How Will Automation in Agriculture Impact Employment?
By Sam Korus
Analyst
Recently, a strawberry-picking robot company, Traptic, raised $8.4 million. Agriculture has been no stranger to automation. The tractor, for example, reduced the labor hours required to produce 100 pounds of lint cotton more than 15-fold from 42 hours to 2.5 hours, but left significant room for improvement. According to Traptic, more than $200 billion worth of fruits and vegetables still are picked by hand each year and 27% of the global population works in agriculture.
ARKâs research suggests that retraining will increase in importance as automation continues to reshape farming and the global economy. Recently, a leading online education company, 2U, acquired edX, an open online course provider created by MIT and Harvard, a combination that could play a critical role in retraining those in industries that are automating. Importantly, 79% of edXâs traffic is international. The resulting entity could train more than 50 million learners and 230 educational and 1,200 corporate partners with 3,500 course offerings. In our view, given the dramatic advances in automation now possible with artificial intelligence, the number of 2Uâs learners could grow by an order of magnitude during the next five to ten years.
In the last few weeks, PayPal launched its Zettle point-of-sale (POS) solution in the US. In 2018, PayPal acquired European POS provider iZettle and rebranded it Zettle. In the US, Zettle POS devices now accept debit and credit cards as well as Venmo QR codes, integrating them with PayPalâs online payment solutions catering to omnichannel commerce. Zettle US also has integrated with BigCommerce, SalesVu, WooCommerce, and Lightspeed. We believe this partner selection is important but not particularly impressive.
According to ARKâs research, because competitor Square offers integrations with all of Zettleâs partners except Lightspeed, not to mention hundreds of other partners in its app marketplace, Paypal seems to be playing catch up. Competitor Shopify also offers hundreds of third-party integrations through its app marketplace.
Zettleâs main differentiator seems to be its introductory low pricing, at least for now. PayPal announced card processing fees of 2.29% + $0.09 âat launchâ, including a footnote that fees are subject to change. Square and FISERVâs Clover price card transactions at 2.7% + $0.10 while Stripe Terminal charges 2.7% +$0.05 and Shopify 2.4%-2.9% + $0.3. Despite its lower product value proposition, PayPal probably will increase its pricing over time.
Last September, Apple shares hit a record $705. And to the overwhelming majority of Wall Street analysts, that meant one thing: buy.
By November, with Apple stock in the midst of a precipitous decline, they were still bullish. Fifty of 57 analysts rated it a buy or strong buy; only two rated it a sell. Apple shares continued their plunge, and this week were trading at just over $450, down 36 percent from their peak.
Above is to show evidence that I did invest in ARK funds. I posted a bearish JPMorgan article on ARK fund to see how @manch respond. As usual, he couldnât put a meaningful response to counter that the JPMorgan opinion is misplaced, he posted an article on AAPL in 2013.
My response to JPMorgan article is to start investing in ARKKâŚ
You mean you sold? It tells me you didnât listen to/ read what @Jil and I have been saying about news article.
Read past posts before making silly comments.
Ofc, I donât blindly follow Cathie Woods. Her team did the solid fundamental analysis, so can take them to be ok, however, for retail investors (who almost certainly have less investible fund) no need to follow her into the stocks immediately.
Nah. I donât own any Cathie ETFâs. Wrote a couple times before I pay attention to their research, but not necessarily agree completely with their trades. Buying their ETFâs would mean I agree 100%, and I donât.
Donât have to agree 100% to invest in her ETFs, generally agree is good enough. I think her team got the general trend right and I think she knows how to trade well for a big fund. Retail investors donât have to follow the same trade since all of us have less funds, and have to adapt approach accordingly.
Another reason for investing in her ETFs is I want to show support to her open style, sharing research openly, sharing trades openly. Ofc not everybody can do this, I have spare $$$
My portfolio is already pretty correlated with hers even though our overlap is not that big. So at the end it doesnât really matter. But I like to maintain my own portfolio because itâs a good way for me to learn and grow.
The financial advisement industry thrives on pushing the notion that people will lose money if they invest in the stock market themselves. The industry goes to extra lengths to make sure that people do not learn anything other than buying expensive load funds or Index funds. While not everyone can be a successful investor, there remains a big segment of the population that can easily learn investment with a little training and right education. Some of them graduate to monthly newsletters. News letters are worse than the no load funds.
Better late than never. One thing I can say is that no one will take better care of me than I. I have seen the financial advisor and mutual fund managers losing money for the public. I might lose money on my own and get some understanding of market sentiments and action. At least I will not have any one else to blame. Is this called personal responsibility?
