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Sadly, we have had to postpone FinFest until 2024

If you follow us on social media, you may have seen the news last week. Unfortunately, we have had to postpone FinFest until 2024. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

You can read our full update here:

Rest assured, this isn’t the end of FinFest. We plan to go bigger and better next year, and have already locked a date in the calendar: Saturday 26 October 2024.

To register your interest and keep up to date, make sure you’re signed up to the FinFest mailing list:

Media’s less glamorous future

The past two decades have been tough for media. Entering the 21st Century, the news business was king. The advertising and classifieds business were “rivers of gold” and TV news had the power to move markets and sway elections. Over the past twenty years, development after development has chipped away at that power.

First was the rise of the online classified websites. REA Group and Domain, CarSales, Seek - these websites diverted the rivers of gold away from the media giants and into their own pockets. Then came the rise of free, online news, challenging the subscription business model and forcing established mastheads to compete with new online entrants for ever-falling advertising CPMs.

Next, the army of streaming services came for cable news. Now CNN, Fox News, Sky News and the rest of the cable giants draw less viewers that mildly popular YouTubers. As cable TV subscribers continue to cut the cord, the dual income model of carriage fees and advertising continues to suffer. Eventually the cable business model will no longer be viable.

As if that wasn’t enough, new developments in Artificial Intelligence promise to further hurt the media business model. These days, media businesses live or die by their SEO (search engine optimisation). The first page of Google has been the biggest driver of traffic and revenue. But chat bots like ChatGPT and Bard deliver information to their users, taking away the much needed clicks from these news websites.

This article takes a look at these forces acting on the media industry and considers what future is left for a business that has been pulled apart over the past two decades.

Netflix password crackdown drives U.S. sign-ups to highest levels in at least four years

Last year, Netflix made a big pivot. For years, it had no issue with users sharing passwords. In fact, it even celebrated password sharing on Twitter.

But last year, facing slowing subscriber growth (and actually declining subscriber numbers in North America) and a falling share price, Netflix changed its tune. It announced it was cracking down on password sharing. And almost a year later, we’re starting to see the results of that crackdown.

Good news for Netflix shareholders, it hasn’t turned users off Netflix. In fact, Netflix is enjoying its highest North American subscriber growth in at least four years.

Bad news for people who don’t want to pay for all of the streaming services. Netflix’s rivals, who all face their own password sharing challenges, will be watching this. And we should expect to see a similar push across the streaming industry.

The other big move Netflix made last year was to introduce an ad-supported tier, where users pay a lower subscription price but have to watch ads. Netflix have announced that this plan has attracted nearly 5 million subscribers in the first six months, which is expected to contribute to a strong financial result in the coming quarter.

Introduction to Farmland Investing

Here’s a fact that may surprise you: Bill Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the United States. It is estimated he owns ~270,000 acres of farmland across dozens of American states.

Farmland has been an incredible asset class, and importantly for investors, largely uncorrelated to the economic ups and downs of the stock market. At the same time, it remains largely misunderstood. This article offers a primer on investing in farmland.

In the past 30 years, US farmland has delivered a higher average annual return than the other major US asset classes (stocks, bonds, real estate). It is also an asset class that offers both income (by selling what it produces) and capital growth (as the land (hopefully) gets more valuable over time).

The challenge for everyday investors is that farmland has traditionally been an expensive and inaccessible asset class. But more and more funds are being listed on the share market that have greatly improved accessibility. For example, there is Rural Funds Group (ASX: RFF) which owns and leases out farms growing cotton, almonds, macadamia, cattle, poultry and vineyards. For those that can invest in the US market, two other REITS are Gladstone Land (NYSE: LAND) and Farmland Partners (NYSE: FPI).

None of this is to say that farmland will be a particularly good investment going forward. Past performance does not guarantee future results. But it is an important reminder that the stock market gives us access to far more opportunities than just stocks - all range of weird and wonderful assets are available at the click of a button.

How Reddit set itself up for a fall

The Reddit blackout of the past few days was the latest in a long line of community activism from the self-described ‘front page of the internet’. For those unfamiliar with Reddit, it operates a little different from its social media peers. While Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the rest centralise content moderation with internal teams, Reddit has devolved power to its users. Groups of community volunteers moderate each of Reddit’s more than 2.8 million subreddits.

This community policing is a superpower of Reddit. It gives it a unique place amongst social media platforms. It also makes it very hard for the Reddit corporate headquarters to make changes. As they found out last week.

Reddit’s thousands of volunteer moderators and millions of most-engaged users feel a strong sense of ownership over the platform. Not only are they contributing the content, they are also moderating and managing it. So when Reddit proposed to greatly increase the price of its API’s - which would have bankrupt many 3rd party Reddit apps - the community revolted.

Reddit claims that its move was to defend its data from AI large language models being trained on its data without paying. Analysts have suggested an alternative reason - that 3rd party Reddit apps don’t carry Reddit’s advertising. And as Reddit prepares for an IPO, it wants its revenue numbers to look as good as possible. (Such a move isn’t new, Twitter made a very similar move with its API’s before it went public).

Reddit’s power has been it’s community. Allowing users to create forums on anything they could think of has led to some wonderfully niche communities. Allowing them to self-govern has allowed Reddit to avoid many of the impossible decisions around free speech and censorship. Instead every community can decide the rules for themselves. But when you empower your community to such an extent, you must be careful when you take it away. And that is an important lesson for Reddit leadership to remember after they IPO and feel the pressures of a public company.

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