Tomorrow's Business Today
The reporting calendar this week offers a stark contrast for where the business world is going.
There are results from a bunch of tech companies with visions of a magical future where none of us need to work (what will we do?).
And there’s figures from a bunch of industry giants who have a rather old-fashioned approach to business: they make things and they sell them.
Do we prefer Amazon and Meta or Rolls-Royce and Melrose? Do we believe in the future or the past?
The future is obviously more interesting, and the tech folk are seen as cool, the engineers as bores.
(I don’t get this at all. Tech people talk funny and produce things that make my life worse. Engineers can build bridges – that’s a skill.)
Tech gadgets are neat, I guess. But if objects are what you are into, how about helicopters and battleships?
The problem from an investment point of view is that tech is offering us a world we have never seen before. Which is exciting.
Industrial investment stories are about improvements to processes. And a plane still looks like a plane however fast it moves.
Someone cleverer than me says: “Tech sells possibility, industrials sell capability. I would always rather bet on the latter.”
Two thoughts:
Which sector is more likely to lie to you?
We don’t need more social media. We do need more planes and more energy.
Perhaps one issue for the industrial giants is that not many hacks come from an engineering or science background.
We probably aren’t tech nerds either, but we’ve no choice but to engage with it, so we can sort of see what it might achieve.
And maybe it would be churlish to wish SpaceX ill. Maybe Elon Musk really is going to save humanity from itself.
But the people behind the social media giants are bad news and the sooner these companies are under proper regulatory control, the better.
The danger is that investment money continues to flock to an imagined AI future, and that companies building practical things now are starved of capital.
The robots are a wild bet. The numbers this week might suggest just that and markets will react accordingly.
Please send candidates for press release of the day to:
Press release of the day
Mortgage approvals rose again in June, say the official figures today. But don’t let that lead you to think lenders have become more flexible, says this from Checkmyfile.
Sam Twyford says: “If anything, they’re paying closer attention to how applicants have managed their finances over the past few years, when household budgets have been under the greatest pressure. Not long ago, many applicants were judged primarily on whether they had missed payments or defaulted on credit. That’s still important, but lenders now have a much longer period of financial behaviour to assess.”
Stories that will keep rolling
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