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…
Executive Summary 1. Deflationary tech is here to stay. In his May press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell cited what he believed were “transitory factors” that resulted in a low inflation print over the past 12 months. Although many economists and officials talk about inflation data as if they were 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…
An idea that was once a twinkle in the eye of radicals is gaining ground among the Silicon Valley intelligentsia, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. The concept is that the disruption caused by automation and artificial intelligence is going to be so severe that half the workforce, or maybe Read more…
Last week, several major news outlets reported that detailed data harvested from Facebook [NASDAQ: FB] had been pressed into service by political consultancy firms under questionable circumstances. The data were harvested by researchers who were abiding by FB’s then-current policies when they collected them. But observers and some FB insiders, Read more…
New Antibiotics Revealed In Humble Soil This week we’re taking a break from commenting extensively on the market’s gyrations, and looking a little more long-term at some new developments in biotechnology. What Really Boosts the Longevity of Human Populations? Some cutting edge biosciences, such as novel cancer therapies, get a Read more…
Toyota’s Self-Driving Boxes and the Future of Retail We commented last week on Toyota’s [NYSE: TM] presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) — an expo that has become so auto-centric in recent years that a running joke dubs it the Car Electronics Show. TM calls its new concept the Read more…
Robots, Robots Everywhere Robots in Food Service With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) just past, it might be a good time to mention two developments in robotics that we’ve recently noted. Sage analyst Larry Jeddeloh at The Institutional Strategist noted that this year’s CES was the occasion for Pizza Hut Read more…
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