Stocks

Interesting, and often contrarian, Snippets on individual companies and the stock market.

Stocks

AI Supercomputer Trends

  • “The computational performance of leading AI supercomputers has doubled every 9 months“.
  • “Power requirements and hardware costs of leading AI supercomputers have doubled every year.“
  • “If the observed trends continue, the leading AI supercomputer in June 2030 will need 2 million AI chips, have a hardware cost of $200 billion, and require 9 GW of power.“
  • “We find that the share of private sector compute rapidly increased from less than 40% in 2019 to about 80% in 2025.” (see chart).
  • Source.
Stocks

FTC Meta Trial Trove

  • Exhibits are uploaded daily giving unparalleled insights into the inner workings of the company.
  • From Ben Evans – “There’s a lot of email on the daily struggles of running social networks (people worrying that US growth is slowing (2022), or that WhatsApp is overtaking Messenger (2013), and I didn’t know that Meta tracks consumer sentiment towards Meta the company. There also a few tantalising ideas – a project for a paid, premium version of Facebook from 2020, for example. And there are charts of how the ad load has doubled. But really, what you see across all of these documents is a relentless focus from the top on making the current thing work better while worrying about the next thing.“
Stocks

Gen AI for Shopping

  • Though still small, Adobe is reporting sharp growth in this type of traffic, “doubling every two months since September 2024.”
  • 39% of consumers use Gen AI for shopping.
  • This traffic is more engaged but has a 9% lower propensity to spend (up from a 43% gap just over 6 months ago).
  • No wonder OpenAI is looking at this use case.
Stocks

US China AI Race

  • What stands out from this deep analysis is the renewed optimism in China on advanced semiconductor design and manufacturing.
  • “Ren [Huawei founder] further said that he is leading a network of more than 2,000 Chinese companies who are collectively working to ensure that China achieves self-sufficiency of more than 70 percent across the entire semiconductor value chain by 2028. These predictions should be taken seriously.“
Stocks

US Electric Utilities

  • Just four companies serve 90% of the technical testimony utilities use to calculate the rate of return in the US.
  • “In 2019, two experts at Carnegie Mellon, Paul Fischbeck and David Rode, analyzed 1,600 rate cases over 40 years, and noted the “balance between utility companies and their customers has been shifting over time, in favor of the utilities.” What investors were being paid to take risk in putting money into a utility in 1980 was about 3%, today it is nearly 7%.”
  • More on how US electric utilities work.
Stocks

Fragrances and AI

  • “Consumers of all age groups are using around four different fragrances regularly, which is a significant change from a decade ago when they had one signature scent.“
  • “Some people talk about the ‘Deep Seek Syndrome,’ saying, ‘You’re overspending, you’re spending $500 billion, you’re overspending! You can save so much more by spending less.’ But I think they are looking at it the wrong way. How much percent of GDP will be replaced by a billion-dollar smart system? I would say at least 5% within 10 years. That 5% is $9 trillion—or if it’s 10%, it’s $18 trillion. So, somewhere between 5% to 10% of today’s GDP will be replaced by this superintelligence. Well, if that’s the amount of return, you shouldn’t be scared of spending a few trillion dollars. If the return is $9 to $18 trillion per year, why should you save? Why should you try to be efficient? For what? I don’t get it. Just a little difference makes a huge return on your market share.” – Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son
  • Source: A good smorgasbord of quotes from recent transcripts.
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