Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 28, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MIXED BAG FOR RIDE-SHARING PLATFORMS)
(UBER), (LYFT)
The raging war in Ukraine and Russia will have repercussions for the American tech sector.
Many of these unintended consequences are lurking in the shadows and don’t fully appear until we are further down the road, but one glaring consequence we can expect imminently is higher inflation.
The higher inflation input first revolves around rising energy prices and big moves in the price of crude indicate that prices at the pump will surge throughout the duration of this Eastern European war.
Russia is one of the world's largest exporters of oil and gas. If US, European sanctions and Russia's responses drive up oil and gas prices, Russia's export revenues will rise and help pay the sanctions' costs. In contrast, rising oil and gas prices will feed US inflation.
The more the war is prolonged, the higher likelihood that oil will stay above $100 per barrel and the psychological effect of high gas prices will stay with the consumer for longer.
Even more ironic, the Russian Ruble crashing more than 30% this morning also means that Russia can reduce its energy offerings to the outside world by 25% yet still make a positive 5% nominal return on the energy exports.
Russia could pull back supply as the next chess move on the board and a barrel of oil could launch to upwards of $140 a barrel meaning that Americans could be paying $7 or $8 per gallon in California and Nevada.
People forget that Ukraine is sitting tight and defending while being supplied by Europe from the West.
This includes arms from the US brought down from Latvia, gas from Slovakia, and a smorgasbord of supplies and aid from other European countries.
Logistically, Russia needs to ship everything from mainland Russia including weapons, food, energy, and equipment.
Distances are far in Russia and this will quickly add up to an expensive war for Russia with reports showing that Russia is spending around $20 billion per day to finance this war.
Along with navigating higher energy prices at the pump, ride-sharing platform Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT) are testing a new driver earnings algorithm in 24 U.S. cities that allows drivers to see pay and destinations before accepting a trip, and raises the incentives for drivers to take short rides in an effort to attract more drivers.
Labor supply has been a major problem for Uber and Lyft who can’t convince drivers to work for them.
The unit economics simply don’t make sense when inflation has meant expenses have spiked to the detriment of gig economy driver supply.
The changes, which are currently in pilot programs, mark the most wide-ranging updates to Uber's driver pay algorithm in years and come at a time when the company is still trying to win back drivers who left at the start of the pandemic.
Fortunately for Uber, even with headwinds of high energy prices and labor bottlenecks, the post-Omicron economic tailwind should keep Uber shares rangebound in the short-term with a slant towards the upside.
The setup to Uber and Lyft’s next earnings report is also ominous with projections looking hard to beat with the exogenous forces piling up.
Lyft and Uber continue to be a buy the dip and then sell the rally stock on high volatility.
Their lack of quality really suffers in tougher tech market conditions.
It’s true that the painfully delayed response not only to Russia’s offensive in Ukraine will cause higher prices, but the cost will certainly be high as the Western world could have snuffed this out years ago when Russia took over parts of Georgia or annexed Crimea.
The bill is now due, and Germany will initially pay 100 billion euros to liven up their military and this is most likely the beginning of the West finally stopping its policy of turning a blind eye to Eastern European dictators.
More expensive Uber and Lyft rides, higher driving expenses, surging fuel costs will keep the stock in check.
However, considering the stock is way oversold at this level, the tailwinds blowing at their sails means shares will grind up slowly as the Fed raises rates slower than expected.
“A.I. is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on.” – Said Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
Global Market Comments
February 28, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or FAREWELL THE PEACE DIVIDEND),
(SPY), (TLT), (TBT), (TSLA), (AAPL)
Remember that great bull market of the Dotcom Boom? Most investors believe it was the result of combining a new Internet, cheap PCs, and the Mosaic Application which made it all work together.
But to Wall Street types usually blind to geopolitics, there was another important factor: The peace dividend paid out by the end of the Cold War. The end result was 30 years of less defense spending, lower taxes, and higher profits for corporate America.
The numbers are pretty compelling. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Dow Average has risen from $2,875 to $34,000, a gain of 12 times. That averages out to an incredible 40% a year. Individual stocks like Monster Beverage (MNST), Tractor Supply (TSCO), and Altria (MO) appreciated a thousandfold or more.
