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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (56218)	1/8/2023 8:42:15 PM
From: Johnny Canuck	2 Recommendations Recommended By kidl Zilyunz Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69260

Keep in mind CES is a big show so it is hard to cover everything. Sometimes the most interesting stuff is in the smallest and unassuming booths. The show this year was smaller in scope than in the years before the pandemic. Keep in mind that was a peak year with 150,000 attendees and consumers were let in on the final day. The last day was quite indicating the professional were the primary attendees again and most people were trying to get home. This year the convention occupied the main hall, the north hall,the new west hall, the Venetian/Sand expo and the Aria. Square footage wise it seem smaller and the booth densities seem less though those that are were involve in EV and part of the EV eco-system has large booths. The most interesting part of the show is the Eureka themed exhibit space where you get to see startups from around the world (mostly USA and Europe with a few other countries thrown in). You get the see the unique ideas people are working on. Some of them are way out there and some fill a real buy unexplored need.The part of the show was a big as any pre-pandemic year. No major theme in that section of the show. The far East manufacturing expo was absent this year. In the last pre-pandemic year they has a series of separate pavilions that occupied one of the large parking lots. While there were suppliers and contract manufacturers from Asia and India they were mixed into the main hall and the Venetian in the Eureka section and the personal electronics section. I have not seen that since 2015. It looks like not as many Asian supplier came. It reflects the fact companies are watching their dollars in Asia. What was interesting was who did not have booths and what was the focus of the companies that did have booths. GoPro won an innovation award but did not have an exhibit at the show. If they were there they probably only had a meeting room. That is a shift from when they had a large booth at the show. If they were there they only had a meeting room on site. It is an indication that some companies are watching their marketing dollars. Canon and Nikon had their booths focus on motion capture systems for Artificial Reality applications. There were no new camera product announcements and their camera section were small in comparison them showing the AR related offerings. AR and VR is sitll a big thing at the show. VR is getting close to being more usable. The weights of the glasses and the technology to show the images (optical waveguides) is close to mainstream and still pricey ($1200 to $1700) but closer to being adopted in application that justify the cost (training, repairs where you need to access manuals in real time). AR goggles are still bulky and heavy. Body sensors and actuators are being promoted at providing real time feedback to users in gaming applications. The gaming is less interesting to me as opposed to the range of body sensor and actuators that are now available at reasonable cost. NFT (crypto art essentially), blockchain and web 3.0 were still big themes. One presenter described it accurately by describing NFTs as artificially created scarcity of digital items. A series of presenter talked about the crypto-winter of blockchains as a normal occurring event every three year. I am not sue I agree with this point. They made the point that despite the sell off more aspects of the eco-system are being accepted. In 2010 the question was blockchain a scam and what was it. In 2014 the infrastructure and technology existed and was accepted. In 2017 blockchain started to be talked about in the context of finance. Despite the melt down more levels of the infrastructure are in existence and can be built upon. I only had time for 3 short presentations but overall I came away think it is still a solution looking for a problem to solve. One presenter made the point it too hard to enter the eco-system and too hard to understand for the average consumer. Crypto-currency does not translate back into real dollars you add or expend on and from your credit card and you need crypto-currencies to buy the digital assets. The fact the FTX meltdown has little effect on the financial system indicates the limit usage it has achieved. AI was everywhere or as one presenter phrased it "AI and items branded as having AI but not really being AI" was everywhere. AI is still a overhyped. Some application have value. AI to analyze skin condition to determine if you can have hair transplants or systems that claim to interpret the crying patterns of children to figure out what they want maybe not so much. He made the points that the greatest challenges are AI inefficiencies of the algorithms and therefore hardware usage is inefficient and the energy usage is inefficient as a result also. It currently works because the hardware capabilities currently exceed the software requirement of designs. I talked to one company that had a product that tracked patients in extended care facilities using cameras to identify falls or other incidents that required intervention. He talked about migrating to customize workstations with NVDA boards as cloud computing was too expensive though he started that way. We have talked about his potential shift in the dynamic of cloud computing recently. One the manufacturing side I did talk to a few contract manufacturers. Some have avoided the bulk of the part shortage and some parts are starting to ease. The tough parts to get are power components due to the demand from solar application and automotive. They seem to suggest some people were paying 10 times the cost for parts in extreme shortage from parts brokers. TI is the number one manufacturer discrete components (power regulators, diodes, etc ...) and therefore power components. They are taking a first come first serve approach making it hard for some contract manufacturers. That would suggest good current pricing for TI. Most said the party line which it is should ease in 18 months which is code for we do not know but that most typical parts shortages are 18 months and it can not be worst from that. I am not sure it is serious guidance as opposed to wishful thinking. Next Q should be good for TI.