Tech Review: 1) What Will Replace Facebook? 2) Jeff Bezos in 1999 (video)

Tech Review (TR 2019-02-16)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news: Features • 1) What Will Replace Facebook? 2) Jeff Bezos In 1999 On Amazon's Plans Before The Dotcom Crash, 3) Investing: The Week & Investor Notes: Globalization in Transition, Germany Vulnerable, Bill Gross, John Paulson, Byron Wien, 4) ICYMI Tech News: Big Tech and more, 5) End Note: Velocity.

1) What will replace Facebook? 

Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) has dominated the social-media landscape for the past 15 years. "But breaches of its users' privacy mean it is now slipping out of favour. Could an emerging technological movement take its place?"--The Economist.com video above published Feb 4, 2019. See also There Are Storm Clouds On Facebook's Horizon--seekingalpha.com.

Also note: Headlines Aren't Reality--seekingalpha.com: "At 22 times earnings, FB is my highest conviction buy of 2019."

2) Jeff Bezos In 1999 On Amazon's Plans Before The Dotcom Crash

Jeff Bezos explained his ambitious vision for Amazon $AMZN in a 1999 interview. He made clear the company’s focus was on “great customer service” and discussed his real estate strategy. Bezos said, “There’s no guarantee that Amazon.com can be a successful company. What we’re trying to do is very complicated.” He added, “Scale is important to us and we’re going to go after that kind of scale.” CNBC.com video published Feb 8, 2019.

See also:

• Bezos Complexifiers from Ms. Sanchez to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: "we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens"--aboutamazon.com.
• Amazon Isn’t Interested in Making the World a Better Place by Kara Swisher--"New Yorkers who expected better bought into the myth that tech companies are more than just self-interested businesses."--NYTimes.com Op-ed.
• 'New York’s Ejection of Amazon Is the Start of a Movement'--citylab.com. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Cheers Amazon’s Withdrawal as a Victory Over ‘Greed’--bloomberg.com.
• Bezos's Wild Days: 'Dick Pics,' Lurid Selfies, Blackmail, Drama--bloomberg.com.
• Bezos Selfie Controversy Triggers Alarm For Billionaires Worldwide.
• Why Amazon $AMZN Is Undervalued--seekingalpha.com.
• Size Matters: When Amazon Went From Big to Unbelievably Big--Amazon now has 288M sq. ft. of warehouses, offices, retail stores, and data centers; all retail adds up to less than 20M sq. ft. and all of AWS uses 10M sq. ft.--the data on the company’s real-estate holdings reveal a remarkable inflection point--theatlantic.com.

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite +2.4% | S&P 500 Index +2.5% | DJIA +3.1%

The Long View:

Investor Notes: with the world awash in $8.6 trillion of negative-yielding debt, money managers are wading again into fringe fixed-income markets across the globe--“We’ve seen a huge psychological swing toward greed from fear in the space of a few weeks,” said Jamie Stuttard, co-head of global macro fixed-income at Robeco Group in London (robeco.com).

Americans' Confidence in Their Finances Keeps Growing--gallup.com; Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says US economy 'chugging along,' chance of recession quite small--cnbc.com.

U.S. Oil & Brexit: the United States is now the largest global crude oil producer (production to grow to 14 mbpd by 2030 according to EIA.gov), and the U.S. has already become the United Kingdom's largest supplier of oil for the first time since the Suez crisis of 1956, reports the Financial Times.

Trump Effect or Not, Globalization is in Transition: future of trade and value chains--China exported 17% of what it produced in 2007, but only 9% of what it produced in 2017, about the same percentage as the U.S., but much lower than Germany's 34%, South Korea's 28%, and Japan's 14%--mckinsey.com.