So what happens if the Cold War resumes? Do we have to pay the money back?
In part, yes.
Not that you have to have to write a check anytime soon. But you will have to pay in the form of higher taxes for more defense spending, slower economic growth, fewer corporate profits, and a more modestly appreciating stock market. And that great multiplier of growth, globalization, just suffered a dagger through its heart.
While we have just seen one of the greatest short-covering rallies of all time, $1,800 points or 5.6% in two days, don’t think you’re back on Easy Street yet. A worst-case scenario full-scale Russian invasion of the Ukraine is in the price. So, it's back to focusing on runaway inflation and the certain multiple Fed interest rate hikes to fight it once again.
And guess what? Wars are inflationary. We are already seeing surges in the price of energy, wheat, and nonferrous metals.
So, I think I’ll stick to the short side for the time being. After all, it’s worked pretty well so far in 2022. You’ll still need to maintain some discipline here, only selling rallies.
If the US acts fast, there is an opportunity here for it to create a second War in Afghanistan for Russia. It’s certainly trying. As I write this, there are already long convoys of NATO trucks that carry ammunition and antitank missiles into the Ukraine. If you remember, it was its loss of the first one that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. I think Putin has bit off more than he expected.
For those who are maintaining core long-term portfolios, which are most of you, writing, or selling short front month out-of-the-money call options against your positions is a great idea. It will reduce your risk, lower your average cost, reduce your volatility, and bring in some extra income. Option volatilities are still high, so you can earn a pretty penny with such a strategy.
And if in case we return to happy days again, you will be taken out of your positions at higher prices with bigger profits and will think you have died and gone to Heaven.
What is the other smart trade here? If you have any energy exposure whatsoever this is a generational opportunity to get rid of it. The best-case golden scenario has happened. Even if oil goes to $125 short term, your energy stocks won’t go much higher from here.
If Russia and Saudi Arabia are trying to exit the energy business, maybe you should too.
There has been a lot of speculation about Putin’s timing of his invasion of the Ukraine. The winter, oil inventory shortages, and NATO’s half-century of underinvestment in defense were all factors.
But the most important one is being completely ignored. Putin has to unload his country’s energy resources before they become worthless, which I reckon will happen in about 20 years.
That means in two decades, some 70% of Russia’s total government revenues vaporize. The invasion of the Ukraine allows Putin to get rid of more energy faster at higher prices right now.
As my old friend, Dr. Armand Hammer used to say, “Everything boils down to oil.” (click here for the link).
Without energy, Russia has little to offer the world but a few metals and a lot of unregulated hackers. You see the same motivation in Saudi Arabia’s massive investment in alternative energy in California. And yes, they really did try to buy all of Tesla three years ago (TSLA) before the shares rose fivefold.
My Ten-Year View
When we come out the other side of pandemic, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 800% to 240,000 or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old. Dow 240,000 here we come!
With near-record volatility fading fast, my February month-to-date performance rocketed to a blistering 10.51%. It turned out to be a great month to play from the short side in size. My 2022 year-to-date performance ended at 25.10%. The Dow Average is down -6.1% so far in 2022. It is the great outperformance on an index since Mad Hedge Fund Trader started 14 years ago.
I went into the Russian invasion with 90% cash, expecting trouble. I stopped out of a long in Apple (AAPL) in a day for a small loss. The next trade I added was another short in bonds, followed quickly by a new long in Tesla (TSLA) ($700 a share? Really?). Within hours the stock was up $100!
That brings my 13-year total return to 537.66%, some 2.00 times the S&P 500 (SPX) over the same period. My average annualized return has ratcheted up to 43.89%, easily the highest in the industry.
We need to keep an eye on the number of US Coronavirus cases at 79 million and rising quickly and deaths topping 950,000, which you can find here.
On Monday, February 28 at 8:00 AM EST, the president delivers the State of the Union Speech
On Tuesday, March 1 at 8:30 AM, the ISM Manufacturing Index for February is out.
