It's relatively easy to argue that some type of exposure to emerging markets belongs in most U.S. investor portfolios. Emerging markets represent about 4.3 billion people, 50% of the global GDP, but only a relatively small percentage of global equities' market cap. Emerging markets are usually defined as a country with a developing economy that shares some, but not all, characteristics with a developed economy. To discuss emerging markets more, 7investing lead advisor Matthew Cochrane welcomed Perth Tolle, the founder of Life and Liberty Indexes, to 7investing's podcast. The two coincidentally talked on February 24, 2023, the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the conflict began, U.S. investors were forced to quickly confront the geopolitical risks of investing in emerging markets as Russian equities were removed from the emerging market indices at $0. Investors in Tolle's Freedom 100 Emerging Markets ETF (CBOE:FRDM) didn't face this problem as the ETF had no exposure to Russian securities. The ETF is a freedom-weighted equity strategy that uses personal and economic freedom metrics as primary factors in its investment process. This means it doesn't have heavy exposure to countries such as China or Russia, markets that traditionally hold larger allocations in emerging market funds. Tolle and Cochrane discuss that even as China's GDP growth has exploded in recent decades, shareholders in Chinese equities have managed to capture very little of that wealth. With China's government in virtually total control of its economy, it can change laws and regulations on a dime. It will often dictate new rules for businesses as it deems fit. This environment makes it very difficult for shareholders to recognize any profits. Tolle and Cochrane also discuss emerging markets that enjoy economic and personal freedoms, such as Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan. Exposure to Chilean markets, for instance, rarely rises above 1% allocations in most emerging market funds. The Freedom ETF enjoys a double-digit allocation that has tremendously boosted FRDM's returns compared to the emerging market index, contributing to Freedom's relative out-performance. To get our investing podcasts and articles delivered to your Inbox every day, join our 7investing email list at 7investing.com/email.

As a host of macro concerns continue to weigh on the global economy, investors are increasingly reassessing their risk tolerances and looking to contain volatility as much as maximizing returns. With this in mind, 7investing lead advisor Matthew Cochrane welcomed back Value Stock Geek to see how his self-proclaimed Weird Portfolio held up in 2022 amid a worrying economic backdrop. The Weird Portfolio consists of six low-cost ETFs representing five different asset classes and geographic diversity. While each of the asset classes are highly volatile on their own, when combined in a portfolio they have an overall smoothing effect, as each asset class delivers different returns during different environments. In the interview, Value Stock Geek walks Cochrane through the asset classes of the Weird Portfolio and the role each one plays, including U.S. small cap value stocks (20%), small cap international stocks (20%), real estate (10% domestic, 10% international), long-term treasuries (20%), and gold (20%). The Weird Portfolio is just part of Value Stock Geek's overall portfolio, however, with the rest dedicated to individual stocks that he believes are wonderful companies at wonderful prices. Cochrane and VSG discuss their mutually shared positions in Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB) and PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL), and why VSG believes both have durable economic moats and trade at attractive valuations. VSG also walks Cochrane through his investment cases for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (NYSE:TSM) and General Dynamics (NYSE:GD). VSG and Cochrane also discuss value traps and how they have each fallen for companies that looked cheap, but which were really declining businesses masked by cheap valuation multiples. To have our investing insights delivered directly to your Inbox, please join our email list at 7investing.com/email.

7investing's Episode 11 of No Limit has lead advisors Luke Hallard and Krzysztof Piekarski sinking their investing fangs into the new ARK Invest Big Ideas of 2023 paper, the dangers of being a futurist investor and the two essential elements to being a good investor— being right and being contrarian.  Luke and Krzys wonder whether they’re being contrarian about Alphabet given their latest kerfuffle with Microsoft. And if you want to know what TV episode is the best Luke’s ever seen, tune in to 7investing’s podcast for all levels of investors, from beginners to the sophisticates and beyond.

