went to his sister and asked,
“Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?”
The girl replied, “Oh, good heavens! I LOVE Brad Pitt and I would sleep with him in a heartbeat!”

The boy then went to his brother and asked,
“Would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?”
“Of course,” the brother replied. “Do you know how much a million bucks would buy?”

The boy pondered the answers for a few days and then went back to his dad. His father asked him, “Did you find out the difference between ‘potentially’ and ‘realistically’?

The boy replied, “Yes.., ‘Potentially’ you and I are sitting on three million dollars, but ‘realistically’ we’re living with two hookers and a future congressman.”

Harry Newton, who likes that GE is moving up. Let’s remember: There are two ways of picking stocks: Momentum and value. Momentum is bitcoin (or used to be). Everyone is (or was) talking about it. Value is when earnings go up and the P/E is reasonable.

“Hot” stocks trade largely on momentum. You can “measure” momentum. Here are the packages that arrived yesterday for the tenants of our building. Notice who they’re mostly all from.

I walked by Best Buy’s huge, three-story  on Columbus Circle last night. This is what they had in their window. With is, they’re enticing me into the store to buy something? Anything? (Check out the wheelchair in the background.)