Tag: Asset Management

Don’t Believe The Hype

Cryptocurrency firms fell from grace (Chain and Lightyear merged to form Interstellar) as valuations and expectations got too far ahead of themselves for both the various “coin” firms as well as for blockchain – the distributed database technology that enables digital currency transactions. We are long-term bullish on each – particularly blockchain.

The crypto space isn’t the only sector that grew overheated as reality has set in to the autonomous vehicle space. Apparently robot cars won’t be shuttling all of humanity to and fro by 2025. We expect that autonomous vehicle startups will suffer a materially adverse impact to their respective valuations.

The two technology hype scenarios got us thinking about previous technology hype cycles. Thus, we created the TEK2day, CEORater “Technology Hype Curve” to visually represent an all too familiar pattern as it relates to hyping new technologies. Click HERE to download the Technology Hype Curve graphic.

Founder CEOs: Creators vs. Builders<span class="badge-status" style="background:red">Premium</span>

Founder CEOs: Creators vs. BuildersPremium

Every founder CEO begins as a “creator”. Not every founder CEO graduates from “creator” to “builder”. Creators eventually self-implode (Elon Musk, Tesla and Travis Kalanick, Uber) whereas other founders are able to scale over the long-term. For example, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are builders (We provide a list of Builder CEOs…

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CEORater Technology Founder CEO Index Remains Undefeated

We created the CEORater Technology Founder CEO Index in 2017 to illustrate our strong belief that founder CEOs are better qualified to lead Technology companies than are “hired” CEOs/ professional managers. The CEORater Index remains undefeated through July 13th 2018.

The CEORater Technology Founder CEO Index returned 24.7% and 22.8% on a Weighted and Unweighted Return basis respectively (click here for detail) during the January 2^nd 2018 – July 13^th 2018 period.

The S&P 500 Information Technology (TKR: S5INFT) returned 13.7% on a Weighted basis over the same period.

The Powershares S&P 500® Equal Weight Technology ETF (TKR: RYT) returned 14.5% on an Unweighted basis over the same period.

Using CEO Personality Types to Identify Risk

We extracted data from our recent CEORater CEO Personality Analytics research findings. We have focused on the personality trait “Openness” for the purpose of this note.

Recall that CEO’s who score high along the “Openness” spectrum tend to be more adaptable and are better at navigating through changing customer markets, particularly those that may be experiencing disruption from new market entrants, changes in technology, etc.

CEO’s who score low on Openness are less adaptable and less effective in navigating choppy waters, less effective in driving growth during periods of change. Note that ACIW CEO Phil Heasley scores low on Openness (75th percentile) and how this score compares to ACIW’s financial and operational performance.

For the record we are not long or short any of the stocks mentioned in our research.

Here is an update to the post: ACIW’s Year-to-Date stock price performance vs. a peer group of FinTech stocks including: EPAY, FNF, JKHY, FISV and SQ.