However, it is worth reflecting that the advances in data processing that excite technology analyst affect sectors which have not performed so well.
One example is the ‘travelling salesman problem’. Academic mathematicians have been puzzling for decades whether there is a formula to show the shortest route a salesman should use, given a number of cities he needs to visit and the distances between them. While the academics continue to struggle, advances in computing power have come up with better and better routes (through crunching billions of worse routes, not through an elegant equation).
So perhaps alongside the poster child stocks of the current technology boom – Nvidia and Microsoft - the lowly rated logistics companies might benefit from the application of this technology. Stocks such as US railroads and UPS seem a long way from the AI hype sectors – but then, of course, there is one other company which has millions of travelling deliverymen: Amazon.
Simon Edelsten spent thirty years as a global equity fund manager
