(RTTNews) - The Thai stock market on Friday ended the two-day winning streak in which it had climbed more than 25 points or 1.7 percent. The Stock Exchange of Thailand now sits just above the 1,580-point plateau and it's expected to take further damage on Monday.
(RTTNews) - The Thai stock market on Friday ended the two-day winning streak in which it had climbed more than 25 points or 1.7 percent. The Stock Exchange of Thailand now sits just above the 1,580-point plateau and it's expected to take further damage on Monday.
China has discovered a new source of high-purity quartz in its western Tibet autonomous region, potentially reducing its reliance on imports of the critical material to make solar panels and semiconductors. High-purity quartz is a gold standard manufacturing material for numerous hi-tech items, including some whose global market is dominated by China. China has relied on imports to obtain the impo...
China has discovered a new source of high-purity quartz in its western Tibet autonomous region, potentially reducing its reliance on imports of the critical material to make solar panels and semiconductors. High-purity quartz is a gold standard manufacturing material for numerous hi-tech items, including some whose global market is dominated by China. China has relied on imports to obtain the important material, with most coming from the United States, because of a lack of domestic sources for...
A museum in Japan is facing accusations of “rewriting history” for replacing the Nanking massacre with the word “incident”, drawing criticism and reviving anger over the country’s wartime aggression. The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which previously resisted revisionist attempts, appeared to have capitulated to a civic group’s pressure campaign, following Thursday’s release of proposed exhibit cha...
A museum in Japan is facing accusations of “rewriting history” for replacing the Nanking massacre with the word “incident”, drawing criticism and reviving anger over the country’s wartime aggression. The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which previously resisted revisionist attempts, appeared to have capitulated to a civic group’s pressure campaign, following Thursday’s release of proposed exhibit changes by its operations council. Other amendments announced by the museum, opened in 1996, include...
Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images Industrial equipment maker Columbus McKinnon ( CMCO ) slumped 9% Thursday following a weaker-than-expected earnings report and then slid once again in Friday's trading. With the drop, the company's stock hit new 52-week lows, and shares are only modestly above their 20-year lows at this point: Data by YCharts I have a small position in Columbus McKinnon...
Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images Industrial equipment maker Columbus McKinnon ( CMCO ) slumped 9% Thursday following a weaker-than-expected earnings report and then slid once again in Friday's trading. With the drop, the company's stock hit new 52-week lows, and shares are only modestly above their 20-year lows at this point: Data by YCharts I have a small position in Columbus McKinnon in my buy-and-hold portfolio, where I own more than 150 different stocks. Over time, good things tend to happen to a lot of companies, be it new product lines, business opportunities, improved management, or simply steady value accumulation over the years. I like to cast a wide net and let the winners run. Sometimes, however, companies lose the plot. Columbus McKinnon, unfortunately, has turned into one of those latter cases. I was up 50% on my position in Columbus McKinnon in 2024, and it appeared the company was favorably positioned to profit from the long-term demand for warehouse automation solutions. Columbus McKinnon also stands to benefit from increased manufacturing activity in North America amid the reshoring movement. Then, one day, I woke up, and Columbus McKinnon stock had lost half its value overnight. As the above chart shows, there's been no recovery of those losses yet, either. This came due to one of the most baffling capital allocation decisions made by any company I've owned over the course of my investment career. Columbus McKinnon Mortgages the Future to Buy Kito Crosby Prior to announcing its huge M&A deal in early 2025, Columbus McKinnon was trading around $35/share. This gave the company a market capitalization of about $1.0 billion and an enterprise value of approximately $1.4 billion. Then, in one fell swoop, Columbus McKinnon announced that it was buying Kito Crosby, a fellow lifting and material handling firm, for $2.7 billion in cash. Stop and read that again. A firm with a market cap of $1.0 billion decided to buy a firm twice its size. Columb...
