I met Chris in the college bar in 1997. I was part of a group of visiting American students visiting the University of Oxford – we kept ourselves to ourselves in the first few weeks of term – and he leaned over from the next table to talk to me. I saw his one-dimpled smile and the cocky way he tipped his chair back on two legs and I thought: “Uh-oh, here’s trouble.” Despite the fact that I was onl...
I met Chris in the college bar in 1997. I was part of a group of visiting American students visiting the University of Oxford – we kept ourselves to ourselves in the first few weeks of term – and he leaned over from the next table to talk to me. I saw his one-dimpled smile and the cocky way he tipped his chair back on two legs and I thought: “Uh-oh, here’s trouble.” Despite the fact that I was only at Oxford for one term, we quickly became a couple – and stayed together. When he finished university and started working in London, I returned to North Carolina to finish my English degree. We visited each other when we could. He made a surprise appearance at my 21st birthday party; we spent a New Year’s Eve in Paris. After graduation, I moved to London to do an MA and also – mostly – to be near Chris. Then I moved to New York to work in publishing, and a year later he joined me to work for an American bank. We rented a place together and lived the life of childless twentysomethings in Manhattan: long working hours, long drinking hours, long summer weekends in a shared house on Fire Island. It was love, for sure. But we were still figuring things out: I wear my heart on my sleeve, while he is the strong, silent type. I come from a middle-class midwestern American family; he was raised outside Manchester by a single mother who sometimes struggled to make ends meet. I was, truth be told, kind of spoiled. He could, on occasion, be a little dour. Were we too different? I wanted to analyse, to discuss – but, typically, he didn’t. View image in fullscreen Lauren and Chris on their wedding day, on 19 July 2003. Photograph: courtesy of Lauren Schott On the morning of 11 September 2001, I was in our Flatiron apartment, getting ready to work at a magazine. I was half-listening to the NY1 news channel when a story broke: there had been an explosion at the World Trade Center. The slow replay of the footage revealed the first plane. I perched on the arm of the sofa with my coffee and...
fabiofoto/iStock via Getty Images Water was trendy back in the Noughts. Terms like “peak oil,” “scarcity conflict,” and “water war” (Nile, Mekong) focused the markets on companies like SUEZ and Veolia. In the Teens, however, investors leaned into SaaS, Cloud, and business digitization opportunities. Water was shelved as too "slow go," a niche segment for the green funds. Now water is making a come...
fabiofoto/iStock via Getty Images Water was trendy back in the Noughts. Terms like “peak oil,” “scarcity conflict,” and “water war” (Nile, Mekong) focused the markets on companies like SUEZ and Veolia. In the Teens, however, investors leaned into SaaS, Cloud, and business digitization opportunities. Water was shelved as too "slow go," a niche segment for the green funds. Now water is making a comeback. The pendulum is swinging back from bits to atoms. Bits are just too suspect, too exposed to “AI-disintermediation” and Moltbot disarray. Companies that can’t be “vibe-coded” out of existence, that exist in physical markets with real supply constraints, are starting to look attractive. According to the WEC, global freshwater demand is projected to exceed sustainable supply by 40% by 2030. Half of the world’s 100 largest cities are in “ water stress zones ." This will be very acute in the developing world and even felt hard here in the US . Thirsty data centers are being built pell-mell, and people are generally fleeing high-tax (but water-rich) northern states for low-tax (but water-scarce) southern states. Singapore has long been modernity’s tip of the spear, and its “ Four Taps Strategy ” –so prescient in many ways—will likely go global, with desalinization becoming a 25% – 30% segment of water consumption for many nations in the coming decades. Consolidated Water Co. Ltd ( CWCO ), an under-the-radar $589 million micro-cap, is one company that is well suited to seize this opportunity. The Company Founded in 1973, CWCO is a water supply and treatment operator headquartered in the Cayman Islands. It designs, builds, and often operates water facilities and distribution systems. Consolidated is perhaps best known for its buildout and full operation of nine seawater desalinization plants on Grand Cayman, though the big news last year was that the firm won a similar plant contract on Oahu Island , Hawaii –its first “desal” win in the US. On the November call, the CEO descr...
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Translate webpages in Chrome: On your computer, open Chrome. Go to a webpage written in another language. At the top, click Translate. Chrome will translate the webpage one time. If you haven't installed Google Chrome. Please download and install it. Down
Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images No theme has shaken the stock market this year as sharply as the selloff in software stocks. Though the S&P 500 remains near all-time highs, many software names (both large caps and small caps) are in deep correction territory as investors fear the threat of AI and vibe coding completely wiping out traditional enterprise software's business models. Fear...
Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images No theme has shaken the stock market this year as sharply as the selloff in software stocks. Though the S&P 500 remains near all-time highs, many software names (both large caps and small caps) are in deep correction territory as investors fear the threat of AI and vibe coding completely wiping out traditional enterprise software's business models. Fear of AI risks has positioned many software stocks in oversold territory. In my view, this is an opportunity for us to be more picky in our investing. While struggling legacy software companies like Blackbaud ( BLKB ) have followed higher-growth peers downward, their relative valuation advantages are also thinning. Blackbaud just reported rather uninspiring Q4 results and a lackluster FY26 guide, which stimulated further selling pressure on the stock. Data by YCharts I last wrote a "Sell" article on Blackbaud in October, when the stock was trading just shy of $70 per share. The fall below $50 certainly makes Blackbaud more appealing for me, especially as the company now sits at adjusted EBITDA multiples that may be more appealing for a PE-oriented buyer. That said, we note that Blackbaud's growth prospects are quite slim, and it's clear from sliding organic growth rates that the company's execution isn't exactly enviable either. I remain at a "Sell" rating here. To me, there are several core issues that I find with Blackbaud. To shed light on the growth deficiency further, consider the fact that Blackbaud believes its TAM is $10 billion. The company stresses that it covers a wide range of solutions, from fundraising and CRM products and organizational tools to streamline program management. Blackbaud TAM (Blackbaud Q4 earnings deck) If we believe this estimate of its TAM, the company's current ~$1.1 billion revenue base is just over 10% penetrated. But despite only holding a small slice of this niche market, we struggle with the fact that the company is only producing low sin...
