The Vice Fund (now the Barriers Fund) continues to outperform S&P 500

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Source: VICEX – USA Mutuals Barrier Fund Investor Class Shares Mutual Fund Quote – CNNMoney.com

The Vice Fund has outperformed the S&P 500 since 2004 as shown by the green line. This mutual fund invests invest in sinful stocks as its managers describe it:

Designed with the goal of delivering better ​risk-adjusted returns than the S&P 500 Index. It invests primarily in stocks in the tobacco, alcohol, gaming and defence industries. Vice Funds believes these industries tend to thrive ​regardless of the economy as a whole.

The Vice Fund is now known as the Barrier Fund because it extended out of sinful stocks into industries with high barriers to entry. Minimum Investment is $2,000.

The Barrier Fund primarily invests in the following industries: Aerospace/Defense, Gaming, Tobacco and Alcoholic Beverages. These four industries were chosen because they demonstrate one or more of these compelling and distinctive investment characteristics:

  1. Natural barriers to new competition
  2. Steady demand regardless of economic condition
  3. Global Marketplace – not limited to the U.S. economy
  4. Potentially high profit margins
  5. Ability to generate excess cash flow and pay and increase dividends

The Barrier Fund  believes numerous investment opportunities in these industries which have been largely overlooked by other funds.

The Fund has high management fees of 2%. Americans can buy Vanguard’s or Fidelity’s index funds and pay only 0.1% in expenses.

Cost to Develop and Win Marketing Approval for a New Drug Is $2.6 Billion

The $2,558 million figure per approved compound is based on estimated:

  • Average out-of-pocket cost of $1,395 million
  • Time costs (expected returns that investors forego while a drug is in development) of $1,163 million

Estimated average cost of post-approval R&D—studies to test new indications, new formulations, new dosage strengths and regimens, and to monitor safety and long-term side effects in patients required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a condition of approval—of $312 million boosts the full product lifecycle cost per approved drug to $2,870 million. All figures are expressed in 2013 dollars.

Source: PR Tufts CSDD 2014 Cost Study | Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development

 

The science of attraction

Why Do Black Markets for Marijuana Still Exist in Colorado? @PeterDunneMP

Why Is Marijuana Legal in Some States and Not Others?

#MorganFoundation errors about @nzinitiative’s Health of the State – part 2

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E-cigarettes as a way of reducing obesity?

One of the many interesting things that Maori Party MP Marama Fox said at a panel discussion for the launch of the New Zealand Initiative’s Health of the State report was that the Maori women she knew who smoked did so out of stress relief.

It is also well known that there is a weight gain after stopping smoking. If people cannot smoke because of higher taxes but still need to have an outlet for their stress, they look elsewhere and seek comfort in food.

 

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Source: Weight Gain After Quitting Smoking – Quit Smoking Community.

This is before you consider the general pleasure seeking aspect of smoking. Some people find smoking pleasurable; I find it disgusting.

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This suggests to me that the restrictions on E-cigarettes are the worst of both worlds. If people are going to smoke, you may as well let them have access to a technology that is safer.

Instead, the do-gooders prefer to put an extra bullet in the chamber as smokers play Russian roulette.

#MorganFoundation errors about @nzinitiative’s Health of the State – part 1

The Greens have joined that Morgan Foundation in playing the man rather than the ball on the recently published report of the New Zealand Initiative on sin taxes.  Green Party health spokesperson Kevin Hague said:

The New Zealand Initiative cares more about junk-food barons’ bottom lines than it cares about Kiwis who are getting sick and dying because of obesity-related illnesses

The Morgan Foundation was just as keen to argue that their opponents on sin taxes are both ignorant and steeped in moral turpitude as a way of avoiding substantive argument:

The New Zealand Initiative are not interested in reducing obesity, or preventing the looming diabetes crisis where 1 in 3 Kiwis will have the disease. They make no attempt to understand the causes, and don’t propose any way to deal with these issues…

Is there no room for honest disagreement and different views on the ability of further government intervention to be a net benefit? As Aaron Director said:

Laissez-faire is no more than a slogan in defence of the proposition that every extension of state activity should be examined under the presumption of error.

One of the specific claims by the Morgan Foundation that seems to be in error is:

In fact, the report seems devoid of any research outside a narrow economic focus. The food industry has funded an enormous amount of psychological research on how to influence people to eat more junk food through packaging, advertising, product placement etc, much of which is publicly available, but which the New Zealand Institute has roundly ignored. Ironic, given that they funded by the same organisations that funded this psychological research.

The Food industry’s own research shows our choices are hugely influenced by the environment that surrounds us, but the New Zealand Institute conveniently prefers to cling to the oversimplification that we are all rational economic units – known as homo economicus.

The report of the New Zealand Initiative has a nice discussion of the limitations of rationality which did not weigh as heavily as it should in the critique by the Morgan Foundation part of which is in the snapshot below:

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Source: Jenesa Jeram, The Health of the State, The New Zealand Initiative ( April 2016, p.10).

18.1% of all children born on this planet in 1960 died before they could celebrate their fifth birthday

The payoff from drinking organic juice

How long have you got in Europe when you are waiting for God?

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Source: OECD Economic Surveys: Germany 2016 | OECD READ edition.

The contradictions of decriminalising marijuana and banning tobacco

Healthcare Triage: Antibiotics and Resistance | The Incidental Economist

A century ago, the top three causes of death were infectious diseases. More than half of all people dying in the United States died because of germs.

Source: Healthcare Triage: Antibiotics and Resistance | The Incidental Economist

Global obesity is on the rise

Source: The World May Have Too Much Food – Bloomberg

What’s going to kill you & when?

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