AOL Hangs Up on Dial-Up, Shoppers Get Picky, Tech Helps the Old and More Investing News

Can you believe AOL still offers dial-up after more than thee decades? Well, soon that will end. Check out this and many other reports as we condense the news of the week that speaks to our Pro Portfolio investments. 

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Aging Population

Some neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended — not always enthusiastically — with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common. Given decades of alarms about technology’s threats to our brains and well-being — sometimes called “digital dementia” — one might expect to start seeing negative effects. The opposite appears true. Read more here

Position: Labcorp LH; Bullpen: Welltower WELL

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a key tool for companies to drive growth — and reduce labor costs —particularly as pressure mounts for businesses to remain competitive. Companies in industries ranging from cloud software to fast food to e-commerce have internally deployed AI tools to improve productivity, customer experience and supply chains. AI is also leading to less reliance on human labor in some spaces, particularly entry level jobs and positions tied to automation and manual tasks. Read more here

The General Services Administration unveiled another major Trump administration initiative Thursday, launching USAi.Gov to serve as a centralized, secure and trustworthy generative artificial intelligence evaluation suite for federal agencies to explore, interact with and even adopt secure AI services. Read more here

Peloton reportedly plans to launch its integrated artificial intelligence (AI) platform and other new products as early as October. The fitness company is set to roll out the platform, an updated bike, a refreshed treadmill and new branded peripherals, Bloomberg reported Thursday (Aug. 14), citing unnamed sources. Read more here

Companies also spotlighted the use of AI in operational backbone and customer-facing interactions. Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said during the most recent call that the company is “advancing a more digital future is with Visa Intelligent Commerce, which enables consumers to shop and buy with AI agents. It combines a suite of integrated APIs (application programming interfaces), including AI-ready cards with tokenization and authentication, together with a commercial partner program for AI platforms, enabling developers to deploy Visa’s AI commerce capabilities.” Read more here

Position: Alphabet GOOGL, Amazon AMZN, Meta META, Microsoft MSFT, ServiceNow NOW, SuRo Capital SSSS

Cash-Strapped Consumer

As food spending becomes more budget-conscious, consumers are not swinging to extremes. Instead, they’re selectively trading down. They’re dining less, but when they do, they want healthy fare. They’re grocery shopping more, but preferring store brands; and they’re buying food online, but favoring fresh, natural options. Read more here

"While we delivered positive same-store sales in a choppy consumer environment for our segment, overall results were below our expectations going into the quarter," said outgoing CEO Andrew H. Madsen. He made it clear that traffic was not what the company had hoped for, and he identified why during Noodles & Company's second-quarter earnings call. Read more here

“Initially it starts off with necessities,” said Dager, 22, who recently took out a personal loan from her credit union, with a 14% interest rate, to pay off her Affirm balance. “To me, it was just $20 a month here and there, not $1,000 in debt. But it all adds up.” The use of such loans, which allow consumers to spread the cost of purchases—from large-ticket items to services as small as food delivery, accelerated in the past year among young Americans, according to a June report from the Bank of America Institute. Read more here

LendingClub CEO Scott Sanborn said more than half of consumers don’t know the interest rates on their credit cards. Among those who claim to know their rates, half underestimate what they’re actually paying. The findings come from LendingClub’s internal research, as credit card interest rates have risen to the high-20% range while essential expenses continue to outpace income growth over the past two decades. Credit card revolving balances have reached record levels during this period. Read more here

Americans with a collective $1.6 trillion in student loans are required to make payments again after five years of pandemic-era leniency measures, but only a third of those receiving bills are actually paying them. Some borrowers are choosing not to pay their student loans as a matter of priorities, forced to decide between paying for necessities like housing or a car versus student loans. Read more here

Position: Amazon, Costco COST, TJX Companies TJX

Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Digital Identity

The breach of the US Courts records system came to light more than a month after the attack was discovered. Details about what was exposed—and who’s responsible—remain unclear. Read more here

The House of Commons of Canada is currently investigating a data breach after a threat actor reportedly stole employee information in a cyberattack on Friday. While the lower house of the Parliament of Canada has yet to issue a public statement regarding this incident, CBC News reports that House of Commons staff were notified of a breach on Monday via email. Read more here

The Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General has announced that a recent cyberattack has taken down its systems, including landline phone lines and email accounts. As Attorney General Dave Sunday revealed on social media on Monday, the office staff is currently working to restore affected services and investigate the incident with the help of law enforcement authorities. Read more here

QR codes were once a quirky novelty that prompted a fun scan with the phone. Early on, you might have seen a QR code on a museum exhibit and scanned it to learn more about the eating habits of the woolly mammoth or military strategies of Genghis Khan. During the pandemic, QR codes became the default restaurant menu. However, as QR codes became a mainstay in more urgent aspects of American life, from boarding passes to parking payments, hackers have exploited their ubiquity… Brewer says that attackers exploit these seemingly harmless symbols to trick people into visiting malicious websites or unknowingly share private information, a scam that has become known as “quishing.” Read more here

Position: Alphabet, First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF, Microsoft

