 and it ranged from cakes, to cookies, to cobblers. One of my absolute favorite cakes to make was a sock it to me cake. It was simple enough and made from cake mix, so my mom would always allow me to make it because it was so simple. As time progressed she began to entrust me with more complicated tasks, and scratch cakes became my new favorite pastime.
When I became vegan, I tried, and tried, and TRIED to make a homemade pound cake without much success. I was determined to perfect a recipe because this, besides ice cream, was one of the things I really missed eating. Well, after countless attempts I finally got it right, so now I must share with you. You're welcome. I really hope you enjoy this cake as much as I did. It's pretty simple and straight forward, and perfect for first time bakers.
The crumb is tender and moist, but still has the look, taste, and feel of a classic pound cake. Enjoy!
Cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in aquafaba (chick pea juice) three tbsp at a time, beating well after each addiction. Add in extract and blend until fully incorporated. Add in one baking soda and salt along with one cup of flour and beat until incorporated. Then add in sour cream and flour alternately, being sure to end with flour.
Grease and flour a Bundt pan, spoon half of the batter into pan, spread filling evenly over batter, then cover with remaining batter! Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and ten minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.
Once cake has cooled, combine powdered sugar, nut milk, and extract with a whisk until smooth. Pour over cake and serve warm.Technology Rules
John Mauldin
- |
- Thoughts from the Frontline
- |
- June 4, 2021
- |
- View PDF
-
Disruptive Innovation
Smart Enterprises
Ron Baron’s Two Biggest Mistakes
Transformed Energy
New York and Writing Frustrations
Macroeconomic forecasting is too politicized. I don’t mean that in a partisan sense, though it may be so. The bigger problem is that forecasters spend most of their time thinking about central bank decisions and government policies. In the long run, those aren’t the most important factors. Not even close.
What really drives economic progress is human ingenuity and the innovation it produces. In other words, technology. I use that term in its broadest sense: applying knowledge to make life better. Nowadays we associate technology with electronic devices, but it’s much older. The wheel was an early technology. We progressed to steam engines, automobiles, telegraphs, radios, airplanes, computers, and more. Each (and a million others) boosted economic growth. Their combined effect brought us to where we are today.
Other forms of innovation improve life just as well. Something as mundane as pizza delivery has morphed into delivery of all types of foods. “Fast food” was an innovation. Home Depot, Walmart, Schwab, and a thousand businesses focus on making life a little easier in small ways, but they multiply to create a society that people living 100 years ago or even 50 years ago couldn’t imagine.
Governments and central bankers don’t generally invent technologies. At their best, they establish conditions that unleash human talents. At their worst, they suppress those talents. It is no coincidence China began its rise when Deng Xiaoping decided that “getting rich is glorious” and unleashed the population’s entrepreneurial bent. (That the country used it to create a panopticon surveillance state is a different matter. A century from now we’ll see how that works.)
At the same time, not every human welcomes every technology. The 19th-century Luddites had serious issues with automated looms taking their jobs. This is a classic quandary. Someone’s livelihood probably depends on the work your new technology will replace. It may (and should) enable growth that creates new jobs, but that takes time. The transitions can be uncomfortable, and more so when the pace quickens, as it is now.
We always discuss these issues at the Strategic Investment Conference, and the dialogue goes deeper every year. I consider this a critically important part of our mission. Technology develops in the background, often unnoticed amid the more headline-generating policy debates. But I really believe it is far more important.
This week we’ll review some of the SIC technology sessions and think about where the latest innovations will take us. (You can still get a Virtual Pass and view the full event, by the way.) It wasn’t just pie in the sky, either. We talked about real investment opportunities available right now.
Disruptive Innovation
We will start with Cathie Wood, founder and CIO of ARK Invest. I first brought Cathie to SIC in 2020, when she was already quite famous, but in the last year her fame went exponential along with (and not coincidentally) some of the stocks in her portfolio.
Like what you’re reading?
Get this free newsletter in your inbox every Saturday! Read our privacy policy here.
Cathie has come under severe criticism in recent weeks because her ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) shares dropped about 33% from their February peak. The momentum players say she made bad decisions and has lost her touch. I think that opinion is misplaced, misguided, and pretty stupid (to be blunt about it). They simply do not understand her mission and purpose in the investing ecology.
Most of this criticism is from momentum players who got caught offsides, or people simply jealous of her success. Full disclosure: I have a great deal of my portfolio with managers who trade ETF’s. A perfectly rational strategy. But don’t complain when you’re not good at it. (Further full disclosure: I suck at trading ETF’s but I know managers who excel, and give them my money.)
Further, Cathie Wood is an active ETF manager—a very rare breed. Most ETFs are passive indexes. The criticism comes from people who don’t understand her process. Bluntly, how many of her critics have taken the time to interview individually each of the members of her investment committee? We have. All 10 portfolio managers, the head of research, and Cathie Wood herself three times. A total of 13 people. Have you done your homework? If not, go sit back on the porch.
Cathie, and each of her portfolio managers, will say the same thing—that they have no idea how well the company will do pricewise over the next 2 to 3 years but they believe within 5 years they will see a 15% compound return. Every one of them. So let’s hold her to her own standard. Here is her flagship fund going back five years:
Source: Yahoo! Finance
Five years ago, ARKK shares were $19.57. Now, even after recent losses, they are around $107. That’s ~40% annualized growth, and actually a little more if you include dividends. Making those kind of returns means you will endure some drawdowns. She clearly made her five-year 15% annual compound return goal, even after 33% drawdown.
Even more impressive, she is doing this in a fully visible, fully liquid public fund. These aren’t early-stage venture capital investments, but the returns would rank it among the best VC funds. Cathie has done this by having a disciplined process and outlook.
Last week I shared some of Cathie’s thoughts on deflation. That snippet, while enlightening, was just part of the deeply researched viewpoint that guides her investments. She looks for “disruptive innovation,” which is another way of saying “automation.” In her view, the labor shortage is a good thing because it accelerates these helpful innovations. Here’s a little more from the SIC transcript.
We think we're going back into a labor shortage, broadly defined. Not having to do with a pandemic, but a labor shortage, given demographics and growth in the economy. I think what we're going to see is the productivity that we're talking about, which is another way of expressing what I did with Wright's Law, is going to accelerate. It already has started to accelerate. I think, on a year-over-year basis, it was 4.2% in the first quarter, and at an annualized rate of change, it was 5.2%. We're already seeing that. That's a powerful antidote to any inflationary pressures that are evolving out there.
We think productivity is going to skyrocket. We did an analysis, just to give you a sense of how much technology-enabled platforms, how many jobs they can create. That was answering the robotics question. We did a study based on University of Oxford, which, when we started the firm, had just been published. It was about the United States and the labor force. Basically, the headline read, "47% of all the jobs in the United States are going to be lost to automation, including artificial intelligence, during the next 20 years." We took the same study. They left it there, and that's why the robots-are-going-to-kill-jobs worries really developed some momentum.
We took the same study with the 700 job classifications they used, and given our cost curve declines, figured out when these various job categories would (succumb) to robotics or automation. There's going to be (a lot of) displacement. We need to re-educate, we need to retrain. But at the end of the day, in 2035, we believe that because of