On Wednesday, March 2 at 5:15 AM, the ADP Private Employment Index is released.
On Thursday, March 3 at 8:30 AM, Weekly Jobless Claims are published.
On Friday, March 4 at 8:30 AM, the February Nonfarm Payroll Report is Published. At 2:00 PM, the Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is out.
As for me, I’m not supposed to be alive right now. In fact, the betting in my extended family is that I would never make it past 30. But here I am 40 years after my “sell by” date and I’m having the last laugh.
There were times when it was a close-run thing. Breaking my neck in a 70 mile per hour head-on collision in Sweden in 1968 didn’t exactly help my odds. Nor did watching a land mine blow up the guy in front of me in Cambodia in 1975, showering me head to toe with shrapnel and bone fragments.
After crashing three airplanes in Italy, Austria, and France, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency certainly wishes I died at a much earlier age. So, no doubt did the tourists at the top of the Eifel Tower one day in 1987, who I just missed hitting by 100 feet (yes, I was the Black Baron).
When I was in high school, the same group of four boys met every day at recess. We were all in the same Boy Scout Troop and became lifelong friends. Since I had been to over 50 countries by the age of 16, I was considered the wild man of the bunch, the risk-taker, always willing to roll the dice. The rest lived vicariously through me. But I was also the lucky one.
For a start, I was not among the 22 from my school who died in Vietnam, 11 officers and 11 draftees. Their names are all on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC. My work for the Atomic Energy Commission at the Nuclear Test Site gave me a lifetime draft exception on national security grounds.
But I went anyway, on my own dime, to see who was telling the truth. It turned out no one was.
The other three boys in my group played it safe, pursuing conventional careers and never took any risks.
David Wilson was the first to go. He managed a hotel in Park City, Utah for a national chain. When he was hiking in the Rocky Mountains one day, a storm blew in and he went over a cliff. They didn’t find his body for a week.
Paul Blaine went on to USC and law school. In his mid-fifties, he lost a crucial case and shot himself at his desk at his Newport Bay office. I later learned he had been fighting a lifetime battle against depression. We never knew.
Robert Sandiford spent his entire career working as a computer programmer for the city of Los Angeles. By the time he retired at 65, he was managing 40 people. He pursued his dream to buy a large RV, drive it to Alaska, and play his banjo in a series of blue grass festivals.
Robert was unfamiliar with driving such a large vehicle. Around midnight, he was driving north on Interstate 5 near Modesto, CA when he passed a semi. When he pulled back into the slow lane, he clipped the front of the truck on cruise control with a driver half asleep. The truck pierced a propane tank on the RV, blowing up both vehicles. Robert, his wife Elise, and the truck driver were all burned to death.
At least, this was the speculation by the California Highway Patrol. Robert and Elise went missing for months. We thought that maybe his RV had broken down somewhere on the Alaskan Highway and family members went there to look for him. It was only after the Los Angeles County Coroner discovered some dental records that we learned the truth.
When the bones were returned, the family had them cremated and we scattered the ashes in the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island where we used to camp as scouts.
I have been rewarded for risk taking for my entire life, so I keep at it. Similarly, I have seen others punished for risk avoidance, as happened to all my friends. The same applies to my trading as well. The price of doing nothing is far greater than doing something, and being aggressive offers the greatest reward of all.
This summer, I am scheduled to fly an 80-year-old Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft over the white cliffs of Dover, of Battle of Britain fame. I am spending my evenings memorizing the 1940 operations manual just to be safe, as I always do with new aircraft.
A 70-year-old flying an 80-year-old plane, what could go wrong with that?
Oh, and I am learning the banjo too.
I’ll send you the videos.
Stay Healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
That’s a Heck of a Dividend
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 25, 2022
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BULLISH TAILWINDS DEFEND THE NASDAQ)
($COMPQ)
The 6.5% reversal in the Nasdaq has been as V-shaped as can be.
Let me remind readers that this Ukraine war is just only one external factor the market is trying to stomach.
It’s not the only show in town.
As we zero in on the March Fed Meeting that comes into focus, I would argue unless new developments rear their ugly head, the Ukraine-Russia hot war is what it is which is mostly quantified.
