When companies commit to investing in innovation, the results compound over time, leading them to possess deep reservoirs of knowledge. We call these companies Knowledge Leaders, and such is the case for San Diego, California-based Illumina, the world leader in DNA sequencing and the No….
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Founded in 1992 to build sensor and measurement tools for factories, farms and mines, Sweden’s Hexagon AB is at work today fusing the physical world with the digital. By integrating hard data collection with software, mobile and cloud-based technologies, this Knowledge Leader uses the tools…
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In our work studying Knowledge Leaders, there’s a common thread: highly innovative companies often exist at the intersection of global trends that demand intensive R&D efforts to solve complex problems the world has never faced before. Coincidence? We don’t think so. The global population is…
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Internet retailers are a much-watched sub-industry in the stock market for good reason: worldwide retail ecommerce is predicted to generate double-digit growth each year through 2022, reaching total sales of $3 trillion by the end of that year, according to Euromonitor. For those of us…
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In 2003, Taiwanese generic drug leader TTY Biopharm and other Taiwanese venture capital firms funded a new type of drug company. PharmaEngine was launched with the specific mission of getting to market faster with drug treatments. To reduce the time between drug discovery, the first…
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For all the buzz, it would be easy to guess Tesla is the most innovative car maker in the world. But as our intangible-adjusted data reveals, Tesla invests less than half as much on R&D as the most innovative car company in the world. Invention…
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When Lyft went public on the last trading day of March, investors learned the firm has staked its future to the street-level adoption of autonomous vehicles. Aside from the legal and ethical concerns, social anxieties and scandals, driverless cars still have major technology hurdles to…
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Last week we were selected as a “Hidden Gem” at the Inside ETF conference in Hollywood, Florida. Steven Vannelli gave a 3-minute pitch on our investment strategy. Here’s what he said. Knowledge Leaders Hidden Gems 3-min Pitch “Hidden Gems” are 12 under-the-radar ETF ideas…
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Pilots used to say, “speed is life.” But things have changed, says former F-15 pilot Bob Edmonds, now of Elbit Systems, in a recent white paper. Today, “information is life.” Because for military pilots, lack of data can lead to spatial disorientation, or worse, fatalities….
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For decades, industries worldwide have used toxic chemicals like fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics that are harmful to people and the environment to drive profits. Denmark-based Novozymes is working to replace those chemical processes with enzymes, naturally derived proteins that initiate biochemical reactions. This Knowledge Leader…
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In 1887, a young man named Tomiro Nagase set out on a mission to bring cleanliness and hygiene to daily life in Japan. The Meiji Restoration was transforming the country from an agrarian to an industrial society and with it, a new middle class was…
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Value investing, which is often traced back to Ben Graham in the 1940s, is among the most influential trends in finance in recent decades. Value investing is based on the idea that lots of stocks are out of investors’ favor because of myriad of reasons, such as…
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My previous blog post (“Beware! Estimates Dominate Financial Reports,” October 13, 2018) alerted you the hidden secret of accounting: Most balance sheet and income statement items are based on managerial subjective estimates and projections (like depreciation, asset write-offs, bad debts, expected gain on pension assets, etc.). The…
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Energy is the best performing sector in four of six market-regions. (From two market groups, Developed and Emerging, and three regions, Americas, EMEA, Asia, we get six market-regions.) Among Developed Market sectors, energy is 5th YTD, down about 5% less than the MSCI All Country…
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Estimates Are Hazardous to Your Wealth. Everyone knows that accounting is boring (not when I teach it, though), but, at least, people think it’s factual. No fake news. After all, accounting comes from counting―counting money, units of inventory, etc. All facts. Nothing further from the truth. Except…
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