Morgan Stanley believes the space economy will be worth more than $1 trillion dollars by 2040. Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes it will reach $2.7 trillion by 2045.   If those estimates are even directionally-correct, outer space will soon become one of the biggest investment opportunities of our lifetime.  And it's more than just a science-fiction dream. The commercialization of space is already well-underway. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently granted SpaceX the right to launch 7,500 of its next-gen satellites, and it's working through a backlog of nearly 40,000 more applications. That would represent a quadrupling of the total number of satellites currently in orbit; as the whole sector is hitting an inflection point.   What's the best way to invest in this trend? Will satellite internet really account for half of the overall space market by 2040? Will we see a renewed "militarization of space", with demand for military intel vaulting defense contractors even higher? Will launch providers appeal to a new wave of commercial customers? And how should investors think of the newly-public "SPAC" companies who raised funding in 2021?   To help us answer those questions, 7investing CEO recently spoke with Procure Asset Management's co-founder Andrew Chanin. Andrew is a favorite guest of our 7investing show, and Procure's ETF with the ticker "UFO" offers pure-play exposure to the space economy.   In the first part of the discussion, Andrew describes the role of private companies in the militarization of space. Elon Musk's SpaceX played an important role in enabling satellite communications for Ukraine during its conflict with Russia. Other satellite operators are similarly assisting in military operations.   One of those companies, Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR) was recently acquired at a 129% premium to its equity valuation -- which demonstrates how important military intelligence has become and the potential opportunity it offers to investors. Andrew goes on to discuss the implications of the Chinese spy balloon and how geopolitical tensions are escalating between the US, China, and Taiwan.   In the next segment, Simon and Andrew discuss how the FCC recently approved 7,500 of SpaceX's next-gen satellites for satellite-based internet. Other commercial enterprises are also interested in proving high-speed internet connectivity to enable new technologies -- such as 5G or the Internet of Things. This has led to a frenzy of applications for spectrum rights, as satellite internet will be one of the largest contributors to the future commercial space economy.   The two go on to discuss the role of consolidation, startups, and skilled labor in the space. Simon points out that Rocket Lab (Nasdaq: RKLB) is investing in infrastructure that would enable an order-of-magnitude increase in its current launch capacity, while Andrew discusses how many companies are actually collaborating to achieve common goals and milestone.  At the conclusion of the conversation, the two discuss additional M&A opportunities.

Jake Taylor is a man that wears many hats. He is the CEO of Farnam Street, the founder of the new Journalytic app, the author of The Rebel Allocator, and the co-host of the Value After Hours podcast. Somehow amid his busy schedule, he recently found time to sit down with 7investing lead advisor Matthew Cochrane to talk about these roles and dive deep into the inner workings of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A)(NYSE:BRK.B). Their conversation begins with Taylor explaining to Cochrane the genesis of the idea for Journalytic, a journaling tool designed specifically for investors. Taylor says that one of the most challenging aspects of investing is that the only thing the individual investor has control over is their process, so he searched for an existing tool that could help him improve his investing process. When Taylor couldn't find anything, he decided to design something they could use in-house at Farnam Street and wield it as an advantage over other investment shops. This was before he decided to open Journalytic to everyone. Cochrane shows Taylor how he used sprawling Word documents for each stock he owned for years before it grew too tedious and cumbersome to continue. Taylor believes Journalytic can help investors organize data and opinions on stocks. By using it, he believes investors can improve their buying and selling processes by journaling their thoughts as they make investment decisions. Recording their thoughts and feelings as they own a company should help investors push back against many of the behavioral biases that have traditionally haunted investors and not let emotions overwhelm them in the heat of the moment. When Taylor wrote The Rebel Allocator, he started by writing a non-fictional thesis on capital allocation. He says it was so dry and dull that he could not envision anyone reading it. Taylor scrapped the non-fictional piece and started from scratch. He takes the same investment lessons he wanted to communicate in the earlier work and weaves them into a fictional story. The story follows a college graduate's journey into young adulthood, as the protagonist meets a fast-food mogul who takes him under his wing and teaches him the secrets to his business success. Meanwhile, the young hero falls in love, gets a promotion at work, and generally matures in his worldview as he learns about life. Taylor and Cochrane end their discussion by discussing Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's conglomerate that owns everything from Dairy Queen and GEICO Insurance to a significant stake in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). Taylor discusses the advantages of holding a Berkshire position, including the ethos with which Buffett has run the business. Taylor believes the company's culture, including its decentralized structure, will long outlast Buffett's and Charlie Munger's tenure. Taylor believes Buffett made one investment that encapsulates some of his best teachings. Berkshire acquired See's Candies for $25 million in 1972. Before acquiring See's, Buffett made "cigar butt" type investments, buying companies well below their book value. At this point, See's Candies has paid back Berkshire Hathaway about $2 billion, illustrating how time is on your side when buying great businesses. To subscribe to our free 7investing newsletter and get daily insights like these, please visit 7investing.com/email

Episode 10 of No Limit has Krzysztof pontificating on his recent trip to Las Vegas and the difference between an investing and gambling mindset.    Luke offers insight into the company Wise and the difficulties and solutions of getting paid across international borders. We critique the merits of investing in what you know, that old tried-and true-is Peter Lynch framework.    There’s also an appearance by Zen Master Hakuin and his powerful method of asking “Is that so?” We announce Peter Zeihan’s new book about the end of Globalization as an insightful place to see where the world is heading and encourage a 7investing group read.    Of course Luke can’t help getting a little poker theory into the conversation and triumphantly announces his hourly rate at the tables— any guesses? Plus, we find more AI toy suggestions for you to explore.    If you’re investing-curious or just getting started on the journey, we’re here to help you learn the basics, so give us a listen and send us your inquires via our discord channel or on twitter @7flyingplatypus and @7lukehallard—we aim to include our members’ questions and challenges in each episode whenever possible, so step right up and don’t be shy, because investing is a community sport!

