Daily Archives: February 26, 2022

Big Tech disruptors have their eyes on healthcare but have reported positive financial results driven by their core business models in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Google

An increase in digital advertising on Google's searches, video and internet platforms helped push sales 27 percent higher year over year, and its cloud sales increased 45 percent to $5.54 billion in the period. The company logged sales of $72.23 billion and profit of $19.91 billion from October to December 2021.

Apple

In its fourth quarter, Apple saw a revenue record of $83.4 billion, up 29 percent year over year. Apple CFO Luca Maestri said in the news release that "sales performance, unmatched customer loyalty, and strength of our ecosystem" helped push the company to record numbers. While sales were up, the company underperformed according to Wall Street's expectations because of supply chain constraints.

Amazon

Amazon saw a 9 percent increase in sales to $137.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $125.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020. This sales increase was the first single-digit growth figure since 2001. Amazon Web Services announced major partnerships with companies like Best Buy, Meta and Pfizer, helping to drive profit. Net income also increased to $14.3 billion in the fourth quarter.

Excerpt from:

How Google, Apple and Amazon fared in Q4 - Becker's Hospital Review

Im entering year two of my second startup, this time as CEO, and Ive been thinking a lot about best practices for starting and building a company. I spent nearly a decade working at Google and more than three years at Alphabets X, the moonshot factory. There I cofounded Xs first cybersecurity startup, Chronicle, before venturing out and founding Stairwell. Along the way, I learned some important management lessons and philosophies that continue to help me.

Every CEO talks about having a strong culture and values; but to be impactful, they should be your guiding principles. A light that shows the direction when one isnt clear. When I joined X, it reminded me of what Google was like when I joined in 2006. X had a sense of empowerment, a sense that its possible to actually change the world. When I launched Stairwell, it was with that same sense of purpose and optimism. We did so by defining our core values on day one, before we wrote a single line of code.

These values became the guardrails of our best selves. One of the most important values we have is diversity of perspectives. You need to make sure you have diversity of voice, opinions, and talents to foster innovation and growth. This is an important lesson I learned at X and Chronicle, where we hired a bunch of people from Google. For some of them, there wasnt a clear enough distinction about what was different from their previous job and culture and the new one we were building. The identity and cultural development that comes from being part of something new needs to be made real. Values need to be reflected in all aspects of your company.

I learned about the power of being bold while working at X and launching Chronicle into orbit. From drone deliveries and internet balloons to wearable devices and self-driving cars, the DNA of X projects is to go bold. The philosophy behind X was refined by Astro Teller, the Captain of Moonshots, who came up with a quirky metaphor dubbed #MonkeyFirst to explain why you should tackle the hard aspects of a project before investing resources on the easiest stuff. Specifically, if your goal is to teach a monkey to read Shakespeare on a pedestal, teach the monkey to read first before building the pedestal. This keeps you from wasting time if it turns out you cant pull off the biggest part of the challenge.

I applied that mindset here at Stairwell, to how we tackle the problem of cyber attacks for customers. Weve built a product that has two components it integrates both external malware feeds and internal security data. It would have been easiest to focus first on one, but the magic is in both components, so we dove in and built them simultaneously. And well continue to apply the principle of MonkeyFirst to every new component.

During my time at Google, I never met a salesperson because functions were so siloed. This changed when I launched Chronicle, which started inside the strong experimental and collaborative culture at X. It was common for product and sales teams to meet, and this created a more direct feature feedback loop between customers and engineers. At Stairwell, we make that collaboration even stronger. My executive team and engineers are in frequent contact with sales, who are in close contact with customers. They pass requests directly to engineers without going through internal workflow systems. Engineers also interact with customers. We have dedicated Slack channels for each customer where engineers and sales team discuss product features and share threat information. We even integrate user feedback management directly into our platform in a way that is transparent to all users and allows them to upvote other users feature requests.

This helps our product team better understand the target market and customer expectations. For example, the platform was initially built to alert customers to advanced persistent threats (APTs) that had evaded antivirus; but after getting customer feedback through these channels, we decided to expand the capabilities. Beyond detecting evasive APT threats, we now provide customers with context about the alerts theyre triaging from other products, so customers can easily determine whether a file is malicious or not and catch false negatives.

