Tony Danaher's Contributions

Tech bloggers and reporters have written so much about the “internet of things” (IoT) that the phrase is beginning to get tired. However, we believe the IoT is one of the most significant investment-related technology themes.

Interest rate levels have been confounding many professional investors around the globe. U.S. government benchmark 10-year interest rates began 2014 near 3.00 percent, but they have been sliding back to about 2.40 percent recently.

Cybercrime knocks almost a percentage point off global GDP growth, according to a study published last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan think-tank with a strong reputation in international affairs and global security issues.

The global revolution in oil and gas production that’s been sparked by fracking continues to steam ahead — potentially with big benefits to the oilfield services companies who have the expertise that’s needed to implement the technology and reap its benefits.

For some time, the Chinese government has been promoting the Yuan as a medium of international trade, and reducing the influence of the U.S. dollar. A pilot program was launched in 2009, and there have been...

Employment in the U.S. has made substantial gains since the end of the Great Recession. The headline unemployment rate continues to decline, and so does the “underemployment” rate, which adds in discouraged workers who have quit the job hunt, as well as those who want to work full-time but can only find a part-time position.

Last week U.S. regulators imposed a large fine on BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank. The nearly $9 billion settlement, in which the bank admitted its guilt, was not the largest in U.S. regulatory history; that title still goes to JPMorgan Chase.

When at the end of April, Orbital Sciences (NYSE: ORB) and Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK) announced their merger into a new space-system firm, with ATK’s ammunition business being spun off, investors were thrilled.

Although the prospect seems far-fetched, the second-oldest profession is on the cusp of a technological revolution. Farmers have faced a long transition over the past three centuries in which their ancient art has become more and more of a science.

The state of Vermont recently passed legislation requiring, within certain parameters, the labeling of food derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Twenty-nine other states have GMO-labeling bills in various stages of legislative process, and two other New England states have passed statutes that will come into effect if a certain...

These factors — very competitive energy costs, increasingly competitive wages, and increasingly competitive energy intensity — together make a bullish macro picture for U.S. manufacturing. In this phase of the cycle, with capital expenditures expanding...

In February, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the Obama administration’s proposed 2015 defense budget. It was notable for the reduction of the U.S. Army to its lowest force level since World War II. It envisions “a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.”

Supported by high agricultural commodity prices and low interest rates, farmland prices more than quadrupled in Iowa during the decade from 2000 to 2010...

Much has been reported about the recent surge in coffee prices but sugar prices have also risen to multi-month highs due to drought conditions in Brazil, the world's number one exporter of these commodities.

Google has its fingers in so many technological pies that it’s hard to keep track of them — even the ones not hidden in Google X, the company’s development lab.

Interest rates are rising, and 2013 posted strong performance for equities. These two facts mean that the health of many large U.S. pension systems has improved dramatically. That has implications for the broader health of companies with big pension obligations.

As investors, we are always alert to the effects of government policy on the economy and on the markets. And the larger the policy, the larger those effects will probably be. People change their behavior in response to incentives, and any complex piece of legislation will create many different incentives and change peoples’ behavior in many different ways.

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, made a splash in December when he described his plan for Amazon deliveries to be made by drones. And not just any drones — weird eight-winged “octocopters” resembling something from an alien attack. Even if it was a publicity stunt...

Financial media were buzzing last week with news about troubles in China’s unofficial, or “shadow,” banking sector. Stories that the sky is falling...

We believe that the world’s major banks do not need to be involved in commodities trading, and that their involvement in commodity markets increases risks of bank failure, and increases the chance that they might manipulate commodity prices.