There are few industries more important to the world than semiconductors. $600 billion worth of chips are sold across the globe each year that go into everything -- from permanent-pressing washing machines to application-crunching datacenters to self-aware automobiles. The world's thirst for computing is continually increasing and the chip industry is shifting into a higher gear to keep up. Yet it's not just market demand that heavy influences this industry's key players. Significant geopolitical implications are present as well, with developed economies needed cutting-edge chips as a crucial part of their national security. Many countries are scrambling to find ways to guarantee domestic chip supply, to avoid a potentially debilitating supply disruption. What does all of this mean for investors? Are there companies who have efficiently leveraged their fixed costs to achieve massive economies of scale? Are there newcomers or less-well-known companies who are necessary to the process and are opportunities to investors? And is the gravitational pull of national interests serving as an advantage to certain companies and as a huge headwind to others? To answer those questions, 7investing hosted a special "Semiconductor Roundtable" this month. 7investing lead advisors Simon Erickson and Krzysztof Piekarski were joined by external guests Jose Najarro and Nick Rossolillo. In the roundtable discussion, each panelist presented a key part or factor of the semiconductor industry. They also introduced a few of the important companies within it. First, Jose discussed the chip designers. He described how consumer-facing applications like self-driving automobiles or OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot are powered by cloud datacenters, which use super-efficient chips designed by companies like NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) and AMD (Nasdaq: AMD). The computing horsepower necessary to run artificial intelligence algorithms is increasing quickly, meaning there's a skyrocketing demand for the world's most advanced chip designers. Nick then discussed the importance of validation software in the design process, to ensure new chips will pass specification and tests to perform as expected. One leader in providing electronic design automation software is Synopsys(Nasdaq: SNPS), whose subscription licensing business model has created a high-margin recurring revenue stream for investors. Krzysztof discussed the semiconductor manufacturing segment, citing Chris Miller's Chip War book as a key influence to his thinking. He described the importance of cutting-edge chips to national security interests and how two companies -- ASML (Nasdaq: ASML) and Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM) -- are necessary for the developed world to continue to function. Fabrication facilities cost tens of billions of dollars to build, giving the companies in this capital-intensive segment high barriers-to-entry against potential competitors. Finally, Simon used geopolitical tensions as a frame for the investing thesis in Intel (Nasdaq: INTC). Intel has been one of the most important semiconductors of the past half-century, who pioneered the concept of "Moore's Law" that led to an exponential rise in the world's computing power. Intel has a boatload of problems, yet faces a unique opportunity of providing America with domestic chip supply. Selling cheaply at just 9x earnings, Intel could be an intriguing opportunity. At the conclusion, each of the panelists voted on which of the six stocks mentioned they believed was the best opportunity for investors today. We hope you enjoyed our 7investing Semiconductor Roundtable! To get daily insights like this delivered directly to your Inbox, please join our 7investing email list at 7investing.com/email.

In this exclusive podcast, 7investing CEO Simon Erickson speaks with hhhypergrowth founder muji about several of the new technologies and investment opportunities that are arising in cloud computing. Muji begins by describing the newest developments at Amazon's most recent "re:Invent" cloud computing conference. The cloud king continues to roll out new products and features for AWS, though they are often confusing to customers and even its own sales team. While Amazon itself coined the term "serverless" to refer to on-demand service and usage-based pricing, there is contention on whether its newest products truly adhere to this term. The two also discussed the potential implications of OpenAI's recent ChatGPT open-source conversational (and controversial!) chatbot. Muji believes the true opportunity for AI in is writing and sharing code, which could be useful for Microsoft's GitHub or its competitor GitLab. Usage-based software subscription licenses are quickly replacing per-user or per-device models within tech-heavy fields like cybersecurity or IT operations, though they're also expanding into ad-supported media for companies such as Netflix. This allows software platforms to better monetize their power users, who generally rack up more hours of viewership or induce higher costs every month. Silicon Valley is going through a round of layoffs, meaning there are fewer technology and IT workers today than there were a few months ago. This could impact software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies who price their products on a per-seat basis, such as GitLab, Zoom, or CrowdStrike. Speaking of CrowdStrike, Simon and muji compared and contrasted the company to its up-and-coming competitor SentinelOne. Muji believes CrowdStrike recently hiring two of SentinelOne's executives is a pretty big deal, though SentinelOne remains a very compelling option for small and medium businesses. The two went on to discuss the go-to-market strategies of companies, and how it is often difficult to pivot in their sales approach. Companies like Okta often sold to larger enterprise accounts and are now trying to sell to smaller development teams, while companies like Twilio who typically sold to developers building apps are now looking to move upmarket and land larger deals. The transition in software sales is rarely easy. In the final segment of the conversation, muji discusses three other publicly-traded companies he is a fan of: Datadog, Bill, and Zscaler. To see the full conversation and a complete transcript, please visit 7investing.com/podcast.

