Friday, February 3, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
A recent headline in The Economist couldn't help but catch my attention... Bypassed: are heart surgeons dying out? The sub-headline was equally compelling... For years, they swaggered atop the medical profession. Now the machines are coming for their jobs So was the cover photo... A few quotes in the story were equally eye-catching – including […]
Thursday, February 2, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
The big question in the early innings of conversational and generative artificial intelligence ('AI'), such as ChatGPT, is... how good are its responses? CNBC recently had a great conversation about this with longtime tech investor Roger McNamee, whom I used to quote decades ago when he was a fairly unknown tech analyst for mutual fund […]
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
Well, that didn't take long... It has been a mere two months since chatbot ChatGPT came out of nowhere to be everywhere... and the stock promoters are up to their old tricks. The "Dash for Trash," as it has been called, is off to the races – this time with artificial intelligence ("AI") as the […]
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
Private equity has met the enemy... and it's staring at itself in the mirror. Think about it... Before the bubble burst, private equity was buying anything and everything that wasn't nailed down: car washes, dental offices, housing contractors, trash haulers, urgent care centers, hospices – the list goes on. And maybe no industry epitomizes what's […]
Monday, January 30, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
I've been on Twitter for 15 years, and lately at times I've been feeling like things are different... Ever since the new owner took over – you know who I mean, that guy who makes electric vehicles ("EVs") and spaceships – the vibe has been anywhere from wobbly to downright weird. I've found myself increasingly […]
Saturday, January 28, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
Between overhyped initial public offerings ('IPOs'), crypto scams, and meme stocks, it has never been easier to lose money in the markets... At the same time, the prices of everything – gas, food, your electric bill, and just simple takeout – have shot higher. While there have been recent signs of relief, inflation is still […]
Friday, January 27, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
The good news about all the buzz, banter, and hype surrounding chatbot ChatGPT is that it'll soon die out... That's how these things always go. First something nobody has ever heard of comes from nowhere, then it's suddenly everywhere. It happens in predictable waves – usually starting in social media, then industry media, and finally […]
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
I was flying back to San Diego on Delta Air Lines (DAL) the other day and had to transfer in Atlanta, when it dawned on me... Southwest Airlines (LUV) isn't the only air carrier that has underspent on technology. That's the only explanation for what happened to our flight. First, moments from when we were […]
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
By Herb Greenberg
If there's one moral to Southwest Airlines' (LUV) screwup last week with thousands of canceled flights, it's this... Companies spend woefully little on tech. What happened at Southwest is really little more than something that has been hiding in plain sight for years. Simply ask yourself: How many times have you heard a retail clerk […]
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I was going back and forth with a friend on LinkedIn the other day, after he had posted something on how even the smart investors often get caught following the crowd... Exhibit No. 1, which continues to intrigue me: the number of so-called "smart" investors who piled into the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, thinking all […]
Friday, December 16, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Since I started writing about stocks – and that has been decades – the most perplexing question I've faced, and the hardest to answer, is when to sell... Buying is the easy part... But selling? There are so many variables rolled into one – from risk tolerances to objectives to instincts and knowledge... And let's […]
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
If you missed it, there was big news yesterday... Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory outside of San Francisco had a breakthrough in creating energy from nuclear fusion. Nuclear physicists have been pursuing this technology for decades. And investors being investors, they immediately started wondering the best way to cash in on what very […]
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Until a week ago, most of you had never heard of ChatGPT... And I'm willing to bet that some – if not most – of you still haven't heard of it... especially if you don't spend your days on social media or all things tech. But out of nowhere, the so-called "chatbot" is seemingly everywhere. […]
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I still get a twinge of PTSD when I think back on doing short research in the year post-pandemic... That was when even the most fundamentally flawed companies were winners. And it seemed that the more fundamentally flawed, the bigger the winner. The biggest immediate winners, of course, were the likes of Peloton (PTON), Zoom […]
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Over the past year, I have become a big fan of the folks at market research firm Kailash Concepts... And that's not just because I have since become an ambitious user of their data. I also like the way they think and – perhaps more important – who they are. And while I'm no longer […]
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Last week saw one of the greatest fiascos to hit the land of cryptocurrencies... On Friday, crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy. It could be another example of the "Stadium Curse"... The blowup comes less than two years after FTX shelled out $135 million to replace American Airlines' (AAL) naming rights for the home of […]
Friday, November 11, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
You could see the ESG mess coming from miles away... ESG, of course, stands for "environmental, social, and governance," which sprang out of nowhere in recent years to become the centerpiece of institutional investment strategies everywhere. It's the old "socially responsible investing" on steroids. Never mind that there are no real standards to signify what […]
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Is the stock market at an inflection point? Don't we all wish for this to be the case, unless of course this really is the end of times. I'm in the camp that says this market still has to go through a deep cleansing... and that's based on nothing more than my worldview of common […]
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
One of the early essays I wrote when I joined Empire was a warning about the hype surrounding autonomous trucks and flying taxis... They both had been part of my focus during the few months I had spent trying to get into activist short selling. For a variety of reasons, neither topic made the cut […]
Friday, October 28, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I laughed out loud when I saw that the government's TreasuryDirect site had been crashing under the weight of a last-minute rush by investors to buy I bonds... Today is the last day for investors to sign up to get 9.62%, before rates fall to an expected 6.47% for the next six months – still […]