$3.7 BILLION HEDGE FUND: 'Perhaps we need to put our phones down and get back to work'
That's according to a $3.7 billion New York hedge fund, Tourbillon Capital Partners.
Perhaps we aren't in secular stagnation. Perhaps we need to put our phones down and get back to work," founder Jason Karp wrote in the firm's third quarter investor letter, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider.
"At the risk of sounding like an old-man curmudgeon and a Luddite, I believe this to be a massive problem for society at large," Karp added. "All businesses globally, where employees have smartphones, are not getting as many true labor hours as we think."
Karp lists several concerns, including how addicted millenials and teens are to their smartphones and computers. Millennials check their phones over 150 times per day compared to about 30 times for the average adult, Karp wrote, citing Facebook data. Meanwhile, the average human's attention span has dropped.
"Undoubtedly, access to such time-saving technologies has dramatically increased our potential productivity," Karp wrote. "But what if we are spending those saved hours on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and the like. As much of the above data shows, we unfortunately are spending those hours on our phones."
That's making people less productive at work, and might be keeping wages down. Since the financial crisis, wages have been growing, but at a slow pace, federal data shows. That's even as wages surged in the last reported numbers earlier this month.
Here's more from the Tourbillon letter:
- "In an odd way, the democratization of the smartphone has led to increased 'wealth' and decreased hours work despite the economic data showing no such drop in hours worked."
- "There are enormous implications for this, both long and short. This ability to consume leisure and goods so easily has forever altered our attitudes toward convenience and avoiding hassle."
- "While most employers think they are paying their employees for 10 hours of labor a day, they are, in fact, only getting 8 or fewer hours of actual labor. Perhaps the lack of rising wages and anemic growth in most sectors is not a function of any true stagnation, but really it is because people have chosen to consume far more leisure during the workday...When true hours worked equals what the employers are paying for, wages will rise, slack will be reduced and our increased productivity will really be evident once and for all."
- "Even 18 years ago, when I joined the workforce, it was far more difficult to consume leisure at work. If I wanted to see what a friend was up to, I had to call him (and others could see or overhear). Or I would visit them at night or on the weekends...Getting groceries, doing errands, planning big things had to be done on weekends or outside the office. Not anymore."
Tourbillon's master fund was up 9.1% net of fees for the third quarter, compared to 3.3% with the S&P 500, according to the letter. That would mean the fund is still down for the year in the low single digits. The fund was down 12.9% through July this year.