Daily Archives: September 10, 2021

An exchange-traded fund with holdings decided by artificial intelligence loaded up on shares of Amazon, Facebook, and Nvidia this month, as the robot trader turned bullish on technology and U.S. retailand doubted some Covid-19 pandemic trend stocks.

In a departure from recent months, the robot trader went all-in with its new picks, which now represent the five largest holdings in the fund. Amazon has a portfolio weighting of 7.98%, followed close behind by Facebook with 7.91%. Nvidia makes up 6.06% of the fund with Walmart and Home Depot at 4.83% and 4.24%, respectively.

The remaining stocks in the funds top 10, making up between 3.96% and 1.9% of AMOM, are software groups Adobe (ADBE) and Intuit (INTU), semiconductor companies Texas Instruments (TXM) and Lam Research (LRCX), and beauty products powerhouse Este Lauder (EL).

Facebook and Nvidias respective pushes into the metaverse make them attractive investments, said Francis Geeseok Oh, a managing director at Qraft and the head of its Asia-Pacific business.

The metaverse is a buzzword referring to virtual environments in which users can immerse themselveswhether that be to interact and work with others, consume content, or more. As Barrons wrote last month, its like being inside the internet, versus just connecting to it.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the companys future is in the metaverseand it recently rolled out virtual workspaces in Facebook Workrooms. Nvidia, similarly, has developed what it calls the Omniversea real-time, 3-D computer simulation and collaboration platform with industrial applications such as simulating factories.

Also read:The Metaverse Goes Beyond Facebook. Watch These Stocks.

As for Amazon, AMOMs recent buy only brings the tech giant back into the fold after a hiatus. AMOM removed Amazon last month before it missed Q2 earnings expectations, Oh noted, saying that its addition in September represents the advantages of an active strategy.

Oh also said that the robot traders picksnamely, Walmart and Home Depotemphasize a retail boom in the U.S. The latest retail sales data, from July, showed that sales have slowed, but there remains a convincing case for investors to remain optimistic about American consumers.

The additions in September came as the artificial intelligence behind AMOM removed chip maker AMD (AMD), social media group Snap (SNAP), video communications company Zoom (ZM), digital scanning and orthodontics specialist Align (ALGN), and connected television maker Roku (ROKU). AMD, Snap, Zoom, and Align previously made up AMOMs top-four holdings.

Oh noted that the AIs decision to remove AMD was likely a profit-taking trade. The stock is up almost 17% so far this year.

But its a different story for Zoom and Roku, Oh said, highlighting that the robot trader turned its back on two stocks that represent the pandemic tradebusinesses that have benefited from trends accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This may be a response to the Delta [coronavirus] variant and the increasing belief amongst many analysts that it has reached its peak, Oh said.

Plus:Jeff Bezos Isnt the Worlds Richest Person Anymore. Meet the Man Who Beat Him.

AMOM has been listed in New York since May 2019, and has delivered total returns of 15.5% so far in 2021 and 32% in the past yearoutpacing its benchmark, the S&P 500 Momentum index, which has climbed a comparable 30% in the past year.

AMOM is an actively managed portfolio driven by artificial intelligence, tracking 50 large-cap U.S. stocks and reweighting its holdings each month. It is based on a momentum strategy, with the AI behind its stock picks capitalizing on the movements of existing market trends to inform the decision to add, remove, or reweight holdings. The artificial intelligence scans the market and uses its predictive power to analyze a wide set of patterns that show stock-market momentum.

The fund is a product of Qraft, a Seoul, South Korea-based fintech group leveraging AI across its investment products, which include three other AI-picked versions of major indexes: a U.S. large cap index ( QRFT ); a U.S. large cap dividend index ( HDIV ); and a U.S. value index ( NVQ ).

The entrance of AI-run funds onto Wall Street promised a new high-tech future for investing, though it hasnt quite lived up to the hype yet. Theoretically, researchers have shown that AI investing strategies can beat the market by up to 40% on an annualized basis, when tested against historical data.

But Vasant Dhar, a professor at New York Universitys Stern School of Business and the founder of machine-learning-based hedge fund SCT Capital Management, argued on MarketWatch in June 2020 that AI-run funds wont crack the code of the stock market.

Advocating caution, Dhar said that it was difficult for funds underpinned by machine learning to maintain a sustainable edge over markets, which have a nonstationary and adversarial nature. He advised investors considering an AI system to ask tough questions, including how likely it is that the AIs edge will persist into the future, and what the inherent uncertainties and range of performance outcomes for the fund are.

Write to Jack Denton at jack.denton@dowjones.com

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This Robot Trader Turned Bullish on Amazon, Facebook, and Nvidia. What It Sold. - Barron's

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, one of the top Republicans focused on holding Big Tech companies accountable, is working with Democrats on an antitrust bill that would significantly boost supporters of bipartisan antitrust legislation in Congress.

Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is in talks to co-sponsor antitrust legislation with Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the chairwoman of the committee in charge of regulating tech giants such as Facebook and Google.

The legislation would complement similar bipartisan anti-Big Tech legislation, which is expected to be brought to the House floor in the coming months.

The House legislation, which passed the House Judiciary Committee in June, included six sweeping antitrust bills aimed at reining in tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. It marked Washingtons most significant and serious attempt to reshape the technology industry.

APPLE APPS, GOOGLE SEARCH, AND AMAZON BASICS FACE DRASTIC CHANGES FROM BIPARTISAN HOUSE ANTITRUST BILL

"Senator Grassley has been engaged with Senator Klobuchar on a possible companion bill to one of the House bills," George Hartmann, a spokesman for Grassley, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "Senator Grassley is only working on one of the bills and has not agreed to cosponsor a bill at this point."

Grassley and Klobuchar have worked together on relevant antitrust legislation in the past, including a bill that passed the Senate in June providing antitrust enforcers, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, additional resources when it comes to evaluating mergers.

Hartmann said strengthening antitrust laws and reducing anti-competitive practices in the business world, particularly among tech companies, has long been a priority for Grassley.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is also interested in working on such legislation and is involved in talks with Klobuchar and Grassley, a spokesman for Cotton said. Other Republican senators are also said to be in negotiations to support a Senate antitrust bill, including Josh Hawley of Missouri, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Susan Collins of Maine, Politico reported.

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Similar to the House antitrust bills, bipartisan Senate legislation could receive opposition from members of both parties due to concerns it could harm innovation and result in unintended consequences to consumers.

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On the House side, many Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan of Ohio, oppose the antitrust package in their chamber, arguing they fail to address censorship of conservatives online.

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Tags: News, Policy, Economy, Big Tech, Chuck Grassley, Amy Klobuchar, Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, Senate Judiciary Committee, Antitrust

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Original Location: Top Republican senator in talks with Democrats on anti-Big Tech antitrust bill

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Top Republican senator in talks with Democrats on anti-Big Tech antitrust bill - Yahoo News

Colin Angle, the CEO and founder of iRobot, believes that tech giants have botched the smart home.

Systems like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings all boast thousands of device integrations, but getting those disparate parts to work well in concert can be a tremendous pain. Instead of trying to connect with everything, Angle believes the way forward is to start over and think smaller.

Unlike the Googles, Amazons, and SmartThings of the world, I believe in a walled garden, Angle says. I believe the experience trumps universality.

iRobot, best known for its Roomba robot vacuums, is now in the middle of trying to fulfill that vision. The companys iRobot Genius software has just added a bunch of new features to help its vacuums better understand whats happening in the home, and its releasing a new high-end Roomba that can steer around power cords and pet waste.

Object-Detection Cords Alert [Photo: iRobot]While those features exist primarily to clean your floors right now, Angle says iRobots eventual goal is hook the companys home awareness into other smart home products, including ones that arent strictly related to vacuuming or mopping. To do that, iRobot will look to build close partnerships with other device makers instead of inviting everyone into its ecosystem. This walled-off approach may be by necessityiRobot is a relatively small company after allbut its ability to map out homes and send robots into every corner could give it an advantage that other smaller smart home brands might lack.

I think we need to have closer partnerships, tighter integrations, and more automation in how your home is managed, configured, and maintained to create an overall experience that the average user can take full advantage of, he says.

iRobots bigger smart home plans started taking shape about a year ago, when it released the first version of its Genius software as a free upgrade for its existing iRobot app. That update allowed Roombas to identify areas that need more frequent cleaning, recommend cleaning schedules based on user behavior, and flag obstacles that users might want to permanently avoid in the future.

Clean While Im Away [Photo: iRobot]The new iRobot Genius software extends those ideas a bit further. New users will see suggested room names after their robot comes up with a floor plan, so they can more easily ask nearby Alexa or Google Assistant speakers to start cleaning specific rooms. iRobot is also adding estimated cleaning times, a geofence feature to help Roombas clean when no ones home, and the ability to move quietly between parts of the house for spot cleaning.

The Roomba j7+ vacuum, meanwhile, can automatically avoid pet wasteiRobot says itll replace any vacuum that fails to do soand can send pictures back to the user for any obstacles it might want to permanently avoid in the future.

Personalized Suggestions, Pet Shedding Season [Photo: iRobot]In the near term, this is all part of iRobots plan to differentiate through software as robot vacuum hardware becomes increasingly commoditized. (Competitors such as Neato, Eufy, and Ecovacs all offer robots with advanced features such as room mapping, waste disposal, and basic obstacle detection.)

The robot intelligence system you choose starts to feel a lot like the personal computer operating system that you choose, Angle says, alluding to how you might pick between Mac or Windows before figuring out which laptop to buy.

The bigger picture is still murky, but Angle says a lot of what iRobot is doing now will ultimately have applications beyond just cleaning floors. Angle floats of the idea of having a Roomba double as a roving security camera, and suggests that it could work in tandem with air purifiers to clean more or less often based on environmental conditions. It might even be able to adjust room lighting when it knows that no ones around. Angle wont give a timeline for these kinds of features, but says iRobot will start testing them in beta before rolling them out more broadly.

The scope of Genius is far larger than simply making your Roomba work better, Angle says.

Roomba j7 with Google Assistant [Photo: iRobot]Angle argues that iRobot is better equipped to automate those tasks than other smart home ecosystems, simply because its robots are set up to map out your entire home and understand your schedule. In other words, it will understand context in ways that other ecosystems often dont.

What we can bring to the table is knowing where everything is, he says. Because youre living with us in a partnership, we probably have a pretty good idea about how you like your house to run.

These could easily turn out to be empty promises, but the underlying concept is refreshing compared to the alternative. For several years now, systems like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple HomeKit have been connecting all kinds of devices with little regard for the quality of those integrations. The result has been a mishmash of competing standards and protocols, along with constant headaches when things fail to work as advertised.

Only now are the tech giants starting to embrace true interoperability, rallying the industry behind a common protocol for smart home devices. But whether any of that will elevate the smart home beyond the purview of geeks with time to kill remains uncertain. Perhaps Angle is right to insist on a reboot.

I would love an all for one and one for all smart home experience, except its so hard, he says. Id settle for a great experience first, then grow whos allowed in, as a radical new approach.

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Move over, Alexa: A Roomba could soon be the brain behind your smart home - Fast Company

A scalding attack on Indian technology giant Infosys by a ruling dispensation-backed mouthpiece has not gone out well with the leading technology companies in the country with many fearing consequences if not being able to align with the Union government wishes.

Over the weekend, a magazine closely associated with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) launched an attack on Indian tech giant Infosys for failing to resolve glitches in the income tax website it manages.

The magazine went far to call Infosys anti-national for letting down the tax system. Just last month, the finance ministry summoned Infosys CEO over the tech issues and in an unusual step took to Twitter to announce the summoning, heightening a media frenzy around a company that has been the face of Indias ITs prowess.

Last month the commerce minister also publicly lashed out at the $106 billion Tata Group for criticizing proposed stringent rules for e-commerce and said local companies should not only think about profits. In India, safeguarding domestic businesses has been Modis priority as close nationalistic groups criticise foreign businesses like Amazon.

The latest events have raised concerns among business leaders about whether Modi is now taking a hardline approach towards domestic giants as well. RC Bhargava, chairman of Maruti Suzuki, while defending Infosys, said it had played a key role in building Indias software reputation globally.

It needs to explain the glitches, but it doesnt mean there is a conspiracy to damage the country, Bhargava said.

The latest Infosys controversy is related to the governments new income tax filing website launched on June 7. But there were many glitches that Infosys could not fix, despite assurances. When the Infosys CEO was summoned in August, the finance minister conveyed deep disappointment and concerns, giving the company until September 15 to fix things.

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Attack on Infosys worry top tech giants of consequences if not aligned with govt wishes - Tech Observer

Chinese mogul Jack Ma had the party set up.

Everything was in order so that the Ant Group (Alibabas financial arm) will begin in November 2020 its first sale of shares on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets for a value of US$34.400 millones, in what would be the largest IPO in history.

But at the last minute, Chinese financial regulators suspended the operation over competition concerns in the market.

That is, they cut off the power, turned off the music, and sent the guests home.

The result was that the authorities demanded a restructuring of Chinas largest digital commerce and finance conglomerate, and Jack Ma, which used to be the symbol of the countrys entrepreneurial success, was out of the public eye for several months.

The unexpected decision caused a great international impact. But what probably few imagined at the time is that it was only the beginning of a government offensive for mark the limits to the tech giants.

Recently the president Xi Jinping He defended his campaign to impose greater control over firms in the technology sector at a meeting of the Steering Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, according to the official press.

Its goal, argued the Chinese leader, is to prevent irrational capital expansion and tackle wild growth of technology companies.

He also issued a clear warning: he will redouble his scrutiny on these companies.

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Disclaimer: This article is generated from the feed and not edited by our team.

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What is the Chinese government looking for with the offensive against the countrys tech giants - Market Research Telecast

When opportunity came knocking in 2009, and it was Steve Jobs at the door, Alina Vandenberghe's career took off.

At the time, Vandenberghe was a 25-year-old software developer, working as an intern on the mobile product team at global news agency Thomson Reuters. Today, the native of Bucharest, Romania, is the co-founder and chief experience officer of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Chili Piper, a meeting scheduler for corporate clients and their sales teams. Founded in 2016, Chili Piper brings in roughly $10 million in annual recurring revenue from 30,000 different clients, including names like Spotify, Airbnb and Shopify.

The 143-employee start-up has pulled in $54 million in funding to date, from investors like Flashpoint Venture Capital and Gradient Ventures, Google's AI investment arm. Vandenberghe says Chili Piper is on track to hit $20 million in annual revenue by the end of 2021.

Plenty of start-up founders credit Jobs with inspiring them to take the entrepreneurial leap. Vandenberghe is one of the precious few who can directly attribute her company's ethos to a personal interaction with the late Apple co-founder: All those years ago, Jobs selected a Thomson Reuters app she helped build for the launch of Apple's first iPad.

Any young software developer would have taken that vote of confidence and run with it. But for Vandenberghe, a young woman in tech who grew up under a Communist regime, working with Jobs meant something particularly special. It was the exact type of mentorship she needed to find her competitive edge.

Take the complex, and make it simple. That was the feedback Jobs repeatedly gave Vandenberghe and her team over email and conference calls as they worked on developing the Thomson Reuters app. The message was decidedly on-brand for the Apple co-founder, whose successful designs often relied on prioritizing ease of user experience.