I advise business leaders to focus on problems over solutions. Its easy to get passionate about cool technology, but theres got to be something to fix first. Falling in love with a problem brings opportunity, while falling in love with a solution brings burden. The key is to keep a fresh mindset and look at different ways for solving problems. Its common for engineers who have spent many months coding a feature/functionmaybe engineering a particularly tidy and cool designto get territorial over the code when someone else tries to change it. They are focused on their part of the solution at the expense of alternative ways that may help the larger team thrive even more. At Stairwell, we aim to keep our sights set on how we can best solve our customers problems.

If youre relying on positional or hierarchical authority to get things done, youre not building a team or a culture in which people feel empowered to try new things. For me, one of the most important things for any culture is that childlike sense of wonder. At Google there was a 20% Rule, which allowed employees to spend time on self-initiated projects that werent expected to see a near-term financial impact for the company. While it may not be feasible for startup employees to tinker on their own projects during work hours, I try to bring that spirit of innovation to Stairwell. We encourage employees to try new things, even if they arent detailed in the product plan. For example, our lead designer recently surprised me with a new UI layout that was an exploratory side project. He had received support from a solutions engineer and a product manager, and when they showed it to me, it blew my mind. It took courage and a level of psychological safety to tinker like that and not feel beholden to what was established. Allowing employees to try something different can improve both the product and company morale.

My experience working at Google, X, and Chronicle was rich with leadership lessons, both ideas that I want to mirror and those that help me choose a different path. Regardless of where I work, Ive found that having an open mind and being flexible help projects and products succeed.

Mike Wiacek is the founder of security company Stairwell. He honed his threat-hunting skills at the NSA and the Department of Defense, created an intelligence team at Google, and cofounded Chronicle, which was spun out of Alphabets X, the moonshot factory.

Originally posted here:

Leadership lessons from Google and Alphabet's X - Fast Company

Google Ads has rolled out Enhanced Conversions for Leads. Spotted as a beta test earlier this month, this option offers an alternative to the existing Google Click ID-based offline conversion tracking method.

Why we care. Since this can be configured from your Google Ads account (instead of your CRM), it may be easier to adopt, enabling more advertisers to track their offline conversions. Using that data, Googles systems may be able to make better auction decisions, which could mean more efficient campaigns and better conversions.

For those using the existing Google Click ID-based upload method, this option is still supported.

How it works. When a potential customer fills out a lead form on your site, youll likely receive first-party data including their email address, name, home address and/or phone number. That data can be captured in your conversion tracking tags, hashed and then sent to Google.

When a lead converts, you upload your hashed lead information and Google matches that information to the ad that drove the lead, providing the platform with a more complete picture of the customers full journey.

The issue with the existing offline conversion tracking method. Offline conversion tracking can help Google get a better idea of the value of different leads, which can help it prioritize more valuable leads via the Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy, for example. Despite this potential advantage, offline conversion tracking has not been widely adopted due to the difficulty of implementing it.

Advertisers are used to being able to control most elements of their campaigns through self-service tools, Frederick Vallaeys, co-founder and CEO at Optmyzr said, adding, But those same marketers usually dont control the CRM systems where this valuable offline conversion data lives inside their organization. This dependency on other teams and sometimes even engineering significantly reduces the adoption of OCI [offline conversion tracking].

Since Enhanced Conversions with Leads uses information about your leads that youve already captured (i.e., email addresses), it doesnt require you to modify your CRM systems, making this a more convenient solution for many advertisers.

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms.

Set up methods. Enhanced Conversions for Leads can be configured via Google Tag Manager so long as you have Google Ads conversion tracking set up and auto-tagging is enabled.

Alternatively, it can also be configured using the global site tag directly on your page if you already have conversion tracking implemented this way.

Link:

Google makes offline conversion tracking easier with Enhanced Conversions for Leads - Search Engine Land

Emma Woollacott23 February 2022 at 11:52 UTC Updated: 23 February 2022 at 11:57 UTC

This could have destroyed the Google Payment system flow, security researcher tells The Daily Swig

A flaw in Google Groups has netted a security researcher $3,133 after he discovered that the unsubscribe feature could be abused to remove members without their consent.

More than 20 years old, Google Groups allows people to set up discussion groups with a common mail ID for members. Using this service, members of the group can send a single email that will then be posted in the group chat.

Members can automatically unsubscribe to the group by sending an email to, for example, test_groups_one+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

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However, Sriram Kesavan, founder and director of security at India-based TG Cyberlabs, discovered that it was possible to trick the system into removing Google Groups members at will, without their knowledge.

