Month: July 2024

July 29, 2024

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Houston, we have a software problem

Dear Reader,

On December 31, 1999, the world stood at the brink of ruin.

The computers that ran the planet could only record the date down to two digits.

Instead of 1999, it was 99, and it couldn’t go any higher.

The fear was that when the new year rolled over, the machines wouldn’t be able to compute the new date correctly.

Everything would stop. The myriad systems the computers supported — electricity, transport, banking, everything — would collapse on the stroke of midnight, plunging the world into a new dark age.

The Year 2000 Problem, or Y2K, of course, amounted to very little.

A handful of quirky consequences cropped up, like this welcome screen display at a school in France:

Party like it’s 1900 (source)

It’s perhaps difficult to believe we could have been so worried about a couple of zeroes collapsing everything.

But this month, the world got a reminder of just how reliant we are on computers.

Channel File 291 and the blue screen of death

Texas-based CrowdStrike is a large cybersecurity firm that’s played a pivotal role in tracing and exposing some of the highest-profile cyberattacks of the past decade.
​
On July 19, they pushed a software update to clients all over the world.

Airlines, hospitals, banks, emergency services.

The update package, to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor product, included a change to a configuration file called Channel File 291.

Channel File 291 doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Y2K, or the Millennium Bug, but it wreaked about as much havoc on the world as we all feared back in late 1999.

It was this part of the Falcon Sensor update that triggered a ‘logic error’.

The error crashed the entire Windows operating system running on all the machines in question (while everyone working in cafés has a MacBook, the entire commercial world pretty much runs on Microsoft).

Thus, the world got a critically high dose of this:

The blue screen of death sweeps the West (source)

All the machines running the CrowdStrike product entered a ‘bootloop’, rendering them completely unusable.

The scale of the failure meant that commercial flights, television broadcasters, banking and healthcare services and even emergency call centres ceased to operate.

For millions and millions of people, the digitally-dependent world froze.

The disruption was vast and severe.

Cybersecurity consultant Troy Hunt called the incident the ‘largest IT outage in history… basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened‘.

Twenty-four years post Y2K, we were finally living the nightmare — all because of a file in a cybersecurity update package.

The damage wasn’t limited to the 8.5 million PCs and the many-times-more people trying to travel, or bank, or access healthcare or emergency services on July 19.

Businesses relying on the crashed computers took heavy losses.

​Source​

By the end of that day, CrowdStrike shares (listed on the NASDAQ) were down 11%.

At the time of writing, they’re down 32% from the all-time high they’d reached just a few weeks prior to the blue screen crisis.

Still, CrowdStrike is trading nearly 7% up for the year. Let’s see if that lasts.

CrowdStrike share price

And the fallout extends farther still.

Elon Musk shared on X that CrowdStrike has been ‘deleted from all our systems‘:

​

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes demanded answers and compensation for millions of dollars in revenue.

CrowdStrike’s competitors seized on the company’s failure and the resulting PR fallout to promote their own products.

The cyber criminals companies like CrowdStrike aim to guard against started sending phishing emails purporting to be CrowdStrike support and impersonating CrowdStrike staff in phone calls shortly afterward.

So the CrowdStrike crash reverberated far beyond the blue screen of death and the share price bloodbath.

Eliminating single points of failure

Mike Jude, research director at leading market intelligence firm International Data Corporation, reckons all of CrowdStrike’s competitors face the same vulnerabilities.

Cybersecurity firms have to push updates frequently. Otherwise, they risk falling behind new threats, which emerge constantly in the world of cybercrime.

​

‘This outage illustrates just how dependent we have become on cybersecurity solutions.’

— Mike Jude

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote that customers generally understood that it’s a question of when — not if — these incidents would happen.

The tone of resignation probably stems, in part, from the centralized nature of the CrowdStrike network.

One update. One product. Same operating system. More than eight million machines — and many times more people — impacted.

So what’s the alternative?

​

Many in the crypto and blockchain communities were quick to point out that over-reliance on centralized digital networks creates precisely these types of vulnerabilities.

One minute, you’re running your check-in counter, or bank, or hospital system like normal, and the next you’re facing the blue screen of death and unprecedented chaos and confusion.

According to SunnySide Digital founder and CEO, Taras Kulyk, the blockchain industry’s infrastructure of choice, Linux, offers immunity to such vulnerabilities.

According to Kulyk, Linux operates on the same principles as Bitcoin and the wider blockchain world; privacy, decentralization and individual empowerment.

Bitcoin ‘was completely unaffected because most, if not all, Bitcoin miners are using Linux-based frameworks‘, Kulyk said in an interview.

‘Banks globally have been shutting down because of this server issue, and yet, Bitcoin keeps hashing.’

Pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis also noted that blockchains remained up and running during the CrowdStrike saga.

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Vires in Numeris means ‘strength in numbers’ — a reference to the thousands of validator nodes that validate Bitcoin transactions.

Decentralization is a key promise for cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Decentralization in technology aims at providing a ‘trustless environment’ — one in which the network’s members reject any altered or corrupted data.

This form of network can also improve data reconciliation, reduce points of weakness, and reduce the likelihood of catastrophic failure — such as that inflicted by Channel File 291.

Quote of the week

‘Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.’

— Steve Wozniak

That’s it for this week’s The Benchmark email.

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Thom
Editor, The Benchmark

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July 22, 2024

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‘Cynical bastard’ exposes Wall St. excesses

Dear Reader,

Shortly after his book Liar’s Poker came out in 1989, Michael Lewis took his seat on a flight to the US.

He was travelling to begin the book tour, and he intended to spend the flight re-reading his part-biographical, part-journalistic, dive into the wild world of Wall Street bond trading in the 1980s.

Within seconds of pulling the book out of his carry-on, the passenger next to him turned and spoke:

‘I’ve read that book,’ he said.

Lewis went to answer, but before he could:

‘Cynical bastard!’

This was a seven-hour flight. A long seven-hour flight.

This would not be the first time Michael Lewis published something that exposed aspects of the investing world which provoked reaction.

From the history of art to the mystery of money

Michael Lewis in his office (source)

Michael Lewis wanted to be an art historian.

He graduated from Princeton University having written a 166-page thesis on Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello, and promptly realized that not only where there few jobs for art historians, but that the few available paid poorly.

He did a 180.

He enrolled at the London School of Economics and earned an MA in economics, then landeda role at the legendary Salomon Brothers investment bank in New York, and then in London.

It was this experience, on the cutthroat trading floors of the 1980s, that led Lewis back to the arts.

As he learned the trading game and navigated the ruthless, opaque hierarchy of what was at that time one of the world’s most influential investment banks, Lewis read The Economist and the Wall Street Journal.

He began to write. But rather than copy the somewhat dry, professional style of the writers he admired…

Lewis chose to explore Wall Street economics and culture through people.

‘If you can attach the reader to a person,’ Lewis says, ‘they’ll follow that person anywhere‘.

Liar’s Poker: Rising Through
the Wreckage on Wall Street

Salomon Brothers trading floor in 1986 (source)

Full disclosure here — I’ve not finished reading Liar’s Poker yet. I’m a few chapters in. But I can tell you now I will 100% finish it. It’s that good.

This book is to investment banking what Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential is to the restaurant and fine dining industry; a gritty insight more concerned with truth than protecting people’s reputations.

Here’s a selection of revelations Lewis makes from his time rising at Salomon Brothers.

On the ‘zero sum game’ of trading:
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‘If there was a single lesson I took away from Salomon Brothers, it is that rarely do all parties win. The nature of the game is zero sum. A dollar out of my customer’s pocket was a dollar in ours, and vice versa.’

On how traders see themselves as kings of the financial jungle:
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‘Corporate finance, which services the corporations and governments that borrow money, and that are known as clients, is, by comparison, a refined and unworldly place. Because they don’t risk money, corporate financiers are considered wimps by traders.’

On the lack of correlation between skill and earnings:
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‘That was somewhere near the middle of a modern gold rush. Never before have so many unskilled twenty-four-year-olds made so much money in so little time as we did this decade in New York and London.’

You get a sense, even from these few excerpts, of the hubris and arrogance to which Lewis was exposed (and, as he admits, participated in and profited from).

Salomon Brothers no longer exists.

CEO John Gutfreund left in 1991 facing a $100,000 fine from the SEC and being barred from holding a CEO role of a brokerage firm.

