No one gave it much thought when Russian scientists used Morse code to send an intentional broadcast of a message into space in 1962, mankind’s first attempt to contact extraterrestrial civilizations. No one has answered, but we have not given up. METI International, an organization focused on messaging extraterrestrial intelligence, was recently founded to elicit…
It’s been said that in the U.S., “soccer is the sport of the future and always will be.” The point being that some trends remain just that, like a wave that comes closer and grows larger but never crashes on the beach. At HCG, we have been talking about and investing in the trend of…
Speaking 75 years ago about the Battle of Egypt, Britain’s first victory of World War II, Winston Churchill famously said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” He knew that one battle could not predict the outcome of…
Kodak. Remember Kodak, before it became a crypto currency high flyer? Kodak thought it was in the business of selling film. They were wrong. Their customers just wanted the pictures and as soon as they could get them digitally, they stopped buying film, suddenly and completely. Banks…Savings and Loans… thought they were in the community…
When Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens on December 15, hordes of fans will flock to theaters to see the latest chapter of this modern classic and to learn what Luke Skywalker has been up to in his galaxy far, far away. Similarly, in the universe of private debt, in our opinion, allocators race from…
A cautionary tale typically comes in three chapters: we learn of a taboo, an actor disregards the warnings and performs the forbidden act and, finally, the violator comes to a tragic and often grisly end. The value of such a tale is usually in the extent to which it reinforces the importance of choosing to…
What a difference a year makes! Around this time in 2016, some were penning the obituary for digital finance investing, given the challenging fund-raising environment for FinTech and an aggressive widening of credit spreads on the sector’s asset-backed bonds. Combined with other negative headlines during the year, a perception emerged that this sector may not have…
2016 was one of those years: great for some, awful for others. For HCG, our investment process delivered discipline and clear direction. For example: Macroeconomic Assessment: Our analysis directed us to put the brakes on an imminent UK platform opportunity given that Brexit was, in our opinion, a likely possibility. This same assessment also gave…