Welcome to Nightpixels, a data-driven visual blog about investing, business, and technology.
Nightpixels is published each week by Nightview Capital Research Analyst Cameron Tierney. Follow him here on X.
The eclipse economy: 3 visuals
The first eclipse graphic is a data visualization from Airbnb data firm AirDNA. It’s a heatmap showing Airbnb occupancy rates the night before the total solar eclipse. As you can see, occupancy rates reached 100% in cities in the path of totality as consumers shelled out to experience this rare event. This highlights a the spending-on-experiences megatrend prominent among Gen Z.
The map shows how flight paths were changed to converge on the path of totality around 3pm EST.
The view of the eclipse’s shadow as seen from a SpaceX Starlink satellite in orbit.
Solar panels are becoming cheap thanks to Chinese producers
Solar panels continue to decline in price thanks to ultra low-cost producers flooding the market with products from China. Panels are only one part of a solar system, which increasingly includes battery storage and complex laboring for roof systems.
Hubspot would be Google’s largest acquisition by nearly $20B
Although still unconfirmed by either party, news broke this week that Google’s parent company Alphabet was pursuing an acquisition of Hubspot, the primary competitor to Salesforce’s CRM. This deal is complete hearsay, but if true, would be Google’s largest acquisition in history by nearly $20B. (The $1.65B YouTube acquisition seems cheap in retrospect.)
Tesla’s FSD surpasses one billion miles driven
Tesla recently offered a free trial of its FSD version 12 software to its EV customers. This free trial looks to have pushed the number of total miles driven (a proxy for data acquired to train the AI models) over one billion miles. The chart is an indication that Tesla’s real-world driving data set is on an exponential curve.
It may be cheaper to produce EV batteries in Mexico than China
BloombergNEF released another timely report on the state of the EV supply chain in Mexico. This chart showcases how it may be cheaper to ultimately produce EV batteries in Mexico than in China. For vehicles that end up in U.S. consumer hands, that could mean cheaper EVs without going through the Chinese manufacturing base.
Assets in money market mutual funds have doubled since early 2019
A duality of higher yields and uncertainty has pushed total assets in money market mutual funds to new heights. There is now over $6 trillion in these funds collecting low-risk returns from debtors. As risk environments change, some of those assets may flow into equities and other asset classes.
Disney revenue visualization – Q1 FY 2024
As the proxy battle in Disney’s boardroom was settled last week, this felt like a prescient chart to bring to the fore. Parks continue to be the stalwart, while streaming has grown to more than 50% of the Entertainment segment.
