Friday, December 30, 2016

The Financial Times Gives NVIDIA a Nod (NVDA)

A smart thumbnail, the writer points out the strengths and weaknesses without the oohing-and-ahhing we're starting to see elsewhere. And no pictures of rocket ships. (sorry Barron's, I know you were joking) 

From the Financial Times, Dec. 30 2016: 

Chipmaker Nvidia tops S&P 500 as best performer of the year
High expectations for artificial intelligence drive stock up 238%
Soaring expectations for artificial intelligence may have threatened to tip over into tech industry hype this year, but they have thrown up at least one clear winner: chipmaker Nvidia, which has ridden a late-year rally to make it the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 by a wide margin.

Like Levi Strauss, who made his fortune selling goods to miners during the California gold rush rather than doing the mining himself, Nvidia has become a key supplier to all the leading tech companies involved in deep learning, the current state of the art in AI.

It is widely credited with having developed the best chips for training the artificial neural networks built by companies including Google, Amazon and Baidu to do things like recognise images or understand language.

“I’ve never seen such agreement about a technology,” said Patrick Moorhead, a chip analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “I think they’re two to three years ahead of Intel.” He added that the world’s biggest chipmaker now had its sights set on the same market and “can’t be counted out”....MORE
The stock is down $2.84 at $108.59 and should be able to hold the top spot in the S&P rankings.
Unless #2 ONEOK doubles in the next five hours.