FANG Today, Toothless Tomorrow?

FANG stands for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

The term, emblazoned on the front page of yesterday’s edition of USA TODAY, was popularized by CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

Some think the FANG clan is unstoppable, and looking at the trajectory of technology and commerce at this moment, it’s hard to see the dominance of these companies ever waning.

But many may remember the portmanteau Wintel as well, which referred to the total dominance maintained by Windows (as a proxy for Microsoft) and Intel.

Wintel had meaning inside the tech industry, but in the early 1990s among investors it represented the duopoly that was a ‘must have’ in any growth oriented portfolio.

It’s difficult to argue Microsoft and Intel have faded from view, but it’s not difficult to argue their hegemony has dissipated and now the FANG stocks are soaring to unimaginable heights.

The oldest FANG company is Amazon, founded in 1994, and the youngest is Facebook, founded in 2004 (Netflix was in the class of 1997, Google 1998).

These historical time lines suggest the companies which may one day eclipse the FANG stocks have already been founded, and have likely put a target on the back of each of its members.

Amazon Summits A Dow That No Longer Exists

The addition of Amazon to the Dow with Walgreen’s unceremonious deletion, and the Dow’s current composition tells it like it

Financial Institutions Feeling the Crunch in Countdown to CECL Implementation

I was retained by Big Four accounting and consulting firm KPMG to assist them in their thought leadership efforts centered on changing accounting regulations. In this case, the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB had instituted new rules on the measurement of current and expected credit losses, i.e. CECL, that would require massive reorganization of financial reporting for the largest financial services organizations in the world. This thought leadership piece concerned the results of a survey among C-suite executives about their state of preparedness in the final countdown to the CECL implementation.

Securitizing Structured Settlement Payment Streams: A Primer

Fall 2012. This article was written with Stefano Sola and Phil Donahue, executives at JGWPT Holdings. We were engaged by JGWPT to assist them
in publishing the article below for The Journal Of Structured Finance.

Is The Media Biased?

This story is from our February 2024 update newsletter that offers communications insights, and hopefully, some amusing diversion.

David R. Evanson, LLC David R. Evanson, LLC