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Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
TheMotorcycleBoy
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#349992

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » October 23rd, 2020, 4:28 am

Remote work isn't just for white collar

Hopefully you people don't need a subscription to view this clip of an in-store robot being guided by a remote teenage worker wearing using VR (I *think*)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-wor ... n#cxrecs_s

If nothing else, the robot looks pretty cool.

Matt

odysseus2000
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350003

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 8:14 am

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Remote work isn't just for white collar

Hopefully you people don't need a subscription to view this clip of an in-store robot being guided by a remote teenage worker wearing using VR (I *think*)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-wor ... n#cxrecs_s

If nothing else, the robot looks pretty cool.

Matt


Can't help thinking that the human component to this will soon be replaced with AI. As things are shown there seems to be a huge financial cost to achieve what someone of minimum wage could do. There will be applications where it would be dangerous for a human to work, radioactive environment, or much more expensive as on the Moon, but if AI is to be useful it has to be able to do these kinds of jobs itself as already happens in some of the big Amazon warehouses.

Regards,

dspp
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350034

Postby dspp » October 23rd, 2020, 10:09 am

odysseus2000 wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Remote work isn't just for white collar

Hopefully you people don't need a subscription to view this clip of an in-store robot being guided by a remote teenage worker wearing using VR (I *think*)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-wor ... n#cxrecs_s

If nothing else, the robot looks pretty cool.

Matt


Can't help thinking that the human component to this will soon be replaced with AI. As things are shown there seems to be a huge financial cost to achieve what someone of minimum wage could do. There will be applications where it would be dangerous for a human to work, radioactive environment, or much more expensive as on the Moon, but if AI is to be useful it has to be able to do these kinds of jobs itself as already happens in some of the big Amazon warehouses.

Regards,


Most likely Tesla FSD as all these cases are clearly simple extensions of the Tesla FSD functionality which has huuuuuuge value ..........

regards, dspp

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350055

Postby vrdiver » October 23rd, 2020, 11:29 am

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Remote work isn't just for white collar

Hopefully you people don't need a subscription to view this clip of an in-store robot being guided by a remote teenage worker wearing using VR (I *think*)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-wor ... n#cxrecs_s

If nothing else, the robot looks pretty cool.

Matt

I hope this is a concept demo, otherwise the lad/robot is going to get sacked for being a slow shelf stacker!

Re the main point - that remote working is growing to include physical jobs; we've seen that already from military drones being piloted from thousands of miles away, to Australian mining workers operating mine equipment from nice air-conditioned offices hundreds of miles away from the mine location (a development driven by the fact that the nice places to live and the mine locations are usually not near each other!).

As the costs come down, I'd expect remote operations to become more popular (for employers at least, looking to cut costs, improve site security, reduce union interference, move to 24/7 operations etc.), but it's a worrying step for high-cost labour when anybody anywhere on the globe can compete for the same job. Call centres are a well known example of international outsourcing, just imagine the number of shelf stackers or other unskilled labourers who would work for less than the UK minimum wage in a remote location...

I'd be interested to find out how the trade unions / Labour Party plan to respond to this threat to the status quo, or whether they are sleepwalking into obsolescence?

As far as the macro investment options go, does anybody have a view on the ROBO or RBOT ETFs etc or would you go straight to a company like ABB?

VRD

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350068

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 12:15 pm

Re the main point - that remote working is growing to include physical jobs; we've seen that already from military drones being piloted from thousands of miles away, to Australian mining workers operating mine equipment from nice air-conditioned offices hundreds of miles away from the mine location (a development driven by the fact that the nice places to live and the mine locations are usually not near each other!).

As the costs come down, I'd expect remote operations to become more popular (for employers at least, looking to cut costs, improve site security, reduce union interference, move to 24/7 operations etc.), but it's a worrying step for high-cost labour when anybody anywhere on the globe can compete for the same job. Call centres are a well known example of international outsourcing, just imagine the number of shelf stackers or other unskilled labourers who would work for less than the UK minimum wage in a remote location...

I'd be interested to find out how the trade unions / Labour Party plan to respond to this threat to the status quo, or whether they are sleepwalking into obsolescence?

As far as the macro investment options go, does anybody have a view on the ROBO or RBOT ETFs etc or would you go straight to a company like ABB?

VRD


My feeling is that remote human working is just going to be a small and time short duration event.

Unless there is some obvious flaw with AI, it looks much more likely to me that most of these kinds of jobs will be done by AI controlled robots.

All the advantages of remote human working, plus 168 hour work weeks.

