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Investment Forecast For 2020 And Beyond – Forbes

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Trying to predict investment opportunities for a year or two into the future is not an exact science. The standard warning that goes with such forecasts is they are educated predictions, and there is no guarantee they will occur. However, as I share my forecast with you, I’ll explain the thinking that goes into it.

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This is for those of you who are sitting on a good amount of cash. You may be an individual or a company with the pleasant problem of deciding what to do with your money. You might find yourself continually asking, “Should I invest my money or hang onto it? And if I invest, where should I put it?” After all, the goal of an investment is to preserve what you are investing, while receiving a good return off it.

As everyone knows, the stock market has been perking steadily upward for more than a decade. It seems like an extremely attractive vehicle to place your money. While history gives no indication of future performance, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In its past, the New York Stock Exchange has seen several streaks where the stock market continually rose. One was from 1949-1956 and resulted from World War II concluding and America starting its march to becoming the most robust economic machine in the world. A couple others occurred in the 1980s and ’90s, when new federal laws governing investments, savings and pensions infused a great deal of money into the market. The latest is from 2009-present and came about after the market meltdown of 2008. Much of the current streak is the result of very low interest rates as the Fed cut those rates to historically low levels for a long time.

The previous upward trends, and any other little streaks the market had, all have one thing in common — they ended. Some ended with a bang and a crash, while others were more of a bull market turning to a bear market. I don’t think we are going to be heading into an economic recession with a resulting market crash or major correction anytime soon. However, there is one factor affecting the stock market that is unpredictable and, I believe, has a more significant impact on its performance than ever before.

I am talking about politics, both the national and international variety. Whatever your opinion is of President Trump, the stock market should stay steady throughout 2020 and into 2021, at least, if he wins re-election next year. If the Democratic candidate wins, the stock market will probably take a negative hit, at least initially. Investors would then have to see what type of economic policies the new administration formulates to get an idea where the stock market will go from there.

The policies of whomever is president as they deal with trade and relationships with other countries will also have a bearing on the nation’s economy. Every time trade with China is in the headlines, you see a bounce or a dip in the stock market depending on the type of news. Wars and conflicts can also crop up at an alarming rate, and when that happens, all forecasts get thrown out the window until the situation stabilizes. Unfortunately, we live in a volatile world, and there is no sign of that abating in the future.

Overall, I believe the stock market will continue to rise, but because of the political volatility the nation is experiencing, there are going to be some peaks and valleys with moderate growth. Fixed investments continue to see a low yield and low interest rate environment. While their rate of return might not be stellar in the economic conditions that favor the stock market, there are ample opportunities to invest in things like general account portfolio of life insurance companies and other specialized fixed items, such as short-term private lending and mezzanine debt, due to their availability.

The economy still appeals to the bulls. For bears, low interest rates make it difficult for those who receive a fixed income on conservative investments. Those same low interest rates set by the Fed that spurred the current bull market have slowed the growth of some other investments.

The bottom line is the economy looks good for the next couple of years. I don’t think we will see a recession. That being said, I urge great caution for anyone considering a major investment right now. The potential effect the political environment in the United States can have on the stock market and other investments is a wild card you cannot ignore. If you are sitting on money to invest, it would be wise to keep sitting on it. Even with a still rising economy, keeping money liquid for future investments is a good idea. Even if the political dust clears after the 2020 election, it might not be until 2021 that the picture will clear on the best places to put your cash.

The information provided here is not investment, tax or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.

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Amazon completes $4B Anthropic investment to advance generative AI – About Amazon

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Amazon concludes $4 billion investment in Anthropic.

Customers of all sizes and industries are using Claude on Amazon Bedrock to reimagine user experiences, reinvent their businesses, and accelerate their generative AI journeys.

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The work Amazon and Anthropic are doing together to bring the most advanced generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) technologies to customers worldwide is only beginning. As part of a strategic collaborative agreement, we and Anthropic announced that Anthropic is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development. Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train, and deploy its future models and has made a long-term commitment to provide AWS customers around the world with access to future generations of its foundation models on Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed service that provides secure, easy access to the industry’s widest choice of high-performing, fully managed foundation models (FMs), along with the most compelling set of features (including best-in-class retrieval augmented generation, guardrails, model evaluation, and AI-powered agents) that help customers build highly-capable, cost-effective, low latency generative AI applications.

Earlier this month, we announced access to the most powerful Anthropic AI models on Amazon Bedrock. The Claude 3 family of models demonstrate advanced intelligence, near-human levels of responsiveness, improved steerability and accuracy, and new vision capabilities. Industry benchmarks show that Claude 3 Opus, the most intelligent of the model family, has set a new standard, outperforming other models available today—including OpenAI’s GPT-4—in the areas of reasoning, math, and coding.

