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75 Facts from 2023
The Idea Farm
December 06, 2023
We send out a weekly email every Sunday to over 90,000 investors featuring our favorite research, podcast, articles, facts & figures.
Here are 75 facts we’ve shared in 2023.
Investing
Berkshire Hathaway has grown its book value per share by 14,123x since 1955. Source: Twitter
"Out of the nearly 10,300 mutual funds and ETFs in the United States, there are more than 5,900 where the listed portfolio managers own no shares in the fund they manage." Source: Morningstar; A Wealth of Common Sense
"Did you know the market cap of the entire U.S. stock market in 1990 was only $2.8 trillion? That’s what one company, Apple, is worth today." Source: Strange Loop Canon
"The investment return of Rolexes was higher than real estate, the stock market, or even gold over a 10-year period, from 2011 to 2021, according to Paul Altieri, founder and CEO of Bob’s Watches" Source: Barrons/PENTA
The 1,661 Opportunity Zones tracked by Novogradac raised $9.7 billion in 2022 and $34 billion since Opportunity Zones were created. Source: Novoco
The Nikkei 225 was flat from July 1990 through November 13, 2023. Source: Bespoke Investment Group
“Of 225 actively managed strategies in the eVestment database that list the MSCI EAFE index as their preferred benchmark, 84% are underweight Japan by an average of 7.5%…” Source: GMO
"Out of 28,114 publicly-listed U.S. companies analyzed over past century, 25 best stocks have created nearly 1/3 of all shareholder wealth; put another way, just 0.1% of stocks have added over $17.6 trillion to investors’ wallets." Source: Visual Capitalist
Market Froth
"Roughly 70 special-purpose acquisition companies have liquidated and returned money to investors since the start of December. That is more than the total number of SPAC liquidations in the market’s history" Source: WSJ
Over the past 40 months, the SPAC market has gone from $25 billion to $200 billion and back to $25 billion (as of August 31, 2023). Source: Accelerate
114x annual recurring revenue — the multiple at which private, venture-capital-backed SaaS companies raised capital in 2021, up from “only” ~15x to 30x a few years prior (Source: Pitchbook/IVP). Source: Phil Ordway
Stripe did a funding round at a valuation of $50bn (down from $95bn two years ago), purely to manage liquidity and options for its employees. Source: Stripe
Tiger Global marked down the value of its investments in private companies by about 33% across its venture-capital funds in 2022, erasing $23 billion in value. Source: WSJ
"Combined, First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank held more in inflation-adjusted assets than the 25 U.S. banks that collapsed in 2008." Source: FDIC
Inflation
~70% of those who signed up to drive for Uber in February 2023 said that inflation was a factor in their decision. Source: Twitter
Burger King joined McDonald's and Subway in removing tomatoes from menus in India as food inflation in August 2023 hit its highest since January 2020. Source: Reuters
"InMarket ... measured a 4% average increase in the share of dollar-store visits this year among those making more than $100,000, compared with the second half of 2022." Source: WSJ
The average ticket price for North American tours hit $120.11 this summer, a 7.4% increase over last year and up 27% from 2019, according to Pollstar. Source: WSJ
Personal Finance
At some point between the ages of 25 and 60 (Source: Rob Henderson):
73% of Americans will find themselves in the top 20 percent of the income distribution
56% will enter the top 10%
39% will enter top 5%
12% will enter in the top 1%
A record 2.8% of .. people in 401(k) plans run by Vanguard Group tapped their retirement savings in 2022 to cope with hardships such as medical bills, eviction or foreclosure .. up from 2.1% in 2021 and a prepandemic average of about 2%. Source: WSJ
Money.com estimates in 2020, 44% of workers with FSAs forfeited money, and the average amount was $408 per person. Workers forfeited approximately $3 billion in 2019 and $4.2 billion in 2020. Source: Money
"If you look at all of the personal income tax returns that were filed in California in the year 2020, just 1% of the total number of income tax returns that were filed were responsible for more than 49% of all of the personal income tax that was paid in that year." Source: CapRadio
17 states guarantee a Personal Finance course for all public high school students. Source: Next Gen Personal Finance
China
“According to a report by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, more than 80% of China's 1 billion private enterprises are family-owned…” Source: Nikkei Asia
The number of newborns in China in 2016 was 17.9 million, a jump of more than 1 million from the year before. However, births dropped each year after that, to 9.56 million in 2022, the lowest since at least 1950. Source: Bloomberg
"China’s total fertility rate—a snapshot of the average number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime—fell to 1.09 last year, from 1.30 in 2020" Source: WSJ
Energy & Commodities
The vehicles Rivian sold in the first quarter for roughly $83,000 on average cost it about $150,000 each to manufacture. Source: WSJ
17% of the world’s gold is held by Indian retail consumers. Source: Colossus
Worldwide, sales of electric vehicles in 2022 passed 10% market share for the first time; 11% of total car sales in Europe (Plug-in hybrid vehicles were another >9%), EVs were 19% in China, and 5.8% in U.S. (up from 3.2% in 2021). Source: WSJ
“The US has driven all the growth in global oil supply, both over the past decade and over the past year.” Source: Goldman Sachs
