This Week on Trends with Friends (May 11th, 2024)

Welcome Friends, 

Here’s an assortment of posts shared this week on Trends with Friends. 

Howard Lindzon is amazed with Google’s DeepMind. In Friday’s post, he references Jeff Brown’s deep dive into Google’s DeepMind. Here’s the feature quote, 

It is exciting to know that while most of the world was chasing apps and growth in China, Deepmind and AI was making magic happen with machines, pattern recognition and data.

JC Parets posted Latin America: This Cycle’s Leader. JC walks through Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Mexico’s outperforms vs. the US. 

Here are the county ETF returns since the beginning of 2023. 

Tadas Viskanta shared Longform Links: Embracing Play featuring topics on longevity, retirement, statistical biases, Jamaica and avocados. It’s a must click.

Michael Parekh previewed the wide world of LLMs and SLMs (Small Language Models) and answered why it’s important to compare and evaluate these models with one another. He writes, 

These problems of measuring, evaluating and explaining big and small AI models , this early in the AI Tech Wave, is going to get worse, not better, for the near term. As the models proliferate and exponentially get better, leveraging the AI Scaling Laws I’ve discussed before, the task ahead is almost a futile task.

3-Circle Investments’ Craig Shapiro, shared his Question for Chair Powell.

He writes, 

My question is why has the Fed been so reluctant to use the balance sheet tool as a more active monetary policy tool in order to help more rapidly bring inflation down to target? Why have you not considered a more aggressive reduction of the Balance Sheet via active selling of assets (MBS and USTs) rather than simply allowing rolloffs? At this point, wouldn’t it make more sense for the Fed to be more aggressive in reducing the size of its Balance Sheet in order to raise term premiums, steepen the yield curve, dampen animal spirits and bring down inflation expectations and inflation through the asset price/wealth channel rather than raising interest rates further?

Craig also featured a “Chart of the Day” visualizing China’s growing Gold holdings.

On Thursday, Trends with No Friends reviewed Blue Bird, AppLovin, RadNet, EPAM Systems, SolarEdge and Acadia Pharmaceuticals. Have a look.

And in case you missed it… Howard Lindzon, Phil Pearlman and JC Parets previewed May’s bullish market, factors that drive earnings, China and investing in Argentina on the latest episode of Trends with Friends. Tune in today.

If you share insights on the market and would like to contribute to Trends with Friends, send us an email.