Last Week's Signals and Model Confirmation Points
Examining recent targeted exposure model confirmation points
We’re back with a fresh set of ripped from the headlines confirmation points and signals for not only our targeted exposure and thematic strategies, but also our Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity model and the AI & Data Center Model Suite.
Feast away!
Aging Population
America’s health care system is straining under the twin pressures of an aging population and a stretched pool of health care providers. Doctors told Fortune that policies limiting skilled visas and student entries could deepen labor shortages in areas such as geriatrics and rural medicine, where immigrant staff have long filled gaps. Physicians urge clearer pathways for skilled workers to stay, warning that without them, the system’s capacity to care for older Americans may falter. On the other hand, changing priorities for the American populace may prompt policy changes to address rising demand for certain medical specialties. Read more here
Enter the use of wearable devices. The department’s L.A. Found program, which is aimed at helping families and caregivers help lost individuals with impaired cognitive conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, launched an initiative last week that will offer Theora Care Smartwatch devices to at-risk individuals at no cost. The wearable devices include GPS tracking that enables their caregivers and responding officers to monitor a lost person’s location in real time, said Gomez, who oversees the program. Caregivers can also establish geofenced boundaries around, for instance, the person’s home, and a corresponding app connected to the device will alert users if the individual has left that area. Watch wearers can also press an SOS button on the device to call their caregiver through the app. Read more here
Artificial Intelligence
Certain sectors are poised to capture disproportionate gains from AI deployment. According to Moody’s, high-gain sectors include finance, healthcare, insurance, and logistics, because they stand to benefit most due to their reliance on data and standardised workflows. Sectors that have a limited upside are utilities, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, and heavy manufacturing because they face structural barriers to fast AI-driven transformation. Read more here
Technology and data are remaking even the most essential and overlooked service, including waste hauling. It’s an industry that quietly keeps cities and towns running, moving construction debris, recycling and household refuse every day. Despite its scale, and a trillion dollar market with $32 billion in fund flows, according to CurbWaste CEO Mike Marmo, it remains one of the most fragmented sectors in the U.S. Waste hauling is dominated by family-run haulers who still rely on paper tickets, clipboards and spreadsheets to track routes, trucks and payments, and just getting started is a long journey, as trucks can cost $300,000 each. Read more here
General Motors is overhauling the electrical and computational guts of its future vehicles in a bid to deliver faster software, more capable automated driving features, and a custom, conversational AI assistant. The result of this overhaul will debut in 2027 in the Cadillac Escalade IQ. The U.S. automaker, which unveiled its plans at an event Wednesday in New York City, said a new electric architecture and centralized computing platform will be the foundation for all of its future gas-powered and electric vehicles, starting in 2028. The next-generation supercomputer, Nvidia Drive AGX Thor, will power the compute unit — the result of an expanded partnership between GM and Nvidia that was announced in March. Read more here
GM is the latest automaker to lean in to generative AI-based assistants that promise to respond to driver requests in a more natural-sounding way. Stellantis is collaborating with French AI firm Mistral, Mercedes is integrating ChatGPT, and Tesla has brought xAI’s Grok to its vehicles. GM’s integration with Gemini is the next logical step for the automaker. Vehicles produced by GM brands Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC already have “Google built-in,” an operating system that gives drivers access to Google Assistant, Google Maps, and other apps directly from the car’s infotainment screen. Read more here
Competition in the global freight business is turning into a race to provide the best artificial intelligence tools to deal with tariffs. Freight forwarder Flexport is the latest logistics-technology provider to release new products to help retailers and manufacturers comply with rapidly changing tariff policies. The San Francisco-based company on Tuesday is launching AI tools that analyze customs filings for errors and compliance risks, and that identify ways of reducing future duties. Read more here
In October 2024, beauty behemoth L’Oréal launched Beauty Genius, an AI-powered online assistant that diagnoses skin concerns and recommends products. The algorithm has been trained on over 150,000 dermatologist-annotated images, says Tom Vince, L’Oréal USA chief digital and marketing officer of the consumer product division. Next year, the brand plans to integrate the virtual assistant to chat with users via WhatsApp. Read more here
Cash-Strapped Consumer
According to data from the Recovery Database Network (RDN), analyzed by CURepossession, 2025 has seen over 7.5 million repossession assignments—authorizations given to an agency to recover a vehicle on behalf of a lender. Based on historic trends, this figure is expected to reach a record 10.5 million by the end of the year. Although recovery ratios have fallen in recent years—potentially lowering the number of actual repossessions—it is projected that over three million cars could be repossessed in 2025, a level only reached in 2009 during the Great Recession. Read more here
Car loans have gone from the safest consumer credit products to among the riskiest over the last 15 years as delinquencies rose more than 50%, driven by soaring car prices and rising interest rates, a new study shows. Consumers across all income categories are struggling to make monthly car payments, according to VantageScore, a credit-scoring company. Read more here
Surging electricity bills likely stunned many Americans this summer, but maybe they shouldn’t have: The cost of electricity has been trending upward since 2020, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Energy and Information Administration (E.I.A.). For at least 20 percent of U.S. households, the increases have likely been financially burdensome. Read more here
Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Digital Identity
State-sponsored Iranian hacker group MuddyWater has targeted more than 100 government entities in attacks that deployed version 4 of the Phoenix backdoor. The threat actor is also known as Static Kitten, Mercury, and Seedworm, and it typically targets government and private organizations in the Middle East region. Starting August 19, the hackers launched a phishing campaign from a compromised account that they accessed through the NordVPN service. Read more here