His technique was to email the group and use the reply-to feature, common to most mailing services, so that any reply would be sent to the unsubscribe email address and the member automatically removed.

Using auto-forwarding allowed Kesavan to make the group removal process invisible to the user concerned.

Kesavan says he was able to use the technique to remove users from a Google Group he set up within his own company and that Google itself uses the service as a Google Payment tracking system.

Read more of the latest hacking news from around the world

I could have literally removed Google employees on several official groups, even if I have no access to it, he tells The Daily Swig.

This could have literally destroyed the Google Payment system flow, and could have caused delays on their internal payments.

When Kesavan reported the issue to Google, it was at first rejected as intended behaviour. With permission, he then submitted a full write-up, which won him the a $3,133.70 reward.

Initially the person who was attending to my report was not given sufficient information from my side to decide and finalize it as a valid security issue, he says.

Later, when I decided to send a write-up which had all the information, they realized the impact of this issue and the team decided to patch this ASAP, so a quick and simple patch was applied in order to prevent users from exploiting it.

A Google spokesperson said the company was unable to comment.

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Google Groups unsubscribe feature abused to remove members without consent - The Daily Swig

Google says a fix is on the way for Pixel 6 owners who are dealing with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity issues after installing a security patch earlier this month, as reported by 9to5Google. In response to a user on Reddit, Google acknowledges the problem and says its bundling a fix in a March software update.

After some investigation, we identified the root cause and determined that it impacts a very small number of devices, Google says. Of course, we realize this is a poor experience and immediately developed a software fix that will be available in the next Google Pixel Update, rolling out in March.

Google also says to contact its support team to explore other options in the meantime, but it doesnt provide any details on what exactly that means. As 9to5Google points out, some users have found that installing the Android 12L beta 3 has solved the problem, so that may be the other option Google is referencing here. Google spokesperson Alex Moriconi confirmed the information outlined in the post is accurate in a statement to The Verge.

For some reason, Googles updates just havent been playing all that nicely with its flagship Pixel 6 and 6 Pro devices. Google pulled its first major update for both phones in December after users reported dropped and disconnected calls. Its January update fixed the bug but things broke again upon the release of the most recent patch, which has been causing some devices to randomly toggle off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Read more from the original source:

Google acknowledges Wi-Fi issues in very small number of Pixel 6 phones, fix coming in March - The Verge

Internet users are taking a trip down memory lane seeing what their favorite websites looked like years ago.

TheWayback Machineallows people to step back as far as the 90s, glimpsing at the basic and awful designs once graced by the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon and so many more.

With 654 billion pages saved, nostalgic users can enter the name of just about any web address and see whether its available.

A calendar view will allow you to virtually turn back time, clicking through some the early days of some sites.

Here are some of the best to look at:

Mark Zuckerberg wasnt first to own the facebook.com address.

A company in the US owned it before.

It was only when the social network rebranded from TheFacebook to simply Facebook, that they reached a deal to buy the web address we know today.

Anyone who was a teen around 2007 will remember this basic look.

Googles main search engine hasnt changed a great deal from its early days.

Of course, the logo has been revamped several times since being founded in 1998.

And it is so much more than a search engine now.

Most people dont even bother visiting the main google.com or google.co.uk address now, they just perform searches at the top of their web browser.

Amazon looks completely different in the early noughties.

Were sure the prices were a lot different then compared to now as well

The worlds most popular video-sharing website was founded in 2005.

Realizing its potential, Google snapped it up a year later.

Twitter looked a lot more basic in the noughties too.

It was created in 2006 and didnt have anywhere near as many features as it does today.

Not least of all, tweets were limited to 140 characters until 2017.

Before the iPhone even existed, this is what you would have found on apple.com in 2000.

Oddly, the tech giant has stuck with the top menu bar look, though it has evolved drastically.

Before Netflix even existed in the UK, and before streaming was a thing, Netflix did postal movie and TV rentals.

It still provides this service in the US, but for the most part, the firm is known the world over for being a streaming platform today.

eBay made waves when it launched in the 90s, allowing people to buy and sell their old stuff.

The site was a lot more simple back then.

Hotmail is still going strong today but didnt have a great deal to it in the early days.

Though its still owned by Microsoft, Hotmail came under the MSN banner back then.

