Don’t Short the Back Bench When It Comes to Entertainment Content Although more controversial game titles usually make the headlines, the sales and revenue stalwarts for many video game companies are established sports titles. Electronic Arts [NASDAQ: EA], for example, has the year’s 8th-best-selling title in a decades-old franchise: “Madden Read more…
Over the past decades, California has learned that all of its sun, forward-thinking culture, educated workforce, and entrepreneurial spirit couldn’t stop the gradually accelerating exodus of the aerospace industry from the Golden State. There were many factors involved, of course – but the point is that regional dominance in an Read more…
After Iranians shot down a U.S. drone over the Gulf of Oman in June, President Trump publicly discussed his reticence to engage in a conventional retaliatory strike against Iran, citing his desire to avoid disproportionate human casualties. Less reported was the unconventional response that the U.S. allegedly made shortly thereafter, Read more…
The War For AI Tech Talent — and How the U.S. Is Winning It In early July, as reported in the Financial Times, a group of British computing scientists decamped to Silicon Valley to form a new quantum computing startup, PsiQ. Quantum computing, as our regular readers will recall, is Read more…
Facebook’s Power Play Last week, Facebook [NASDAQ: FB] finally announced its long-rumored digital currency initiative. Although bitcoin had been rallying since April, since the announcement it has risen almost 25%, as of this writing. Why the boost for bitcoin? Won’t FB’s currency — called “Libra” — be competition for bitcoin? Read more…
1. Hong Kong in the crosshairs of the trade war. Hong Kong is experiencing massive protests against the Chinese government’s erosions of the city’s traditional liberties and democratic governance. These protests have occasioned the introduction of a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress that would strip the city of its Read more…
Executive Summary 1. We’re long-term bulls on India. A recent U.S. action rescinded some tariff exemptions that India had enjoyed as a developing nation. We don’t feel this is a significant event, and anticipate that the friendly relationship between the U.S. and Indian administrations will continue. We see policy continuity Read more…
Morgan Stanley [NYSE: MS] is acquiring a Canadian firm, Solium Capital, which manages stock-compensation plans for about 3,000 companies. Collectively, Solium’s clients have a million employees — disproportionately young, and disproportionately employed in high-tech, high-growth startup companies (including, for example, Nextdoor, Sonos, Dropbox, Stripe, and Instacart). This acquisition makes sense Read more…
A report just issued by the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) concludes that 80% of the trading volume of the most significant cryptocurrency pairs consists of wash trades. A wash trade is one in which a malicious actor, human or machine, places both buy and sell orders in an attempt to Read more…
Market Summary The U.S. Market and Economy As we have been mentioning frequently in these pages, we continue to have a bullish view of the U.S. economy. More positive economic data surface each week. This week we learned that small business optimism in the U.S. is at the highest level Read more…
12400 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 820 Los Angeles, CA 90025
1 310 826-8600
Mon-Fri 6:30-4:30
