AI Is Reshaping Hiring, Swarms Come to Drone Warfare and Other Investing Signals
Let's scan through the headlines for the stories of the week that speak to our Pro Portfolio holdings.
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We have a very full plate of signals to share for the Portfolio’s strategies and its holdings. From aging and AI to homebuilding and an energy pain point, we continue to see multiple confirmation points unfolding around us.
If you’ve come across a signal we should know about, be sure to drop a link in the Comment section below.
And if you haven’t watched this week’s TheStreet Stocks & Markets podcast, here’s a helpful link so you can.
Aging Population
More than 16 million people aged 65 and older in the U.S. live alone. That represents 28% of that age group, almost triple the share in 1950. Among the reasons: increased longevity, higher divorce rates among older adults, and children more scattered than previous generations. Read more here
Many retirees these days are facing financial difficulties due to an assortment of problems including meager or nonexistent pensions, low savings, steep healthcare costs and longer lives that raise the risk of outliving their money. To address these, financial advisers often recommend working longer. Read more here
Position: Labcorp LH; Bullpen: Welltower WELL
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping hiring decisions in the U.S. labor market, but fears of widespread job loss remain unfounded, according to new regional surveys from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The August regional business surveys found a sharp uptick in AI use among firms in the New York, Northern New Jersey region, with 40% of service firms reported using AI in the past six months, up from 25% this time last year. For the next six months, 44% expect to use AI. Read more here
Starbucks is rolling out its latest AI-powered back-of-house technology with barista efficiency in mind. The Seattle-based coffee giant is working with NomadGo to roll out a custom automated inventory counting tool that allows store employees to keep track of items in real time and count inventory eight times more frequently than manual inventory tracking methods. Read more here
Position: Alphabet GOOGL, Amazon AMZN, Elastic ESTC, Meta META, Microsoft MSFT, ServiceNow NOW, SuRo Capital SSSS
Cash-Strapped Consumer
But there’s another reason for the persistence of consumer strength: Shoppers haven’t yet felt the sting of higher prices. That is largely because many retailers imported products ahead of spring and summer tariff implementations, allowing them to keep most of their prices unchanged, and have been willing to eat some of the higher costs... And those doubts largely stem from new tariffs as retailers restock inventories for the holiday season and companies are forced to pass on higher import costs to consumers to protect margins. Read more here
The escalating prices offer a glimpse of how President Trump’s trade policy is starting to trickle down to American shoppers. For consumers fatigued by recent bouts of heavy inflation, the announcements portend another round of sticker shock when buying groceries and household goods. Read more here
Evidence of a squeezed middle class is mounting. Several CEOs across the dining, retail, fashion and airline industries have said their middle-class customers are increasingly strapped, even as high earners keep on buying. Read more here
Position: Amazon, Costco COST, TJX Companies TJX
Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Digital Identity
China has hacked into American power grids and companies for decades, stealing sensitive files and intellectual property such as chip designs as it seeks to gain an edge over the United States. But a sweeping cyberattack by a group known as Salt Typhoon is China’s most ambitious yet, experts and officials have concluded after a year of investigating it. It targeted more than 80 countries and may have stolen information from nearly every American, officials said. Read more here
Palo Alto Networks suffered a data breach that exposed customer data and support cases after attackers abused compromised OAuth tokens from the Salesloft Drift breach to access its Salesforce instance. The company states that it was one of hundreds of companies affected by a supply-chain attack disclosed last week, in which threat actors abused the stolen authentication tokens to exfiltrate data. Read more here
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against education software company PowerSchool, which suffered a massive data breach in December that exposed the personal information of 62 million students, including over 880,000 Texans. PowerSchool is a cloud-based software solutions provider for K-12 schools and districts, with more than 18,000 customers and supporting over 60 million students worldwide. Read more here
Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting the trust organizations place in artificial intelligence platforms to conduct sophisticated phishing attacks, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Cato Networks. The company’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service recently uncovered a campaign where threat actors leveraged Simplified AI, a popular marketing platform, to steal Microsoft 365 credentials from US-based organizations. Read more here
Position: Alphabet, Elastic, First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF CIBR, Microsoft
Digital Infrastructure
Amazon has formally launched cloud services in New Zealand and dusted off a plan first announced in 2021 to invest more than NZ$7.5 billion ($4.4 billion) in data centers in the South Pacific nation. Read more here
Google has unveiled plans to invest $9 billion in Virginia. The funding will be focused on cloud and AI infrastructure, including the development of a new data center in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond. The tech giant’s multibillion-dollar investment will also go towards the expansion of its existing data center facilities in Loudoun and Prince William Counties… Read more here
President Donald Trump said that Meta Platforms is planning to spend $50 billion on its massive data center in rural Louisiana. Trump, speaking Tuesday during a Cabinet meeting, said he was in awe of the cost of the project, which is currently being built. Read more here
APAC operator Digital Edge has broken ground on a data center outside Bangkok, Thailand. First announced in June 2025, construction is now underway on the 100MW campus, with a Q4 2026 target Ready-for-Service (RFS) date. Read more here
Positions: Marvell MRVL, Nvidia NVDA, Qualcomm QCOM
Digital Lifestyle
A new survey has found that nearly seven in ten iPhone owners in the United States plan to upgrade to an iPhone 17 model, signaling strong demand ahead of Apple's expected unveiling of the devices at its September 9 keynote. Read more here
