"There is no force on earth more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo
Bots in the News:
Fridays have not been good for investors over the past few trading sessions. This past week, the markets faltered following weak guidance by Walmart, consumer sentiment which dropped to a 15 month low to the 64.7 level, tariff concerns, stubborn inflation and a report from S & P Global that noted U.S. business activity is nearing growth deceleration to a 17 month low level. The S & P 500 fell 1.66% and the Bot Index declined 1.22%.
The Bots were aided by the Japanese firm Yaskawa Electric whose fate jumped 7.4%. The company has been weaker than the NIKKEI Index for the past year, three years and five-year periods. However, the stock has been bouncing back with a 7.76% increase year-to-date versus the NIKKEI’s 2.80% decline.
Also, aiding the Bot Index was the 6.37% jump by the Taiwanese electronics firm HiWin Technology as the firm will be reporting 4th quarter earnings on Feb 26th. In the prior quarter, the company’s income beat expectations and, clearly investors expect the upcoming announcement will continue the favorable trajectory.
Amazon fell 5.29% and Tesla dropped 5.07% in sympathy with the poor consumer confidence numbers. Tesla also announced a recall of 380k of automobiles based upon power steering issues.
Oceaneering International and 3D Systems were the only double-digit decliners with 11.58% and 12.77% respectively.
Under the Sea:
For years astronauts and scientists have been living and working in the Space Station. With minor exceptions, however, aquanauts have not had the luxury of a consistent deep underwater living arrangement. A new company, Deep, is embarking on a project to provide a unique seabed modular habitat. Using 3D printing, the company will kick off its program of having three divers living in the undersea environment for up to a week or so this year. In a follow-up designed for a 2027 introduction, a prototype of a more permanent living system will be introduced that could be compared to the Space Station. The company expects the prototype to accommodate six people, each with their own bath and bedroom. The occupants could live for a period of a month before food, water and gases would need to be resupplied.
A real key to this whole endeavor is the ability for deep undersea exploration. Currently divers can only effectively operate at 200-meter depths for work of only 10 minutes, followed by 6 hours of decompression. Deep suggests that more than 90% of the ocean’s biodiversity lives within 200 meters depth and we only know about 20% of the ecosystem’s processes and activities. To have a habitat already anchored to the seabed, the ability to expand the time of diver exploration has led the