"Simple can be harder than complex," Jobs told Business Week back in 1998. "You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

The advice stuck with Vandenberghe, who struggled to convey complex concepts for years after arriving in New York City in 2007. Entrepreneurship wasn't new to her: In Bucharest, at the end of the communist party's reign in Romania, Vandenberghe's early-age side hustles ranged from tutoring and selling lipstick to managing her neighbor's water and electricity invoices.

But in the United States, her broken English and heavy accent made it difficult for her to effectively communicate. "When I arrived, I felt like everyone's English was 100 times superior to mine," Vandenberghe says. "It got better, but at the beginning I was struggling a lot with others and sometimes I would barely talk."

After two years of working as an independent consultant for mobile software projects and sending out "millions of job applications" she finally landed the Thomson Reuters internship. A few months in, her manager approached her and a colleague with a special assignment: Build an app for a small rectangular tablet encased in a metal frame and chained to the desk in a windowless basement room below Times Square in New York City.

The task required signing a non-disclosure agreement, which expired once the iPad was publicly announced. "[I] didn't say anything to anyone, including my own manager," says Vandenberghe. The feedback from Jobs to keep simplifying the user experience was constant. "Create something that will 'wow' them," she recalls Jobs saying.

Alina Vandenberghe in New York City's Times Square, standing below an ad for the Thomas Reuters iPad app she designed.

Source: Alina Vandenberghe

After Vandenberghe and her partner finished the app, she was promoted from intern to mobile product manager. After Jobs' livestream keynote address announcing the tablet in January 2010, Vandenberghe was promoted again to director of mobile. A few days after the announcement, she left her Times Square office and looked up to see a giant ad for the app on a billboard.

"I was completely struck by it," she says. "[I] couldn't even imagine it was possible."

A decade later, when Vandenberghe finally decided to launch her own company, she remembered Jobs' advice.

Chili Piper's platform was designed to be simple one-click, intuitive and visually appealing. The company's mission is also based on the concept of simplicity, Vandenberghe says: helping sales teams by easing the complicated back-and-forth of scheduling meetings. "The reason we are successful is because we decided to take the simple consumer experience and apply it to enterprise," she says. "Enterprise software tends to be clunkier and difficult to use."

The concept might seem silly or, perhaps, overly simplistic but investors point to the start-up's revenue figures as proof that Vandenberghe and her co-founder, her husband Nicolas, were onto something from the beginning.

"When we invested [in 2019], they already had north of $1 million of revenue," says Flashpoint founder and general partner Michael Szalontay. "And you know, basically no one in the U.S. was interested in giving them money."

Today, marketing tech attracts much more attention, especially in the remote-work era of virtual meetings and deals. Market research firm Gartner estimates the software side of the industry to be worth roughly $17.9 billion, while Chili Piper's internal research pegs the broader marketing tech industry at $56.5 billion.

One competitor, Atlanta-based start-up Calendly, reached a $3 billion valuation in January following a $350 million fundraise. Tech giants like Google and Apple have also entered the arena during the Covid-19 pandemic by building meeting scheduling services into Google Workspace and iWork, respectively.

"I'm sure [Google and Apple] will be able to build a great product," says Szalontay. "But hopefully, we can use our first-mover advantage and get far enough that we continue to bring instant value."

Vandenberghe downplays the competition from Google, a Chili Piper investor, saying their respective products are built to serve different needs. But the pressure of competing with Apple is real, especially since she credits Chili Piper's success to her time spent working with Jobs and the iPad team. As a first-generation immigrant and female engineer, she says, self-doubt constantly creeps in especially when she thinks about the legacies of her new competitors.

Whenever that happens, she recalls those early days with Jobs. "I am always reminding myself to have courage," she says. "And to continue down the crazy path I'm on."

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Steve Jobs helped launch her career. Now, her start-up brings in millions annually - CNBC