The recent wave of cyberattacks against Japanese businesses has exposed critical weaknesses in the country’s corporate digital defenses, fueling fears of further disruption to sales and supply chains... The surge reflects a combination of factors, including the rise of post-pandemic remote work, greater use of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence that make it easier for bad actors to communicate with their victims and claim ransoms, according to security experts. Read more here
Toys “R” Us Canada has sent notices of a data breach to customers informing them of a security incident where threat actors leaked customer records they had previously stolen from its systems. The company discovered the data leak on July 30, 2025, when a threat actor posted on the dark web what they claimed to be Toys “R” Us customer data. Read more here
Digital Infrastructure
Goldman Sachs is expanding its push into the hot market for financing data centers and other infrastructure, a move to grab a bigger piece of the AI boom. The Wall Street giant is creating a team within its global banking and markets division that will focus on infrastructure financing globally, both by lending more in the sector and finding investors to buy that debt, according to people familiar with the matter. The effort is being fueled by the new wave of multibillion-dollar deals that involve financing artificial-intelligence data centers, the massive amounts of power they need to run, and the processing units behind the AI build-out. The new team will also focus on the building or upgrading of traditional infrastructure, ranging from toll roads to airports, in developed and emerging markets. Read more here
Digital Lifestyle
Amazon.com Inc. is considering equipping its contract delivery drivers with augmented-reality glasses that would help them find the right spot to drop a package. The world’s largest online retailer on Wednesday said it was conducting trials of the glasses with drivers in North America and planned to further refine the technology before any broader rollout. The device, which is equipped with cameras, are designed to activate after a driver parks and guide them with turn-by-turn walking directions to the customer’s doorstep. Read more here
Snapchat is making its new “Imagine Lens,” the company’s first open prompt image-generation AI Lens, available to all users for free. The Lens was initially launched in September but only for paid subscribers. With the Lens, users can edit their own Snaps using custom prompts or generate their own. Read more here
ChatGPT is the most popular AI chatbot by far, capturing about three-fourths of total AI chatbot traffic, according to Similarweb. And about 2% of conversations on ChatGPT are related to shopping, according to a working paper published last month by OpenAI’s economic research team. Roughly 38% of U.S. consumers surveyed by Adobe earlier this year said they have used generative AI for online shopping—ranging from product recommendations to seeking out deals. Read more here
During the past 20 years, the Google-owned YouTube has slowly — then rapidly — become a dominant force in media, the hub for a wide array of genres, from talk and comedy to food and unscripted fare. But the bigger prize for the video platform would be to take over the other hours people are spending on their TV sets, and there are signs that YouTube is close to a breakthrough there. Sports, led by the NFL, is in many ways the final frontier for YouTube to conquer. The platform is on the verge of subsuming the genres that have helped define the past 100 years of TV. Read more here
Nuclear Energy & Uranium
With the push for AI dominance at warp speed, the “Bring Your Own Power” boom is a quick fix for the gridlock of trying to get on the grid. It’s driving an energy Wild West that is reshaping American power. Most tech titans would be happy to trade their DIY sourcing for the ability to plug into the electric grid. But supply-chain snarls and permitting challenges are complicating everything, and the U.S. isn’t building transmission infrastructure or power plants fast enough to meet the sudden surge in demand for electricity. Read more here
EV Transition
General Motors is abandoning its BrightDrop electric delivery vans, just four years after introducing the vehicles. The company announced Tuesday alongside third-quarter earnings that it made the decision because the “commercial electric delivery van market developed much slower than expected.” GM also blames the “changing regulatory environment and the elimination of tax credits in the United States” — the result of the second Trump administration’s hostility toward EVs. Read more here
Homebuilding & Materials
Homebuying sentiment in September, the most recent month available, remained relatively low, with 73% of respondents telling Fannie Mae it was a bad time to buy. Typically, lower mortgage rates results in more housing demand, PulteGroup President and CEO Ryan Marshall said on a Tuesday conference call, Barron’s previously reported. The same can’t be said for the recent drop, which shaved more than 0.75 percentage point off mortgage rates since the end of May, according to Mortgage News Daily data. “The buyer response to the decrease in interest rates was more muted than we experienced in other periods of rate declines,” PulteGroup’s Marshall said about the builder’s third quarter ended Sept. 30. Read more here
Luxury Buying Boom
Card issuers have indeed piled on what they describe as thousands of dollars in rewards: tickets to private dinners with famous chefs, comped memberships to Apple Music or DoorDash, early access to concert tickets and restaurant reservations, monthly refunds on Uber rides, free clothes from Lululemon and Saks Fifth Avenue, discounts on luxury gym memberships, and hundreds of dollars’ worth of hotel credits, as well as the promise that everything you buy will be turned into points or miles that you might eventually use to book a fantasy vacation. Read more here
Safety & Security
Defense tech startup Shield AI unveiled a new fighter jet called the X-BAT — an autonomous vehicle powered by artificial intelligence that doesn’t require a runway or GPS to fly. The company expects to start testing the new jet in 2026, it said Wednesday, and aims to have it ready to fly in military operations in 2028. Read more here
Ukraine’s parliament voted on Tuesday to amend the country’s budget for this year, raising defence spending to a record level as the war with Russia dragged on into its fourth year. Lawmakers approved the increase of about 325 billion hryvnias ($7.7 billion), raising Ukraine’s defence spending to a total of about 2.96 trillion hryvnias ($70.86 billion) this year. 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.
Data Privacy & Digital Identity - Companies providing the tools and services that verify authorized users and safeguard personal data privacy.
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.
Digital Payments - Companies benefitting from the accelerating structural adoption of digital payments and financial technology (FinTech).
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.