Thursday, May 26, 2022
Wall Street analysts would have you believe that the global supply chain problems will be over with soon. Spoiler alert: they will not. We have many months before the supply chain issues abate. The demand for physical goods that began during the pandemic only highlighted the infrastructure shortcomings that could take years to fix. Investors […]
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has awakened other countries in Europe, which now realize they must recalibrate their security strategies and increase defense spending. Even Germany, despite the pacifist strategy it has followed since the end of World War II, said it would sharply increase its spending on defense to more than 2% of its […]
For well over 20 years, shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) have been on a long journey to nowhere, with the pharmaceutical company lagging well behind its peers. That’s why activist investor Elliott Management has been pushing the company to come up with a plan to correct years of stock price underperformance and operational drift. The […]
Most of you are surely aware of the headlines blaring that retail gasoline prices in the United States rose again and hit another all-time record, surpassing one set in March. On May 10, the average cost of a retail gallon of gasoline hit $4.374, according to the American Automobile Association, surpassing the former record of […]
Some of the best investments come from digging a little deeper beyond the headlines. For example, we have all heard by now about Europe’s woes regarding natural gas and its dependency on Russian gas supplies. But do you know what company is the second-biggest provider of natural gas to Europe, behind only Russia’s Gazprom? It […]
On May 4, the European Union proposed a phased-in ban on imports of all Russian oil. The ban will cover all Russian oil, seaborne and pipeline, crude and refined. The goal is to phase out Russian oil supplies in an “orderly fashion” within six months and refined products by the end of the year. The […]
In early March, I told you how Sony (SONY) has had one ambition for literally decades: to become the world’s most fully integrated entertainment company. Over the years, Sony has put together an outstanding array of assets: world-class music catalogs (Sony Music), Hollywood film and television studios, plus PlayStation, the leading video game hardware. But […]
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore the importance of many sectors, especially in the commodities space. But it has also reinforced the importance of one tech sector in particular: cybersecurity. In early April, news broke that Russian hackers had launched a cyberattack on the Ukrainian power grid, along with parallel attempts […]
Despite the view from Wall Street analysts and their rose-colored glasses, the woes of the semiconductor industry continue. Last month, a warning came from Peter Wennick, CEO of ASML Holding (ASML), a manufacturer of chip-making equipment. In an interview with the Financial Times, Wennick said: “Next year and the year after, there will be shortages. […]
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resultant sanctions against Russia are creating many profitable opportunities for investors. However, many of these opportunities have been passing by unnoticed because they occur in a sector that Wall Street routinely ignores: commodities. A major piece of news on March 21 has led to one of these under-the-radar opportunities: […]
