Berkshire Hathaway 2020 Report

 Warren Buffett released the 2020 report for Berkshire Hathaway here. The interesting thing is the stark contrast between the homespun stories about See’s Candy and Nebraska Furniture Mart and Berkshire's investments in large corporations like Apple, BNSF, and Coca-Cola.

The incredible run in Apple stock seems to make up for the mea culpa from Buffett about Precision Castparts (PCC). However, the report starts out with a chart showing only a 2.4% return from the stock in 2020, compared to a 18.4% return for the S&P 500.

ARK Invest 2021

 ARK Invest has some of the hottest ETFs, with investments in Tesla, Roku, and other disruptive companies, that have returned over 100% for 2020. Led by Catherine Wood, they just released their "Big Ideas 2021" report with a fascinating analysis of technology trends and disruptors: https://ark-invest.com/big-ideas-2021/

This report focuses on 15 areas they see opportunity for investment going forward. Three of the 15 areas include biotechnology that I'm not interested in. But two of those three were new areas they were reporting on, suggesting that it's a quickly evolving area.

The remaining twelve areas of interest should probably be familiar to anyone following technology trends. However, I do think some predictions are bolder than others. The rise of ARM chips in the datacenter and on PCs is probably more obvious than ground-breaking, but I think it foretells continued profitability for Cloud software stocks. Beyond the typical CPU, ARK sees continued growth for GPU and special purpose chips powering increasingly complex, AI systems.

While 2020 has seen the rise of video conferencing from companies like ZM, ARK Invest sees the rise of virtual worlds, including video games, VR, and AR. Inside these worlds they predict more revenue will come from virtual goods. In five years, they see a huge market for VR and AR, far beyond what is available today.

ARK Invest appears to be a bitcoin bull, and also sees real opportunity in digital wallets. 

In transportation, they see continued growth in EVs, ride-sharing, autonomous vehicles, and drone delivery, not to mention orbital aerospace.

Finally, they mention 3-d printing an area, I think has been uninvestable for years. While ARK sees opportunity in this area, I'm definitely skeptical. Sales in this area have been flat or declining in recent years, not a great indicator for future growth.

All of these areas of technology show incredible promise, but the real question is which companies in these sectors are investable. That the report is not too specific about, but it is certainly an interesting read on the future.

Pinterest Q4 2020

 Pinterest announced Q4 earnings on February 4, 2021, for the Christmas Quarter, during which they achieved a 76% revenue increase. Consisting of a 145% International revenue growth and 67% US revenue growth. The most striking difference between International and US is in ARPU, where International is $0.35 and US is $5.94. So US ARPU is almost 17x. 

Pinterest Q3 2020 Earnings

 Pinterest grew revenues in Q3 2020 by 58% over the previous year with 49% growth in the US, and 145% growth internationally. This is a stark rebound from the 4% revenue growth of Q2 2020.