Interesting infographic showing the struggles and importance of the Catalan economy to Spain:
Click to enlarge
Source: SputnikNews
Land and Ocean Temperature Changes Since 1900
I came across the following animation on global land and sea temperature changes since 1900:
How land and ocean temperatures have changed around the world.
Data from https://t.co/6x2Yq61wzU pic.twitter.com/WEcoizoYnd— John Kennedy (@micefearboggis) September 28, 2017
Via Twitter
Copper Prices Have Soared Sharply: Chart
Copper prices have soared so far this year. After years of poor performance copper prices started goin gup late last year and have continued that upward trend this year. Prices shot up to $7,000 a metric ton this year. The following chart shows the solid growth in copper prices:
Click to enlarge
Source: Chart of the week: red metal is red hot, MoneyWeek
Yesterday prices closed at just over $6,640 a metric ton.
Rising copper prices are a boon to copper producing and exporting countries. As the world’s copper producing country Chile is reaping the benefits of higher prices. Chilean stocks have already shown the positive impact of copper prices. For example, Banco Santander-Chile (BSAC) is up by over 41% year-to-date and Banco de Chile (BCH) has increased by over 35%. The iShares MSCI Chile ETF (ECH) has also shot up over 35% YTD.
Disclosure: Long BCH
Credit Suisse: Family-Owned Firms Outperform Non-Family Owned Peers
A research report recently published by Credit Suisse(CS) showed that family-owned companies outperformed their non-family owned peers. CS defined a family-owned firm as (1) direct shareholding by founders or descendants of at least 20%; (2) voting rights held by founders or descendants of at least 20%.
The Top 50 family-owned firms globally based on market cap, revenue and share-price erturns are shown in the table below:
Click to enlarge
The table below shows the Top 50 Asian family-owned firms:
Source: The CS Family 1000, Credit Suisse
More than half of the top 1000 family-owned firms in the world are located in Asia. The top four countries are China, the USA, India and France.
The complete report has many more fascinating charts and detailed infomation.
Download: The CS Family 1000 (in pdf)
College Tuition in the U.S. Continues To Soar
The cost of college tuition in the US contiues to increase each year. In fact, college tuition has been increasing at a higher rate than even healthcare and is double that of overall consumer prices. The causes for the relentless rise of college tution are many including cheap and easy loans from Uncle Sam, requirement of a diploma certificate for a many jobs including ones that hardly needs high-school level skills, expensive and luxurious college facilities, highly paid educators, thousands of highly-paid administrators who do paperwork and administer everything, etc.
The following chart compares the growth in college tuition against medical care and other consumer prices:
Click to enlarge
Source: The True Cost of Higher Education, Manning & Napier, September 20, 2017
Earlier: