Anthropic filed a confidential draft S-1 in June, with a public prospectus expected after Labor Day. We’ve identified 10 pre-IPO factors to clarify how an AI developer moat becomes a sustainable business and whether further…

The Optimal Advisory Cost Factor accelerated on y/y basis for the ninth week in a row. For the year, costs are up (+15.8% y/y, up from +3.5% y/y in early July) primarily on energy and…

Summary: (1) NVIDIA’s announced acquisition of open source AI hub Hugging Face opens up game changing access to AI developer community and workflows; we consider buying the “Github for AI” for ~$13B and expanding NVIDIA’s…

Sports Ecosystem spending growth decelerated for a fourth consecutive week though the level remains solidly positive, our subsector equity indices sharply underperformed a roughly flat market, and our latest NKE analysis finds digital traffic at…

As many major consumer packaged goods (CPG) leaders prepare for next week’s Back to School conference, our biggest takeaway is the likely reckoning for calendar reporting food companies that already impacted mid-year reporters GIS, CAG…

Summary: (1) Real Disposable Income has been in rare flat/negative territory the last few months – and now we can add Savings Rate to the “abnormally low” list. That non-normal combination leaves little cushion to…

In this monthly note we examine sports ecosystem brands and themes breaking out among Gen Z consumers: (1) The World Cup predictably dominates breakouts, with FIFA, Fox Sports, & FotMob leading; (2) Beyond the World…

Gen Z traction and mix are critical leading indicators given long-term demographic share shifts – in August’s analysis of 103 companies across sectors we note diverging trends in SBUX, MCD, CMG, BROS, WING, GME. We…

Our attached 37-page Consumer Discretionary Briefing Book summarizes our updated August analysis of hundreds of public and private companies for non-normal change, examines spending and inflections by category, sentiment by ticker, early-indicator mindshare traction, and…

Summary: (1) MAR, BBY, MLKN, HD are highest measured names in AI impact, see Fig 1; (2) AI inflections are positive across all four categories (Travel, Autos, Retail, Apparel), see Fig 2; (3) MAR, MLKN,…

The Optimal Advisory Cost Factor accelerated on y/y basis for the eighth week in a row. For the year, costs are up (+13.7% y/y) with a sharp change in trend since early July (+3.5% y/y)…

Summary: (1) Our recent note “Channel Checks and Classes of SaaS” emphasized our bullishness on horizontal SaaS leaders (“We remain optimistic on the long-term soundness of SaaS companies like Salesforce, who control authoritative data, permissions,…

Summary: (1) Optimal proprietarily collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data on key attributes of brands from the perspective of elite athletes including pro, NCAA D1, elite high school, and retired athletes. Understanding the views…

Sports Ecosystem spending growth decelerated for a third consecutive week but remained strongly positive led by betting & data names, and our latest NKE analysis points to digital traffic at series highs even as other…