The Bot Brief

"There is no force on earth more powerful than an idea whose time has come."                   

Victor Hugo

Bots In the News:

The Independence Day shortened trading week was highlighted by a surprising labor market report which allowed a continuation of the stock rally. The Bot Index gained 3.25% while the broader market advanced 1.93%. The only weakness within the bots were the defense manufacturers who were, ironically, the best performers in the prior week. AeroVironment led the defense stocks lower with its 3.61% decline, closely followed by Lockheed Martin who fell 3.04% and Northrup Grumman was off 1.20%. Faro Technologies was the overall weakest stock in the index with a 4.78% drop.

Three stocks were in double-digit positive territory. The low priced Accuray Inc. was the best performer with its 13.54% jump, while Google and Tesla each rose a bit over 10%. Tesla was the subject of a Bloomberg article that hinted that the collapse of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter would allow more of his time and mental energies to concentrate on the electric vehicle market. iRobot introduced a new product. According to the press release,  iRobot OS, is an evolution of the company's Genius Home Intelligence platform. iRobot OS delivers a new level of customer experience for a cleaner, healthier and smarter home. Leveraging iRobot's growing base of over 20 million connected devices sold, a unique understanding of the home environment and an advanced computer vision platform, iRobot OS is already enabling over 2.7 million cleaning missions each and every day around the world. The stock gained 8.37%.

NVIDIA Corp. and Keyence Corp. were among the gainers with 9.05% and 8.73% increases respectively.

Robots in the News:

Bloomberg ran an article about a start-up autonomous long haul truck venture that is expected to commence operation in Texas next year. The company Aurora Innovation has designed and configured the hardware and software it will use to launch a service toward the end of next year in which roughly 20 trucks will ply highways without a human on board. The application will ease the shortage of human drivers as well as the need for mandatory rest periods, making the rigs’ productivity significantly enhanced.

Without a doubt, the laboratory is one of the greatest contributors in the world of science. The constant trials and errors, together with happenstance occurrences have led to advances in the world of medical research, plant and animal improvements and a greater understanding of our environment and how we interact. The problem is that the number of trials needed to reach a positive conclusion can be a massive time commitment. Recently, there have been advances in the laboratory where robots run tests on a 24/7 basis. These ‘cloud labs’ allow researchers to log on to computer dashboards and specify what experiments they want to conduct and when; configure the equipment to their liking; make adjustments along the way; and get live progress updates on their experiments and watch the process on video. An artificial-intelligence-based ‘expert’ acts as a highly skilled technician, giving users the ability to tweak default values and identify issues that can halt experiments. The geometric capabilities of this form of research will allow for quicker advances that face the world today.

Member: American Economic Association, Society of Professional Journalists, United States Press Association. Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, Robotic Industries Association, Member IEEE.

The Bot Brief is a weekly newsletter designed for economists, investment specialists, journalists, and academicians. It receives no remuneration from any companies that may from time to time be featured in the brief and its commentaries, analysis, opinions, and research represent the subjective view of Balcones Investment Research, LLC. Due to the complex and rapidly changing nature of the subject matter, the company makes no assurances as to the absolute accuracy of material presented.