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Dec 22, 2019 at 13:00 UTC

This post is part of CoinDesk's 2019 Year in Review, a collection of 100+ op-eds, interviews and takes on the state of blockchain and the world. Scott Army is the founder and CEO of digital asset manager Vision Hill Group. The following is a summary of the report: An Institutional Take on the 2019/2020 Digital Asset Market.

No. 1: Theres bitcoin, and then theres everything else.

The industry is currently segmented into two main categories: Bitcoin and everything else. Everything else includes: Web3 innovation, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, smart contract platforms, security tokens, digital identity, data privacy, gaming, enterprise blockchain or distributed ledger technology, and much more.

Non-crypto natives are seldom aware that there are multiple blockchains. Bitcoin, by virtue of it being the first blockchain network brought into the mainstream and by being the largest digital asset by market capitalization, is often the first stop for many newcomers and likely will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

No. 2: Bitcoin is perhaps market beta, for now.

In traditional equity markets, beta is defined as a measure of volatility, or unsystematic risk an individual stock possesses relative to the systematic risk of the market as a whole. The difficulty in defining market beta in a space like digital assets is that there is no consensus for a market proxy like the S&P 500 or Dow Jones. Since the space is still very early in its development, and bitcoin has dominant market share (~68 percent at the time of writing), bitcoin is often viewed as the obvious choice for beta, despite the drawbacks of defining market beta as a single asset with idiosyncratic tendencies.

Bitcoins size and its institutionalization (futures, options, custody, and clear regulatory status as a commodity), have enabled it to be an attractive first step for allocators looking to get exposure (both long and short) to the digital asset market, suggesting that bitcoin is perhaps positioned to be digital asset market beta, for now.

No. 3: Despite slow conversion, substantial progress was made on growing institutional investor interest in 2019.

Education, education, education. Blockchain technology and digital assets represent an extraordinarily complex asset class one that requires a non-trivial time commitment to undergo a proper learning curve. While handfuls of institutions have already started to invest in the space, a very small amount of institutional capital has actually made it in (relative to the broader institutional landscape), gauged by the size of the asset class and the public market trading volumes. This has led many to repeatedly ask: when will the herd actually come?

The reality is that institutional investors are still learning slowly getting comfortable and this process will continue to take time. Despite educational progress through 2019, some institutions are wondering if its too early to be investing in this space, and whether they can potentially get involved in investing in digital assets in the future and still generate positive returns, but in ways that are de-risked relative to today.

Despite a few other challenges imposed on larger institutional allocators with respect to investing in digital assets, true believers inside these large organizations are emerging, and the processes for forming a digital asset strategy are either getting started or already underway.

No. 4: Long simplicity, short complexity

Another trend we observed emerge this year was a shift away from complexity and toward simplicity. We saw significant growth in simple, passive, low-cost structures to capture beta. With the lowest-friction investor adoption focused on the largest liquid asset in the space bitcoin the proliferation of single asset vehicles has increased. These private vehicles are a result of delayed approval of an official bitcoin ETF by the SEC.

In addition to the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, other bitcoin-focused products this year include the launch of Bakkt, the launch of Galaxy Digitals two new bitcoin funds, Fidelitys bitcoin product rollout, TD Ameritrades bitcoin trading service on Nasdaq via its brokerage platform, 3iQs recent favorable ruling for a bitcoin fund and Stone Ridge Asset Managements recent SEC approval for its NYDIG Bitcoin Strategy Fund, based on cash-settled bitcoin futures.

We also observed a growing institutional appetite for simpler hedge fund and venture fund structures. For the last several years, many fundamental-focused crypto-native hedge funds operated hybrid structures with the use of side-pockets that enabled a barbell strategy approach to investing in both the public and private digital asset markets. These hedge funds tend to have longer lock-up periods typically two or three years and low liquidity. While this may be attractive from an opportunistic perspective, the reality is its quite complicated from an institutional perspective for reporting purposes.

No. 5: Active managements been challenged, but differentiated sources of alpha are emerging.

For the year-to-date period ended Q3 2019, active managers were collectively up 30 percent on an absolute return basis according to our tracking of approximately 50 institutional-quality funds, compared to bitcoin being up 122 percent over the same time period.

Bitcoins performance this year, particularly in Q2 2019, has made it clear that its parabolic ascents challenge the ability of active managers to outperform bitcoin during the windows they occur. Active managers generally need to justify the fees they charge investors by outperforming their benchmark(s), which are often beta proxies, yet at the same time they need to avoid imprudent risk behavior that can potentially have swift and sizable negative effects on their portfolios.

Interestingly, active management performance from the beginning of 2018 consistently outperformed passively holding bitcoin (with the exception of opportunistic managers who also take advantage of yield and staking opportunities, as of May 2019). This is largely due to various risk management techniques used to mitigate the negative performance drawdowns experienced throughout the extended market sell-off in 2018.

