Shopify offers an e-commerce platform primarily to small and medium-size businesses. The firm has two segments. The subscription solutions segment allows Shopify merchants to conduct e-commerce on a variety of platforms, including the company’s website, physical stores, pop-up stores, kiosks, social networks (Facebook), and Amazon. The merchant solutions segment offers add-on products for the platform that facilitate e-commerce and include Shopify Payments, Shopify Shipping, and Shopify Capital.

Founded in 2012, Coinbase is the leading cryptocurrency exchange platform in the United States. The company intends to be the safe and regulation-compliant point of entry for retail investors and institutions into the cryptocurrency economy. Users can establish an account directly with the firm, instead of using an intermediary, and many choose to allow Coinbase to act as a custodian for their cryptocurrency, giving the company breadth beyond that of a traditional financial exchange. While the company still generates the majority of its revenue from transaction fees charged to its retail customers, Coinbase uses internal investment and acquisitions to expand into adjacent businesses, such as prime brokerage and data analytics.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is the world's largest dedicated chip foundry, with almost 60% market share. TSMC was founded in 1987 as a joint venture of Philips, the government of Taiwan, and private investors. It went public as an ADR in the U.S. in 1997. TSMC's scale and high-quality technology allow the firm to generate solid operating margins, even in the highly competitive foundry business. Furthermore, the shift to the fabless business model has created tailwinds for TSMC. The foundry leader has an illustrious customer base, including Apple, AMD, and Nvidia, that looks to apply cutting-edge process technologies to its semiconductor designs. TSMC employs more than 73,000 people.

Our stock-bond asset-allocation model, which we call the Stock-Bond Barometer, is now indicating that bonds are the asset class offering the most value at the current market juncture. But not by much. Our model takes into account current levels and forecasts of short-term and long-term government and corporate fixed-income yields, inflation, stock prices, GDP, and corporate earnings, among other factors. The model's output is expressed in terms of standard deviations to the mean, or sigma. The mean reading from the model, going back to 1960, is a modest premium for stocks (of 0.16 sigma), with a standard deviation of 0.97. The current valuation level is a 0.14 sigma premium for stocks, which is below the historical average and is not indicating that stocks are dramatically overvalued, even with the S&P 500 having logged all-time highs. Other valuation measures also show reasonable multiples for stocks. The current forward P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is approximately 19.6, which is within the normal range of 13-24 and down from 23 in 2021. The current S&P 500 dividend yield is 32% of the 10-year Treasury yield, compared to the long-run average of 39% and the all-time low of 18% during 1999. Looking ahead, we expect the results from our stock-bond valuation model to tilt toward stocks, as interest rates head lower in 2024 and earnings growth picks up. Based in part on the output from our Stock-Bond Barometer, our current recommended asset-allocation model for moderate accounts is 74% growth assets, including 72% equities and 2% alternatives; and 26% fixed income, with a focus on Core and Opportunistic segments of the bond market.