June 16: Last Week's Thematic Signals
If you missed out on this week's signals, we've got you covered
Aging Population
Oregon has more residents over 65 than it does people under 18, a striking demographic reversal that has enormous implications for the state’s economy. Read more here
The demographic dividend that has supported global economic expansion in recent decades will soon make way for a demographic drag. In advanced economies the share of working-age people is shrinking already. The largest emerging market economies will reach this demographic turning point within the decade, while the most populous low-income countries will get there by 2070. What do falling fertility and rising longevity mean for the world economy? Read more here
Artificial Intelligence
“At the beginning of the 2020's, we didn’t kind of have AI. A bunch of other systems were out, but that was still the pre-GPT-3 era- just by a little bit,” he said. “Now halfway mark since a decade, it’s really been remarkable progress from non-human GPT-3 model to GPT-4.5– these models that can really feel smart and helpful, and can give you real utility experiences, where people will look at this, if they could go back in time and say that feels almost impossible. "I think we are going to maintain the same rate of progress in the second half of the decade.” Read more here
The Food and Drug Administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to “radically increase efficiency” in deciding whether to approve new drugs and devices, one of several top priorities laid out in an article published Tuesday in JAMA. Read more here
Just this week, OpenAI’s annualized revenues have hit $10 billion, an extraordinary number considering ChatGPT was only launched in late November 2022. And yet, the heaviest users of AI right now are businesses, not consumers. After all, they have a goal of earning a profit, and LLMs and agentic AI help them operate more efficiently. As we can see in the following chart, over 40% of U.S. businesses are now paying for access to AI models, platforms, or tools. Does anyone still seriously believe that AI isn’t being widely used yet? Read more here
Adobe (ADBE.O), opens new tab raised its full-year results forecast on Thursday, helped by continued demand for its AI-powered software tools that generate images and video content. Read more here
Cash-Strapped Consumer
Bankrate’s recent Discretionary Spending Survey captured numbers that fit right into the trend. The mood is down: 54 percent of U.S. adults say they expect spend less on travel, dining or live entertainment this year than they did in 2024. But it’s important to watch what people do, not just what they say. And what they’re doing — well, those numbers don’t add up to what they’re saying. Read more here
Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Digital Identity
“What AI has done is accelerate a problem that’s already existed on the internet for a long time,” Song said. “How do I prevent a bad actor from having access again and again?” By 2030, 90% of internet traffic is expected to be generated by bots. This shift will likely demand new identity paradigms. Read more here
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is warning that it suffered a data breach after a threat actor downloaded 300,000 crash records from its database. The incident occurred on May 12, 2025, and was caused by a threat actor logging into the TxDOT systems using compromised credentials. Read more here
United Natural Foods Inc., a distributor for Whole Foods and other grocers, disclosed this week that it suffered a cyber incident, causing temporary disruptions in its operations. Read more here
The District Attorney’s Office for the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit, which handles prosecutions for Bulloch, Effingham, and Screven counties, said their offices are closed following a cyberattack Wednesday morning. Read more here
Digital Infrastructure
A major Google Cloud outage disrupted much of the Internet, including provider Cloudflare - causing issues with users of either service. Among those impacted are a broad array of Google services, including Home/Nest, some Meet calls, and Google Search. Also affected were Spotify, Discord, Weights & Biases, Freetrade, and the DCD website, among others. Read more here
Oracle’s CTO Larry Ellison has claimed that the company will build “more cloud infrastructure data centers than all of our infrastructure competitors combined” during its recent earnings call... "We currently have 23 MultiCloud data centers live with 47 more being built over the next 12 months. We expect triple-digit MultiCloud revenue growth to continue in FY26.” The company is expecting capex of $25bn next financial year, though Catz noted that this may turn out to be “understated.” Read more here
Large-scale investment in both cloud and AI infrastructure remains a defining theme of the market in 2025. Meanwhile, to accelerate the enterprise adoption of AI at scale, leading cloud providers are intensifying efforts to optimize infrastructure—most notably through the development of proprietary chips—aimed at lowering the cost of AI usage and improving inference efficiency. Read more here
Digital Lifestyle
At Augmented World Expo 2025, Qualcomm announced its new Snapdragon AR1 Plus Gen 1 chip for smart glasses. It's capable of running the Llama 3.2 edge AI model with one billion parameters on smart glasses — no phone required. And this could transform the next generation of smart glasses. Read more here
The company behind the Snapchat social media platform is calling its next-generation smart glasses “Specs,” which is different from the company’s previous “Spectacles” branding that was used for its wearable devices. The new smart glasses will employ augmented reality technology that lets people see and interact with digital imagery overlaid on the real world. Read more here
IoT is going from a “market with potential into a major demand centre”, according to Transforma Insights. A new forecast report from the firm says the total number of active IoT devices will more than double over the next 10 years to reach 40.6 billion, up from 17.7 billion today. Compound (CAGR) growth, from the end of 2024 to the end of 2034, is pegged at nine percent per year over the period. Annual device sales will grow from 4.3 billion to nine billion in the period, with a CAGR of eight percent. Read more here
Digital Payments
Shopify has begun rolling out a feature that enables merchants to accept USDC stablecoins within their existing payment and order fulfillment flows… This new feature was developed by Shopify in partnership with Coinbase and Stripe, according to the post. It uses the Base network built by Coinbase for moving money. Read more here
Energy Pain Point