Although 2019 has challenged the large-scale success of these alpha strategies, they are nonetheless in the process of proving themselves out through various market cycles, and we expect this to be a growing theme in 2020.

No. 6: Token value accrual: Transitioning from subjective to objective

At the end of Q3 2019, according to dapp.com, there were 1,721 decentralized applications built on top of ethereum, with 604 of them actively used more than any other blockchain. Ethereum also had 1.8 million total unique users, with just under 400,000 of them active also more than any other blockchain. Yet, despite all this growing network activity, the value of ETH has remained largely flat throughout most of 2019 and is on track to end the year down approximately 10 percent at the time of writing (by comparison, BTC has nearly doubled in value over the same period). This begs the question: is ETH adequately capturing the economic value of the ethereum networks activity, and DeFi in particular?

A new fundamental metric was introduced earlier this year by Chris Burniske the Network Value to Token Value (NVTV) ratio to ascertain whether the value of all assets anchored into a platform can be greater than the value of the base platform's asset.

The ETH NVTV ratio has steadily declined throughout the last few years. There are likely to be several reasons for this, but I think one theory summarizes it best: most applications and tokens built and issued atop ethereum may be parasitic. ETH token holders are paying for the security of all these applications and tokens, via the inflation rate that is currently given to the miners dilution for ETH holders, but not for holders of ethereum-based tokens.

This is not a bullish or bearish statement on ETH; rather it is an observation of early signs of network stack value capture in the space.

No. 7: Money or not, software-powered collateral economies are here

Another trend we observed this year is a larger migration away from cryptocurrencies in an ideological currency (e.g., money/payment and a means of exchange) sense, and toward digital assets for financial applications and economic utility. A form of economic utility that took the stage this year is the notion of software-powered collateral economies. People generally want to hold assets with disinflationary or deflationary supply curves, because part of their promise is that they should store value well. Smart contracts enable us to program the characteristics of any asset, thus it is not irrational to assume that its only a matter of time until traditional collateral assets get digitized and put to economic use on blockchain networks.

The benefit of digital collateral is that it can be liquid and economically productive in its nature while at the same time serving its primary purpose (to collateralize another asset), yet without possessing the risks of traditional rehypothecation. If assets can be allocated for multiple purposes simultaneously, with the risks appropriately managed, we should see more liquidity, lower cost of borrowing, and more effective allocation of capital in ways the traditional world may not be able to compete with.

No. 8: Network lifecycles: An established supply side meets a quiet but emerging demand side.

Supply side services in digital asset networks are services provided by a third party to a decentralized network in exchange for compensation allocated by that network. Examples include mining, staking, validation, bonding, curation, node operation and more, done to help bootstrap and grow these networks. Incentivizing the supply side is important in digital assets to facilitate their growth early in their lifecycles, from initial fundraising and distribution through the bootstrapping phase to eventual mainnet launches.

While there has been significant growth of this supply side of the equation in 2019 from funds, companies, and developers, the open question is how and when demand for these services will pick up. Our view is that as developer infrastructure continues to mature and activity begins to move up the stack toward the application layer, more obvious manifestations of product-market fit are likely to emerge with cleaner and simpler interfaces that will attract high volumes of users in the process. In essence, it is important to build the necessary infrastructure first (the supply side) to enable buy-in from the end users of those services (the demand side).

No. 9: We are in the late innings of the smart contract wars.

While ethereum leads the space on adoption and moves closer to executing on its scalability initiatives, dozens of smart contract competitors fundraised in the market throughout 2018 and 2019 in an attempt to dethrone ethereum. A handful have formally launched their chains and operate in mainnet as of the end of 2019, while many others remain in testnet or have stalled in development.

Whats been particularly interesting to observe is the accelerative pace of innovation not just technologically, but economically (incentive mechanisms) and socially (community building) as well. We expect many more smart contract competitors operating privately as of Q4 2019 to launch their mainnets in 2020. Thus, given the incoming magnitude of publicly observable experimentations throughout 2020, if a smart contract platform does not launch in 2020, it is likely to become disadvantageously positioned relative to the rest of the landscape as it relates to capturing substantial developer mindshare and future users and creating defensible network effects.

No. 10: Product-market fit is coming, if not already here

We dont think human and financial capital would have continued pouring into the digital asset space in such great magnitude over the last several years if there wasnt a focus on solving at least one very clear problem. The questionable sustainability of modern monetary theory is one of them, and Ray Dalio of Bridgerwater Associates has been quite vocal about it. Big Tech centralization is another. There are also growing global concerns related to data privacy and identity. And lets not forget cybersecurity. The list goes on.We are at the tip of the iceberg as it relates to the products and applications blockchain technology enables, and mainstream users will come with growing manifestations of product-market fit. As more time and attention gets spent on diagnosing problems and working on solutions, the industry will begin to achieve its full potential. Facebooks Libra and Twitters Bluesky initiative confirm that as an industry we are heading in the right direction.

