TechSector

World Broadband Lines and Average Speeds

World Broadband Lines in active use will reach 350 Million in 2008, and rise to 470 Million by 2010.  Of equal significance, the Impact of Computing ensures that the cost of network bandwidth continues to drop exponentially, and thus the average speed of each Broadband line is also increasing by as much as 30% a year.

As both the number and the average speed of lines are increasing simultaneously, this combined growth enables continued Internet evolution to occur much faster than most observers are expecting.  Technological changes often take observers by surprise because they are fixated on just one advancing trend, while failing to notice another trend on a rapid collision course with the first. 

Web 2.0 emerged a mere half-decade after the Internet bust (2000-02) due to the simultaneous combination of greater Internet connection speeds and wider Broadband penetration, leading to a greater number of people each spending more time online.  The total aggregate person-hours spent on the Internet grew dramatically, enabling new business models to sustainably exist. 

Thus, early in the next decade, the greater number of Broadband users, each with access to much higher speeds than today, will create an ecosystem that can sustain new Internet business models that may seem premature today.  This will eventually be defined as 'Web 3.0', which could include technologies known today under the term of 'Semantic Web'.

Be watchful of the companies that could become to Web 3.0 what YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. were to Web 2.0. 

TechSector's Stock Portfolio for 2007 - RESULTS

On January 23, 2007 on The Futurist, I created an investment portfolio to be frozen at that time, and evaluated on December 31, 2007 against the benchmark of the S&P500 index.  The portfolio incorporated principles, economic trends, and technologies discussed in other articles here on The Futurist.  Dividends were reinvested, and so the price paid reflects dividend-adjusted cost-basis.  Yahoo and Google Finance do tend to miss recording some dividends, so one must go to a more reliable site like Morningstar to account for the exact dividends. 

So how did the portfolio do?  I achieved a return of 13.3%, vs. just 4.3% for the S&P500, from January 23 to December 31.  Most fund managers are unable to beat the S&P500 index despite the advanced tools at their disposal.  The fraction of those that can beat the index by a margin 9.0 percentage points is even more exclusive, putting this portfolio in the top 10% of all mutual fund results for this period. 

 

As always, weightage matters just as much as stock-picking.  The first two securities, amounting to 50% of my portfolio, were a total disaster.  In fact, when I first created the portfolio, I listed FXI as a security that was strongly considered but left out.  FXI returned an eye-popping 83% over the same period, so if I had included FXI instead of ICF, the portfolio's total return would have exceeded 25%.  But it was not included, so 'what ifs' do not count. 

The India Investment Fund (IIF) was a star, more than compensating for the failure of the first two securities.  But the real home runs came from the video game stocks.  Three of the four outperformed the S&P500, and two of those, Activision and GameStop, surged into the stratosphere.  My selection and detailed analysis of this sector way back on April 17, 2006 yielded a spectacular payoff.  As a quartet, these 4 gaming stocks returned a combined 49% over this period. 

So there you have it.  Futurism is not impossible after all.  I have already started my 2008 portfolio, and we shall see how that goes on December 21, 2008.  The same principles covered in the articles below, are being applied.  Let us see if the success can be repeated or exceeded. 

The Next Big Thing in Entertainment, Part I, Part 2, and especially Part 3

The Culture of Success and Stock Market Capitalization in Developing Countries

The Stock Market is Exponentially Accelerating too

2007 Technology Breakthrough Roundup

One year ago on The Futurist, I posted a roundup of 2006 technology breakthroughs from MIT Technology Review.  Of the breakthroughs listed at that time, displays, plug-in hybrids, and solar cells showed impressive progress over the subsequent 12 months. 

Now, we arrive at the 2007 list, which has expanded from four categories last year to five this time. 

The Year in Software

The Year in Hardware : Gadgetmania

The Year in Energy : Solar power inches closer.

The Year in Biotechnology : Stem cell research methods that no longer need embryos.

The Year in Nanotechnology : Stanford University research into nanowires that dramatically increase battery capacity is the most promising breakthrough of 2007, in any discipline.  Think 30-hour laptop batteries. 

Most of the innovations in the articles above are in the laboratory phase, which means that about half will never progress enough to make it to market, and those that do will take 5 to 15 years to directly affect the lives of average people (remember that the laboratory-to-market transition period itself continues to shorten in most fields).  But each one of these breakthroughs has world-changing potential, and that there are so many fields advancing simultaneously guarantees a massive new wave of improvement to human lives. 

This scorching pace of innovation is entirely predictable, however.  To internalize the true rate of technological progress, one merely needs to appreciate :

The Milli, Micro, Nano, Pico curves

The Impact of Computing

The Accelerating Rate of Change

We are fortunate to live in an age when a single calendar year will invariably yield multiple technological breakthroughs, the details of which are easily accessible to laypeople.  In the 18th century, entire decades would pass without any observable technological improvements, and people knew that their children would experience a lifestyle identical to their own.  Today, we know with certainty that our lives in 2008 will have slight but distinct and numerous improvements in technological usage over 2007, just as 2007 was an improvement over 2006. 

Into the Future we continue, where 2008 awaits..