In an informal poll this week, aided by a smorgasbord of beers and cheap plonk, Spy surveyed a number of industry people who work in sales, marketing, portfolio and wealth management. It was a simple question: how many of your daily searches have moved from Google to some form of AI (Grok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc)? The answers varied from about 5% to nearly 100% for some responders. Before our very eyes, a radical revolution is taking place, and the implications are huge. Previous search took users to the end website; this is traffic that millions of companies rely on for their business leads. With AI, the end website is being thoroughly disintermediated, and it is almost impossible to see how one’s brand or product is being interpreted by the various AI tools. Power is being concentrated in a few, very strong, very well funded brands. Spy sees trouble ahead.
Be a contrarian or run with crowd? The age-old dilemma, reckons Spy. For those who are keen on running with the crowd, a manager named VistaShares has just launched a strategy it thinks might help: the Animal Spirits 2x Daily Strategy ETF, which has the rather irresistible ticker, WILD. The strategy uses as its universe stocks that are so popular with investors, they already have single-stock leveraged ETFs available in their name. For example, Tesla or Nvidia, etc. WILD will select the five most popular stocks ranked by “buying momentum and investor sentiment”. The fund is then recalculated every month to stay on message. If the trend is your friend, this may work. It is a shamelessly opportunistic strategy but plays into a deep truth about human nature: when it comes to investors, many of us are lemmings. Caveat emptor, of course.
Another week, another private markets deal, notes Spy. Franklin Templeton has snapped up another private credit manager in Europe. The San Jose-headquartered manager has bought a majority stake in Aspera Asset Management, which has about €5bn ($5.72bn) in AUM. Franklin said the deal should close in the third quarter. The acquisition will enhance the manager’s global alternatives platform and strengthen its direct lending capabilities in Europe’s expanding lower middle market. Following the acquisition, Franklin’s global alternative credit AUM is expected to rise to $87bn, with total pro-forma alternative AUM reaching a healthy $260bn as of 30 April 2025.
Here is an intriguing Friday question, reckons Spy. How many adults, across the world, don’t have access to a bank account? It is a staggering 1.4 billion adults. Instinct will tell you that those people largely reside in emerging or frontier markets, because it is almost impossible to do anything in a developed market without a bank account these days. Now, here is another question: What is the gap between emerging markets and developed markets, in terms of internet or mobile penetration? The unexpected answer is almost non-existent, these days. Regardless of where you are, mobile phones and internet access are available and widely used. Why are these two facts significant? Well, according to Redwheel, in a great insight worth reading in full, deep internet and mobile access in non-developed markets should help rapidly close the banking gap in the years ahead and therein lie some great opportunities. Well, 1.4 billion of them, actually.
Walking through the luxurious shopping malls of Hong Kong Central or Singapore’s Orchard Road, Spy is usually impressed, even gob smacked, at the way luxury brands present their exorbitantly expensive goodies. But even within this rarefied class of consumer goods firms, some stand out, and represent truly exceptional investment opportunities. In prose written as luxuriantly as the subject matter, Spy lapped up Ninety One’s insight on exceptional fashion brands: “In its highest form, luxury transcends utility. It embodies not merely product but permanence—an articulation of artisanal mastery, heritage, and cultural cachet. Hermès exemplifies this philosophy, epitomizing the qualities we prize in enduring franchises.” Spy almost put himself on the waiting list for a Birkin bag. Or, how about eyewear maker Essilor Luxottica, owner of Ray Bans: “It has achieved an approximate 15% compound annual growth rate since 1999.” Beyond luxurious, positively cool.
Get out the popcorn. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and the most narcissistic American president of all time, Donald Trump, have spectacularly fallen out and are having a very public spat. Musk has accused Trump of being in the Jeffrey Epstein files – essentially accusing him of being party to female trafficking. Trump, in turn, is threatening Musk’s empire with the withdrawal of government contracts. Spy has no idea how this ends but history is a good place to look. Julius Ceaser and Brutus, Napolean and Talleyrand, Stalin and Trotsky, Mao Zedong and Lin Biao all spring to mind.
For silver buffs, the metal has just hit a thirteen-year high. “The times, they are a changing”.
Spy’s quote of the week comes from financier and philanthropist, George Soros, “It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.” Nailed it.