We see 2020 shaping up to be one of the brightest years on record for the digital asset industry. To be clear, this is not a price forecast; if we exclusively measured the health of the industry from a fundamental progress perspective, by various accounts and measures we should have been in a raging bull market for the last two years, and that has not been the case. Rather, we expect 2020 to be a year of accelerated industry maturation.

Digital assets are still an emerging asset class with many quickly evolving narratives, trends, and investment strategies. It is important to note, that not all strategies are suitable for all investors. The size of allocations to each category will and should vary depending on the specific allocators type, risk tolerance, return expectations, liquidity needs, time horizon and other factors. What is encouraging is that as the asset class continues to grow and mature, the opacity slowly dissipates and clearly defined frameworks for evaluation will continue to emerge. This will hopefully lead to more informed investment decisions across the space. The future is bright for 2020 and beyond.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

See the article here:
Institutional Investment in Crypto: Top 10 Takeaways of 2019 - Coindesk

Old brightly coloured houses with balconies on the waterfront on a sunny day in summer in Porto, ... [+] Portugal

Real estate in major European cities has had a wild ride in 2019. Brexit was, in theory, going to be taking place toward the beginning of the year and all eyes were on cities outside of the United Kingdom to figure out where it would be the most financially beneficial to invest in a second home. But then the political decision-making dragged on for the rest of the year with signs that the deal wasnt going to be as favorable to Britain as what had initially been in the news, leading to an even greater pressure to purchase a home before the deal was done and its economic effects rippled through the European economy.

As a result some cities saw demand increase rapidly and the idea of finding a good investment became much more difficult to obtain. Going into 2020, I reached out to LeadingRE, a global consortium of 565 real estate brokerages across 70 countries, to find out what other cities were showing signs of real estate growth but hadnt yet surpassed the threshold for turning a profit.

Naples, Italy

Aerial view of Naples, in Campania region, southern Italy. (Photo by Salvatore ... [+] Laporta/KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Always a popular destination for holiday-goers, Naples has seen a 15% increase in property sales over the past year. By being an hour away from Rome (by train) on the coast of the Mediterranean, with a warm climate and Capri and Ischia islands nearby, it has become a popular place to live over and above the more population-dense city of Rome. Prices start around $200 per square foot versus the approximately $315-per-square-foot starting prices in Rome.

The increase in demand represents something of a reverse in fortunes for the historic city of Naples, which is often overlooked for its northern counterparts, said Chris Dietz,executive vice president of global operations for LeadingRE. The comparatively low prices reflect the historicallysubdued demand here.

Megve, France

The city of Megeve, which hosted the 103th Tour de France in 2016 TDF / (Photo by KT/Tim De ... [+] Waele/Corbis via Getty Images)

Besides being the site of a Tour de France stage a few years ago, Megve has seen an influx of interest from several different European countries largely attracted to its ski resort identity as part of the Mont Blanc mountain range. For example, according to local agent Antonin Allard, buyers from Britain have increased from 5% to 15% over the past twelve months and those from Switzerland account for 25% of sales compared to 20% in 2018.

Property prices typically start under $500,000 for two-bedroom chalet-style condos or freestanding cottages. One sure sign of the surge in interest is the luxury Four Seasons hotel was just one of a several hotels that opened in the past year.

Szkesfehrvr, Hungary

Street musician playing in Szekesfehervar, Hungary

Dont be put off by the hard-to-spell name. This secondary market has a 17% increase in home sales when compared to 2018, largely thanks to a major upgrade to the rail link between Budapest and Szkesfehrvr. It is on the route between two popular recreational spots: Lake BalatonandLake Velence, the latter of which is known for its beaches.

The countrys economic prosperity and strong real estate growth make it an attractive option for those looking to invest, and were seeing increasing interest from across Europe for Szkesfehrvrs attractive stock, said Dietz. Investors also from neighboring Turkey are attracted to the 2,000-year history and culture as well as the favorable prices compared to other more well-known European coastal hubs.

Batumi,Georgia

An aerial photo taken on August 27, 2017 shows the Black Sea resort city of Batumi. / AFP PHOTO / ... [+] Vano Shlamov (Photo credit should read VANO SHLAMOV/AFP via Getty Images)

This port town is the third largest city in Georgia and home to the popular Black Sea Resort. At the moment there are no height restrictions on new buildings so developers and buyers alike are maximizing on the opportunity. According to data from Batumi Expert, new construction homes cost approximately $37 per square foot and the majority of buyers in this city are from overseas. An estimated 22,752homes (including single-family and condos) were built over 2018 to 2019 as a response to the increased demand.

