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2022-08-18 10:00:01 The US Still Spends A Lot More Than Peers On Pharmaceuticals

This week a new study from Harvard Medical School researchers estimated that Medicare could save almost $4bn a year were it to purchase drugs and prescriptions from Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company instead of the complex supply chain of private brokers and pharmacies that it currently sources from.

Billionaire Mark Cuban launched the Cost Plus Drug Company in January this year, selling generic prescriptions direct to consumers with a fixed pricing structure of a 15% mark-up, a $3 dispensing fee and a $5 shipping fee, in a bid to disrupt the $350bn+ a year prescription-drug industry.

America #1

The study showed that in some specific cases Medicare was being charged 800%+ more than what they could pay if they had gone direct or via Cuban's new company.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-08-17 10:00:01 Border Crossing Data Shows Some Refugees Are Returning To Ukraine

Data from the Ukrainian borders suggests that a substantial number of refugees that had previously fled Ukraine have now returned home — if only for a short trip.

Data from the UN refugee agency, originally reported on by The Economist, reveals that the gap between the number of people leaving Ukraine and the number of people entering Ukraine has narrowed. Indeed, throughout the first two weeks of June roughly 30,000 people have entered Ukraine per day, mostly staying west where the fighting with Russia has been more muted, suggesting Ukrainians are eager to return home as soon as they can.

Even with the number of returning refugees going up, there's still a net exodus of people leaving the country — although it's more of a trickle at 15,000-20,000 people per day compared to the hundreds of thousands that fled in the early days of the invasion.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-08-16 10:00:01 Drowning In Debt: Beauty Group Revlon Has Filed For Bankruptcy

Revlon, the beauty and cosmetics company first founded in 1932, has filed for bankruptcy.

For years Revlon, which owns Elizabeth Arden and a number of fragrance lines (including Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera's brands), has struggled with a growing debt pile. From 2009-2015, Revlon mostly had that debt under control, ekeing out enough of a margin to cover the annual interest expense every year.

But then Revlon acquired Elizabeth Arden in a bid to buy its way to growth. That meant taking on more debt, at a time when competition in the beauty space was intensifying. Revlon started to struggle. Having been reliant on physical distribution in malls and shops for years, Revlon suddenly had to compete with upstart brands such as Fenty Beauty (by Rihanna) or Kylie Cosmetics (by Kylie Jenner).

These were digitally-native brands with huge followings that shipped straight to consumers.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-08-15 10:00:01 More Data

1) The Austrian capital, Vienna, is back on top of The Economist's annual list of the World's Most Liveable Cities.

2) Netflix has confirmed it is laying off another 300 employees, while also confirming that the ad-supported tier is in development.

3) A Japanese man has lost a USB stick with an entire city's personal details on it (data on more than 500,000 people).

4) Our friends at CB Insights have collated 29 pitch decks of startups that went on to become huge, including Airbnb, BuzzFeed and Facebook.

5) The senate has voted 65 to 33 to pass the bipartisan gun control bill, which incentivizes states to pass red flag laws and close certain loopholes.

6) A Web3 startup hired a Snoop Dogg impersonator to drum up hype for their company at the NFT NYC conference.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-08-15 09:00:03 Do you know:

How NATO expanded to attack Russia?

How much earned the highest paid TikTok star in 2021?

How much time we've left according to the "Doomsday Clock"?

All of this, and much more mindboggling stats on in Statista.

@StatistaOfficial Open / Comment

2022-08-14 10:00:00 Interest In The News Is Falling

A new report from the Reuters Institute & Oxford University has found that interest in the news cycle has dropped. In the US the proportion of people who are "very" or "extremely" interested in news has fallen from 67% in 2015 to 47% last year — a trend that was also found in other countries such as the UK, Spain, Germany and Brazil.

Why is this happening?

There are a few potential explanations. One is just that we're all exhausted by the news cycle of the last few years which has featured highly polarized politics, a global pandemic, inflation and geopolitical tensions to name but a few stories. Another potential reason is more structural — that as news is increasingly digital it's actually easier to get disconnected from it, through choice or by algorithms that learn you're not that interested. Interestingly the proportion of people who actively avoid the news also rose to a new high of 42% of those surveyed in the US.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-08-13 10:00:01 Cigarette Sale Have Fallen, But Big Tobacco Is Still Big Business

Big tobacco is still big tobacco

After 40+ years of declining cigarette sales and graphic public health warnings about the damage that smoking causes, it might be easy to think of big tobacco as a frail industry on its deathbed — it's anything but. In fact, even in the wake of falling sales, Altria has eked out record earnings over the last decade. The $12-13bn that it has presumably lost on the Juul deal is an enormous sum... but it's one that Altria can — quite easily — afford. It's racked up operating income of more than $10bn for the last 3 years in a row. Big tobacco is still just that... big.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-08-12 10:00:01 The Rapid Rise And Fall Of Juul

Yesterday the FDA announced that Juul cannot sell its e-cigarettes in the US anymore — a huge blow for a company that was recently one of the most highly-valued startups in all of America.

Juul was the brainchild of two graduate students of product design at Stanford who wanted to make cigarettes that were healthier, better smelling... and cooler. They succeeded.

After launching in 2015 it took just a few short years for Juul's e-cigarette to hit the big time. Its USB-stick-looking vaporizer came in flavors like mango, creme and mint and teenagers loved them. By late 2017 they had 20% of the e-cigarette market. One year later they had over 70%. Juul seemed unstoppable, and big tobacco took notice.

Juul Labs had been spun out of its parent company, and had notched a substantial valuation in private markets as its sales exploded.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-06-24 10:00:04 The Rise & Fall Of The iPod

In October 2001 Apple released the iPod. Its iconic scroll wheel and the slogan "1,000 songs in your pocket" were an instant hit, and within few years the world of music was changed forever.

The iPod, and other MP3 players, offered an alternative to the mostly-linear way that albums used to be listened to on CD or vinyl — and they were just so much more convenient. "1,000 songs in your pocket" was a powerful slogan that quickly became 2,000, then 4,000 and 16,000 as storage capacity expanded. The fact that most people only had a few hundred songs to fill their iPods with was irrelevant.

Nothing lasts forever in tech and this week Apple announced it was going to discontinue the product line, marking the official end of the iPod era — which at its peak saw Apple shift more than 50 million iPods every year. Indeed, before the rise of the iPhone the iPod was the company's crown jewel alongside the Mac — in 2006 the iPod was roughly 40% of Apple's revenue.

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚛 | 𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 Open / Comment

2022-06-24 09:00:04 The secrets of millionaires are now available to everyone.

They are posted here daily:
Psychology of Money Open / Comment