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 Easter shortened trading week was not favorable to the stock markets. The Bot Index fell 2.59% and the S & P 500 declined 2.13%. The Asian stocks were particularly hard hit with each of Keyence, Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, Hiwin Technologies and OMRON Corp. were down around 5% each. The worst performer, however, was the imaging company Faro Technology who declined 9.48% on heavy volume but on no reported news. The company has fallen for four consecutive weeks, bringing the stock from $54.87 to the week’s closing of $44.78.

Cognex Corp. and NVIDIA Corp. each declined heavily with 7% and 8% flops respectively. NVIDIA had been one of the previous week’s worst performers with its 13.45% slide.

There were only three components of the Bot Index that reported reasonable increases for the week. Accuay Inc. gained 2.83%, however, it was again the defense companies that remained in investor favor. Raytheon Technologies was subject to a large amount of positive press by Wall Street analysts. The stock gained 3.85%. The best performer for the week was the drone manufacturer AeroVironment. The White House released a number of AeroVironment’s Switchblade ‘killer drones’ for use against Russian tanks and cargo with effective results. The stock rose another 5.91% and reiterated the recent strength of the company. As recently as mid-February the stock was trading at $59 and closed at $109.18 at week’s end.

What Next…Again, Mr. Musk:

In addition to Elon Musk’s investment in the social media firm, Twitter, recent news of Mr. Musk’s Optimus was overshadowed. Benzinga reported Musk’s comments on the fact that his humanoid robot was probably going to be more significant than his self-driving vehicles. In fact, he feels AI must accompany both autonomous vehicles as well as his Optimus. The two must accompany one another. He stated, “In order to solve self-driving you really needed to solve real-world AI and at the point at which you solve real-word AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that to a robot on legs,”.

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.