With plenty of land available in Batumi and little restriction on development, new projects are popping up in the city to cater for the uplift in demand, said Dietz. Investors, also from neighboring Turkey, are attracted to the 2,000-year history and culture as well as the favorable prices compared to other more well-known European coastal hubs.

Porto, Portugal

City Porto (Oporto) at Rio Douro. The old town is listed as UNESCO world heritage. Portugal. Europe. ... [+] (Photo by: Enrico Spanu/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Last years list had Lisbon as a good place to invest in a second home, but the growth has been so significant over 2019 that good deals on homes are harder to find. The next best place to look is Porto, where home prices are still 30% lower than Lisbon despite seeing a 15% increase in closed sales, according to Rita Ribeiro at INS Portugal. Demand has increased both because of the comparatively more expensive homes in Lisbon and because there has been a change in rental laws making it more favorable for landlords to make a profit.

Portugal is also one of the more lower-priced places to obtain a Golden Visa for EU citizenship. Ribeiro estimates home sales to foreigners has grown over the past three years from one out of ten buyers to one out of three.

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Rotterdam Skyline with Erasmusbrug bridge at sunset in morning in Rotterdam, Netherlands

After Amsterdam, this is the largest city in the Netherlands. Located on the River Maas, that traverses several European countries, Rotterdam is home to the largest port in Europe and sometimes referred to as the Manhattan on the Maas.

For those looking for a more urban place to invest, Rotterdam is still a good place to look (it also made last years list). As Erik Noordamat VOC International says, It is fast becoming a refuge for buyers who feel Amsterdam has become too expensive.

Prices here have increased about 10% since last year, with average sales prices at around $295 per square foot, though the average is about 20% higher for new construction homes.

More here:
The Best European Cities To Invest In For 2020 - Forbes

The foreign takeover of Cobham, a world-leading expert in air-to-air refuelling, has been widely criticised. Photograph: Reuters

The new US owner of the UK defence company Cobham has pledged to keep jobs and investment in Britain as the government faces increasing criticism for allowing the 4bn takeover to go ahead.

The world-leading expert in air-to-air refuelling said its private-equity buyer, Advent International, had committed to maintaining a UK headquarters and to continue funding research and development at its Dorset offices. It has also vowed to keep using the companys name, which references Sir Alan Cobham who founded the firm in 1934.

The deal had been delayed for months after fears were raised that Advent Internationals acquisition could undermine national security, because of Cobhams sensitive military contracts. It has extensive deals with the British military and also manufactures electronic warfare and communications systems for military vehicles.

Advents offer to purchase Cobham was approved by shareholders in August, but delayed in September when the government intervened on national security grounds.

The business secretary, Andrea Leadsom, approved the deal on Friday. Cobhams founding family criticised the decision and said the government had timed it before the Christmas break to avoid scrutiny.

On Monday, Advent pledged to maintain UK employee numbers at 90% of the current level for five years. Cobham employs about 1,700 UK staff of a worldwide headcount of 10,000.

It also said it would keep Cobhams communications and connectivity business in the UK. This includes its missions systems unit on air-to-air refuelling technology.

Advent also pledged to continue spending on UK-based research, committing to invest at least 4.4% of revenue from its UK communications division.

Shonnel Malani, a partner at Advent, said: Advent takes its custodianship of Cobham seriously, and we are confident the transaction and undertakings being given on national security, jobs and future investment, provide important long-term assurances for both Cobhams employees and customers, particularly in the UK and also globally.

Lady Nadine Cobham, the daughter-in-law of the companys founder, said: This is a deeply disappointing announcement and one cynically timed to avoid scrutiny on the weekend before Christmas. In one of its first major economic decisions, the government is not taking back control so much as handing it away.

In Cobham we stand to lose yet another great British defence manufacturer to foreign ownership, through a takeover that would never have been approved by the Americans, French or Japanese, all of whom have taken steps recently to raise protections for their own defence sectors.

View post:
Cobhams US buyer vows to keep UK jobs and investment - The Guardian

Technology giants are increasingly designing their own semiconductors to optimize everything from artificial intelligence tasks to server performance and mobile battery life. Google has the Tensor Processing Unit, Apple Inc. has the A13 Bionic, and Amazon.com Inc. has the Graviton2.

What the titans all lack, however, is a factory to build the new chips they are dreaming up.

Enter Samsung Electronics Co., which is planning a decade-long, $116 billion push for their business. The South Korean company is investing heavily in the next step in miniaturizing semiconductors, a process called extreme ultraviolet lithography. It's by far the priciest manufacturing upgrade Samsung has ever attempted, a risky bid to move beyond its established business of cranking out commoditized silicon and to leapfrog the incumbent leaders in the $250 billion foundry and logic-chip industry.

"A new market is opening up," Yoon Jong Shik, executive vice president of Samsung's foundry business, said at a forum recently held in Seoul. "Companies like Amazon, Google and Alibaba, which lack experience in silicon design, are seeking to make chips with their own concept ideas in order to boost their services. I think this would bring a significant breakthrough for our non-memory chip business."