In other news, thenaughtiest emoji combinationshave been revealed.

Tinder has revived the classicblind date experiencewith a virtual twist.

And TikTok has announcednew rules, banning users who deadname or misgender others.

This story originally appeared on The Sun and has been reproduced here with permission.

The rest is here:

Mind-blowing internet time machine reveals how awful Facebook, Google and more used to look - New York Post

Theres a bottomless pool of threats facing Android users these days, and as soon as one Android malware operation sinks to the bottom, a new one rises to give users headaches.

Discovered and detailed in areportpublished today by security firm ThreatFabric, the latest of these threats is namedXenomorph.

First spotted this month, the Xenomorph malware is a classic banking trojan that infects Android smartphones, requests access to the Accessibility service, and then uses this overpowered tool to show fake login screens on top of mobile banking applications.

The malware collects this info, along with other device data, and sends it to its owners command and control (C&C) servers.

This data is later used to access bank accounts and steal funds. In case accounts are protected with two-factor authentication, Xenomorph can also intercept SMS message notifications and retrieve the code for the attackers.

ThreatFabric said that based on the malware samples they found so far, Xenomorph could show fake login screens for 56 banks from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Belgium.

In addition, it can also show fake login screens for 12 cryptocurrency mobile wallets and seven email apps.

But while many Android banking trojans today are being spread around using apps offered for download on third-party apps stores or via dedicated websites, Xenomorph is part of a select group of malware strains that have been distributed via the official Google Play Store.

The ThreatFabric team said Xenomorph is being offered as a second-stage payload inside malicious apps that have managed to sneak past Googles Play Store security checks.

These apps typically hide a small malware strain called a dropper that, once it gets past these checks, will download more potent and intrusive malware on a device.

In the attacks it spotted this month, ThreatFabric said it saw Xenomorph being dropped on users devices via a dropper namedGymdrop.

For now, theyve spotted Xenomorph infections only via the Fast Cleaner app, installed on more than 50,000 devices, before it was pulled from the Play Store.

While researchers said the malware still appears to be under development, it is clear that this is a new major threat thats here to stay, and they expect new attacks in the future.

ThreatFabric said it named the malware with the peculiar name ofXenomorphbecause it found clues in its code linking many of its features with an older Android banking trojan known as Alien and decided to go with a similar name inspired by the Alien movie series.

Catalin Cimpanu is a cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He previously worked at ZDNet and Bleeping Computer, where he became a well-known name in the industry for his constant scoops on new vulnerabilities, cyberattacks, and law enforcement actions against hackers.

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New Xenomorph malware sneaks onto the Google Play Store - The Record by Recorded Future

Ninja Van Goes the Extra Mile with Google Cloud to Fulfill Vision of Tech-Enabled, End-to-End Logistics Management for Businesses in Southeast Asia

Extended collaboration will support Ninja Van's strategy for secure and sustainable expansion, while maximizing the potential of its technology talent

SINGAPORE, Feb. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ninja Van, Southeast Asia's leading logistics provider, is extending its multi-year collaboration with Google Cloud to help businesses seize digital growth opportunities and overcome supply chain disruptions. By running its platform and applications on Google Cloud's scalable, secure and open-source infrastructure, Ninja Van aims to strengthen its leadership in last-mile courier services and expand upstream into supply chain management solutions.

Backed by the likes of Europe's largest parcel delivery network GeoPost / DPDgroup and global investment firm B Capital, Ninja Van has operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It is now the trusted delivery partner for close to two million businesses and handles around two million parcels daily across Southeast Asia. To facilitate onshore or nearshore production and distribution for businesses, Ninja Van recently launched Ninja Direct, a procurement concierge that covers supplier sourcing and management, customs clearance, financing, and shipments tracking.

"Retailers have shifted toward e-commerce strategies as opposed to selling through physical stores, especially with the pandemic forcing consumers to shop online more than ever before. With disruptions to the traditional flow of raw materials and finished goods, there's also an urgent need for adaptive micro supply chains that allow businesses to 'make where they sell' and fulfill orders quicker," said Shaun Chong, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Ninja Van. "We chose Google Cloud because of its proven ability to help us scale reliably and innovate at high velocity, as we address the region's end-to-end logistics management needs."

Freeing Up Talent to Drive Innovation and Impact

Ninja Van consistently evaluates whether it is making efficient use of its technical talent. This means determining how the cloud can empower its 150 engineers, developers and data scientists to build products that add value to the business, instead of spending time managing complex IT infrastructure.

With Google's open cloud approach, Ninja Van's technical teams are free to choose the tools they need to accelerate software development and scale more efficiently while also reducing technology risk. For instance, by using Google Cloud's open-source data processing platform which integrates seamlessly with its data scientists' preferred external data visualization tools, Ninja Van's teams can comfortably process terabytes of data daily to support the company's business needs.

To create its NinjaChat chatbot and simulate the quality and immediacy of in-person interactions, Ninja Van's developers turned to Google Cloud's open-source and pre-built virtual agents to bring the feature to life in a month, rather than spend three months building a machine learning framework from scratch.

"From a chatbot that enhances customer experiences to algorithms for fuel-saving route optimization these are amongst the hundreds of new features released by Ninja Van each day. By automating application deployment and upgrades using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), our technical teams can avoid engaging in manual backend configurations and stay laser-focused on innovation," said Chong.

"We're actively hiring to bolster our technology teams in the region. Once we have the talent in the door, it makes zero sense to have them recreate code that exists and is ready-to-use, or manually select servers with the right vCPUs or RAM to deploy each application. Google Cloud puts open-source at the center of its solutions, while GKE does a great job at making sure things happen automatically. These allow us to avoid lock-in, reduce costs and truly give our in-house talent the ability to make more meaningful contributions to the business," added Chong.

Security and Zero Downtime to Enable 24/7 Operations

Southeast Asia's e-commerce gross merchandise value is expected to reach US$234 billion by 2025. As Ninja Van continues to help retailers compete in this fast-growing market and expand its services upstream, reliability and data protection remain top priorities.

The demand for Ninja Van's services have grown by three times during the pandemic. Whether it is preparing for major online sales events like Singles' Day, responding to sudden surges in demand because of merchants running ad hoc campaigns, or making thousands of software upgrades each year, Google Cloud's dynamic autoscaling capabilities enable Ninja Van's website and mobile applications to handle 10 times the normal traffic with a smooth user experience, before scaling down to reduce costs when additional computing resources are no longer needed.

"Having benefited from security solutions that are designed by default into Google Cloud's infrastructure, such as end-to-end encryption and automated patching, we will now work with Google Cloud's security specialists on additional ways to reinforce our zero trust security model," said Chong.

"We're proud to have played a part in Ninja Van becoming a leading end-to-end logistics management provider and one of the most admired technology unicorns," said Ruma Balasubramanian, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud. "By investing in world-class talent and relentless innovation, the company is well-positioned to deliver the just-in-time production and distribution capabilities that businesses need to satisfy contemporary consumers' desire for product variety and immediacy. Google Cloud will continue to uphold our high standards in reliability, collaboration, openness and security, as we support Ninja Van's vision of connecting Southeast Asia to a world of commerce possibilities."

About Google Cloud

Google Cloud accelerates organizations' ability to digitally transform their business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

About Ninja Van

Ninja Van is a leading tech-enabled express logistics company providing supply chain solutions for businesses of all sizes across Southeast Asia. Launched in 2014, Ninja Van started operations in Singapore as a last-mile logistics company. Since then, it has become one of the region's fastest-growing tech logistics companies, powering businesses with innovative solutions that optimize e-commerce opportunities. Today, Ninja Van has grown its network to cover six countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. For more information, visit http://www.ninjavan.co.

SOURCE Google Cloud

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Ninja Van Goes the Extra Mile with Google Cloud to Fulfill Vision of Tech-Enabled, End-to-End Logistics Management for Businesses in Southeast Asia -...

Google Assistant is available on the Nest Mini.

You ask your smart speaker a question, like "What's the weather like today?," or give it a command to play a song from your favorite album. The speaker springs to life and begins talking to you, but it just won't stop. It keeps going and going, rambling on, and you just want it to end. If it's aGoogle Assistant-powered speaker, like theGoogle Homeor Nest Mini, you can say "Hey Google" and then any number of commands to shut it up, but now there's a quicker way.

Thanks to a recent update that Google announced on Twitter, you no longer have to use a two-part response to get Google Assistant to hush. You only have to say one word: "Stop."

Now playing: Watch this: HomePod Mini vs. Echo Dot vs. Nest Mini: Finding the...

