I have decided to invest in the new Autonomies fund but the fact that I live inside the Eurozone poses a problem. My income and liquid assets are in Euros. The euro seems to be oversold against sterling. I am tempted to make a small invest in the Autonomies fund now and wait for a rally in the euro to increase my investment. What is your opinion on this strategy?
This article from the Scientific American may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Neuromorphic technology
Computer chips that mimic the human brainEven today's best supercomputers cannot rival the sophistication of the human brain. Computers are linear, moving data back and forth between memory chips and a central processor over a high-speed backbone. The brain, on the other hand, is fully interconnected, with logic and memory intimately cross-linked at billions of times the density and diversity of that found in a modern computer. Neuromorphic chips aim to process information in a fundamentally different way from traditional hardware, mimicking the brain's architecture to deliver a huge increase in a computer's thinking and responding power.
Miniaturization has delivered massive increases in conventional computing power over the years, but the bottleneck of shifting data continuously between stored memory and central processors uses large amounts of energy and creates unwanted heat, limiting further improvements. In contrast, neuromorphic chips can be more energy efficient and powerful, combining data-storage and data-processing components into the same interconnected modules. In this sense, the system copies the networked neurons that, in their billions, make up the human brain.
Neuromorphic technology will be the next stage in powerful computing, enabling vastly more rapid processing of data and a better capacity for machine learning. IBM's million-neuron TrueNorth chip, revealed in prototype in August 2014, has a power efficiency for certain tasks that is hundreds of times superior to a conventional CPU (central processing unit), and more comparable for the first time to the human cortex. With vastly more computing power available for far less energy and volume, neuromorphic chips should allow more intelligent small-scale machines to drive the next stage in miniaturization and artificial intelligence.
Potential applications include: drones better able to process and respond to visual cues, much more powerful and intelligent cameras and smartphones, and data-crunching on a scale that may help unlock the secrets of financial markets or climate forecasting. Computers will be able to anticipate and learn, rather than merely respond in preprogrammed ways.
This article by Marie Mawad for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
Vivendi said its board approved an agreement to sell its remaining 20 percent stake in cable and wireless carrier Numericable-SFR to Altice SA for 3.9 billion euros.
Chairman Vincent Bollore has been leading the discussions on how to spend Vivendi’s cash pile as it scouts potential acquisitions. The company, based near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, has divested telecommunications assets including a stake in Maroc Telecom and its French mobile unit SFR, with the latter sold to billionaire Patrick Drahi for 17 billion euros. In September Vivendi agreed to divest its Brazilian broadband business GVT to Telefonica SA for about 7 billion euros.
Vivendi reported fourth-quarter net income of 2 billion euros, compared with 556 million euros a year earlier. Sales rose 0.4 percent to 3 billion euros, in line with analysts’ estimates.
Of its remaining assets, Universal Music Group is the world’s largest music company, while pay-TV provider Canal Plus mainly targets the French market.
In April last year, after Vivendi agreed to sell SFR, it said it would return as much as 5 billion euros to shareholders in 2014 and 2015 through dividends and share buybacks. Since then, it’s sold more assets including GVT as well as stakes in Activision Blizzard Inc. and Apple Inc.’s Beats.
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It has worked to diversify its toy offerings, but doll sales still account for 40% of Mattel’s business.
Net income was $149.9 million, or 44 cents per share, down 59% from $369.2 million, or $1.07 per share, a year ago. Total sales fell 6% to $1.99 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated per-share earnings of 96 cents and revenue of $2.14 billion.
With Stockton out, Mattel is looking for a new candidate for the top job. A change in leadership was necessary ”to change the trajectory of the business and maximize our potential going forward, and certainly to take advantage of our many assets,” said Sinclair on a conference call with investors.
Mattel said it won’t offer any outlook for the year amid the transition. Shares of Mattel are down 33.7% over the last 12 months and slid 1.5% to $26.50 in pre-market trading.
