The Piton Investment Team seeks what will be superior investments in the future, so that they can incorporate those into the portfolios of Piton clients and, preferably, reap benefits by being ahead of the curve. There is never any guarantee of returns, of course, but this is the perspective and ambition of the team. Put another way, Piton’s Senior Vice-President of Research, Chuck D. Etzweiler, MBA, CIMA®, CFP®, CMT, likes to quote hockey legend Wayne Gretsky, who explained his success this way: “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
With this perspective in mind, the team has been having conversations about what strategic direction to take for investments related to technological innovation (AI, robotics, etc). A couple of years ago, the team leaned into companies involved in building up the infrastructure for the growing need for electrical power that so many of these technologies require. In previous blog entries, for example, the team has reported on this development (e.g., https://pitonwealth.com/investment-resources/update-on-power-needs-and-investing/). As those developments have matured, the team is looking ahead to where more dynamic growth is likely to occur in the coming years. This graph presents a way of looking at the supply chain in these areas:
One especially intriguing area is the expansion of fiber optic technology and photonics. Very broadly speaking, developers are facing the physical limits of copper for transmitting data and seeing fiber optics as a more efficient means to transmit even larger amounts of data, something which, like electrical power previously, will be necessary for a wide range of progressive technologies. While we are not going to give any names of specific companies in the secret sauce that the Piton Investment team is cooking up, Piton clients can be confident that the team is hard at work, focused on what will deliver the best results for Piton portfolios!