Why?

Ryan Gosling in the film adaptation of Lewis’ later Wall Street book, The Big Short. (source)

The bank became embroiled in a scandal involving illegal treasury bond auction manipulation.

Several of its traders had submitted false bids to the Treasury Department in order to gain an unfair advantage.

The scandal shattered the bank’s reputation.

Salomon Brothers was eventually acquired, then merged into Citicorp, and now no longer exists.

There was, believe it or not, a brief period post-Gutfreund in which Warren Buffett held the CEO position.

Michael Lewis called time on his bond trading career at the bank in 1988, and began writing about his experiences.

One wonders whether the man sitting next to him on the trans-Atlantic flight perhaps worked on Wall Street himself, or perhaps even had some connection to Gutfreund, who told Lewis later in life:

‘Your fucking book destroyed my career, and it made yours.’

Feedback: Appreciated

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve received a stack of emails from readers letting me know how much they’re The Benchmark.

Thank you.

I try to write an investing email that I would enjoy reading.

So I’m stoked to hear you enjoy reading The Benchmark.

As I said to one Chief Investment Officer who wrote me last week; please feel free to send through any ideas or stories you’d like me to write about.

Quote of the week

‘A man who can tell a good story can make a good living as a broker.’

— Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

That’s it for this week’s The Benchmark email.

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Invest in knowledge,

Thom
Editor, The Benchmark
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July 15, 2024

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The Original Wolf (and Great Bear) of Wall Street

Dear Reader,

In 1929, as the Great Crash destroyed investors and heralded the beginning of the notorious Great Depression, one man made $100 million.

Jesse Livermore, who’d grown up in poverty in Massachusetts, had been observing the market’s behaviour throughout the 1920s.

He noticed that stock prices were rising rapidly, driven by speculation and excessive leverage. He recognized that the market was in a bubble, and reasoned it was due for a correction.

So, Livermore began shorting stocks.

Jesse Livermore

In early 1929, he started building his short positions quietly to avoid drawing attention. By spreading his trades across multiple brokerage houses, he managed to keep his activities under the radar.

As the market showed signs of weakness in September and October 1929, he increased his short positions.

Then, on October 29, 1929, or ‘Black Tuesday’, the stock market crashed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted by 12% in a day, wiping out about $14 billion in value.

The market then collapsed lower and lower for three years, ultimately taking about a quarter of a century to reclaim its previous highs:

​Source​

But the picture was far from bleak for Livermore, whose profits were astronomical. He likely made around $100 million (equivalent to more $1.5 billion today) during the crash.

His foresight and execution made him one of the few individuals who thrived financially during one of the most devastating periods in stock market history.

Revered for the foresight, reviled for the profit

Livermore’s gargantuan win from the 1929 crash cemented his reputation as one of the greatest traders of all time. His ability to predict the market downturn and profit from it became legendary.

But it was also bad news, in that a series of newspaper articles declared him the ‘Great Bear of Wall Street’ and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, which gave the public someone to blame for the crash.

Livermore received death threats, and spent some of his profits on hiring an armed bodyguard.

But how had he come to be able to make such a forecast, and profit by betting against a market pretty much everybody else thought would never stop going up?

If you’re into fascinating investor and trader biographies, they don’t come much more rock ‘n’ roll than Jesse Livermore’s.

Volatility personified: A tale of windfall and woe

NYSE trading floor in 1929

Livermore’s journey from humble beginnings to financial titan was marked by dramatic success and equally spectacular failure.

At 14, he ran away from home to Boston, where he started working as a board boy in Paine Webber, a brokerage firm.

This involved posting stock prices on a chalkboard, and gave him an opportunity to observe market trends and price movements up close, in detail. Livermore soon placed his first trades and quickly accumulated a small fortune.

By his twenties, he had moved to New York City, the epicenter of the financial world. His aggressive trading style, characterized by leveraging significant amounts of capital, earned him nicknames like the ‘Boy Plunger’.

Livermore’s most notable successes came during times of market turmoil. He made a substantial profit during the Panic of 1907 and solidified his legendary status during the Great Crash in ’29.

