Very interesting chart in newletter: total cash on hand by industry. Tech's crazy growth dominates on this metric.
Conversation
I'd divide by market cap or revenue to adjust for sector size
2
Depends what you care about. Gross cash is an interesting metric for agile power - i.e. cash that could be deployed for anything.
1
Yes, but too much cash on the books for a larger company isn't about agility. It's being out of ideas. Hence stock buybacks as one response.
1
1
Yea, that's the corollary that I'm most interested in. They have the ability to project this power into new realms, but lack ideas.
1
What's it say when the biggest / most innovative companies are out of ideas? Are we at the final stage of the Perez curve?
2
I'd say we're at the Perez wave of search (started ~'96), social ('05 or so), and mobile ('95 or '07). Enterprise is next. After that....?
2
I'm not sure Perez model should be applied to micro technologies/trends.
1
1
I think we're at the end of 5th TechRev. IT at maturity, with "intelligence" being the 6th TR - currently in the "frenzy" stage.
2
Yeah Perez should not be applied sectorally. There are arrhythmias in global impact but that's not = localized impacts
2
Big tech companies are basically machines for turning global attention revenues into engineering talent upgrades
Very unlike old economy companies which turned ore into steel. When marginal cost of production is zero, marginal cost of learning dominates
2
Remember, programmers produce code, code produces everything else at 0 marginal cost unless it's a blockchain
1
Harder to see with something like Apple, but even with an iPhone, almost all value add between raw materials and product is achieved by code
2