"We use enough crude to fill about 6,500 Olympic-size swimming pools every day. More than a third of those swimming pools would be needed to quench the thirst of two countries: the US and China." Source: Bloomberg
Crypto
"wash trading accounted for over half (58%) of the total NFT trade volumes on Ethereum in 2022" Source: CoinDesk
A new study estimates ~ 95% of people holding NFT collections are currently holding onto worthless investments. Source: dappGambl
"More French people own crypto (9%) than stocks (7%) or ETFs (2%)." Source: Bloomberg
Company-Specific
Chick-fil-A generated $18.8 billion in sales in 2022, with $8.6 million in revenue per standalone location. Source: Restaurant Business
87% of teens own an iPhone. Source: Piper Sandler
The number of LinkedIn posts grew 41% from 2021 to 2023. Source: Business Insider
Advertising is 28% of Instacart’s net revenue. Source: Instacart's S-1
Buy Now, Pay Later accounted for 6.5% ($927 million) of all purchases on Amazon Prime Day, a 20% YoY increase. Source: Retail Brew
4.4 million Americans now on GLP-1 drugs. Novo, the maker of Ozempic, passed LVMH as the largest company in Europe (as of September 5, 2023). Source: Howard Lindzon
Post-COVID Economy
"Nearly half of mortgaged properties were considered equity-rich in the second quarter -- meaning owners had at least 50% in home equity." Source: Bloomberg
As of July 23, 2023, there were 600,000 more realtors than homes for sale in the U.S. Source: Twitter
The last week of January 2023 was the first time that return-to-office rates crossed 50% of their pre-pandemic levels. Source: BNN Bloomberg
Two stats on working from home (Source: Stanford University):
"Working from home rose five-fold from 2019 to 2023, with 40% of US employees now working remotely at least one day a week."
Golfers are playing more golf on weekdays (143% more on Wednesday in 2022 vs 2019) and mid-afternoon (278% more on Wednesday 4pm in 2022 vs 2019).
As of March 31, 2023, New York City’s vacant office space could fill 26.6 Empire State Buildings. Source: The New York Times
Sports
In 2021, players on the winning Super Bowl team received $130,000 bonuses each. Source: Country Living
The winning team normally receives about 150 gem-encrusted Super Bowl rings for players, coaches, and other important members of the organization. The total for the set adds up to about $5 million. Source: Country Living
The average cost of a ticket to the past five Super Bowls is $6,214. Source: Wallet Hub
"In 1970, they (field box seats at Yankee Stadium) cost an inflation-adjusted $26 in 2019 dollars. The same ticket cost $300 in 2019 - more than eleven times as much." Source: Amazon-An Economist Goes to the Game
"The median salary of Major League Baseball players was twice that for employed males in 1964, but by 2019 it was 27 times the median." Source: Amazon-An Economist Goes to the Game
"...there are now more NBA players with $30 million annual salaries than CEOs of S&P 500 companies who are guaranteed that much." Source: Reuters
"Between 6 and 7 percent of all the money earned by American Black men born in 1988 was earned by NFL and NBA players." But wait, there's more: "Kevin Durant's annual income represented almost 1 percent of all the money earned by the more than 300,000 African American men born in 1988." Source: An Economist Goes To the Game
Americans have bet $245 billion on sporting events since restrictions were loosened in 2018. Source: Financial Times
Media
Half of Netflix's top 10 US shows ever released were in 2022. Source: The Ringer
Almost 1 in 5 people in the US age 13 or older listen to a podcast daily (double the rate it was in 2018). Source: Edison Research
At the start of the year, >50% of Disney+ subscribers were adults without kids. Source: Twitter
Inequality
As of this fall, ~900 school districts (~7% of all districts in the US) now have four day school weeks. Source: Planet Money
One-third of the children of the very richest families scored a 1300 or higher on the SAT, while less than 5% of middle-class students did. Just 1 in 5 children from the poorest families even took the test. Source: The New York Times
Miscellaneous
"Married couples filing a joint return put the male name first 88.1% of the time in tax year 2020, down from 97.3% in 1996." Source: NBER
On average, in U.S. cities with over 1 million people, 22% of land in the city center is used for parking.” Source: KTVX
"Between 1975 and 2022…the number of products in an average U.S. supermarket has increased by more than three‐fold, from 8,948 products to a whopping 31,530." Source: CATO
"21.8% of U.S. loan applications over the last month (June 2023) were denied—the highest rejection rate since June 2018." Source: Forbes
The value of global advertising revenue from retailer-owned e-commerce sites is forecasted to exceed television revenue by 2028. Source: Reuters
Today, about one-fifth of the generic drugs consumed in the world come from India. In Africa, it’s half. Source: Bloomberg
"At its peak, the Apollo program was consuming 60% of all chips manufactured in the United States." Source: Fermat’s Library
"the chance of an author ending up on the bestseller list after death is about eight times higher if the author is famous ... and about twice as high if the bucket kicker is aged 65 or younger." Source: Klement on Investing
The percentage of 16 year olds with a driver's license has declined from 43% in 1997 to 25% in 2020. Source: The Washington Post
“Marijuana was the sixth most valuable wholesale crop in the United States in 2022 at a $5 billion worth, trailing only corn, soybeans, hay, wheat and cotton." Source: Statista