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Postal Savings Bank is a fixture in rural China, where its network scoops up deposits from rural households. It has as much as $800bn in deposits, and puts its money into Chinese government bonds and the interbank market as well as lending to small and medium-sized enterprises and agricultural households.
Its branch network of about 40,000 is larger than more widely known state-owned banks, such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
“It is a true and pure savings bank,” said the head of one Chinese investment fund that is considering buying a stake. “Its ability to collect deposits is very, very strong and because it doesn’t have a huge loan book, the overall risk is very, very low. But to turn it into a new retail bank may be way too difficult.”
Among the more interesting possible investors is Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba, the US-listed ecommerce group. Alibaba already has a partnership with the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, to offer micro finance services in China. It could use the Postal Saving’s Bank’s cheap funding as a way to extend its financial muscle in the country.
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Traders put a record $2.9 billion into the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund last month, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The ETF attracted about the same amount during the fourth quarter and has absorbed $9.4 billion of inflows over the past year. The fund aims to protect against exchange-rate fluctuations with derivatives such as forward currency contracts, currency swaps and currency futures contracts, as its prospectus explained.
“Investors are thinking of using currency-hedged ETFs as strategic core holdings,” Dodd Kittsley, head of ETF strategy at Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management, said in a Feb. 6 interview on Bloomberg Radio with Catherine Cowdery. “By eliminating currency, you’re actually creating a currency- neutral position.”
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For the fourth quarter -- typically the most lucrative for the Web retailer because of the holiday shopping season -- net income declined 12 percent from $239 million a year earlier while sales rose 15 percent from $25.6 billion. Operating expenses climbed 15 percent to $28.7 billion, which was a slower rate of increase than the 20 percent jump a year earlier.
Excluding an $895 million hit from foreign exchange rates, net sales increased 18 percent from a year ago, the company said. Gross margin was 29.5 percent, up from 26.5 percent.
Amazon also forecast first-quarter sales of $20.9 billion to $22.9 billion, falling short of analysts’ average projection of $23 billion.
“It felt like Amazon had a great holiday because they started early and they carried strong through,” said Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, which helps third-party merchants sell on Amazon.
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There are other forces driving consolidation. An improving job market and the drop in oil prices are helping to stoke demand for consumer-related packaged products, said Panjabi of Baird. International Paper Wednesday reported fourth quarter sales that beat analysts’ estimates.
At the same time, materials costs are coming down, Panjabi said.
“The idea of increasing your exposure to that paradigm makes more sense,” he said. Companies are going to want to “capitalize on that dynamic” and merging with a peer will help reduce costs even further.
Packaging Corp. could be a potential takeover target or a merger partner, Anthony Pettinari, a New York-based analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a report on Tuesday. The company could also be an acquirer, according to Mark Wilde, a New York-based analyst at BMO. After buying Boise Inc. in 2013, it has the balance sheet flexibility to start looking at deals, he said.
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Other companies, like Honeywell International Inc., were able to anticipate the currency changes. Back in October, Honeywell CEO Dave Cote reversed his policy and started using currency hedges because he was -- rightly -- concerned the euro may sink further.
3M Co. today was another example of a global business weathering the dollar strength, partially with currency hedges. The St. Paul, Minnesota-based manufacturer beat fourth-quarter earnings estimates, countering the negative effects of foreign- exchange rates with stronger sales, especially in fast-growing markets.
P&G, which makes about two-thirds of annual sales outside of the U.S., said currency effects will continue to be a drag in the current fiscal year and reduce sales by 5 percent, leading to a decline of as much as 4 percent from a year earlier. Like Kimberly-Clark Corp. and other consumer companies, Cincinnati- based P&G was especially hurt by a slump in Venezuela, where falling oil prices have heightened the bolivar’s volatility.
Bristol-Myers, the New York-based maker of cancer treatments such as Yervoy for melanoma, gets about half its sales outside the U.S. The dollar’s strength weighs down the company as it pursues growth by focusing on a new class of cancer drugs.
