Dan Wang
Technology Analyst
Dan Wang writes about technology. He was born in Yunnan, grew up in Canada (where he was a Royal Canadian Army Cadet), and moved to the United States before he finished high school. Dan has worked in technology companies—including one that experienced a liquidity event—in ecommerce, container shipping, and commodity data. He double-majored in philosophy and economics at the University of Rochester.
Dan goes on expeditions of mushroom picking, which he considers an excellent source of lessons for risk/reward tradeoffs. He writes occasional essays on his personal site: danwang.co
For Dan's article archive click here.
The Daily
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Gavekal Research
April 12, 2018
The Future Of Facebook
For someone infamous for his social awkwardness, Mark Zuckerberg acquitted himself relatively well in his two days of testimony before US Congressional committees. Certainly investors thought so. After sliding -14.5% over February and March, shares in Facebook rallied 5.3% over two sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Gavekal Research
November 1, 2017
A Different Order Of Political Risk
Investors in big technology companies, both US and Chinese, are waking up to political risk. In Washington yesterday, senators hauled lawyers for Facebook, Google and Twitter over the coals for carrying foreign-funded political advertisements during the 2016 presidential election campaign in contravention of US law.
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Gavekal Research
October 4, 2017
A Kinder Semiconductor Cycle
In August, the world’s semiconductor-makers shipped chips worth a record US$35bn, up by more than 20% over a year earlier. That growth has been reflected in stock prices. The PHLX semiconductor index has risen 43% over the last 12 months, and at yesterday’s close was just 11% below its all-time high, set in March 2000.
Ideas
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Gavekal Dragonomics
March 7, 2018
The New Challenger In Memory Chips
China is making an expensive new push to crack the market for memory chips, now dominated by a South Korean-led oligopoly. In this piece, the first in an occasional series looking at China’s technological ambitions and the Made in China 2025 plan, Dan assesses whether and how China can succeed in this drive to gain semiconductor market share.
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Gavekal Research
November 28, 2017
What Retail Apocalypse?
With so much US retail activity going online, a CNN headline over the weekend asked if this “Black Friday” might be the last. That is good news for the newly-minted US$100bn man at Amazon and bad news for old-style chains like JC Penney, Sears, and Kmart, which face constant downsizing pressure. But what about more broadly for the economy?
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Gavekal Dragonomics
November 3, 2017
The Politicians Behind A Big Data Boom
A local politician named Chen Min’er rose to prominence last week with his promotion to the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo. Chen’s main claim to fame is his transformation of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces, into a supposed powerhouse of “big data.” But Chen’s real skill was in using political leverage from his ties to Xi Jinping.