With Luke and Krzysztof on the same side of the Atlantic, the Force Without Limit is even more palpable! There’s lots of self-reflection from Luke about lessons learned in another year around the sun and why you should move to Tahoe, ride motorcycles, use fancy AI camera systems to make you look like a snowboarding bad-ass and remember what money is really for. Krzysztof pontificates about what the value of an education needs to be in the time of chatGPT and how both educators and investors need to turn toward the tool with a mind of creativity and potential rather than an enemy to be outwitted. We take the scenic road in answering a member’s question about Upstart and how to think about selling and the ever-present tension between hope and reality. If that’s not enough, confirmation bias tendencies are also discussed, which means we end up at a poker table with Daniel Negreanu (in theory)! What a time to be an investor! Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Join the 7investing Community Forum: https://discord.gg/6YvazDf9sw Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

Investing in natural resources and commodities is a tricky business. Investors in these sectors must look at individual companies and the macro variables that go into intrinsic values, such as future precious metals and energy prices. These prices are known to go through volatile cycles, the timing of which can be hard to get right. Walking us through this process is Will Thomson, the founder and managing partner of Massif Capital. Thomson's fascinating journey took him from Afghanistan to Lloyd's of London before founding Massif Capital. The Massif Capital Real Asset Strategy is a global long/short equity strategy built around bottom-up stock picking.  The firm is focused on creating a portfolio of businesses within the Energy, Basic Materials, and Industrial sectors that balance the environmental and economic realities of achieving a carbon-neutral economy. Before founding Massif Capital, Thomson served as a strategic and economic advisor to NATO in Afghanistan. Cochrane and Thomson begin their conversation by looking at factors that might determine when emerging economies are ready for investment and when they're not. Specifically, Thomson details the elements that make Afghanistan a challenging place for profitable investments at this time. Thomson describes Massif's strategy to Cochrane as one that is not focused on future commodities prices, a risky proposition at best, but one that instead drills down to specific catalysts for individual companies. For instance, if a copper mining company is trading at a steep discount to its net asset value (NAV), Massif Capital will take a closer look to explore its long-term prospects and how soon it can come to realize its true value. When inputting the future prices of copper into the equation, Thomson looks at its historical prices, including its 10-year lows, highs, and averages, to determine a realistic idea of how copper prices can react to a range of conditions. Thomson also shares his unique perspective on ESG investing. To promote more meaningful change, Thomson believes investors should focus more on companies transitioning to a smaller carbon footprint than companies that will inherently enjoy such advantages because of their business model. Thomson also looks for opportunities in green energy from political catalysts. When the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022, it included almost $400 billion in energy- and climate-related initiatives, making it one of the most significant environment-focused bills the U.S. Congress has ever passed. Thomson said while several companies will experience rapid growth from this sudden surge in revenue from the measures in this bill, only a few will be able to do so profitably. Thomson believes Siemens Energy ADR (OTC:SMNEY) is one such company that will benefit from the bill's passage. Siemens Energy is an engineering technology company that manufactures a wide range of products needed by electric utilities, including wind and steam turbines, natural gas generators, grid technology applications, and hydrogen energy solutions. This makes it a one-stop shop for energy companies with various needs across different ways of generating and distributing power. Centaurus Metals Ltd (OTC:CTTZF) is another company Thomson highlights as a compelling opportunity. Centaurus Metals is an Australian-listed mining company focused on developing a nickel sulfide project in Brazil. Geological tests indicate the project might ultimately produce 20,000 tons of Class 1 nickel annually, making it one of the world's largest, high-grade nickel mines. This is important because while lower-classed nickel can be used in applications such as stainless steel, only Class 1 nickel can be used for batteries. As electric vehicle usage expands, batteries may account for up to 35% of nickel demand by 2030 while only accounting for about 10% of nickel demand today.