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Business and Market Discussion Podcast: Coronavirus and its impact to economy

Tony Nash, founder, CEO and Chief Economist of Complete Intelligence is a guest in RTHK’s Business and Market Discussion podcast. He says that the lockdown of major Chinese cities could make foreign enterprises re-think their supply chain strategy.

 

Some notes below:

 

Do you see this in the US purely as a China problem or is it a global problem?

 

People here are taking precautions. A lot of airlines have stopped direct flights to China. People are concerned about it, but that’s not an overwhelming worry. The preparations that are happening around Asia, but we had this drill before. From a western perspective, it looks like these preparations are being mode and it’s a panic mode. I think Asian governments are doing the right thing by ramping up and preparing for the worst. Best case, it’s not really that bad, but we’ve done all these preparations just in case.

 

How this is hitting tourism, retail sales, trade, commerce because Wuhan is a logistics center. The whole country is virtually shut down. People are not traveling at the moment. You can imagine China will take a big economic hit. One think tank saying economic growth could drop below 5 percent.

 

I would argue that it’s already below 5% for about a year. The magnitude of the response is enough for anyone to get nervous. I think the response is the right response, but it has made people nervous. It’s a difficult balance to strike for the Chinese government. Yes, it will have a hit to the economy. But there may be a sharp rebound.

 

It’s happening over the new year season. But in terms of manufacturing and exports, if these things can be contained before the end of new year, it can be rebound.

 

And that’s because there will be a lot of demands once this is over.

 

How about the impacts on commodities? Copper? Ag products?

 

These are all the typical fear plays when people are worried or when China is in crisis. Traders are shorting because the trade deal may not be implemented. My hope is for the government to turn this around in a couple of weeks.

 

I think that it’s oversold like Gold is overplayed. People are still learning the magnitude of the impact.

 

Do you think this could derail the Phase 1 deal?

 

There are two years for that. This is a relatively short impact like 1 to 2 months. I don’t think the demands will change that much. Because there will be a spike on buying. If this is a medium impact, then this will change.

 

This maybe the event that pushes some manufacturers over the end, and may start moving their production capacity to other areas.

 

And that’s the thing that there’ll be a long impact on the Chinese economy.

 

Absolutely, and that’s where the economy will be stagnant. That’s the main worry.

 

Do you think there will be a big equities sell-off?

 

It’s possible but I don’t think it will happen until we have evidence about the cases or intensity of the impact. We have to wait a little bit of time to see if these are properly reported cases.

 

Listen to the podcast at RTHK.HK’s Money Talk Podcast. 

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The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce to Host Annual Economic Outlook Conference February 21

THE WOODLANDS, TX — The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce, the largest business association in Greater Houston, will host the 34th Annual Economic Outlook Conference on Friday, February 21, 2020, at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel and Convention Center.

 

This year’s conference, themed “Innovative Solutions in a Diverse Community,” will feature a community, national and economy update, a CEO panel focused on technology and innovation, and keynotes highlighting the projected growth of the economy in Montgomery County and beyond.

 

Tickets are on sale now at woodlandschamber.org/EOC for $199 and Chamber members receive a discounted price of $169.

 

“The Chamber’s Economic Outlook Conference not only features economic experts who share valuable information for business leaders about current events and the future of the economy, it also offers a business expo that provides sponsors and attendees the opportunity to engage in one-on-one conversations with more than 700 professionals,” Margo McZeal, director of governmental affairs for The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce, said.

 

Renu Khator, the University of Houston System Chancellor and the University of Houston President, will give a keynote presentation.

 

A highlight of the 2020 event includes an Innovation Panel where four CEOs will discuss how the latest trends in innovation are helping to solve economic issues. Panelists include Clint Brinkley, Your Business Solutions CEO; Ashok Gowda, Biotex, Inc. president and CEO; Tony Nash, Complete Intelligence founder and CEO; and Gabriella ‘Gaby’ Rowe, The Ion executive director will discuss how the latest trends in innovation are helping businesses to solve economic issues.

 

Read the rest of the press release at Woodlands Online. 

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6% The Best China Can Do

As markets overnight were bolstered by concerns over a virus spreading from China, we speak to Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, for his insight into the downgrade of China’s GDP forecast, the upside to US equities, and a fall in oil prices as a result of China’s coronavirus.

 

Presented by: Roshan Kanesan, Wong Shou Ning, Lyn Mak

 

Listen to the podcast from BFM: The Business Station. 

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Huawei chief fights extradition to the US

Huawei chief operating officer appears in a Canadian court to fight extradition to the United States on charges of fraud and breaching sanctions on Iran.

 

The United States Census for 2020 is launched in Alaska, an important exercise for economic planning – we hear from Gabriel Layman, the Chief Operating Officer of Cook Inlet Housing Authority, about the quirks of gathering such huge amounts of information.

