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Single best idea and the single best idea this weekend across this nation is to be intelligent about the heat. I've learned a lot about it. I'm pretty ignorant about it. A shout out to the New York Times, which I think is part the difference between the word dangerous in
the difference with excess heat or whatever. And the answer is from what I can tell, you don't know you're doing heat exhaustion until it's too late, is sort of the what I've learned in this new heat and particularly not the number of degrees and index and all that stuff, but the number of days back to back seems to be new. We heard that from Rob Carolyn Our, Bloomberg meteorologist about the three day heat wave is becoming the
five day heat wave. Careful because this this heat exhaustion thing, whatever your age, whatever your background, it creeps up on you. One of the things that's crept up on us is drought worldwide. We went to the authority. We try to do that on Bloomberg Surveillance. ConA Haek is with Ed n f Man. If you don't know that name, it is truly one of the romantic names of the history of finance. Edf and Man goes back forever, kings and queens. It's been around, and ConA Haek is truly the most
intelligent person on softs. We know safts are agricultural economies. In America, rice is no big deal. In Cambodia, rice really matters. ConA Haek on rice.
Yeah, so rice was very tight. The markets were very tight the last year and a bit. India had a rice export ban and they're the world's largest exporter. Thailand had a drought, as mentioned, you know, causing severe declining rice yields so an Asia. For Asians, rice is the staple. It's the potatoes of the UK, It's the grains of the USA. You know, without rice, you know, you get food inflation. And that's what happened. And unfortunately there just
wasn't enough. The monsoons are absolutely critical to help the rice yields recover.
One of the great themes Conaek there, Edie and f Man. One of the great themes of the week has been the word solid. There's been all sorts of interviews and maybe this nuance, that nuance and the rest of it, but the answer is people are summarizing to their interpretation of a solid economy, the financial economy, the stock market economy is wrapped around a group of people that have participated in what six, seven, eight, ten stocks and those
that have it. And there's a partitionere that we deal with every day with the mail that we see, YouTube, live chat and all the context people in restaurants, people in the street here in New York City, and there's this underlying belief. I think that everybody has that at some point, like musical chairs, the music's going to stop. Matt Michigan is with John Hancock in Boston with all sorts of experience, a really brilliant conversation, and here Matt Michigan on when the music will stop.
I believe in reversion the meme, I do you know? And I think this concentration is historic. It is historic. I mean, that's the data. This is an outlier. You're never see ten stocks represent only almost forty percent of the S and P five hundred. So reversion the mean suggests that that's going to move down, that they're not going to be that big. But it could be worse, right, It could be that these companies don't make money that
they're not great companies. These companies have great profit margins, great balance sheets, great return on equity or overweight tech. We've been overweight tech for the last five years, and that's the best airings engine in the world.
People ask me all the time how I measure this, And of course we do not give investment advice here. Of course we're asconced, you know, with all the different trusts for the children and the triple leveraged all cash fund. But what I would say is there has to be a new respect away from financial media ratios to what the grown ups like Matt Michigan look at, and that is free cash flow. In this strange phrase, capital allocation.
The Bloomberg has a wonderful screen, the WACC screen, the weighted average cost of capital screen that shows for each company, Apple, whatever, American Chin Strap. It shows eva weighted average cost of capital, return on invested capital, and the difference that spreads the differences between those. I use it like religion. It's hugely important in my first study of any company. So what do you do? Pro tip, and particularly for those of
you that are students, capital allocation is a religion. Easily going back twenty years, if not thirty. At the High Altar is Michael Mobison m au BB Michael Mobison now at Morgan Stanley. Read Michael Mobison. I don't know what else to say, but that will give you a better idea of what Matt Michigan was talking about, which is the concentration is ridiculous. But the fact is there's still minting money. So look to Michael Mobison at Morgan Stanley
for some leadership. There. There's some good books. Bill Priest's book on free cash flow. Shareholder Yield is also another thing to look at. William Priest. Shareholder Yield is a great great short read on free cash flow. Our short read is staggered a Monday. It's good to know that Paul Sweeney will have dinner with John Tucker tonight after the Sea Streak ferry over to New Jersey because the
trains aren't working. It'll be a stressless weekend. Red Keeper of the AMX, of course, will pick up all that vast expense. We're on YouTube search and subscribe to Bloomberg Podcasts on Apple car Play, on Android play as well, and of course on Apple Podcasts. It's single best idea