Samsung is a relative underdog in this growing field. The foundry business -- the name for the manufacturing of chips for companies like Google and Qualcomm Inc. -- is dominated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. with more than half the market, according to TrendForce Corp. data that puts Samsung at 18%.

Taiwan Semiconductor also took over Apple's A-series processor manufacturing from Samsung, which was the original production partner. Samsung plans to spend about $10 billion per year on equipment, research and development over the next decade, but Taiwan Semiconductor is even more ambitious, with capital expenditures of around $14 billion for this year and next.

"It is not just a matter of willingness," said Changwon Chung, head of pan-Asia technology at Nomura Financial Investment Co., in assessing Samsung's chances of success. "Chip-making is like a composite art. Unless there are enough supports for all-round social infrastructures, it'd be a scarcely achievable goal."

To win over clients, top Samsung executives are touring major cities from San Jose to Munich to Shanghai, hosting foundry forums and negotiating deals. E.S. Jung, president and general manager for the foundry business, is the frontman delivering Samsung's "can-do" pitch at every gathering, where his practiced joke is to suggest that his initials stand for "engineering sample."

"The complexity of the lines drawn by the [extreme ultraviolet] equipment is similar to building a spaceship," said Jung while unveiling a $17 billion extreme ultraviolet lithography plant in Hwaseong earlier this year, flanked by Samsung heir and de-facto boss Jay Y. Lee and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The plant is planned to start mass production in February.

A single extreme ultraviolet lithography machine from ASML Holding NV costs $172 million, and Samsung is setting up dozens of them in Hwaseong in an effort to be first with the technology. Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung are both expected to reach 5-nanometer production processes with extreme ultraviolet lithography in the new year -- by contrast, a human hair is about 60,000 nanometers thick. When those two companies reach the 5-nanometer level on semiconductors, they'll have only each other to compete with in a market that's only set to expand.

And once they ramp up and achieve economies of scale, the overall process cycle time is likely to decrease by 20% and the foundry capacity output will increase by 25%, according to a Citigroup Inc. research report.

" [Taiwan Semiconductor] is too busy with orders pouring in for new products as we enter into the 5G era," said Greg Roh, senior vice president at Hyundai Motor Securities. "For Samsung, that's bringing a good chance to expand their market share by offering lower prices and delivery schedules to meet clients' needs."

Samsung is collaborating with its biggest clients on designing and manufacturing custom chips, and that work is already starting to add to its revenue, according to one Samsung executive who has direct knowledge of the matter. The push toward bespoke processors in Silicon Valley and China is opening up fresh opportunities, and Samsung already has established relationships, as demonstrated by its recent announcement that it'll produce an artificial intelligence chip for Baidu Inc. early next year.

Officials at Samsung believe the company has a competitive edge from its experience building both the chips and the devices that they go into. It is thus able to foresee and address the engineering requirements of its clients. Samsung believes its other trump card is an ability to package memory and logic chips into a single module, improving power and space efficiency.

Analysts do warn, however, that some companies are wary about outsourcing production to a direct competitor in the consumer electronics market -- lest Samsung learns and copies their chip designs in its own products.

Information for this article was contributed by Debby Wu of Bloomberg News.

Business on 12/25/2019

Link:
Samsung investing $116B in semiconductor production - NWAOnline

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It happens every year. January 1: Youre feeling motivated. This is the year youll go to the gym every day, meditate and prep meals like a boss. February 1: Yeah, not so much.

This year, pick some New Years resolutions that will stick. Here are five investing moves that will get your portfolio in order so fast, it might still be 2019 when you finish.

Most investors know they should diversify their investments, but did you know you can diversify your investment accounts? If youre contributing to a 401(k) at work, its a good idea to contribute at least enough to earn any matching dollars from your employer. After that, you should consider putting any additional retirement savings into a Roth IRA.

A Roth IRA provides tax diversification alongside a 401(k). 401(k) contributions are typically made pre-tax and then distributions in retirement are taxed as income. But Roth IRA contributions are made after-tax, which means your money grows tax-free and you dont pay taxes on retirement distributions.

If you havent yet started investing for retirement, a Roth IRA is also a great first account, especially if you dont have an employer retirement plan like a 401(k). If you do, be sure to max out that employer match before you invest elsewhere. You can open an IRA at any online brokerage.

In a recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll for NerdWallet, more than a third of investors said they wish they wouldve invested more money in 2019. One easy way to ensure youre saving the amount you want is to set up an automatic deposit into your investment account.

If you can, send that money directly from your paycheck. If you never have the cash in your checking account, you never have the temptation to spend it. If your employer cant split your direct deposits into more than one account or doesnt offer direct deposit, schedule automatic transfers to occur from your checking account after your paycheck is deposited.