 

And baseball is hit by a cheating scandal which could prompt advertisers to walk. And in Japan, a major restaurant chain is feeling the effects of the country’s ageing population.

 

We discuss all this with live guests Sushma Ramachandran, an independent business journalist for The Tribune newspaper in Delhi, and Tony Nash, chief economist at Complete Intelligence in Houston, Texas.

 

Listen to the podcast at BBC Business Matters.

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US-China Phase One Trade Deal Signed

Tony Nash, CEO and Founder of Complete Intelligence gives his analysis on the main takeaway from the US-China phase one trade deal and when could a phase two deal takes place.

 

Tony is a guest commentator in Singapore’s Money FM 89.3.

 

Listen to the podcast at Money FM 89.3.

 

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What do tense US-Iranian relations mean for China, North Korea?

Al Jazeera

 

Complete Intelligence Founder and CEO weighs in on Asian nations likely to be affected differently, with economic risks for Beijing and Pyongyang eyeing strategic gains.

 

Since 2018, the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a trade war that is squeezing Chinese industries. The country recorded growth of 6 percent in the last three months of 2019, a low not seen since 1992, amid slumping exports and manufacturing.

 

Beijing may not have the staying power to continue fighting a trade war, said Tony Nash, founder of artificial intelligence firm Complete Intelligence and a long-term China watcher.

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Iran VS US: What will Iran do next?

In this episode of BBC’s Business Matters, Tony Nash comments on Iran vs the US and what the former will likely do next. 

 

The NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said members were united in their concerns about what he called Iran’s destabilising operations in the region and in their resolve that Iran should never acquire nuclear weapons. 

 

But he said it was a US, not a NATO, decision to kill the senior Iranian general Qasim Soleimani in Iraq last week. After Iranian threats of retaliation, the world awaits. Who will make the next move? 

 

Listen to the podcast here

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3 Houston innovators to know this week

This year, Houston’s innovation ecosystem is set to change tenfold — from the rise of 5G to burgeoning startup and entrepreneurial hubs emerging across town. Today’s featured Houston innovators know a bit about these movements — from an entrepreneur using artificial intelligence in data management for his clients to a banking exec who went all-in on startups.

 

Tony Nash, founder and CEO of Complete Intelligence

 

Every company wishes they have a crystal ball when it comes to making business decisions, and while a physical iteration of that wish isn’t possible, Tony Nash has developed the next best thing for his clients at his startup, Complete Intelligence.

 

Founded in 2015, Complete Intelligence is an AI platform that forecasts assets and allows evaluation of currencies, commodities, equity indices and economics. The Woodlands-based company also does advanced procurement and revenue for corporate clients.

 

“We’ve spent a couple years building this,” says Nash in a recent InnovationMap interview. “We have a platform that is helping clients with planning, to simplify finance, procurement and sales and a host of other things. … We built a model of the global economy and transactions across the global economy, so it’s a very large, very detailed artificial intelligence platform.” 

 

Read the full story here.

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Houston startup uses artificial intelligence to bring its clients better business forecasting calculations

This article is originally published at https://houston.innovationmap.com/houston-based-complete-intelligence-changing-the-business-forecasting-game-2643180609.html

 

The business applications of artificial intelligence are boundless. Tony Nash realized AI’s potential in an underserved niche.

 

His startup, Complete Intelligence, uses AI to help on how to make better business decisions, which looks at the data and behavior of costs and prices within a global ecosystem in a global environment to help top-tier companies make better business decisions.

 

“The problem that were solving is companies don’t predict their costs and revenues very well,” says Nash, the CEO and founder of Complete Intelligence. “There are really high error rates in company costs and revenue forecasts and so what we’ve done is built a globally integrated artificial intelligence platform that can help people predict their costs and their revenues with a very low error rate.”

 

Founded in 2015, Complete Intelligence is an AI platform that forecasts assets and allows evaluation of currencies, commodities, equity indices and economics. The Woodlands-based company also does advanced procurement and revenue for corporate clients.

 

“We’ve spent a couple years building this,” says Nash. “We have a platform that is helping clients with planning, finance, procurement and sales and a host of other things. We are forecasting equity markets; we are forecasting commodity prices, currencies, economics and trades. We built a model of the global economy and transactions across the global economy, so it’s a very large, very detailed artificial intelligence platform.”

 

That platform, CI Futures, has streamlined comprehensive price forecasting and data analysis, allowing for sound, data-based decisions.

 

“Our products are pretty simple,” says Nash. “We have our basic off the shelf forecasting application which is called CI Futures, which is currencies, commodities, equities and economics and trade. Its basic raw data forecasts. We distribute that raw data on our website and other data distribution websites. We also have a product called Cost Flow, which is our procurement forecasting engine, where we build a material level forecasting for clients.