Despite these triumphs, Livermore’s career was marred by numerous bankruptcies and personal tragedies. His speculative methods, while capable of generating enormous wealth, also exposed him to tremendous risks.

He declared bankruptcy three times, each instance a result of over-leveraging and miscalculation. Livermore’s personal life was equally volatile, with happy, harmonious periods punctuated by tragedy and turmoil.

Divorces. Armed robberies. One of his wives shot his son. A lawsuit from a Russian mistress.

Livermore was an all-or-nothing operator, both in the stock market and in his personal life. He had it all, and lost it all, several times over.

On November 28, 1940, just after 5:30pm, in the cloakroom of The Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York City, Jesse Livermore shot himself dead.

‘To see if I could…’

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Livermore’s story is one of volatility.

Predicting it, observing it, betting on it and profiting from it.

He was a trader through and through, and openly admitted he wasn’t in the business of investing for the long term.

While his trading style and lifestyle would be too much for most of us to handle, you can’t deny that some of the highs were truly remarkable.

After World War I, Livermore secretly cornered the cotton market. President Woodrow Wilson, prompted by a call from the United States Secretary of Agriculture, summoned the trader to the White House.

During this meeting, Livermore agreed to sell back the cotton at break-even, averting a potential surge in cotton prices.

When President Wilson inquired about his motives, Livermore candidly replied, ‘to see if I could, Mr. President‘.

Quote of the week

‘There is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.’

— Jesse Livermore

That’s it for this week’s The Benchmark email.

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Thom
Editor, The Benchmark
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All information contained in The Benchmark and on navexa.io is for education and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional financial or tax advice. The Benchmark and any contributors to The Benchmark are not financial professionals, and are not aware of your personal financial circumstances.

July 8, 2024

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There will be wealth

Dear Reader,

Resources have long been a key factor in determining a nation’s wealth.

Timber, coal, precious metals, natural gas, rare earths, and, of course, oil.

On August 21, 1969, Ocean Viking found oil in Norway’s sector of the North Sea. By the end of that year, it was clear the Norwegians were sitting on massive oil and gas reserves.

About a decade later, the first Norwegian oil field, Ekofisk, was, was producing 427,442 barrels of crude oil a year.

The Ekofisk oil field in 2010

Today, Norway is one of the world’s leading exporters of both oil and natural gas. The country makes between US$50 billion and $100 billion a year from these resources.

But, this is just the start of Norway’s modern wealth saga.

Norway established the Statens pensjonsfond, or Government Pension Fund, in 1990. The fund contains two distinct entities: the Global fund (GPFG) and the Norway fund (GPFN).

The Global fund, known as the Oil Fund, is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund at more than $1.6 trillion in assets. It invests the surplus revenues Norway generates from its resource exports.

Why: To provide a financial buffer against volatile oil prices and secure the nation’s wealth long after its oil reserves have been depleted.

How: Through robust ethical, socially responsible and sustainable investments in stocks, bonds and real estate all over the world.

As for what, exactly, the Oil Fund invests in?

A piece of (almost) everything

Norges Bank — the central bank of Norway

Norway is on a mission to convert its (finite) oil wealth into long-term, multi-generational wealth for its citizens.

To give you a sense of just how much invested wealth they’re managing, Norway could liquidate the Oil Fund and give each of its 5.5 million citizens almost $300,000 in cash.

From that relatively modest Oslo building in the photo above, the GPFG deploys its $1.6 trillion (and growing) portfolio across pretty much the whole world (with some exceptions, which I’ll explain shortly).

Here’s a breakdown of its main investment categories:

Stocks

Allocation: Around 70% of the fund.

Geographical spread: Investments are made globally across developed and emerging markets.

Sectors: The fund invests in a broad range of industries, including technology, finance, healthcare, consumer goods, and more.

Examples: Major holdings include shares in large multinational companies like Apple, Microsoft, Nestlé, and Alphabet.

Fixed Income

Allocation: Approximately 25% of the fund.

Types: Investments include government bonds, corporate bonds, and inflation-linked bonds.

Geographical spread: Fixed income investments are also globally diversified, with significant holdings in U.S. Treasuries, European government bonds, and bonds from other stable economies.

Real Estate

Allocation: Around 2-3% of the fund.