Automating your investment contributions takes just a few minutes and saves you the time youd spend moving your money manually. Saving the same amount on a regular basis makes it easier to budget for your contributions instead of stomaching larger deposits all at once. If you feel like going the extra mile, try to raise your contributions by 1% every year. You might not even miss it.

Account fees, transaction charges, high investment expenses: All of these costs eat into your portfolios return. If you put $500 a month into a brokerage account for 30 years, earn a 6% average annual return and pay fees of 0.50% of your balance each year, youll end up sacrificing over $44,000 in returns.

While fees are hard to avoid completely, there are certainly ways to reduce them. Start by looking through your investment account statements to find what fees youre being charged by your brokerage or account provider. If youre invested in mutual funds, also take a look at each funds prospectus. These documents are available on your brokers website, and the first few pages will outline the fee, called an expense ratio, charged by the fund.

You should question any mutual fund or exchange-traded fund that has an expense ratio greater than 0.50%, said Spencer Stephens, a certified financial planner and owner of Rooted Interest Financial Planning in Holladay, Utah, via email.

If youre investing through a 401(k), you might not have an alternative fund, as these plans have small investment selections. But in any other investment account (like an IRA), you can shop around for lower-cost funds. Most online brokerages offer fund screeners, which you can use to sort available mutual funds and ETFs by expense ratio. And if your brokerage is still charging you a trading commission, consider switching to one of the many online brokers now offering free trades.

A 401(k) is a valuable employee benefit, which means you dont want to leave it behind when you leave a job. If you have old 401(k)s lingering at past employers, take a bit of time to roll them over into an IRA.

Its important to do the rollover correctly, though; otherwise, you could trigger taxes. Dont cash out your balance or have your provider write you a check directly. Instead, ask your 401(k) plan provider to do a direct rollover into an IRA. You may also be able to roll your balance into your current 401(k).

When youre in the throes of planning a wedding or dealing with swollen ankles from pregnancy, the last thing on your mind is updating the beneficiaries on your investment accounts. But these selections are important, and new years resolutions are a good reminder to make them.

A beneficiary assignment (on an IRA, 401(k) or otherwise) supersedes the will of the deceased. So whoever the beneficiary is will receive the money, regardless of what the will says. This applies to both retirement and non-retirement accounts, Ian Bloom, a CFP and owner of Open World Financial Life Planning in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in an email.

Maintaining up-to-date beneficiaries makes the transition smoother and ensures your money will go where you intend it to.

Read more here:
Got 15 Minutes? Use It to Up Your Investing Game in 2020 - NerdWallet

On Mar. 29, Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) began trading on the NASDAQ and became the first ride-hailing company to go public in a much-anticipated market debut. For some investors, it was a warm-up for the Uber (NYSE:UBER) IPO, which would take place in May. There was a lot of hype surrounding both IPOs, as this was the first time that investors could buy shares of the popular ridesharing businesses.

Lyft priced its offering at $72 per share, good for a valuation of $20.6 billion, and that was already up from the original pricing range of $62 to $68 per share. Demand for the stock remained strong, and Lyft ended up opening the day at a price of $87.33. That's the price at which most investors would have been able to buy the stock when it first began trading.

Image Source: Getty Images.

But day one didn't end particularly well. The stock would decline during the day to close at $78.29, offering a tepid 9% gain for such a highly-anticipated IPO. Unfortunately, things only got worse for the company and its shareholders. The stock shed 12% on its second day of trading, falling below the initial offering price, and by the time Uber made its own debut, Lyft would be struggling to stay above $50.

The stock is trading a little below that mark as of this writing, and those who invested $5,000 in Lyft at the first-day opening price of $87.33 would own 57 shares, which today would be worth a little more than $2,700. That's a loss of 45%. Even if you were lucky enough to buy in at the $72 offering price, your stake would still be down over 33% as of this writing.

Part of the problem for Lyft was that it debuted just before some other major IPOs. Uber was a little more than a month away, whilePinterest and Zoom would both begin trading in April. Given Lyft's disappointing start, investors likely shifted their focus to chase the newer offerings, especially with rival Uber being the much bigger fish in the ride-hailing market. And while timing was one problem for Lyft, an even bigger one was the company's poor financials.

Just days before the Uber IPO, Lyft released its first quarterly report as a public company, and it wasn't pretty. Although the company beat analyst expectations on the top line with revenue of $776 million, its net loss of over $1.1 billion called into question just how profitable the ridesharing business is. It led to such significant apprehension in the markets that even Uber felt the effects of the sudden bearishness, and its IPO struggled as well.

Things have not gotten a whole lot better for Lyft. The company has gone on to post net losses of $644 million and $464 million in the second and third quarters, respectively.