OpenAI says it’s developing an AI-powered hiring platform to connect businesses and employees, a service that would put the outfit in close competition with LinkedIn. The product is called the OpenAI Jobs Platform, and the company expects to launch the service by mid-2026, an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. Read more here
Positions: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, SuRo Capital
Energy Pain Point
European data center firm Data4 has signed a nuclear power supply agreement with French electric utility EDF to power its French data center portfolio. The Nuclear Production Allocation Contract (NPAC) will last for 12 years and see EDF supply 40MW of power from its operational fleet. As part of the agreement, Data4 will share a portion of the costs and risks associated with the volumes of energy actually produced. Read more here
Data centers in North America are facing record-breaking demand that’s reshaping digital infrastructure, but major roadblocks persist, with the average wait time for a grid connection now reaching four years. According to JLL’s midyear report on the data center market, power delays remain one of the industry’s biggest hurdles, and the commercial real estate firm notes this constraint is helping prevent a speculative bubble. Read more here
Position: Eaton
EV Transition
GM is pressing pause on two of its biggest electric SUVs, the Hummer EV and Escalade IQ, as it temporarily halts output at its Factory Zero assembly plant. The move will see production at the Detroit facility stop after Labor Day, beginning September 2, and remain idle until October 6… The temporary shutdown underscores the challenges automakers face in balancing EV demand with production capacity. Read more here
Analysts have warned that the end of federal tax incentives for electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States could lead to a significant drop in sales for major manufacturers such as Tesla, General Motors, and Ford. The tax credit, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is set to expire at the end of this month, which could result in a 50% decrease in EV sales compared to current levels. Read more here
Homebuilding & Materials
High mortgage rates, anemic housing supply in some regions and record prices have forced many Americans to sit tight on buying a new home or selling their existing one. For builders of new homes, that has meant offering more incentives, like cutting interest rates on a mortgage for the first few years, giving buyers more money toward closing costs or reducing the list price of a home. Read more here
Sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell in July following a sharp upward revision to the prior month's sales pace, and the overall trend remained consistent with a housing market struggling in an environment of high mortgage rates. Read more here
Luxury Buying Boom
Disney’s ethos began to change in the 1990s as it increased its luxury offerings, but only after the economic shock of the pandemic did the company seem to more fully abandon any pretense of being a middle-class institution. A Disney vacation today is “for the top 20 percent of American households — really, if I’m honest, maybe the top 10 percent or 5 percent,” Read more here
Sharp declines in tourist spending on luxury goods in Japan and Europe are dragging on industry sales, adding to the challenges for a sector grappling with the end of a multiyear boom and the fallout from U.S. tariffs. Read more here
Safety & Security
Military experts say the so-called swarm technology represents the next frontier for drone warfare because of its potential to allow tens or even thousands of drones — or swarms — to be deployed at once to overwhelm the defenses of a target, be that a city or an individual military asset. Read more here
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is scaling back its ambitions for a slate of upgrades called Block 4, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday, as the aircraft struggles with production delays, cost overruns and supply chain snarls. The downgrading of plans for F-35 upgrades, revealed in GAO’s report “F-35 Program: Actions Needed to Address Late Deliveries and Improve Future Development,” is the latest challenge for the vital — as well as troubled and expensive — program. Read more here
Position: Axon Enterprise AXON, Palantir PLTR
The Strategies Behind Our Thematic Models
Aging of the Population - Capturing the demographic wave of the aging population and the changing demands it brings with it.
Artificial Intelligence – Software, chips and related companies that facilitate the collection and analysis of large data sets and autonomous generation of solutions given non-machine language prompts.
Cash Strapped Consumer - Companies poised to benefit as consumers stretch the disposable spending dollars they do have.
CHIPs Act – Capturing the reshoring of the U.S. semiconductor industry and the $52.7 billion poised to be spent on semiconductor manufacturing.
Cybersecurity - Companies that focus on protecting against the penetration of digital networks and the theft, ransom, corruption or destruction of data.
Data Privacy & Digital Identity - Companies providing the tools and services that verify authorized users and safeguard personal data privacy.
Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity - The buildout and upgrading of our Networks, Data Storage Facilities, and Equipment.
Digital Lifestyle - The companies behind our increasingly connected lives.
Digital Payments - This model focuses on companies benefitting from the accelerating structural adoption of digital payments and financial technology (FinTech).
Energy Pain Point - Companies poised to prosper from rising power demand.
EV Transition - Capturing the transition to EVs and related infrastructure from combustion engine vehicles.
Guilty Pleasure – Companies that produce/provide food and drink products that consumers tend to enjoy regardless of the economic environment and potential long-term health hazards associated with excessive consumption.
Homebuilding & Materials – Ranging from homebuilders to key building product companies that serve the housing market, this model looks to capture the rising demand for housing, one that should benefit as the Fed returns monetary policy to more normalized levels.
Luxury Buying Boom - Tapping into aspirational buying and affluent buyers amid rising global wealth.
Rebuilding America - Turning the focused spending on rebuilding US infrastructure into revenue and profits.
Safety & Security – Targeted exposure to companies that provide goods and services primarily to the Defense and security sectors of the economy.
