"There is no force on earth more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo
Bots In the News:
The final week of February saw investors continuing to focus on the impact of Artificial Intelligence. Both the producers of the periphery of AI hardware and software and the companies that apply the new technology have caught the attention of both professional and personal investors. In somewhat reminiscence of the events leading up to Y2K and the internet boom, recent P/E and PEG ratios are following a similar course. What does seem a bit different in this cycle is the lack of tech IPO’s that, without a concrete business model nor any reasonably future earnings, drove the lucky investors that had investment banker connections into overnight million-dollar gains.
Let’s hope the AI phenomenon will not end in a collapse as did the tech bubble. Remember, the NASDAQ fell from 4914 in February of 2000 to 1262 by July of 2002!!
The Bot Index gained 1.13% last week, eclipsing the 94 basis points of the broad index. The Asian component of the Bot Index was, again, one of the areas of strength in the portfolio as Fanuc gained 6.26%, Yaskawa Electric rose 10.64% and NIO Inc. bounce back from recent lows to jump 25.55%. The best performing domestic name was from Azenta Corp. up 6.22% with Tesla (+5.56%), Faro Corp. (+5.31%) and NVIDIA Corp. (+4.38%) not far behind.
By far the weakest issue in the Index was 3D Systems, who fell 13.63%. Unfortunately, this decline follows a 10.9% slide in the previous week. The stock has trended down and set a new low since late October.
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Fusion, Fusion, who’s Got the Fusion (answer)!
The Bot Brief has devoted considerable print to considerations of energy to drive an increasingly digital economy. One of the more interesting avenues of future energy has always centered around fusion. It is clean, sustainable and efficient…….if they can figure out how to make it work!!
Perhaps, the answer in making a leap into commercial fusion will be through Artificial Intelligence. The Princeton Plasma Physics Lab recently reported that ‘they have found a way to use AI to forecast the instabilities of the hydrogen plasma and prevent them from happening.’ These plasma maladies have been a major stumbling block in the development and containment of the fusion process.
While there are still a host of obstacles to overcome in the production of electricity from hydrogen, the use of AI to sift through the multitude of variants and scientific options, will certainly speed up the ultimate process of duplicating the sun’s power to provide the same free energy that sol currently delivers to mankind.
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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 the material presented.