koto_feja/E+ via Getty Images I looked at NuScale Power ( SMR ) back in early January , noting that especially amid the AI boom, the company could have high upside, but also warned that “I am not ready to rate SMR as a buy, as I believe the slide isn't over.” The slide has indeed continued, but it appears that SMR may have arrived at a floor. I'll admit this is based more on gut instinct, but SMR ...
koto_feja/E+ via Getty Images I looked at NuScale Power ( SMR ) back in early January , noting that especially amid the AI boom, the company could have high upside, but also warned that “I am not ready to rate SMR as a buy, as I believe the slide isn't over.” The slide has indeed continued, but it appears that SMR may have arrived at a floor. I'll admit this is based more on gut instinct, but SMR has only briefly dipped below $10 over the last several months. I do believe this is now justifiable as a risk capital play. That said, I am assigning a hold rating to avoid misleading investors in what is a high-risk but also high-upside investment owing to AI and the harsh reminder sent by the Hormuz energy crisis. Seeking Alpha Artificial Intelligence and Energy Politics Provide Tailwinds First, AI is vastly increasing demand for energy. While AI chips are starting to become more energy efficient, energy demand continues to rise as more data centers are built out. Further, if AI adoption continues to grow, demand for energy for AI inference will also increase , potentially dramatically. With AI, there’s training and inference. On a moment-by-moment basis, training is more energy intensive . Yet most energy overall is consumed during inference, which is when trained AI models are put to work. President Donald Trump explicitly directed AI companies to supply their own energy sources or otherwise shield local communities in an effort to reduce pressures on residential energy prices. Many big AI companies have pledged to do so. Separate from federal government efforts, local and state governments have been proactively denouncing and even discouraging/blocking investments. Especially in an election year, I do expect this to continue. The good news is that that makes solutions like SMR all the more tempting. If the company can deliver on its solutions, the modular nuclear reactors will be relatively easy to deploy, including in remote areas. The Hormuz energy crisis also drove...
Bitcoin steadied in early Asia trading on Monday after recovering some lost ground since dropping below $60,000 late last week — a level not seen since Donald Trump won reelection in 2024. The original cryptocurrency was up as much as 3.8% to nearly $64,200. It was trading around $63,000 at 9:45 a.m. in Singapore. Ether, the second-largest token, was more than 3% firmer at around $1,680. A signal ...
Bitcoin steadied in early Asia trading on Monday after recovering some lost ground since dropping below $60,000 late last week — a level not seen since Donald Trump won reelection in 2024. The original cryptocurrency was up as much as 3.8% to nearly $64,200. It was trading around $63,000 at 9:45 a.m. in Singapore. Ether, the second-largest token, was more than 3% firmer at around $1,680. A signal from Michael Saylor , chairman of Strategy Inc. , that the digital-asset treasury may announce more Bitcoin purchases has helped to soothe the market. It was Strategy’s disclosure of a small Bitcoin sale, its first in four years, that contributed to the token’s 18% decline last week, as it undermined the narrative that it would never sell. Richard Galvin, executive chairman at crypto investment firm DACM, said the market had looked oversold and Saylor’s post on X this morning “suggests he has been buying.” “The key short-term determinant of crypto market direction will likely be Strategy’s 8-K filing in the US morning, which will make it clearer what the company has done over the last few days,” he said, referring to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Still, traders didn’t appear convinced that the turnaround was durable. “We reduced our portfolio across the board and increased our cash levels to the highest they have been in two years,” Galvin said. Bitcoin slumped as much as 7% to $59,101 on Friday in New York trading hours, falling below $60,000 for the first time since October 2024. It has lost about half its value since reaching a peak above $126,000 in October last year. Last week’s drop was fueled by a combination of investors pulling money from Bitcoin-tied exchange-traded funds, renewed geopolitical tensions and growing concerns about the durability of Strategy and other digital-asset treasuries, one of the market’s most important sources of demand. “Sentiment is incredibly shaky,” said Pratik Kala, a portfolio manager at Apollo Crypto, a digi...