Regards,

Itsallaguess
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350077

Postby Itsallaguess » October 23rd, 2020, 12:51 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
Unless there is some obvious flaw with AI, it looks much more likely to me that most of these kinds of jobs will be done by AI controlled robots.

All the advantages of remote human working, plus 168 hour work weeks.


I love your huge enthusiasm for near-term delivery of these tech-solutions Ody.

I get that little blip of excitement when reading these types of posts that I used to get when watching Tomorrows World in the 70's..

That wide-eyed kid hasn't got the investment horizon ahead of him that he used to have, mind, so these relatively small-scale experiments better hurry up and achieve wider roll-out soon if they're going to deliver good investment returns in our lifetime...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350085

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 1:12 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
Unless there is some obvious flaw with AI, it looks much more likely to me that most of these kinds of jobs will be done by AI controlled robots.

All the advantages of remote human working, plus 168 hour work weeks.


I love your huge enthusiasm for near-term delivery of these tech-solutions Ody.

I get that little blip of excitement when reading these types of posts that I used to get when watching Tomorrows World in the 70's..

That wide-eyed kid hasn't got the investment horizon ahead of him that he used to have, mind, so these relatively small-scale experiments better hurry up and achieve wider roll-out soon if they're going to deliver good investment returns in our lifetime...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


One thing that has changed since the 1970's is the rate of innovation.

Once something happens that is making money, the entire strength of the global economy is brought to the job and things happen super fast. We are
no longer seeing the product inflation of the 70's because the limits are "what can be sold", not "what can be made" as was the case back then.

If AI can be made to work there will be a whole load of folk focused on "me too."

As things now stand, especially with something with real term consequences if wrong, such as driving, there will be big barriers to entry, but for lesser applications once folk see someone doing it there will be a new gold rush to get stuff made to start profiting from it.

Never before has there been such short lead times between discovery and working copy.

Regards,

dealtn
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350096

Postby dealtn » October 23rd, 2020, 1:42 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
As things now stand, especially with something with real term consequences if wrong, such as driving, there will be big barriers to entry, but for lesser applications once folk see someone doing it there will be a new gold rush to get stuff made to start profiting from it.



Remind me who made money in the "Gold Rush"...

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350099

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 1:54 pm

dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
As things now stand, especially with something with real term consequences if wrong, such as driving, there will be big barriers to entry, but for lesser applications once folk see someone doing it there will be a new gold rush to get stuff made to start profiting from it.



Remind me who made money in the "Gold Rush"...


Remind me who made money in the PC revolution.

Remind me who made money in the internet revolution.

Regards,

TheMotorcycleBoy
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350101

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » October 23rd, 2020, 1:55 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
Re the main point - that remote working is growing to include physical jobs; we've seen that already from military drones being piloted from thousands of miles away, to Australian mining workers operating mine equipment from nice air-conditioned offices hundreds of miles away from the mine location (a development driven by the fact that the nice places to live and the mine locations are usually not near each other!).

As the costs come down, I'd expect remote operations to become more popular (for employers at least, looking to cut costs, improve site security, reduce union interference, move to 24/7 operations etc.), but it's a worrying step for high-cost labour when anybody anywhere on the globe can compete for the same job. Call centres are a well known example of international outsourcing, just imagine the number of shelf stackers or other unskilled labourers who would work for less than the UK minimum wage in a remote location...

I'd be interested to find out how the trade unions / Labour Party plan to respond to this threat to the status quo, or whether they are sleepwalking into obsolescence?

As far as the macro investment options go, does anybody have a view on the ROBO or RBOT ETFs etc or would you go straight to a company like ABB?

VRD


My feeling is that remote human working is just going to be a small and time short duration event.

Unless there is some obvious flaw with AI, it looks much more likely to me that most of these kinds of jobs will be done by AI controlled robots.

All the advantages of remote human working, plus 168 hour work weeks.

Regards,

I think the point you are really trying to make is that you think that AI (non human driver) will quash the main stream usage of VR (human driver)!

HTH
Matt

(EDIT - robotics playing a part in both scenarios)
Last edited by TheMotorcycleBoy on October 23rd, 2020, 2:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Itsallaguess
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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350102

Postby Itsallaguess » October 23rd, 2020, 1:59 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
Never before has there been such short lead times between discovery and working copy.


I totally agree with that, but I think that it's most relevant for new businesses and industries, and perhaps not so much for legacy footprints...

What I mean by that, and taking these 'AI store-robots' as a good example, is that once that type of tech is both available and proven, then of course it might always be a consideration for any new facility-builds to incorporate into their business-model...

