The geopolitical conflict unfolding in the Middle East has upended the global energy market. It has also increased investor concerns about economic growth, with Wall Street clearly wondering if high oil and natural gas prices could tip the world into a global recession. Stocks have pulled back, with Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT: VTI) down roughly 6% from its 52-week high. What should i...
The geopolitical conflict unfolding in the Middle East has upended the global energy market. It has also increased investor concerns about economic growth, with Wall Street clearly wondering if high oil and natural gas prices could tip the world into a global recession. Stocks have pulled back, with Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT: VTI) down roughly 6% from its 52-week high. What should investors make of that drop? To set a baseline, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF provides the broadest possible exposure to U.S. stocks. It effectively owns all of the investable stocks traded on U.S. exchanges. That said, it uses a market-cap-weighted methodology, so the largest companies have the greatest impact on the exchange-traded fund's (ETF's) performance. That's how the real world works, but it also has broader implications. Image source: Getty Images. Continue reading
Ukraine Becomes World's AI Weapons Laboratory By Craig S. Smith of Eye on AI , I was in Ukraine in February and wrote this piece before the start of the war with Iran, but its implications are even more relevant today. My interest in lethal autonomous weapons dates back to my time with the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, where full autonomy was debated but largely dismisse...
Ukraine Becomes World's AI Weapons Laboratory By Craig S. Smith of Eye on AI , I was in Ukraine in February and wrote this piece before the start of the war with Iran, but its implications are even more relevant today. My interest in lethal autonomous weapons dates back to my time with the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, where full autonomy was debated but largely dismissed as ethically unacceptable. But in practice, the step to full autonomy is smaller than it sounds. Once a human is no longer actively controlling a system and is only monitoring it with the option to intervene, the shift to removing that human entirely is incremental. It’s similar to how Iran describes its nuclear program. Uranium enrichment for civilian energy is presented as benign, but once enrichment reaches reactor-grade levels, the remaining technical steps to weapons-grade material are a matter of time and intent, not capability. It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that fully autonomous weapons will not arrive. They follow naturally from realities already on the battlefield. What is easier to grasp is the fear they generate. Watch first-person-view footage of a quadcopter chasing a soldier to his inevitable death and the abstraction disappears. Bundled against Ukraine’s subzero February chill, a man in a gray coat threw what looked like a gray model airplane into the pale blue sky. The buzzing of the drone’s propeller slowly faded as it climbed above snowy fields and barren hedgerows. It looked like a toy. Oleksandr Liannyi was not playing, however. He was working on a way to make drones far deadlier than they are today. “It’s mostly about accuracy of positioning, of how the navigation part will perform in different conditions,” said Liannyi, cofounder of NORDA Dynamics, which builds autonomous navigation and targeting modules for military drones.. Liannyi and his colleagues and other Ukrainian teams have achieved partial autonomy, allowing drones to navig...
whitebalance.space/iStock via Getty Images Everyone (and probably their dogs and mothers) should know by now that for-profit education stocks are tough. Seeking Alpha Still, if you dig deep enough, you'll eventually find gold at the right price. That’s how I see Strategic Education ( STRA ). Some folks and I here at Seeking Alpha have been shouting for some time that this stock is dirt-cheap at ~6...
whitebalance.space/iStock via Getty Images Everyone (and probably their dogs and mothers) should know by now that for-profit education stocks are tough. Seeking Alpha Still, if you dig deep enough, you'll eventually find gold at the right price. That’s how I see Strategic Education ( STRA ). Some folks and I here at Seeking Alpha have been shouting for some time that this stock is dirt-cheap at ~6x EBITDA. Of course, Higher-Ed enrollment is under pressure in the U.S. and NZ/Australia. You see this from the 1.5% drop in consolidated enrollments in FY 2025 (-1.4% at Strayer/Capella and -1.8% at Torrens). Earnings Presentation But here's the catch. Not everything is about enrollment. Strategic is using (very well, by the way) AI to cut expenses. In FY 2025 alone, they cut approximately $30 million (just over 7% of SG&A) and invested in high-growth areas. In Q4 FY 2025 alone, they increased the EBIT margin of Strayer/Capella and Torrens by 470 and 270 bp, respectively. The ETS segment (primarily Sophia Learning) is growing much faster than Higher-Ed (41.4% in FY 2025 alone) and now represents almost 12% of the total. So this is pushing up Strategic's EBIT margin, with ETS running at ~39.6% against 15.5% consolidated. Workforce Edge is the perfect win-win acquisition funnel for Strategic. Besides reducing CAC, this also makes them eligible for OBBB tailwinds (primarily the Workforce Pell Grant ). It's the classic tailwind for for-profits focused on the job market with highly employable courses, something similar to Grand Canyon ( LOPE ). For me, the mistake is treating Strategic like just another slow, counter-cyclical for-profit. Strategic Tomorrow: Modeling FY 2026 Now the fun part. Management didn't give me much to work with, so I'll have to fill in a few gaps. I don't need to use much of my creativity here. It’s quite clear to me that ETS will continue to grow (even with EBIT having peaked) and U.S. Higher-Ed will have some more lift in margins. The only drag seems t...
As Chinese enterprises pivot from traditional export models to building comprehensive global ecosystems, the strategic road map for this expansion took centre stage in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Gathering at the Island Shangri-La Hong Kong for the 2026 SCMP C-Suite Annual Leadership Summit, CEOs and business leaders from Hong Kong, China and across the region, convened to dissect the “China Inc. Goes G...
As Chinese enterprises pivot from traditional export models to building comprehensive global ecosystems, the strategic road map for this expansion took centre stage in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Gathering at the Island Shangri-La Hong Kong for the 2026 SCMP C-Suite Annual Leadership Summit, CEOs and business leaders from Hong Kong, China and across the region, convened to dissect the “China Inc. Goes Global” phenomenon. The closed-door forum, organised by the South China Morning Post, provided a rare...