#14 - Friday Musings

News bite

A sad story out of Canada:

In an e-mail viewed by CTV News Toronto, a representative from Mount Sinai Hospital told Di Maria her surgery was cancelled because of “the situation with COVID-19” and that “everything is getting cancelled at this point.”

It seems like hospitals are overwhelmed. Anything non-covid related is likely to be postponed. Something to keep in mind if considering investments in MedTech.

Economy

Lumber has rallied (round 2) like crazy:

Not sure what’s behind this surge but I doubt it stays high for long; I haven’t seen anything indicating that it is driven by demand.

Investment Tidbit

One of the most important investment metrics is the Return on Invested Capital, because it measures how effective companies are at reinvesting profits back into their business.

The growth rate of a business is the product of its ROIC and its reinvestment rate.

Here’s a simple way to sum it up, from Comus Investment:

Calculating ROIC is simple enough (source):

Cash and cash equivalents can be use as a rough proxy for non-operating assets.