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has raised its projections for electricity consumption in the country, citing a spike in power demand from commercial sectors—especially data centers—as a key driver. In its latest update of the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA said it expects total U.S. electricity demand to rise from 4,097 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) last year to 4,193bn kWh in 2025, and 4,283bn kWh in 2026. Read more here
Talen Energy and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have expanded an existing agreement to supply nuclear energy to an AWS data center in Pennsylvania. The companies signed a 17-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to supply AWS with 1.92GW of energy from the 2.5GW Susquehanna nuclear power plant. The PPA is contracted until 2042 and contains an option to extend. Read more here
Social network firm Meta has signed an agreement with enhanced geothermal energy firm XGS Energy to support the development and deployment of a 150MW project in New Mexico. When operational, the project is expected to supply energy to the PNM electrical grid and power Meta’s data center portfolio across New Mexico. Read more here
CoreWeave is powering some of its data center operations with a solar and wind Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) in Spain. Revealed today (June 12) during the London AI Summit, CoreWeave's chief business officer, Mike Mattacola, told the audience that the company has signed a "large-scale" PPA in Spain, from which the majority of power comes from solar and wind sources. Read more here
Guilty Pleasure
Food giant Strauss Group announced today that, from July 1, prices of some of its chocolate and coffee products will rise, six months after it raised the prices of those products by 18%. Prices of chocolate bars will rise by up to 15.8%; family packs of Elite snacks will rise by up to 9%; baked goods will rise by up to 9%; Turkish coffee by 5%; instant coffee by up to 8%; and cocoa powder by up to 16%.
Safety & Security
Sweden will reach a planned new NATO defense spending target of 5% of GDP, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, joining a string of countries ramping up commitments ahead of a key summit of alliance leaders. Read more here
Germany will seek to prioritise defence spending in the next EU budget while opposing any increase in national contributions to the common pot, according to a position paper. Read more here
The government of Pakistan announced on Tuesday a plan to significantly increase its defense spending, a month after a military confrontation with India that brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war. Read more here
President Donald Trump has signed three executive orders that is aimed to accelerate domestic drone production, secure U.S. airspace, and regain the United States' dominance in supersonic technology. Read more here
The Strategies Behind Our Thematic Models
Aging of the Population - Capturing the demographic wave of the aging population and the changing demands it brings with it.
Artificial Intelligence – Software, chips, and related companies that facilitate the collection and analysis of large data sets and autonomous generation of solutions given non-machine language prompts.
Cash Strapped Consumers - Companies poised to benefit as consumers stretch the disposable spending dollars they do have.
CHIPs Act – Capturing the reshoring of the US semiconductor industry and the $52.7 billion poised to be spent on semiconductor manufacturing.
Cloud Computing – Companies that provide hardware and services that enhance the cloud computing experience for users, such as co-location, security, and edge computing.
Core Holdings – Companies that reflect economic activity and are large enough to not get pushed around by day-to-day market trends. Low-beta, large-cap names able to better withstand economic turmoil.
Cybersecurity - Companies that focus on protecting against the penetration of digital networks and the theft, ransom, corruption, or destruction of data.
Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity - Companies that are integral to the development and the buildout of the infrastructure that supports our increasingly connected world.
Digital Lifestyle - The companies behind our increasingly connected lives.
Data Privacy & Digital Identity - Companies providing the tools and services that verify authorized users and safeguard personal data privacy.
EPS Diplomats - Profitable large capitalization companies proven to produce above-average EPS growth and provide investors with the benefit of multiple expansion.
EV Transition - Capturing the transition to EVs and related infrastructure from combustion engine vehicles.
Guilty Pleasure – Companies that produce/provide food and drink products that consumers tend to enjoy regardless of the economic environment and potential long-term health hazards associated with excessive consumption.
Homebuilding & Materials – Ranging from homebuilders to key building product companies that serve the housing market, this model looks to capture the rising demand for housing, one that should benefit as the Fed returns monetary policy to more normalized levels.
Market Hedge Model – This basket of daily reset swap-based broad market inverse ETFs protects in the face of market pullbacks, overbought market technicals, and other drivers of market volatility.
Nuclear Energy & Uranium – Companies that either build and maintain nuclear power plants or are involved in the production of uranium.
Luxury Buying Boom - Tapping into aspirational buying and affluent buyers amid rising global wealth.
Rebuilding America - Turning the focused spending on rebuilding US infrastructure into revenue and profits.
Safety & Security – Targeted exposure to companies that provide goods and services primarily to the Defense and security sectors of the economy.
Space Economy – Companies that focus on the launch and operation of satellite networks.
The Strategies Behind Our Dividend Income Models
Monthly Dividend Model – Pretty much what the name indicates – this model invests in companies that pay monthly dividends to shareholders.
ETF Dividend Model – High-yielding ETFs that provide a range of exposures from domestic equities, international equities, emerging market equities, MLPS, and REITs.
ETF Enhanced Dividend Model – A group of high-yielding ETFs that utilize options to enhance yield through collecting option income.
Don’t be a stranger
Thanks for reading and if you have a suggestion for an article or book we should read, or a stream we should catch, email us at info@tematicaresearch.com. The same email works if you want to know more about our thematic and targeted exposure models listed above.