Digital Infrastructure

The 6G healthcare market is set for transformative growth, driven by ultrareliable, low-latency connectivity. Key trends include AI, IoT, and sensing tech enable RPM, AR/VR diagnostics, and telehealth. The report analyses trends, challenges, market share, plus key players, and forecasting up to 2040. Read more here

AOL dial-up is ending on September 30th according to a statement posted on the company’s website. It marks the end of the service that was synonymous with the internet for many since its launch in 1991. Read more here

Saudi data center firm center3 is targeting 1GW of capacity by 2030… Center3 is a subsidiary of Saudi Telecom formed in 2022. It has some 20 data centers in development and operation in and around the Kingdom as well as Bahrain. The company aims to reach 300MW of total installed capacity by 2027. Read more here

The market for physical data centre infrastructure will grow at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 15 percent from 2024 to 2029, reaching $63.1 billion by the end of the period. Analyst house Dell’Oro Group puts the growth down to (you guessed it) the mad rush for AI of various kinds. “AI-ready capacity [will] accelerate through the mid-decade,” it says. “This outlook reflects stronger-than-expected deployments to support accelerated computing workloads.” Read more here

During the quarterly call with investors, Robbins said that as AI agents begin autonomously performing tasks, “the capacity requirements of the network will be compounded to accommodate both unprecedented levels of network traffic and an increasing threat landscape,” with major network upgrades expected. Read more here

Positions: Marvell MRVL, Nvidia NVDA, Qualcomm QCOM

Digital Lifestyle

German carrier Deutsche Telekom has introduced an AI-enabled smartphone and tablet, with the main goal of making artificial intelligence more widely accessible at a relatively low price, the telco said in a release… The AI-phone integrates the Perplexity Assistant, enabling users to perform a range of everyday tasks — from drafting emails and setting calendar events to planning trips, finding recipes, translating text, and answering general questions. The European telco noted that users can interact with the assistant via voice or text, either by pressing a dedicated button or double-clicking the power key. The device connects to pre-installed apps for functions such as navigation, messaging, and calls, the telco added. Read more here

Amazon is rolling out same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S. as it looks to encourage shoppers to add meat and eggs to their order while they’re browsing its sprawling online store. The company announced Wednesday it’s bringing the service to more than 1,000 U.S. cities and towns, including Raleigh, North Carolina, Tampa, Florida, and Milwaukee with plans to reach at least 2,300 locations by the end of this year. Read more here

E-commerce has become an indispensable part of global retail. Like many other industries, buying and selling goods has undergone a substantial transformation following the advent of the internet, and thanks to the ongoing digitalization of modern life, consumers all over the world now profit from the perks of online transactions. As global internet access and adoption rapidly increase, with over five billion internet users worldwide, the number of people making purchases online is ever-increasing. In 2025, retail e-commerce sales are estimated to exceed 4.3 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, and this figure is expected to reach new heights in the coming years. Read more here

Positions: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, SuRo Capital

Energy Pain Point

Europe’s energy systems have come under intense strain this summer as repeated heatwaves have driven up demand for electricity and forced plants to pause production. June was the hottest on record in western Europe, fuelling a rise in the use of air conditioning and prompting a sharp increase in electricity prices. Most parts of the region experienced at least two intense periods of heat in June and July, with some suffering more. Read more here

Oncor Electric Delivery, Texas’s largest transmission and distribution electric utility, has reported more than 200GW of interconnection requests, with 186GW from the data center sector and 5GW from cryptocurrency facilities… Due to the volume of requests, Oncor said that it could potentially add more than $12 billion to its existing $36bn capital plan when it revises that plan sometime next year. Read more here

Position: Eaton

Safety & Security

For all the impressive tasks that drones can do, there is one that remains beyond their power: facial recognition. Drones are generally much farther from their subjects than the kind of cameras, such as cctvs, that are ordinarily used for biometrics. At these distances a face may consist of only a few dozen pixels. Atmospheric turbulence caused, for example, by rising hot air, can distort features like the distance between one’s eyes. And because they record from the sky, drones’ on-board cameras may capture only a partial view of a face (or, if someone is wearing a wide-brimmed hat, none at all). But new technology from a team at Michigan State University (msu) seeks to change all that and extend the spying powers of artificial intelligence (ai) into the skies. Read more here

Europe’s weapons factories are expanding at three times the rate of peacetime, stretching over 7mn sq metres of new industrial development that represents rearmament on a historic scale… The data shows that Europe’s long-promised defence revival, driven by an injection of public subsidies, is beginning to materialise not just in policy rhetoric or spending pledges but also in concrete and steel. Read more here

The U.S. Army will soon assume a broader mission in defending the U.S. homeland, expanding from a focus on countering intercontinental ballistic missiles to address a much wider variety of threats, from drones to cruise missiles to hypersonic weapons, said Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Read more here

Position: Axon Enterprise AXON, Palantir PLTR

Other Recent Signals We’ve Shared

AI Is Taking Jobs Away, Shoppers Fret Over Prices, Columbia Hacked, More Investing News

Going Gray Online in China, AI on the Menu, KitKat Costs and More News for Investing

$20 'Prime' Shoppers; Gray New Yorkers; Hacker Hacks; and More Investing News

The Strategies Behind Our Thematic Framework

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 US 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.