In September, California passed Assembly Bill 5, which could force Lyft and other ride-hailing companies to classify their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. That means the companies would incur many employee-related costs and have to deal with minimum wage laws as well as benefits, training, and labor laws. In short, it's a headwind that the companies are still fighting. Lyft and Uber are hoping that a ballot initiative for November of next year, the Protect App-Based Drivers & Services Act, will provide ridesharing companies an exemption from the new law.

The danger is not only limited to California, however, as other states could follow suit, and the problem could become a nationwide one for Lyft.

So is the stock a buy at these depressed trading levels? Despite its decline since the IPO, Lyft still presents too big a risk. The company is nowhere near breakeven, and if it has to classify its drivers as employees, that's only going to make it more difficult for Lyft to turn a profit. This has been a stormy year for the company, and things might not get any easier in 2020. For now, this is a stock investors should stay far away from.

Read the original here:
If You Invested $5,000 in Lyft's IPO, This Is How Much Money You'd Have Now - The Motley Fool

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been spending the run-up to Christmas checking his Wikipedia page.

"Just looked at my wiki for 1st time in years. It's insane!" Musk tweeted on Sunday, saying the page was "a war zone with a zillion edits."

The tech billionaire also took issue with some of the language in the article. "Can someone please delete 'investor.' I do basically zero investing," he wrote.

"If Tesla & SpaceX go bankrupt, so will I. As it should be," he added, implying that most of his wealth consisted of his stock in the two companies. He made a similar argument during his legal fight with the UK cave diver Vernon Unsworth, during which he said he was cash-poor.

A Twitter user asked Musk whether Tesla counted as an investment, to which he replied that he'd rolled the proceeds of all his companies forward into one another. "These are all companies where I played fundamental founding role. Not right to ask others to put in money if I don't put in mine," he said.

Another Twitter user suggested that the term investor could be replaced with "business magnet," to which Musk replied "Yes" followed by a laughing emoji and a heart emoji. Musk has previously joked he would like to be known as a business magnet, as opposed to a business magnate.

At 8:11 p.m. on Sunday an edit was made to Musk's Wikipedia page that replaced investor with business magnet, "as requested by Elon Musk," according to the page's history. "Business magnet" has since been erased, but the "investor" edit was left unchanged.

Musk has been known to invest in companies: He was an early investor in the artificial-intelligence research startup DeepMind before it was bought by Google's parent company, Alphabet, in 2014. Musk told Vanity Fair in 2017 that he invested in DeepMind to keep an eye on the progress of AI rather than for financial return.

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Elon Musk fact-checked his own Wikipedia page and requested edits including the fact he does 'zero investing' - Business Insider

The UK Oil and Gas (LSE:UKOG) share price has endured another turbulent month, after declining in value since October.

For investors looking to put money into stable investments for long-term growth, UKOG is not the answer. It has a market capitalisation of 65m, there is no dividend yield and earnings per share are negative.

In September 2017, the UKOG share price hit a high of 8.7p and for a lucky few, a lot of money will have been made. The UKOG share price had been trading around 1.4p on December 20 2016, and is hovering at 0.9p today. Those who bought three years ago and still hold, will not have seen their investment grow it will have declined by 37%.

If youd bought 1,000 worth of UKOG shares in December 2016, they would now be worth around 630.

Back in 2015, UKOG began testing for oil at its West Sussex site, called Horse Hill, near Gatwick airport. Its rumoured to contain as much as 158m barrels of oil per square mile, which has understandably excited investors and exciyed interest in the venture.

In September, the company increased its stake in the field to a controlling 85.6% and flow testing was due to start imminently. However, earlier this month the firm was driven into an emergency 2m fundraising effort after its joint venture partners Doriemus and Alba Minerals ran out of money. An institutional investor fully funded this placing at 0.85p per share, but the UKOG share price fell 8% on the news.

UKOG has the misfortune of being both an oil and gas share and a penny share listed on AIM. Oil & Gas is a notoriously risky and volatile investment sector, while AIM is the Wild West of the share-dealing arena and comes with its own additional risk.

Long-term investors should know the pitfalls of trading shares on AIM. The AIM index is much less heavily regulated than the major FTSE indices. As such its suspected to be home to relentless shorting, pumping and dumping, price manipulation through bulletin board ramping and other dodgy dealings.

Share prices in Oil & Gas hinge on the price of oil, but that price depends on more external influences, such as the trade war between the US and China, decisions made by OPEC, the risk of war or terrorism and the world economy at large. Therefore, although the quality of the company, its funding, management integrity and decision-making processes are all paramount, oil company share prices are constantly affected by many uncontrollable factors too.

I can see why investors are enticed by UKOGs potential, many fortunes have been established in oil booms, but the risks should not be overlooked. Many more fortunes have been lost on AIM than won.

In mid-December, UKOG unveiled plans to install two exploration drills at privately owned sites at Arreton and Godshill on the Isle of Wight. This will require planning permission, but if granted, flow-testing should start in Autumn 2020. UKOG expects the sites would be in operation for 25 years and if successful, each site might generate 0.5bn during its lifetime. Its very early days and there are many factors to consider, including environmental concerns.