The Nasdaq index was cheering the light sanctions as the West chose to avoid the nuclear option of removing Russia from accessing the SWIFT system of global bank payments.
Germany refuses to support this option as it would make it harder to pay the Russians for their oil and natural gas.
America also doesn’t support this because we have concerns that it would undermine the status of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.
On more of a micro level, the Ukraine-Russia situation mostly affects energy and food prices which is a relative win for the Nasdaq index that is comprised of technology.
The Nasdaq has outperformed the Dow and S&P in this short quick spike to the upside contributing to my thesis of investors feeling more comfortable dollar-cost averaging into the best breed of tech than reaching for something more inferior.
And yes, I am saying the best companies currently listed in America are tech companies.
The geopolitical turmoil overshooting means that the Nasdaq index is now pricing in a 25-basis point cut instead of a 50-basis point cut.
Either case is still highly stimulatory, and the Fed is way behind the curve on inflation, and this does mean that inflation will stick around a lot longer than first anticipated.
According to the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), the US Central Bank has actually been increasing asset purchases to their balance sheet most likely because they are becoming nervous about the transition from dovish to hawkish policy.
To add an inflationary pillow to the interest rate dilemma is irresponsible, but it shows investors how much pressure is on the Fed to get this right after waiting way too long to raise rates.
Ultimately, I believe the Fed is also concerned about the recent selloff and these asset purchases will ensure the market does not dip to painful levels.
Traders got wind of the green lighting of saving the stock market and piled into risk-on assets and this reversal does a lot to draw a line in the sand as to what level of volatility the Fed is able or willing to tolerate.
Boosting the balance sheet to new all-time highs means that the Fed will need to be careful because nobody really knows how much they can push the hawkishness with a $9 trillion debt load.
It seems counterintuitive to initiate new asset purchases at these levels, and this behavior implicitly admits that the Fed cares more about saving the stock market by reducing volatility than putting a kibosh on hyperinflation.
Basically, high inflation is here to stay.
The $9 trillion Central Bank balance sheet is 43% of the United States’ GDP and it appears that the Fed is taking the Japan approach to their balance sheet.
Of course, there is nothing illegal about government asset purchases, just look at Japan whose Central Bank owns about 15% of the Japanese stock market and the US Fed is using their playbook as they look to future decisions on monetary policy.
Will it get to that point of a Japanese monetary policy?
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
If the Fed governor Jerome Powell does go insane with liberal infusions of asset purchases, then readers can bet that tech stocks will be the first to benefit from fresh liquidity.
Does it appear that the U.S. Central Bank is trigger happy when any crisis comes along?
There are elements of truth to that, but we aren’t the ones making the decisions, and on the next mini dip, I would use that as a new entry point into the best American tech stocks on the planet such as the likes of Alphabet (GOOLG), Adobe (ADBE), Microsoft (MSFT), and Apple (AAPL).
Lastly, we are exploding from the embers of the omicron virus and that hasn’t gotten much play because of the war reports.
Once these pandemic headwinds are thrown to the side, the U.S. economy and technology companies will accelerate into the summer.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” – Said British Physicist Stephen Hawking
Global Market Comments
February 25, 2022
Fiat Lux
SPECIAL AMAZON ISSUE
Featured Trade:
(WHY AMAZON IS BEATING ALL), (AMZN)
I believe there is a good chance that this creation of Jeff Bezos will see its shares double over the next five years.
Amazon, is in effect, taking over the world.
Jeff Bezos, born Jeff Jorgensen, is the son of an itinerant alcoholic circus clown and a low-level secretary in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When he was three, his father abandoned the family. His mother remarried a Cuban refugee, Miguel Bezos, who eventually became a chemical engineer for Exxon.
I have known Jeff Bezos for so long he had hair when we first met in the 1980s. He was a quantitative researcher in the bond department at Morgan Stanley, and I was the head of international trading.
Bezos was then recruited by the cutting-edge quantitative hedge fund, D.E. Shaw, which was making fortunes at the time, but nobody knew how. When I heard in 1994 that he left his certain success there to start an online bookstore, I thought he’d suffered a nervous breakdown, common in our industry.
