economics

Companies follow a U-shaped pattern of cash holdings across their lifespan: • Firms in the introduction stage hold the most cash — with cash making up nearly a third of their assets. This is perhaps because they raise a lot of money, and then slowly burn through it all developing new products, and building their market.

• As companies mature, with e

intangibles like patents and other forms of knowledge. And that’s around when companies started holding on to more cash

Well, that’s perhaps because different industries have different sorts of assets. Traditional companies have large reserves of tangible assets, like buildings or machines. More new age companies, on the other hand, are likely to have intangible assets — like algorithms, or patents.

Now, if you need cash in a pinch, you’re much better off with tangib

Pharma and biotech firms top the charts — over 55% of their total assets are held in cash, or in other assets that can quickly be turned into cash. Software companies, too, hold more than 30% of their assets in cash.

At the other end of the spectrum, traditional industries like energy, at 4%, and utilities, at less than 1%, maintain far leaner cash

lately (and interestingly), companies across the world have recently been holding way more cash than they might ever need.

Listed US companies held nearly $2.5 trillion in just cash at the end of 2024 — about 4.7% of their total market cap. From 5.8% in the thirty years between 1970-2000, cash has risen to ~9.7% of companies’ assets between 2001-202

In my opinion, this highlights the importance of the hiring channel. When employers want to shrink their workforce (or at least slow its growth), they use hiring as their primary lever; and when it’s time to expand/accelerate, they pull the same lever. Ergo, young people are highly levered to sectoral, occupational or economy-wide cycles, something

One thing that struck me about their core insight - that AI is having a negative impact on AI-exposed occupations - is that it seems a lot like what we’ve seen in prior sectoral crashes.

For instance, construction employment had a nasty contraction after 2006. And employment in younger age categories plummeted even as the employment of older workers

India is the world's second-largest consumer of edible oil. Our per capita consumption reached 19.7 kg per year or possibly even more — much higher than the WHO's recommended 13 kg. To give another perspective: in the 1960s, we consumed just 3.2 kg per person annually. That means an increase of more than 500% .

More money is lost by people trying to prepare for recessions than in recessions. However, there are times to lean in with conviction and other times to remain flexible, and I view this as a time to remain flexible.