“We have a notable history with Anthropic, together helping organizations of all sizes around the world to deploy advanced generative artificial intelligence applications across their organizations,” said Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI at AWS. “Anthropic’s visionary work with generative AI, most recently the introduction of its state-of-the art Claude 3 family of models, combined with Amazon’s best-in-class infrastructure like AWS Tranium and managed services like Amazon Bedrock further unlocks exciting opportunities for customers to quickly, securely, and responsibly innovate with generative AI. Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next.”

Global organizations of all sizes, across virtually every industry, are already using Amazon Bedrock to build their generative AI applications with Anthropic’s Claude AI. They include ADP, Amdocs, Bridgewater Associates, Broadridge, CelcomDigi, Clariant, Cloudera, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Degas Ltd., Delta Air Lines, Druva, Enverus, Genesys, Genomics England, GoDaddy, Happy Fox, Intuit, KT, LivTech, Lonely Planet, LexisNexis Legal & Professional, M1 Finance, Netsmart, Nexxiot, Parsyl, Perplexity AI, Pfizer, the PGA TOUR, Proto Hologram, Ricoh USA, Rocket Companies, and Siemens.

To further help speed the adoption of advanced generative AI technologies, AWS, Anthropic, and Accenture recently announced that they are coming together to help organizations—especially those in highly-regulated industries including healthcare, public sector, banking, and insurance—responsibly adopt and scale generative AI solutions. Through this collaboration, organizations will gain access to best-in-class models from Anthropic, a broad set of capabilities only available on Amazon Bedrock, and industry expertise from Accenture, Anthropic, and AWS to help them build and scale generative AI applications that are customized for their specific use cases.

Deepening our commitment to advancing generative AI, today we have an update on the announcement we made to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic for a minority ownership position in the company. Last September, we made an initial investment of $1.25 billion. Today, we made our additional $2.75 billion investment, bringing our total investment in Anthropic to $4 billion. To learn more about the broader strategic collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic, of which this investment is one part, check out the stories below:

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Amazon doubles down on Anthropic, completing its planned $4B investment – TechCrunch

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Amazon invested a further $2.75 billion in growing AI power Anthropic on Wednesday, following through on the option it left open last September. The $1.25 billion it invested at the time must be producing results, or perhaps they’ve realized that there are no other horses available to back.

The September deal put $1.25 billion into the company in exchange for a minority stake, and certain tit-for-tat agreements like Anthropic continuing to use AWS for its extensive computation needs.

Amazon reportedly had until the end of the first quarter to decide whether to increase its investment to a maximum of $4 billion, and here we are just before the deadline, and the company has decided to throw in the maximum amount.

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Anthropic’s AI models are one of very few that compete at the highest levels of capability (however you define it) yet are available at scale for enterprises to deploy internally or in user-facing applications. OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Gemini are the others up there, but upstarts like Mistral may soon threaten that fragile triumvirate.

Lacking the capability to develop adequate models on their own for whatever reason, companies like Amazon and Microsoft have had to act vicariously through others, primarily OpenAI and Anthropic. The two have reaped immense benefits by allying with one or the other of these moneyed rivals, and as yet have not seen many downsides.

What we can take from Amazon’s decision to invest the maximum after (one must assume) getting a pretty close look at how they make the AI sausage over there is, really, pretty scant.

It makes too much strategic sense for these companies, which possess enormous war chests saved up for exactly this purpose (outspending rivals when they can’t out-innovate them), to pour cash into the AI sector. Right now the AI world is a bit like a roulette table, with OpenAI and Anthropic representing black and red. No one really knows where the ball will land, least of all the companies that couldn’t predict or create this technology themselves. But if your bitter enemy puts their chips down on red, it only makes sense for you to bet on black.

Especially if you can bet on black at a discount — which is what Amazon got here, since it could invest at Anthropic’s September valuation, which is most certainly lower than it is today.

That said, if things were looking sketchy over there — the way they must have looked at Inflection before Microsoft pounced on it — Amazon could have backed out or just invested less than the full supplemental $2.75 billion. But that might have sent a confusing signal no one wants getting out there, least of all existing multibillion-dollar investors.

We know Anthropic has a plan, and this year we’ll find out what Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and other multinational interests think they can do to monetize this supposedly revolutionary technology.

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Canada to tighten foreign investment rules for AI, other sectors

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Canada will require foreign companies to warn the government in advance before making investments or acquisitions in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and space technology, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing an interview with Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.

The move will aid the government in conducting a national-security review before transactions get too far advanced and would-be investors may be restricted in their access to target companies’ user data or other property while the inquiry is taking place, the report said.


Click to play video: 'Canadians concerned about risk of AI generated fraud'
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Canadians concerned about risk of AI generated fraud

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The tougher rules will also apply to investments in critical minerals and potentially other sectors, Champagne said to Bloomberg.

Earlier this month, Champagne said Canada will crack down on foreign investment in the interactive digital media sector to stop state-sponsored actors from endangering national security.

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