| |  | TOGETHER WITH |  | | | Good morning.
Avocado prices reached a 24-year high Tuesday, climbing to $38 for a 9-kilogram box, according to Mexican government figures. While guacamole at Chipotle normally costs an arm and a leg, it will henceforth also require you to give up your firstborn. | | | • | | The owner of the biggest US health insurer is buying a company that keeps hospital services at home. | | • | | Russia has been dismissed as a “big gas station” — and now countries are using Canada to fill up. | | • | | Robinhood looks to steer out of its stock skid with more hours. | | | | |  | Healthcare | UnitedHealth to Spend $5.4 Billion to Buy a Piece of Healthcare-at-Home Market | | Pad Thai wasn’t the only thing ordered in during the pandemic. In fact, an increasing number of people went ahead and ordered in a doctor. One of America’s largest healthcare companies is betting the practice has a healthy future.
Healthcare giant UnitedHealth agreed Monday to acquire LHC Group, a home healthcare provider, for $5.4 billion. The business proposition is simple: UH will make money, and its insurance division will save money. | Stay-at-Home Fad | LHC has more than 900 locations in 37 states, giving it a vast network of in-home health and hospice care services that can be deployed to people with illness, injury, or chronic conditions. Thanks to recent technological advancements, hospital-level care can now be delivered at home for many conditions, saving money and resources. A 2020 study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found healthcare costs were 52% lower for acutely ill patients who were given hospital care at home. A home trial at Johns Hopkins Medicine for elderly patients found both costs and length of care required decrease around 30%. UnitedHealth, meanwhile just so happens to own the largest insurer in America, UnitedHealthcare. By buying LHC and building out more home care, the company could create efficiencies for its insurance division, which can recommend less costly home care. Plus, there's money to be made in the home care business, which one top competitor has already capitalized on: | • | | Spending on home healthcare was $122 billion last year, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and it is expected to rise to $226 billion by 2030. | | • | | Humana, UnitedHealthcare’s major rival for Medicare business, bought a majority stake in at-home care provider Kindred at Home (now being rebranded as CenterWell Home Health) for $5.7 billion last year, and says it’s the largest home-health provider in the US. | | | | The Last Word: Barring an intervention from regulators, the LHC deal is expected to close in late 2022. Unfortunately for UnitedHealth, they’re already in the Justice Department’s crosshairs. The DoJ sued UH last month to block its $13 billion acquisition of health-technology company Change Healthcare, arguing the deal would give United too much control over healthcare data, which could help its insurance unit against competitors. | | | | | | Natural Resources | Canada’s Vast Resources Have Made It the World’s Russia Alternative |  | | They’re two of the world’s largest countries by land area, with harsh winter landscapes bordered by three oceans. They’re rich in oil, potash, uranium, and nickel. But only one has the delicious comfort food poutine, while the other is stuck with Vladimir Poutine (as his name is spelled in French, Québécois or otherwise).