• Editor's note: export-heavy countries may be at risk, particularly Germany. The EU has badly miscalculated the economic risks of Brexit for the EU, particularly Germany (the UK imports more from the EU than it exports, and Germany is most vulnerable). A 'hard Brexit,'  in conjunction with Trump's trade policies, could deliver a double whammy to Germany's already slowing economy in 2019.
• "Germany’s long expansion comes under threat, the slowing is a consequence of its export-oriented model"--economist.com.
• German Industrial Production Falls the Most Since 2009. New Orders Plummet ... a “technical recession” beckons--WolfStreet.com.

Majority Of U.S. CEOs See Trump's Tariffs Helping--"More than double the number who saw a negative impact"--zerohedge.com.and bloomberg.com.

The Bond King Retires: Bill Gross’s retirement from Janus and his  recent struggles show how hard it’s become for individual managers to beat the indexes, algorithms and sprawling trading teams that oversee today’s portfolios--bloomberg.com.

John Paulson, 63, may also be getting ready to call it a day. He said last month that he is considering booting out investors and managing only his own money within a couple of years--largely unknown until the financial crisis, when he shorted housing before everyone else recognized the bubble, his firm made $15 billion in 2007, and his personal cut was $4 billion. Read The Greatest Trade Ever.

Blackstone's Byron Wien Discusses Lessons Learned in His First 80 Years: #20 Never retire.  "If you work forever, you can live forever.  I know there is an abundance of biological evidence against this theory, but I’m going with it anyway."--blackstone.com.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

Google announces "over $13 billion in investments throughout 2019 in data centers and offices across the U.S., with major expansions in 14 states. These new investments will give us the capacity to hire tens of thousands of employees, and enable the creation of more than 10,000 new construction jobs in Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia. With this new investment, Google will now have a home in 24 total states, including data centers in 13 communities. 2019 marks the second year in a row we’ll be growing faster outside of the Bay Area than in it." Google also plans to release a lower-priced smartphone this year--nikkei.com; and  Google extends chip-making efforts to a design hub in Bengaluru, India--reuters.com.

Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOGL) aggressively ramped up capital spending in 2018, spending far more than the large telecoms AT&T (T) and Verizon Communications (VZ), and other tech giants Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN).--seekingalpha.com. See also 'Why Alphabet is a better investment than Apple'.--seekingalpha.com, and Apple Faces New Challenges In App Store--seekingalpha.com.

Big Tech: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, have become so large that even relatively modest percentage growth in any of their businesses would translate into enormous absolute change in the world--theatlantic.com.

Going short Tesla $TSLA: Druckenmiller bought Tesla Puts in Q4 2018.

Venture Capital: VCs raised $55B in 2018, but most of the increased funding went into growth rounds, which are effectively private IPOs--bothsidesofthetable.com.

Speed robotics development with the cloud--therobotreport.com.

Cut the Cord: MGM’s Epix Joins Streaming Market With Epix Now app--Variety.com.

Boeing's iconic 747:

NASA's Boeing 747 transporting the Space Shuttle

UPS ordered 14 more 747-8 freighters in 2018, and Boeing's iconic jumbo jet, now flying in the skies for more than 50 years, looks set to outlive its younger European competitor, Airbus SE’s A380, thanks to a cargo market boom fueled by online shopping.

Sprint sues AT&T over its “5G Evolution” branding, claims it is false and deceptive advertising that is damaging the reputation of actual 5G --engadget.com.

Germany, France face hurdles in push to rewrite EU antitrust rules--Vestager says global rules on subsidies and trade defense instruments, controlling foreign investments, mutual access to markets and reinforcing data protection and privacy rules should be included.

Blockchain’s Occam problem--mckinsey.com: "given the amount of money and time spent ... little of substance has been achieved." [ Editor's note: Occam’s razor is a problem-solving principle, the simplest solution tends to be the best.]

5) End Note

How to Increase Velocity: Say "No" to the Non-Essential, ruthlessly eliminate unnecessary tasks, priorities, meetings, BS; create systems and habits that help you fend off distractions; and put all your effort into the projects that really matter.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”--Steve Jobs

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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