 

“Then we have a product that we’ll launch next year called Revenue Flow, which is a sales forecasting tool that will use balance of both client data and publicly available data to forecast client sales by product, by geography and so on and so forth. So we really only do three things: revenues, costs and raw data forecasts.”

 

Forecasting across industries

Complete Intelligence’s Cost Flow and Revenue Flow products are specific to direct clients. They are working with clients in the food and beverage sector, the energy sector, the chemical sector, and the technology sector.

 

“Anybody that manufactures a tangible good, should use our product,” says Nash. “Because we can take their historical data we can configure their bills of material and they can see the exact cost and exact revenue of those products by month over time.”

 

CI is not a consulting firm, so they offer their clients an annual license, which allows them to receive updated forecasts every month to understand how markets will iterate over time.

 

“We’re integrating with the client’s enterprise data,” says Nash. “Whether it’s their ERP system or their procurement system or their CRM, we’re integrating with client’s enterprise data, and we’re creating forecast outlooks that are perfectly contextually relevant for client buying decisions.”

 

Called out by Capital Factory

 

As a business solution, CI has garnered widespread industry confidence and accolades, such as Capital Factory’s coveted “Newcomer of the Year” award, which recognizes innovative companies from a pool of 110 startups in Texas.

 

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it because with a startup like ours, there’s so much hard work that goes into it, there’s so much time, there’s so much persistence,” says Nash.

 

“And the types of startups that Capital Factory attracts are very competitive startups, so for us to receive this award, it’s given us a huge amount of credibility in the market and it’s really encouraged the team inside the company to understand that what we’re doing is being recognized, it’s meaningful and we’re really going places.”

 

From consulting to billions of monthly calculations

 

Nash is no stranger to going places. Before setting up shop in his native Texas, he lived in Singapore for 15 years where he started his career in sourcing and procurement for American retail firms.

 

“I became very sensitive to costs, cost inflections and I got very involved in global sourcing and international trade and then I did a couple of corporate turnarounds and start ups and so with that you see costs as an issue with those types of firms,” Nash says.

 

He then worked with the Economist running their global research business. There, he grew familiar with how clients and customers use data. At IHS Markit, a global information provider.

 

“When I was working with those firms, those firms helped companies with planning,” says Nash. “The problem is that those firms have very large errors in their forecasts. It is not just the internal forecasts that have a 30 percent or higher error rate in their forecasts, even the industry forecasters typically have around a 20 percent error rates in their forecasts.

 

“Even the people who should actually know where prices are going are not very good forecasters. With Complete Intelligence, we wanted to use data and use artificial intelligence to machine learning to create a better way to identify where costs and revenues will go for companies.”

 

Every month, CI runs billions of calculations. They test their error rates and record them for clients that request them. With 700 assets that they show publicly, CI their average error rate is 3.7 percent, which is dramatically lower than both corporate procurement professionals and industry experts.

 

“With us doing billions of calculations, it allows us to run simulations and scenarios that your average analyst just can’t do and most companies haven’t even thought of. We’re able to run a comprehensive view of activities in the world to understand how things directly and indirectly affect a cost. In Houston, for example, that could be crude oil or natural gas or something like that.”

 

Proving its value

Last year, the company tested its platform with a natural gas trader. After reviewing the data, CI revealed to the client that natural gas would fall by 40 percent over the next year.

 

“They looked at our forecast and said they couldn’t work with us because it didn’t make sense,” says Nash. “A 40 percent fall didn’t make sense, so they didn’t subscribe to us. That was 2018. What has happened over the past 12 months? Natural gas prices had fallen by 49 percent. You would look at our forecasts and say, ‘Wow, that’s a dramatic drop over 12 months.’ But reality was even more dramatic than that and there weren’t analysts out there saying what our model was telling us.”

 

That natural gas trading company never admitted its faux pas, but if they had listened to CI, they could have positioned themselves to negotiate their vendors down for their cost base, which helps the margin of their business.

 

“Nobody ever admits mistakes,” says Nash. “But when you think about the numerous materials that require natural gas, especially things that are manufactured in Houston, it affects a lot of costs.”

 

Houston roots — by way of Asia

The missed opportunity with the natural gas trader notwithstanding, Nash is happy that he brought Complete Intelligence to Houston.

 

“I went to Texas A&M and grew up in Texas, so I moved back to Texas knowing how good Americans are with planning, with math and with data. I like Houston because people make stuff in Houston,” Nash says. “We just found Houston to be perfect after spending 15 years in Asia given the global centrality of Houston. The industry’s here and there’s a lot of diversity in Houston.”

 

Nash’s expectation was that he would be able to work with Western multinationals to improve their analytics and their artificial intelligence processes because he has learned that there is a lot of pressure in American financial markets and analysts communities to really know what is happening within companies.

 

“We want companies to be able to really tightly plan their costs so they can better improve their profitability,” says Nash. “That’s what I wanted to do when we moved to the U.S. and we’re finding that there’s a lot of interest from companies.”