Bezos incorporated his company in Washington state later that year, initially calling it “Cadabra” and then “Relentess.com.” He finally chose “Amazon” as the first interesting word that appeared in the dictionary, suggesting a river of endless supply. When I learned that Bezos would call his start-up “Amazon,” I thought he’d gone completely nuts.
Bezos funded his start-up with a $300,000 investment from his parents who he promised stood a 75% chance of losing their entire investment. But then his parents had already spent a lifetime running Bezos through a series of programs for gifted children, so they had the necessary confidence.
It was a classic garage start-up with three employees based in scenic Bellevue, Washington. The hours were long with all of the initial effort going into programming the initial site. To save money, Bezos bought second-hand pine doors which he placed on sawhorses, which stood in for proper desks.
Bezos initially considered 20 different industries to disrupt, including CDs and computer software. He quickly concluded that books were the ripest for disruption, as they were cheap, globally traded, and offered millions of titles.
When Amazon.com was finally launched in 1995, the day was spent fixing software bugs on the site, and the night wrapping and shipping the 50 or so orders a day. Growth was hyperbolic from the get-go, with sales reaching $20,000 a week by the end of the second month.
An early problem was obtaining supplies of books when wholesalers refused to offer him credit or deliver books on time. Eventually, he would ask suppliers to keep a copy of every book in existence at their own expense, which could ship within 24 hours.
Venture capital rounds followed, eventually raising $200 million. Early participants all became billionaires, gaining returns of 10,000-fold or more, including his trusting parents. There is one guy out there who missed becoming a billionaire because he didn’t check his voicemail often enough, which invited him into the initial funding round.
Bezos put the money to work, launching into a hiring binge of epic proportions. “Send us your freaks,” Bezos told the recruiting agencies, looking for the tattooed and the heavily pierced who were willing to work in shipping late at night for low wages. Keeping costs rock bottom was always an essential part of the Amazon formula.
Bezos used his new capital to raid Walmart (WMT) for its senior distribution staff, for which it was later sued.
Amazon rode on the coattails of the Dotcom Boom to go public on NASDAQ on May 15, 1997 at $18 a share. The shares quickly rocketed to an astonishing $105, and in 1999 Jeff Bezos became Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year.”
Unfortunately, the company committed many of the mistakes common to inexperienced managements with too much cash on their hands. It blew $200 million on acquisitions that, for the most part, failed. Those include such losers as Pets.com and Drugstore.com. But Bezos’s philosophy has always been to try everything and fail them quickly, thus enabling Amazon to evolve 100 times faster than any other.
Amazon went into the Dotcom crash with tons of money on its hands, thus enabling it to survive the long funding drought that followed. Thousands of other competitors failed. Amazon shares plunged to $5.
But the company kept on making money. Sales soared by 50% a month, eventually topping $1 billion by 2001. The media noticed Wall Street took note. The company moved from the garage to a warehouse to a decrepit office building in downtown Seattle.
Amazon moved beyond books to compact disc sales in 1999. Electronics and toys followed. At its New York toy announcement, Bezos realized that the company actually had no toys on hand. So, he ordered an employee to max out his credit card cleaning out the local Hammacher Schlemmer just to obtain some convincing props.
A pattern emerged. As Bezos entered a new industry, he originally offered to run the online commerce for the leading firm. This happened with Circuit City, Borders, and Toys “R” Us. The firms then offered to take over Amazon, but Bezos wasn’t selling.
In the end, Amazon came to dominate every field it entered. Please note that all three of the abovementioned firms no longer exist, thanks to extreme price competition from Amazon.
Amazon had a great subsidy in the early years as it did not charge state sales tax. As of 2011, it only charged sales tax in five states. That game is now over, with Amazon now collecting sales taxes in all 45 states that have them.
Amazon Web Services originally started out to manage the firm’s own website. It has since grown into a major profit center. Full disclosure: Mad Hedge Fund Trader is a customer.
Amazon entered the hardware business with the launch of its e-reader Kindle in 2007. The Amazon Echo smart speaker followed in. This is despite news stories that it records family conversations and randomly laughs.