Types: Investments in commercial real estate, including office buildings, retail spaces, and logistics properties.

Geographical spread: Key markets include major cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Examples: Properties in cities like New York, London, and Tokyo.

Renewable Energy Infrastructure

Allocation: A relatively new and growing segment, though still a small portion of the overall fund.

Types: Investments in renewable energy projects such as wind farms and solar power plants.

Geographical spread: Global investments with a focus on regions with strong renewable energy potential.

The GPFG’s allocation is all about maximizing returns while — and you won’t believe this — maintaining manageable risk levels.

According to Norges Bank (my emphasis added):
​

‘The fund has a small stake in about 9,000 companies worldwide, including the likes of Apple, Nestlé, Microsoft and Samsung. On average, the fund holds 1.5 percent of all of the world’s listed companies.’

With 2.33 percent of European stocks in its portfolio, the Oil Fund is the largest stock owner in Europe. It participates in thousands of shareholder meetings and proposals every year.

Building wealth by beating benchmarks

The chart below shows you how the Oil Fund’s value has grown over the past three decades.

$23 billion to $1.6 trillion in 26 years

The GPFG‘s growth since 1998

So that’s the value, but what about the performance?

Since its inception in 1996, the GPFG has averaged annual return of about 6%.

Given the fund’s conservative investment strategy aimed at long-term stability and growth, this is a solid, albeit not spectacular, return.

The fund’s returns can vary significantly from year to year due to market fluctuations.

For example, in 2021, the GPFG achieved a return of 14.5%, driven by strong equity markets. However, in years of economic downturn or market stress, returns can be negative, such as during the 2008 financial crisis.

Last year, the Oil Fund logged a mega 16.1% return and $213 billion in profit.

​Source​

Generally, the fund aims to outperform its benchmark indices. The returns are compared against a custom benchmark based on global equity and bond indices. Historically, the fund has often managed to exceed these benchmarks, adding value through active management and strategic asset allocation.

But it’s not just the fund’s size or returns that make it remarkable.

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The Oil Fund also seeks to build wealth for Norway by investing only in ethical, socially responsible and sustainable assets.

The fund’s ethical guidelines mean it cannot invest money in companies that directly or indirectly contribute to killing, torture, deprivation of freedom or other violations of human rights in conflict situations or wars.

Here’s a small sample of investments excluded by the Oil Fund, and the reasons for doing so:

​Full list here​

You won’t find companies that produce tobacco, manufacture nuclear arms, or contribute to severe environmental damage or humans rights abuses in the fund’s holding list.

So that’s a quick primer for you on the largest sovereign wealth fund on the planet.

The Norwegian Ministry of Finance forecast that a worst-case scenario for the fund value in 2030 was $455 billion.

Best case? $3.3 trillion.

Oh, and one more thing.

The Oil Fund is perhaps the most transparent such organization in the world — you can tune into In Good Company, their podcast, in which Norges Bank CEO Nicolai Tengen interviews CEOs of the companies the fund has invested in.

Quote of the week

‘The fund’s role is to ensure that our national wealth lasts for as long as possible. Its investments have an extremely long-term perspective, enabling it to cope with big swings in value in the short term. Our goal as manager of the fund on behalf of the Norwegian people is to generate the highest possible return with only moderate risk so that the fund grows and endures.’

— Norges Bank Investment Management

That’s it for this week’s The Benchmark email.

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All information contained in The Benchmark and on navexa.io is for education and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional financial or tax advice. The Benchmark and any contributors to The Benchmark are not financial professionals, and are not aware of your personal financial circumstances.

July 1, 2024

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ChatGPT = tip of the iceberg

Dear Reader,

Artificial intelligence has exploded into the mainstream consciousness in the past couple of years.

AI is changing pretty much every aspect of the world we live in. How we produce and consume media, how we do business, receive healthcare, you name it — it’s changing faster than ever.

So it comes as no surprise that AI is changing the investing world, too.

At a basic, individual level, you can now feed a company’s financials into an AI tool and get it to read and analzye everything for you in seconds — like having your own Warren Buffett poring through numbers so you don’t have to.

But the stock market’s relationship with tech goes back way further than the current AI acceleration.

Dawn of the algos

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Algorithmic — or ‘algo’ — trading began back in the early 1970s.

