Envelope / Develope

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash I was reading about the developing efforts for a vaccine reflected through the stock market. It happened to have a few shares of the VIR Biotechnology ( VIR ) company when the chase of finding a vaccine started. It was an incredible ride, even for a guy accustomed with the up-and-downs of the shares in a company and the political game played when companies are bought or acquired. Just for illustration, please see the chart of this stock for a three month period. There is excitement, at the beginning  of March about the possibility of developing a vaccine for Corona virus, and the stock surpasses 70$/share when before is was lingering under the 17$/share threshold. There are many companies in the race - Moderna ( MRNA ), Gilead ( GILD ), Inovio Pharmaceuticals ( INO ) and probably a few of them will find a virus. What I don't understand is the effort spent in parallel of fighting the same cause. It is a lot of ...

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash I don't know what is worse: the whole pandemic provoked by the corona virus or the consequence of shutting down businesses due to the risk of contaminating their customers? There are industries where people are clustered together, where you have to be close to your client: airlines hospitality (Disney, cruises) entertaining industry restaurants, fast food establishments, wineries, breweries anything related to well being and not health care As I outlined in a different post, year 2020 is essential for US presidential elections. Mr. Trump understands the whole economic factor is so important to get elected a second term. With the forced close down of the major economic sectors (car manufacturing, industrial manufacturing, airlines, entertaining), the crisis in the health sector being overwhelmed by the peak of people admitted in ICU, banks hit by a slowed down economy, there is a perfect storm to bring his chances very down. There...

Here in Toronto, there is an intermittent radio show called "White coat, black art" about being a doctor nowadays or the dilemmas of the health system in Canada. The whole accent is about how difficult is to navigate the current medical problems when in fact, almost everyone is more interested about the ethical questions, economic factors (why some procedures are supported or not) and obviously the transparency of the personal skills of the medical staff. The public services are served as a "block" for everyone when the reality is that it counts on whose hands are you under medical care. What is not touched in any way (the guest making the show is a doctor) are conflictual and controversial views about doctors. The show is mostly about raising big questions, not touching constant slippage of the system and the self-empowerment of the job due to the social contract of how the doctors and the medical system are provisioned in Canada's economy. In this post I...

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash One in five workers with a high school education or less are subject to a non-compete clause. Labor cost becomes one of the variables any company will try to contain, especially for large companies or small franchises (like soccer, basketball teams) where the star status is coming with large paychecks. I will try to touch this subject in the light of a few observations and findings of today's labor market. Large companies are been tacitly agreeing to limit poaching talent from each other in order to limit the salaries of the talented people Monopsony is the buyer's power in the market, single buyer or many of them agreeing to follow the same rules. I wanted to touch the subject because it reflects one of the old ideas where "managers" are trying to contain costs of their raising stars. That is valid for all industries with the exception of the movie, music industry or individual sports. All other cases - team sp...