11:40

If Google Assistant is talking to you, all you have to do is say "stop" and it will cease from speaking. It's a useful new feature to prevent Google Assistant from blabbing incredibly long directions to a destination, for example, or giving you a too-thorough weather forecast. It's similar to the feature that allows you to stop an alarm or timer by simply saying "stop," except now you can do it while Google Assistant is talking.

Know everything about Google, from breaking news to reviews and Android tips. Delivered Wednesdays.

If Google Assistant won't stop talking, just say "stop."

Unfortunately, the "stop" feature currently only works on smart displays like the Google Nest Hub or the Lenovo Smart Clock, as well as on smart speakers like the Google Home or the Sonos One. That means that the feature is currently unavailable on smartphones, watches and tablets that have Google Assistant, but that could eventually change.

If you want to learn more about Google Assistant, check out how to make your Google Assistant less annoying by turning off these 5 settings and 32 cool things you need to try with Google Assistant.

See more here:

Google Has Fixed the Most Annoying Thing About Your Google Home or Nest Speaker - CNET

Big tech stocks have seen their stellar pandemic-era run abruptly end in early 2022.

With geopolitical turmoil in Ukraine, high inflation around the world, and expectations of rising interest rates, the entire market has started the year sharply lower. But shares of Meta (FB), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NLFX), and Alphabet (GOOGL) are faring even worse than the rest of the market, begging the question: are these top growth stocks now cheap enough to buy?

For JPMorgan, the answer is no. Strategists Mislav Matejka, Prabhav Bhadani, Nitya Saldanha and Karishma Manpuria have examined the market in forensic detail for their latest equity strategy report.

The FAANG stocks or Meta (n Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (Google) are all lower, even relative to the wider US equities market, which is down over 9% so far in 2022.

Shares of Meta crashed after the company reported its first-ever decline in daily active users last quarter, while Netflix took a similar dive when the company announced it believed subscriber growth will slow next quarter. As a result, shares of Meta are down over 39% year-to-date, while Netflix is down 36%. Meanwhile, Apple shares are down 7%, while shares of Amazon and Alphabet are both down over 9% this year.

But according to the team at JPMorgan the issue isn't the price of these high-growth stocks it's the timeframe. When looking at the big picture the JPMorgan team is unconvinced growth stocks are a bargain right now.

"Despite recent underperformance, growth continues to trade near highs, in a multi-year context," they wrote. "In a longer term context, the recent underperformance of growth is much less stark, as it comes on the back of years of outperformance."

"Similarly, the recent underperformance of FAANG relatively also appears muted, considering its large outperformance over the last decade. In fact, the price earnings differential between technology and banks is still close to the widest on record."

Given this, where should investors put their money? The JPMorgan team said that despite its recent rally, value investments continue to trade "outright cheap relative to growth."

"As growth stocks weakened of late, they derated, but are still not outright cheap," they wrote. "On the other side, financials and commodities in particular had a strong rally, but are far from expensive, especially relative to underlying commodity prices and relative to the magnitude of potential rate changes by central banks."

JPMorgan noted that the earnings of growth companies "might not be exceptional anymore," while the earnings of certain value sectors are "bouncing." They also said the forward earnings of value appear to be "bottoming out" versus growth stocks.

"The big driver remains the direction of bond yields," the JPMorgan team explained. "Over the past 10 years, growth style benefitted from negative real rates and subdued bond yields, rerating vs value sectors. If bond yields show a more persistent upside, as central banks undergo a series of rate increases, and as the demand-supply for bonds changes, then the large valuation premium that growth sectors have over value will keep reducing."

Inflation peaking might not be a "durable reason" to go back and buy growth stocks, they warned, but it could offer a short-term tactical bounce.

"We believe one should look through the widespread 'slowdown' calls that are currently in vogue, and stay bullish on banks, mining, energy, insurance, autos, travel and telecoms. The year-to-date market performance is tracking these well."

"The question is whether one should buy back quality, especially if one sees a potential peak in inflation," the team continued. "In our view the key is the direction of bond yields we expect them to continue moving higher, and that was always consistent with cyclical leadership."

The team also gave a nod to one geographic part of the equities market that looks attractive. "Regionally, we reiterate our upgrade of the UK to overweight, after six years of a cautious stance."

Read more:

Are Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta Cheap yet? JPMorgan Has the Answer - Business Insider