Which of these news items will stand the test of time?

This is our monthly round-up of news and developments that might just stand the test of time.

So much urgent news passes quickly into a distant memory. Some of this month’s news we can be confident will be talked about for generations.

There is growing interest in a remarkable company called Redwood Materials, a start-up founded by JB Straubel (who for 15 years was the CTO (tech guru) at Tesla and co-founded the company). He set up Redwood in 2017 with a formidable mission “bordering on alchemy: to break down discarded batteries and reconstitute them into a fresh supply of metals needed for new electric vehicles. Straubel believes there is a “massive, untapped” source of metals: the garages of the average American. He estimates there are about 1 billion used batteries in US homes, sitting in old laptops or mobile phones — all containing valuable metals.”

In bond-land, an insightful FT piece reminded us of how many bond funds improve performance by investing in riskier bonds in order to gain a better Morningstar rating. The gist of the report is that this practice is not wrong per se, but it’s just wrong to not fully disclose the practice: “ But the reality is that this transforms the nature of a bond fund. More risky, volatile junk bonds mean that they move more in tandem with the equity market. That is fine if it is transparently sold as a racier vehicle, but can be a nasty surprise for many investors that buy bond funds as a counterweight in their portfolios.”

We came across news of a company called Framework - no, we hadn’t heard of them either. In a nutshell, they make MacBook lookalike computers, that come with a screwdriver and easy (‘ish) instructions on how to change the parts within. Relatively guilt free computing - designed to be kept for a decade or two, rather than the duration of a typical Apple product cycle. “We’ve built the Framework Laptop from the ground up to be upgradeable in ways that no other high-performance notebook is. In addition to adding memory and storage, you can choose the ports you want, customize the bezel color and keyboard language, and even upgrade your entire mainboard!” Move over, Apple?