“Bloomberg: The China Show” is your definitive source for news and analysis on the world's second-biggest economy. From politics and policy to tech and trends, Yvonne Man and David Ingles give global investors unique insight, delivering in-depth discussions with the newsmakers who matter. (Source: Bloomberg)
“Bloomberg: The China Show” is your definitive source for news and analysis on the world's second-biggest economy. From politics and policy to tech and trends, Yvonne Man and David Ingles give global investors unique insight, delivering in-depth discussions with the newsmakers who matter. (Source: Bloomberg)
Robinhood’s Senior VP and GM for Crypto, Johann Kerbrat, speaks with Bloomberg’s Annabelle Droulers at Consensus Hong Kong about the recent crypto rout, shifting retail and institutional flows, and how Robinhood plans to grow despite market volatility. He discusses the firm’s move into blockchain infrastructure, tokenized assets, and expansion across Asia, including acquisitions in Indonesia and S...
Robinhood’s Senior VP and GM for Crypto, Johann Kerbrat, speaks with Bloomberg’s Annabelle Droulers at Consensus Hong Kong about the recent crypto rout, shifting retail and institutional flows, and how Robinhood plans to grow despite market volatility. He discusses the firm’s move into blockchain infrastructure, tokenized assets, and expansion across Asia, including acquisitions in Indonesia and Singapore. Kerbrat also shares how AI is transforming Robinhood’s operations and customer tools on Insight with Haslinda Amin. (Source: Bloomberg)
Micron Technology has managed to become one of the most recognizable equities in the artificial intelligence industry, and its share value has grown by about 300 % in the last twelve months and now is valued at around $372 a share, which means the company, is worth almost $420 billion in the stock market. The boom may be deemed to be the expression of the generational lack of devices with a high b...
Micron Technology has managed to become one of the most recognizable equities in the artificial intelligence industry, and its share value has grown by about 300 % in the last twelve months and now is valued at around $372 a share, which means the company, is worth almost $420 billion in the stock market. The boom may be deemed to be the expression of the generational lack of devices with a high bandwidth of memory because AI data centers, graphic processing units, and custom AI accelerators take up nearly all the accessible memory bandwidth. Analysts currently expect Micron to generate EPS of $32.19 in fiscal 2026, implying a year-over-year increase of more than 300% – 319% to be precise. Given the company’s strong start to the year and the favorable industry environment, earnings expectations could rise further if pricing and demand remain strong. History of Booms and Busts The historical path of Micron demonstrates the fluctuations of assets that are related to memory. In previous booms in the past 20 years, the company shares have experienced maximum returns of about 600% compared to the previous downturns, before experiencing sudden turns as it has been in 2012-2014 and 2016-2018. At the latest profit peak, but based on the demand to use cloud-computing, the trailing net income of Micron reached over $16 billion but the trailing price-to-earning ratio fell to about 3 when share price rose after the announcement of earnings. The reason why this cycle looks different Micron Technology has had a strong start to 2026, with its stock price up 39% as of January 22. The growth is largely due to its excellent financial results, which included a record revenue of $13.6 billion, a 57% year-over-year increase, in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2026 (which ended November 27, 2025). The major difference of naturalness lies in the magnitude and foreseeability of AIinfrastructure expenditure. The significant %age of capital spending that will be dedicated to AI-compute ...
J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images By Jeremy Schwartz, CFA & Behnood Noei, CFA Rising Japanese bond yields and the weak yen are causing some market consternation as politics and fiscal policy are back in the driver's seat. Initially, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi dissolved parliament and set a February 8 general election, catching markets off guard, especially with her pledge to scrap a cons...
J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images By Jeremy Schwartz, CFA & Behnood Noei, CFA Rising Japanese bond yields and the weak yen are causing some market consternation as politics and fiscal policy are back in the driver's seat. Initially, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi dissolved parliament and set a February 8 general election, catching markets off guard, especially with her pledge to scrap a consumption tax on food for two years. The election has delivered a decisive victory for the Liberal Democratic Party under Prime Minister Takaichi, with the ruling bloc securing well above the “absolute stable majority” threshold of 261 seats and exceeding a two-thirds majority in the Lower House. However, there are still questions about the direction of fiscal policy, and longer-dated bond yields have spiked higher. The rise in yields was large enough that the Bank of Japan commented on the speed of the selloff and suggested it's prepared to step in if trading becomes disorderly, even as it continues to move policy away from ultra-easy settings. Let's put the recent moves in a better context. Japan's fiscal picture is improving as the economy moves past deflation and nominal growth picks up. Higher nominal gross domestic product (GDP) has translated into stronger tax revenues and a healthier fiscal balance, and the debt-to-GDP ratio has already started to edge lower. If we compare Japan's budget deficit to GDP, it stacks out better than the U.S., France, Italy and Germany—this represents a complete reversal from 15 years ago, where it stood as the worst in the group. It also helps to look at the broader public-sector balance sheet: because the Bank of Japan holds a large share of outstanding long-term JGBs, the headline debt numbers can make the near-term financing situation look worse than it really is. Figure 1: Budget Balance as Percentage of GDP Source: Bloomberg, WisdomTree, for the period 12/31/10–12/31/24. Also, where the bond market stress is showing up matters. The b...