Financial institutions began experimenting with primitive automated trading systems that executed trades based on predetermined criteria, such as price movements or volume indicators, with limited computing power.

In the 1980s, stock exchanges went electronic, massively increasing the amount, and speed, of market data and execution capability. Trading algorithms evolved, too.

Broker Thomas Peterffy programmed a PC with a stock data feed to search for options relative to fair value — pioneering options trading in the process. Peterffy went on to found Interactive Brokers — one of the largest electronic trading platforms in the world.

The 1990s brought Direct Market Access (DMA) and electronic communication networks (ECNs). DMA enabled traders to interact directly with exchange order books, bypassing traditional brokerage channels and reducing execution times. ECNs provided electronic platforms for matching buy and sell orders, fostering competition and driving down transaction costs.

$1 trillion in 36 minutes

In 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission relaxed regulations on alternative trading systems. This paved the way for a boom in computerized high-frequency trading.

In 2010, an algorithmic trading program went haywire, triggering a 36-minute ‘flash crash’ that wiped about a trillion dollars off the major U.S. markets before they quickly recovered.

The 2010 ‘flash crash’

In the early 2000s, algorithmic trading grew further, fuelled by advancements in computing technology and quantitative finance.

Hedge funds and proprietary trading firms led the charge, leveraging complex algorithms to exploit market inefficiencies and generate alpha.

The growing prevalence of algorithmic trading also raised concerns about market stability and fairness. Critics argued that HFT algorithms could exacerbate market volatility and contribute to flash crashes, prompting regulators to introduce stricter oversight and regulatory measures.

The algorithmic trading market is today valued at $14.42 billion USD.

That’s projected to explode about $10 billion higher to $23.74 billion in the next five years.

So while the AI boom has only captivated mainstream consumer attention as of late 2022, the investing world has been hard at work on using machines to interpret data for profit for more than half a century.

AI for investors, according to BlackRock

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The current AI acceleration is making automation accessible to many more people, across many more areas of society. Trading algorithms powered by AI can enhance trading accuracy and efficiency, while also suggesting strategies based on unique goals and trading styles for improved performance.

But now it’s about more than just trading. ChatGPT’s explosion (which is really the large language model explosion) has drastically changed investment research, strategy and portfolio management.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager (with $10 trillion FUM) is big into AI, and has been for a long time.
​

For decades, we’ve been applying natural language processing (“NLP”) techniques across a wide range of text sources including broker analyst reports, corporate earnings calls, regulatory filings, and online news articles. When analyzed at scale, each individual insight can be combined into an aggregate view that helps inform our return forecasts. The more effectively we’re able to extract and understand these insights, the more of an investment edge they may be able to provide.

(From BlackRock’s How AI is transforming investing.)

What this means is that BlackRock uses artificial intelligence to ‘listen’ to earnings calls, and predict how the market will react to them.

In other words, predicting the future to profit from it.

According to them, they have the most accurate model for doing so:

BlackRock’s earnings call AI destroying ChatGPT

The ChatGPT hype is the tip of the iceberg.

The rise of the machines in investing and trading began long ago.

But now it’s hitting full stride and everyone from the bedroom value investor to the biggest asset manager on the planet is harnessing it.

To summarize?

Well, let’s ask AI, shall we?

Here’s what ChatGPT told me about how AI changes the game for investors:

Beyond mere data analysis, AI excels in predictive analytics, leveraging historical data to forecast market trends with remarkable accuracy. This predictive prowess enables investors to discern opportunities and anticipate risks, optimizing investment strategies accordingly.

AI’s utility extends to portfolio management, where it orchestrates optimized investment portfolios, dynamically adjusting to market dynamics while balancing risk and return. This systematic approach ensures portfolios remain aligned with investors’ objectives amidst evolving market conditions.

AI represents a paradigm shift in investment methodologies, offering unparalleled analytical capabilities and strategic insights. As stewards of capital, let us embrace this technological frontier with vigilance and adaptability, leveraging AI to enhance investment outcomes responsibly.

Quote of the week

‘AI will be the most transformative technology of the 21st century. It will affect every industry and aspect of our lives.’

— Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA

That’s it for this week’s The Benchmark email.

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