sepeskoe

I've been watching Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Google, Meta, ....

There's a bit of musical chairs among Apple, MS and Nvidia, but Apple seems to be maintaining its lead with new AI products.  Nvidia is still ramping up, but AMD and Intel are bringing new GPU chips to challenge Nvidia, and new players Cerebras and SambaNova are developing new architectures that are purpose built for AI/LLMs rather than general purpose GPUs which are faster and more efficient than Nvidia's GPUs.  Cerebras filed for an IPO earlier this month, so soon they'll have significant capital to work with.  Their market cap might reach unicorn status, so they aren't a competitor to Nvidia on that scale, but in terms of market share, Nvidia can be challenged.  SambaNova is still a private company, but they have some huge investors behind them, including SoftBank, Intel and Black Rock.  Their new Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) is demonstrating an order of magnitude -- it benchmarks as the fastest AI platform available now (https://sambanova.ai/press/worlds-fastest-ai-platform).

So, as I've presented recently, I think Nvidia's growth will slow because of competition from other AI platforms, which will put downward pressure on the growth in share value.  Exactly when we'll see the impact isn't clear to me, yet, but I think there will be enough hints over the next 7 months to keep Nvidia's market cap from exceeding Apple's or Microsoft's.

Again, full disclosure: I hold shares of Apple and Nvidia.  Personally, I don't care which one is the leader next May.

I honestly am not following this question closely, and I'm not absorbing the details in the HWC very well.  From what I can discern, the James Webb is opening up all regions of space with sufficient detail, so here's my assumption: there are probably an infinite number of habitable planets out there, and the JWST is helping find dozens of exoplanets each year.  Since historically 10% of the newly discovered planets are in their star's Habitable Zone, and 1% are in the Goldilocks zone, my wager is that more than 5 such planets will be discovered by any of several means (Kepler, Hubble, JWST, ...) between 1 Feb and 31 Dec 2024.

As the clock ticks, the more I'm certain I'm right.  However, if Trump wins in ten days, it's possible that his anti-China sentiment might drive MS to rethink its positions in China.  With a Harris win, I think there will be a continuation of the Biden policy in re: China.  I expect no immediate changes after the election, but with 2 months remaining and a Trump win, the situation with this MS Lab may change.  However, right now, I'm betting on a Harris/Walz win.

Now that Israel is bombing Beirut and Tehran, as well as Hamas in the Gaza, the Saudis cannot show any support for Israel.  While there's no cease-fire in Gaza, there will not be any public rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. 

Given the escalating tit-for-tat with Israel, which might bring US forces closer to the action and most of the EU and NATO countries supporting Israel (or at least damning Iran), there's no way that Iran will reduce its nuclear aspirations.  Now, with its support of Russia with weapons for the Ukraine battle, Iran may be getting more nuclear weapons technology from Russia.  For me, all this points to a solid 100% NO on this question.

Israel's devastating military actions against 3 of Iran's key proxies -- Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis -- may provoke Iran to do something stupid like declare war on Israel.  I'm giving it a low probability because Iran knows that a declaration of war vs Israel will bring the US into the battle.  However, Iran has already escalated the situation with a 200 ballistic missile barrage on Israel on 1 October.  The US has vowed "severe consequences" for Iran's actions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/10/01/iran-israel-biden/ Iran has not declared war, yet -- the 200 missile barrage was a retaliatory strike for Israel's actions in Lebanon (including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah).  It's possible that the US engagement might bring Iran's regional (Syria, Lebanon, ...) or global allies, esp Russia, into the fray.  I haven't read any reports that Russia or Iraq or Venezuela or Syria or Yemen or Lebanon or any others that are generally considered Iran's allies have vowed to support Iran in any military engagements with Israel or the US with the same emphasis that the US vowed to come to Israel's defense.  (I consider China to be a trading partner of Iran's but not a military ally.)