Where there may be a level of over-enthusiasm though Ody, is where people might then also start to perhaps instantly extrapolate those solutions 100% backwards as well, into the existing economy, and that where I begin to see slightly longer-term benefits than just assuming it's a case of 'pasting' these types of new ideas across the global landscape in quite such a flash...

If we all had 50 years of investment ahead of us Ody, then I'd perhaps share your enthusiasm, but as it stands I'm not sure things will move quite as fast as you might think when considering the existing economic areas, that's all...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350103

Postby dealtn » October 23rd, 2020, 2:00 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
As things now stand, especially with something with real term consequences if wrong, such as driving, there will be big barriers to entry, but for lesser applications once folk see someone doing it there will be a new gold rush to get stuff made to start profiting from it.



Remind me who made money in the "Gold Rush"...


Remind me who made money in the PC revolution.

Remind me who made money in the internet revolution.

Regards,


I don't know, and wouldn't claim otherwise.

My recollection, which might not be true, that it was the "support industries" not the prospectors that made the majority of the money in the Gold Rush.

So if there are predictions of a similar repeat, my "macro investment..." would be to look at the "support industries" not the "prospectors". Typically they tend to be less highly rated too.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350111

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 2:49 pm

dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
Remind me who made money in the "Gold Rush"...


Remind me who made money in the PC revolution.

Remind me who made money in the internet revolution.

Regards,


I don't know, and wouldn't claim otherwise.

My recollection, which might not be true, that it was the "support industries" not the prospectors that made the majority of the money in the Gold Rush.

So if there are predictions of a similar repeat, my "macro investment..." would be to look at the "support industries" not the "prospectors". Typically they tend to be less highly rated too.


Once upon a time, the "picks and shovel makers" made money out of gold rushes.

However, things have changed.

I did a study of Apple looking for the "picks and shovel" makers who I thought would be doing better than Apple.

The results of my study were that Apple made most of the money. The "picks and shovel" makers were all commodity suppliers, even the ones who had some vital product, such as the "Gorilla" glass makers for phones were not able to operate in a manner which brought them comparable profits to Apple, sometimes because even if they are running high margins their components are only a small portion of the cost.

Microsoft was another example of were secular change was orchestrated by one company and the picks and shovels makers didn't do as well. Sure there was the duopoly of wintel for a time and some of the pc makers did okay, but Gates and Microsoft were the big winners.

Amazon is another secular growth story were despite all the needed picks and shovels it was Bezos who came out as the billionaire.

All of this makes a non-sense of the traditional valuation metrics of Benjamin Graham et al.

The big money in all of these secular growth stories has been made by the primary mover and this has led to the abandonment of much of the valuation based analysis. It has paid to buy the highest rated growth story than the much lower rated picks and shovels suppliers.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350114

Postby dealtn » October 23rd, 2020, 2:57 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:The big money in all of these secular growth stories has been made by the primary mover and this has led to the abandonment of much of the valuation based analysis.


I think your conclusion suffers significantly from hindsight bias.

Plenty of other mobile phone companies, Nokia, Blackberry etc. came along (and were successful) in that "secular growth". The same in computing (hardware and software).

Nothing to suggest it will be easy to identify the big winners, be they the primary, or more likely subsequent movers.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350118

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 3:04 pm

dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:The big money in all of these secular growth stories has been made by the primary mover and this has led to the abandonment of much of the valuation based analysis.


I think your conclusion suffers significantly from hindsight bias.

Plenty of other mobile phone companies, Nokia, Blackberry etc. came along (and were successful) in that "secular growth". The same in computing (hardware and software).

Nothing to suggest it will be easy to identify the big winners, be they the primary, or more likely subsequent movers.


Sure there are always competitors.

The investors job is to weed out the also ran.

A huge amount of money can be made even when it becomes obvious who the winner is, as for example in Apple.

Once a leader appears something like an Apple or Amazon, it become very difficult for a competitor to effectively compete.

There is no guarantee that such dominance will continue, often it boils down to the quality of the CEO and eventually a new one is needed.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350120

Postby dealtn » October 23rd, 2020, 3:12 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:The big money in all of these secular growth stories has been made by the primary mover and this has led to the abandonment of much of the valuation based analysis.


I think your conclusion suffers significantly from hindsight bias.

Plenty of other mobile phone companies, Nokia, Blackberry etc. came along (and were successful) in that "secular growth". The same in computing (hardware and software).

Nothing to suggest it will be easy to identify the big winners, be they the primary, or more likely subsequent movers.


