The old “John in Mumbai” joke heralds back to the days when Indian support desk agents were given Western-sounding names which didn’t manage to fool anyone. These days that slight accent you hear when calling a support desk is the twang of Tagalog, the predominant language spoken in the Philippines. We’ll just say what everyone […]
One disadvantage of having a living investment methodology is that as things change, you need to go back and revisit previous conclusions that may have changed. For example, we instituted a rule that prevents us from investing in any firm with a market cap of less than one billion dollars. That’s because the smaller a […]
We’ve been in the business of researching stocks for 20 years now and never cease to be amazed at the sorts of nefarious individuals walking freely. The ability to smell a rat comes from years of exposure to the odor. Usually, it’s just a hunch. Then you do some digging and find past lawsuits in […]
In numerous studies, psychologists have found that rewards of an uncertain magnitude and timing are more motivating than rewards that are certain and expected at fixed intervals. Think about how you might perceive that boring monthly salary vs. a stock options award at bonus time. This psychological phenomenon is what makes certain activities such as […]
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize the drug discovery process is an AI healthcare thesis that’s probably one of the more appealing and least mature when it comes to how machine learning will change industries. While themes like robotic process automation (RPA) and AI chips are reaching maturity and reaping rewards, we’ve yet to see […]
We recently published a piece which breaks down the tech stock universe into size buckets, the largest being companies with a market cap of $100 billion or more – the so-called “mega caps.” Ideally, we’re able to discover mega caps before they reach that size and invest in them. When they grow to occupy more […]
Checking in with your stocks about once a year seems like the minimum cadence for a long-term tech investor. In reality, you’ll be checking in more often when dramatic stock price movements happen, or corporate events take place. Today, we’re going to check in on a company we haven’t written about in several years – […]
Let’s talk about AI voice assistants. So far, Siri, Alexa, and company represent decades of development of conversational intelligence technologies, particularly in what’s called natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU). Yet it’s all still extremely crude, and the algorithms remain a poor substitute for human grey matter. In fact, giving them the […]
Unless you’ve served time in some of America’s toughest corporations, you probably won’t know what the food chain looks like. At the very top of the hierarchy sits the Board Of Directors (BOD), a group of people who are elected to represent the interests of shareholders. Heading up this group of people is the Chairman […]
Earlier this month, we profiled the latest frontline battle between Walmart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN), with both retailers investing heavily in autonomous vehicle delivery. But that’s a mere skirmish compared to a much bigger prize: the $8.5 trillion global healthcare market, with the United States accounting for more than 40% of all spending at $3.65 […]