Amazon Studios started in 2010, run by a former Disney executive, pumping out a series of high-grade film productions. In 2017, it became the first streaming studio to win an Oscar with Manchester by the Sea with Jeff Bezos visibly in the audience at the Hollywood awards ceremony.
Its acquisitions policy also became much more astute, picking up audio book company Audible.com, shoe seller Zappos, Whole Foods, and most recently PillPack. Since its inception, Amazon has purchased more than 86 outside companies. Make that 89 with MGM Entertainment.
Sometimes, Amazon’s acquisition tactics are so predatory they would make John D. Rockefeller blush. It decided to get into the discount diaper business in 2010, and offered to buy Diapers.com, which was doing business under the name of “Quidsi.” The company refused, so Amazon began offering its own diapers for sale 30% cheaper for a loss. Diapers.com was driven to the wall and caved, selling out for $545 million. Diaper prices then popped back up to their original level.
Welcome to online commerce.
At the end of 2021, Amazon boasted some one million employees worldwide. In fact, it has been the largest single job creator in the United States for the past decade. Also, this year, it disclosed the number of Amazon Prime members at 100 million, then raised the price from $120 to $139 a year, thus creating an instant $2 billion in profit.
The company’s ability to instantly create profit like this is breathtaking. And this will make you cry.
So, what’s on the menu for Amazon? There is a lot of new ground to pioneer.
1) Health Care is the big one, accounting for $3 trillion, or 17% of U.S. GDP, but where Amazon has just scratched the surface. Its recent $1 billion purchase of PillPack signals a new focus on the area. Who knows? The hyper-competition Bezos always brings to a new market would solve the American health care crisis, which is largely cost-driven. Bezos can oust middlemen like no one else.
2) Food is the great untouched market for online commerce, which accounts for 20% of total U.S. retail spending, but sees only 2% take place online. Essentially, this is a distribution problem, and you have to accomplish this within the prevailing subterranean 1% profit margins in the industry. Books don’t need to be frozen or shipped fresh. Walmart (WMT) will be target No. 1, which currently gets 56% of its sales from groceries. Amazon took a leap up the learnings curve with its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods (WFC) in 2017. What will follow will be interesting.
3) Banking is another ripe area for “Amazonification,” where excessive fees are rampant. It would be easy for the company to accelerate the process through buying a major bank that already had licenses in all 50 states. Amazon is already working the credit card angle.
4) Overnight Delivery is a natural, as Amazon is already the largest shipper in the U.S., sending out more than 1 million packages a day. The company has a nascent effort here, already acquiring several aircraft to cover its most heavily trafficked routes. Expect FedEx (FDX), UPS (UPS), DHL, and the United States Post Office to get severely disrupted.
5) Clothing-Amazon has already surpassed Walmart this year as the largest clothing retailer. The company has already launched 76 private labels, with half of them in the fashion area, such as Clifton Heritage (color and printed shirts), Buttoned Down (100% cotton shirts), and Goodthreads (casual shirts) as well as subscription services for all of the above.
6) Furniture is currently the fastest growing category at Amazon. Customers can use an Amazon tool to design virtual rooms to see where new items and colors will fit best.
7) Event Ticketing firms like StubHub and Ticketmaster are among the most despised companies in the U.S., so they are great disruption candidates. Amazon has already started in the U.K., and a takeover of one of the above would ease its entry into the U.S.
If only SOME of these new business ventures succeed, they have the potential to DOUBLE Amazon’s shares from current levels, taking its market capitalization up to $3.2 trillion. Perhaps this explains why institutional investors continue to pour into the shares.
Whatever happened to Bezos’s real father, Ted Jorgensen?
He was discovered by an enterprising journalist in 2012 running a bicycle shop in Glendale, Arizona. He had long ago sobered up and remarried. He had no idea who Jeff Bezos was. Ted Jorgensen died in 2015.
Bezos never took the time to meet him. Too busy running Amazon, I guess. Worth over $300 billion, Bezos is now the second richest man in the world after Elon Musk.
Second Richest Man in the World