The risks surrounding UKOG mean it doesnt interest me. There is a lot of speculation, plus funding worries and external pressures to consider. Ill continue to avoid the share.

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Kirsteen has no position in any of the shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has no position in any of the shares mentioned. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Motley Fool UK 2019

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This is how much 1k invested in UKOG shares 3 years ago would be worth now - Yahoo Finance UK

In October, TRILLER vowed to give TikTok a run for their money and it is keeping itsword. The music-driven social video platform has secured strategic investments from major music industry figures totaling more than $10 million.

TRILLER has 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S. and more than 75 million active users worldwide. According toReuters, the app is set to surpass TikTok, which currently has 26.5 million users domestically.

Two monthsafter raising $28 million, TRILLER unveiled a heavy-hitting roster of investors and strategic partners. Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd, Lil Wayne, Young Thug, Kendrick Lamar, Pitbull, and TI are among TRILLERS top investors, raising more than $15 million + for the app.

To have the biggest names in hip hop and music join TRILLER validates the genuine need for a radical shift in the way the music industry has operated, Ryan Kavanaugh, Founder of Proxima Media said in a press conference. As were moving into the next decade, TRILLER is the MTV for todays generation.

TRILLER is taking itself seriously by licensing partnerships with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group, all of which are believed to own a minority piece of the company. Partners are not only investing in the app, but artists are producing exclusive content for TRILLER.

Popular music managers like Gee Roberson, Co-CEO of the Blueprint Group, whose client list includes Lil Nas X, Jill Scott, and G-Eazy also put their hand in the pot and invested in the app.

We are incredibly fortunate to work with some of the largest artists on the planet, and todays announcement about our increasing portfolio of partnerships and collaborations with top labels and artists marks perhaps the most significant shift in music since the creation of streaming, Mike Lu, CEO of Triller, said in a statement. We are truly putting the music business back together, and artists recognize the importance of Triller to the future of the industry.

Under the licensing agreement, users can create content using the catalog of music and share across several platforms without the worry of licensing fees. The app creators say it has the highest engagement rate of any music social platforms on the market, stating its users spend an average of 20 minutes per day while creators spend an average of one hour.

TRILLER users can also stream full-length songs from any labels in-app for free instead of just a 30 to 60 seconds clip. Its feature also includes saving songs to their own playlists.

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Goodbye TikTok. Hello Triller: Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and The Weeknd Invest Millions in This New App - Grit Daily

Earlier this month Ilookedat how successful $20,000 investments in a number of popular ASX shares had been over the last 10 years.

Whilst picking market-beaters is no easy feat, I believe the three shares listed below have the potential to achieve outsized returns over the next decade.

Heres why I would invest $20,000 into them in 2020:

Nanosonics is a leading infection control specialist. At present it is best-known for its industry-leading trophon EPR disinfection system for ultrasound probes. Its global market share has been growing an a rapid rate in recent years, leading to it recording a 17% share at the end of FY 2019. Given its quality, I expect this trend to continue in the coming years, driving strong unit and consumables sales growth. This should be supported by the release of new products in the near term that are targeting unmet needs. If they are half as successful as the trophon EPR product, then the future will be very bright for Nanosonics.

I think that this property listings company would be another top option for investors to consider buying. I think it is one of the highest quality companies on the local market and believe it is well-positioned to deliver strong long term earnings growth over the next decade. Especially given new revenue streams, price increases, and the rebounding housing market. The latter could drive increasing demand for listings over the coming years.

Finally, I think this job listings giant would be a great place to invest $20,000 in 2020. I believe SEEK is well-positioned to deliver above-average earnings growth over the next decade thanks to its dominant position in the ANZ market, its growing international operations, and its high level of investment in growth opportunities. The latter is expected to play a big part in helping SEEK achieve its aspirational revenue target of $5 billion by FY 2025. This will be a significant increase on the revenue of $1,537.3 million it posted in FY 2019.

The post Where to invest $20,000 in ASX shares in the 2020s appeared first on Motley Fool Australia.

As well as Nanosonics, REA Group, and SEEK, I think these top shares could beat the market in the 2020s.

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Motley Fool contributor James Mickleboro owns shares of SEEK Limited. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of and has recommended Nanosonics Limited. The Motley Fool Australia has recommended REA Group Limited and SEEK Limited. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

The Motley Fool's purpose is to help the world invest, better. Click here now for your free subscription to Take Stock, The Motley Fool's free investing newsletter. Packed with stock ideas and investing advice, it is essential reading for anyone looking to build and grow their wealth in the years ahead. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Bruce Jackson. 2019

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Where to invest $20,000 in ASX shares in the 2020s - Yahoo Finance Australia