Global Competitiveness

2017 Global competitiveness report has been published, and Switzerland tops the overall rankings for the six years. This year, U.S. landed the second place and Singapore has slipped to third. The most significant change was the Hong Kong improved the score to sixth from ninth last year.

US Utility Regulation

Once a set of decisions about projects and investments, kinds and levels of expenses, and their booked costs are accepted, regulators allow utilities to recover operating expenses in full, as well as capital costs plus an opportunity to earn a commission approved "rate of return" on invested equity.

The rate of return is made up of a return on debt (bonds) and a return on equity (stocks), weighted to reflect the proportional shares of total capital each type of security provides. 

This system of compensation is predicated on the assumption that nearly all, if not all, utilities are creating investor value every time they make capital investments. That may have been appropriate when the primary social goal of the utility sector was to grow enough to provide universal service, and economies of scale were clear. 

http://www.westerngrid.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CostValue-Part1-Revenue.pdf

Adjectives used to describe animal-like appearances or behaviors

bovine (cow)

feline (cat)

canine (dog)

ovine (sheep)

porcine (pig)

lupine (wolf)

murine (mouse)

equine (horse)

leporine (rabbit)

vulpine (fox)

ursine (bear)

taurine (bull)

cervine (deer)

elapine (viper)

caprine (goat)

ranine (frog)

vespine (wasp)

anserine (goose)

Wind profiler

Wind profilers are Doppler radars with which we can grasp the wind speed and direction in the atmosphere.

 

• US NOAA Research
• Japan Meteorological Agency

 

 

Foreign bond names

There are funny names of the bonds which was issued by the different entity, like company or government, but is issued and traded in an country and the local currency:

 

• Yankee bond (US)
• Maple bond (Canada)
• Bulldog bond (UK)
• Kangaroo/Matilda Bond (Australia)
• Kiwi bond (New Zealand)
• Panda bond (China)
• Dim sum bond (Hong Kong)
• Samurai bond (Japan)
• Kimchi bond (Korea)
• Masala bond (India)
• Baklava bond (Turkey)

 

You can find another story here.

 

 

Hurricane

These days, within the weather forecast, we frequently hear the name of spaghetti models, which shows the multiple trajectory forecasts of hurricanes.

 

Spaghetti models (also called spaghetti plots) is the nickname given to the computer models that show potential tropical cyclone paths. When shown together, the individual model tracks can somewhat resemble strands of spaghetti.

 

There are so many different spaghetti models:

•XTRP

•TVCN

•NHC

•BAMD

•BAMM

•BAMS

•GFDL

•UKM

•NGPS

•AVNO

•AEMN

•HWRF

•CM

•APxx

•CLP5

 

CMBS Default Study

CMBS Default Study from Kroll Bond Rating Agency, implying fewer defaults with higher losses.

 

US Energy Information Administration Data

Production is quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), but sometimes the unit of Megawatt hour (MWh) is used. The conversion is 1 Btu = 2.93E-7 MWh.

 

Historical Total Energy: https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/index.php

Projections: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/projection-data.cfm

Fred on R

When you are trying to handle the data fed from public data source like Google Finance and Fred on R, the library quantmod is absolutely useful. Here, their manual says Yahoo Finance is also available, but now it's not because of protocol change. Also, tickets only in the US seems available, not London nor Tokyo.

It’s just one line command:

> getSymbols(‘GDPC1’, src='FRED')

Then, the data is saved in the time series object named same as the symbol name, so you can draw a graph like:

> chartSeries(GDPC1)

NA field is filled with the following command:

> na.locf(GDPC1, fromLast = FALSE)

If you want to fill the data with the last observation, put the flag fromLast = TRUE.

The time frame can be specified intuitively:

> GDPC1[‘1999/2010-10’]

With this sample, the data is trimmed from the beginning of 1999 to the end of Oct, 2010.

Sampling with defined frequency period end is:

> endpoints(GDPC1, ‘years’)

This returns the index of the year end data, so in order to pick up the yearend data:

> GDPC1[endpoints(GDPC1, ‘years’)]

Methane and climate

Methane – a primary component of natural gas – leaks from drilling sites and pipelines which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.

The amount is now ~10% higher than the cow burps which now many scientists are struggling to develop the feed to mix so called 3-nitrooxypropanol that may reduce the methane by as much as 30%.

Now, the gas leakage poses additional climate risks and erodes the climate benefits of replacing coal with natural gas.

 

Gas /Diesel Price

The tax percentage in the gas price is really high in Europe and Japan although it is really low for the US.

It’s interesting that the percentage is slightly lower for diesel in every country other than the US.

Anyway, this implies the preference of energy efficient cars in Europe and Japan, on the other hand this is not the principal factor for choosing a car in the US.

 

Source: Oak Ridge National Lab.

Energy Sector M&A

There were couple of M&A activities on today's news:

• Sempra Energy Reaches Deal to Acquire Oncor
• Total Buys Maersk Oil for $4.95 Billion

These days, we can see the transition from coal or nuke from oil & gas, and also the trend of M&A to result more generalist energy companies.

In the US, we can see this trend strongly backgrounded with increasing shale oil and etc.

Industry

GICS industry code
Moody's industry classification
Barclay's industry classification

There are many differences there:

• Mortgage REIT is in REIT for Barclay's, but in Finance for GICS, and Real Estate for Moody's
• Coal mining is Metals & Mining in Basic Industry for Barclay's and Moody's, but a part of Energy in GICS

Charlie Puth

This is one of my favorite tune right now.

REIT

To qualify as a REIT a company must:

- Invest at least 75 percent of its total assets in real estate
- Derive at least 75 percent of its gross income from rents from real property, interest on mortgages financing real property or from sales of real estate
- Pay at least 90 percent of its taxable income in the form of shareholder dividends each year
- Be an entity that is taxable as a corporation
- Be managed by a board of directors or trustees
- Have a minimum of 100 shareholders
- Have no more than 50 percent of its shares held by five or fewer individuals

Restart blogging

I'm going to restart posting on this blog following to my interests. I'm not sure how long it will continue, but hope it will become not for memo myself but some integrated knowledge or best practices; does the word "folksonomy" still alive?