Sure there are always competitors.

The investors job is to weed out the also ran.

A huge amount of money can be made even when it becomes obvious who the winner is, as for example in Apple.

Once a leader appears something like an Apple or Amazon, it become very difficult for a competitor to effectively compete.

There is no guarantee that such dominance will continue, often it boils down to the quality of the CEO and eventually a new one is needed.

Regards,

Yes you "can", but that's not the same as what you originally said which was to do with the "primary mover". There is a huge difference between "primary mover" and "obvious winner", and it is especially hard to tell them apart with foresight.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350139

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » October 23rd, 2020, 4:49 pm

This would be really interesting if it was about Macro investments rather than Odysseus2000 vs the rest of the World.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350151

Postby odysseus2000 » October 23rd, 2020, 5:46 pm

dealtn
Yes you "can", but that's not the same as what you originally said which was to do with the "primary mover". There is a huge difference between "primary mover" and "obvious winner", and it is especially hard to tell them apart with foresight.


Is it?

It was very easy with Tesla at least so far, if you had spent a long time studying secular growth from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and some similar ideas from the ancients.

MotorCycleBoy
This would be really interesting if it was about Macro investments rather than Odysseus2000 vs the rest of the World.


That is often how it has to be to make progress and pick winners. Most of the world has been telling me since the days of the UK Fool that Tesla was massively over valued and could not compete with legacy auto.

The great thing about being slagged off repeatedly and derided as an idiot is that all of this diss was being done without any study of what was possible. One person was telling me that the production levels Musk was talking about had never been achieved, but I knew that Henry Ford had done better production levels without robots early last century.

I make a ton of mistakes, but so what?

If you are not making mistakes then you are not trying things.

Several folk have told me that they had done well this year and had made a few 100 basis points above bank rates. I smiled and didn't say that return was very poor, at least compared to the >120% I have made this year (and I am sure I should have done better), but such folk are often pillars of the community, have nice leased car and all the trappings of a job, but no clue about almost anything and are extremely small c conservative and lazy. Others have not spoken about their returns and seem to have had very bad years.

As with all things in life, some folk put little in, but find some way into a well paid job, others of equal quality are less lucky, others work very hard and lady luck still does not smile on them, while others work hard and profit from it.

The beauty of the Lemon is that it allows mostly polite discussion between posters spread across the generations and across the wealth and education spectrum. If people use it wisely it can be very valuable, but a lot get so caught up in emotions that they fail to grow and do not reap the blessing of the Lemon.

Regards,

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350219

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » October 24th, 2020, 6:30 am

The problem for others is that often the noise vastly overwhelms the signal.

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Re: Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

#350638

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » October 26th, 2020, 7:58 am

vrdiver wrote:
TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:Remote work isn't just for white collar

Hopefully you people don't need a subscription to view this clip of an in-store robot being guided by a remote teenage worker wearing using VR (I *think*)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-wor ... n#cxrecs_s

If nothing else, the robot looks pretty cool.

Matt

I hope this is a concept demo, otherwise the lad/robot is going to get sacked for being a slow shelf stacker!

Re the main point - that remote working is growing to include physical jobs; we've seen that already from military drones being piloted from thousands of miles away, to Australian mining workers operating mine equipment from nice air-conditioned offices hundreds of miles away from the mine location (a development driven by the fact that the nice places to live and the mine locations are usually not near each other!).

As the costs come down, I'd expect remote operations to become more popular (for employers at least, looking to cut costs, improve site security, reduce union interference, move to 24/7 operations etc.), but it's a worrying step for high-cost labour when anybody anywhere on the globe can compete for the same job. Call centres are a well known example of international outsourcing, just imagine the number of shelf stackers or other unskilled labourers who would work for less than the UK minimum wage in a remote location...

I'd be interested to find out how the trade unions / Labour Party plan to respond to this threat to the status quo, or whether they are sleepwalking into obsolescence?

As far as the macro investment options go, does anybody have a view on the ROBO or RBOT ETFs etc or would you go straight to a company like ABB?

VRD

I was looking at L&Gs version of the ROBO ETF just now

https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/etf/sn ... 0P00014IK3

as a way of joining the party. My Dad gave me his old Oct 10th-16th "The Economist" which has a couple of articles that have confirmed my bias increased my conviction in AI+Automation.

In addition to the ROBO ETFs and the mentioned firm ABB, does anyone know of any UK-listed ITs which I could use to obtain some exposure to these sectors?

thanks Matt

PS. The closest I already have to this is PCT Polar Capital Technology Trust


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