Podzept - The Bigger Picture

In this episode Luke Templeman provides a brief summary of the teams’ top thematic ideas for the rest of the year.

Deutsche Bank Research has just released the latest World Outlook, featuring updated views on economics and markets. They have called this edition “The Waiting Game…” because they maintain their call for a US recession in Q4 as the lags from tighter monetary policy really start to hit. That weak outlook is evident elsewhere too, and their forecasts don’t expect any G7 country to grow by more than 0.8% in 2024. However, when it comes to the long term they are very enthusiastic about the prospects of AI changing the nature of our economies in the years ahead, which could offer some optimism after a very challenging start to the decade.

Artificial intelligence is an overnight success that has been many years in the making. But where is it going next? In our latest Podzept episode, Dr Marion Laboure, Cassidy Ainsworth-Grace and Adrian Cox, analyse the details of an extensive database of AI venture capital deals and patents to anticipate what innovations will soon be arriving on our doorsteps.

Artificial intelligence offers the tantalising prospect of improving the perennial underperformance of companies with many employees.In this podcast, Luke Templeman, Olga Cotaga and Adrian Cox discuss why high-staff companies tend to have a lower market capitalisation, thinner margins and lower growth rates than lower-staff ones. They analyse evidence that suggests AI could enable high-employee companies to get more value from each staff member. That may generate an outsize benefit in return on equity and potentially catalyse equity market returns in the years to come.

In our series ‘Making Sense of Space’ we discuss various aspects of the Space ecosystem. This episode will focus on Earth Observation (EO) which involves gathering information about the planet’s physical, chemical and biological systems to deliver actionable insights. In particular, we go over how radio frequency data can be used to analyze marine, aviation, and weather patterns.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to permeate our lives, but the technology and opportunities likely remain a mystery to many. In this podcast, Dr Marion Laboure, Adrian Cox and Cassidy Ainsworth-Grace look at today’s artificial intelligence landscape, its rapid growth and the new capabilities of ChatGPT and its competitors.

What happens when geo-political tensions create a sense of insecurity in corporate CEOs? One result is that some are reshoring. This applies to both manufacturing and services – both supply chains and operations. In this podcast, Luke Templeman and Olga Cotaga discuss how to identify the reshoring theme and how it has accelerated dramatically over the last couple years. In addition, they consider some of the countries that are best placed to capitalise on the trend and how investors can think about the effects on asset allocation.

How do we identify the key themes that are driving markets and economies, and also incorporate their impact into investment and corporate decisions? Adrian Cox asks Luke Templeman about his latest report ’16 themes driving markets and economies’. It highlights the top themes and explains how applying a common framework across different themes is necessary to assess how those themes can affect each other. “You can read something written by intelligent people on theme A and then theme B, and they might make sense individually, but they may overlap in ways that are mutually exclusive. That’s what really interests me”, says Templeman.

House prices are cooling off around the world after the boom years of historically low interest rates and a pandemic race for space. Countries like Sweden, Canada and Australia, which had the biggest gains, heaviest household debt and highest proportion of variable rate mortgages, are most exposed. In the latest episode of Podzept, Michael Hsueh, FX Strategist and author of the G10 Housing Monitor, Jon Bell, Head of the European Construction and House Building Research, and Adrian Cox, Thematic Strategist, discuss the outlook.

In our new series ‘Making Sense of Space’ we discuss various aspects of the Space ecosystem. The third episode dives into the future of space stations and habitats. Edison Yu, lead on research coverage of Space & Aerial Mobility, speaks with Amir Blachman, Chief Investment Officer of Axiom Space.