Canada, the US’ resource-rich neighbor, has turned into a favorite destination for countries and companies around the world looking to replace Russian resources. | Bringing Home the Canadian Bacon | Russia’s sanction pains have turned into maple leaf gains in a matter of weeks due to the two countries’ strikingly similar commodity baskets. Before invading Ukraine, Russia provided about 10% of the global oil supply. Canada has the fourth-largest oil reserves in the world. Roughly 30% of the global potash supply has been removed from markets because Russian and Belarus producers can’t export. Canada has the world's largest potash reserves, at 1.1 billion tonnes. Sounds like a great opportunity, eh? The demand flowing in for Canadian resources has sent the S&P/TSX Index, the Toronto Stock Exchange benchmark, up 3.5% this year. In comparison, the S&P 500, struggling against a backdrop of war and inflation, has fallen 4.6%. Canadian producers are rushing to get supplies out as fast as a sprinting moose (they’re frighteningly quick): | • | | Nutrien, the world’s largest corporate potash producer, is increasing production by 10% to 15 million metric tons in 2022 — its share price is up 38% this year. Canada's largest uranium producer, Cameco, has seen its share price jump 17% this year, and plans to ramp up production at its mines by 10 million pounds by 2024. | | • | | Last week, the federal government said Canadian oil producers — including Natural Resources, Suncor, Cenovus, and Exxon affiliate Imperial — will raise production and boost exports by 300,000 barrels a day to help nations trying to wean themselves off Russian supply. Alberta, Canada’s main oil-producing province that relies on industry revenues, expects a budget surplus for the first time in eight years. | | | | Cash for Gas: “You have an economy that’s basically at full employment … and you have the backing of the commodity-based economy, so you’ll have cash flows coming in,” Earl Davis, the head of fixed income at the Bank of Montreal, told the Financial Post. | | | | | | SPONSORED BY COMPOSER | How Did This Hedge Fund Return 66% Per Year? | Renaissance Technologies’ flagship Medallion fund returned over 66% per year from 1988 to 2018. That means $1 invested would have grown to over $20,000 while $1 invested in the S&P 500 would be worth $20. In fact, in 2008 when the S&P 500 lost 37%, the Medallion Fund gained 82%! Unlike traditional funds, Renaissance is run by hundreds of computer scientists, mathematicians, and neural engineers that specialize in “quantitative trading.” So how can you invest in the Medallion Fund? You can’t: it’s been closed to outside investors since 1993. Besides, access to quantitative funds requires an 8 figure check. Until now… Composer lets you invest in or build your own quant fund. Explore their pre-vetted quant strategies like “Risk On or Risk Off Leveraged S&P 500'' or “Buy the Dips Nasdaq.” Or, use their no-code portfolio editor to seamlessly drag and drop algo-strategies from scratch - replacing Python, Excel, and a few dozen PHDs. The best part? It’s completely free to use. Explore Composer Today.* | | | | | | Retail Trading | Robinhood Extends Its Trading Hours | | Attention sweatpants-wearing, meme stock-chasing, amateur retail traders everywhere: Your hours of operation (and, we must add, your availability to receive scary margin calls) are about to expand.
On Tuesday, Robinhood announced it is adding four hours of extended trading for its users as it slowly moves to offering 24/7 services. | These Are the People in Your Robinhood | | Amid meme stock mania and the bitcoin blitz, Robinhood had a blockbuster 2021 on the backs of millions of new users. Its revenue jumped nearly 90% to $1.82 billion, it announced in an earnings report in January, while its user base increased from 12.5 million to nearly 23 million. But then a not-so-surprising thing happened for the day trading app: Much of its clientele had day jobs and social lives and family matters to attend to. Growth fell off, with Q4 revenue tied to stock trades dropping 35% YoY.
“Our customers often tell us they’re working or preoccupied during regular market hours, limiting their ability to invest on their own schedule or evaluate and react to important market news,” the company explained in a blog post announcing the news. With extended hours, Robinhood hopes to meet its users where they are (presumably on the couch, after work, surfing Reddit for hot tips and new cryptocurrencies): | • | | The app is extending its pre-market trading hours to 7 a.m. ET and its after-hours trading availability to 8 p.m. Previously, its extended hours lasted from only a half-hour before open and two hours after close, or from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. | | • | | The move brings its operating hours in line with chief rivals. Fidelity and Interactive Brokers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. for most basic accounts, although Charles Schwab is open virtually 24/7. | | | | Robinhood’s stock closed up 24% following the announcement on Tuesday, but it still needs a GameStop-esque run to rise out of the red for the year. | | | | | | Extra Upside | • | | In his latest feud with the SEC, Elon Musk is quoting… Eminem. | | • | | $5.7 trillion: that’s how much in annual renewable investments are needed to ward off the worst climate impacts, according to the IAE. | | • | | *Tick-tock* It’s wine o’clock. But instead of popping the cork, it’s time to discuss your liquid assets. Investment-grade wine (that’s labels with durable brand equity harvested from premier vintages) offers structural advantages that most asset classes could only dream of. Think: a built in supply-demand that creates automatic scarcity over time and resistance to recessions (the 1% will always drink fine wine). With Vinovest, you can tap this asset class which has returned 10.6% per year for the last three decades. Learn more.* *Partner | | | | | | |  | Just For Fun | | | | | Written by Sean Craig and Brian Boyle.
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