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Tag: 2018

  • VN-Index ends year 10 percent lower

    VN-Index ends year 10 percent lower

    The VN-Index closed the last trading day of 2018 at 892.54 points, down almost 10 percent from the year’s outset. This was a drop of 93 points from January 2, the first trading day of the year. The benchmark closed below the 900-point mark on Friday, a drop of over 25 percent from its peak at over 1,200 points in April. The VN30-Index, representing the 30 largest tocks in terms of capitalization, closed at 854.99 points, dropping 10.46 from Thursday, or 1.21 percent lower.

    Many stocks in the VN30-Index also ended in the red. Diary giant Vinamilk closed at VND120,000 ($5.2), 2.6 percent lower.

    Vietnam’s top petro importer and distributor Petrolimex fell 5.69 percent to VND53,000 ($2.3), while food company Masan dropped 1.9 percent to VND77,500 ($3.36).

    However, the HNX-Index on the Hanoi Stock Exchange and the UPCoM-Index for unlisted public companies ended in the green, up 0.24 percent and 0.46 percent respectively.

    Vietnam’s largest private firm Vingroup (VIC) ended the day at VND95,300 ($4.13), 6.93 percent lower. Vincom Retail’s VRE stock dropped almost five percent to VND27,000 ($1.17).

    Total market capitalization of all three stock markets, the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE), HNX and UPCoM, was VND4 trillion ($173.25 million).

    2018 has proved the most turbulent year for VN-Index since the 2008 crisis, ending an increasing run since 2016.

  • Isobar Launches ‘Augmented Humanity: Isobar Trends Report 2018’

    Isobar Launches ‘Augmented Humanity: Isobar Trends Report 2018’

    Isobar, a leading global digital agency, predicts that 2018 will be the year of Augmented Humanity, a year where technology enhances and scales our most human attributes. In 2018, technological interfaces will become more natural and instinctive, technology will automate repetitive tasks to free up time for creativity and compassion, and artificial intelligence will meet emotional intelligence. This is further detailed in ‘Augmented Humanity, Isobar Trends Report 2018’.

    Isobar’s innovation and strategy experts from around the world have defined five key trends that explore this evolving relationship between humanity and technology and predict a harmonious future. Augmented Humanity explores the ways in which technology enhances and fuels our most human attributes – the ability to recognise and trust each other, to adapt to changing circumstances and the power to deliver true creativity.

    Jean Lin, Isobar’s Global CEO, comments: “Artificial intelligence is great, but humans score on emotional intelligence. The power of being human is in empathy. This cannot be automated or outsourced. Augmented Humanity will use technology to scale everything that is best and most powerful about human interaction.”

    The report argues that we may one day view the era of anonymous, one size fits all transactions as a temporary blip in our evolution, and that as technology advances it will become more human, not less. It will return us to a time where voice will be the primary way we interact with the world, where we will be recognised and rewarded in stores, and where we will buy more directly from trusted suppliers.

    Isobar’s five key trends for 2018 explore this intersection of technology and humanity, magic and the machine, code and conscience:

    1. Body Talk explores the body as an interface, as our eyes and ears replace touching and tapping.
    2. Powered by People tackles the shift from customers to communities as technology turbocharges the sharing economy.
    3. The Economy of Me looks at the power of AI to deliver ever more personalised products, prices and places.
    4. The Ethical Algorithm tackles technology as a force for good; in a world of fake news and algorithm bias is there such a thing as moral code?
    5. The Makers and the Machines explores the extraordinary union of art and technology to create outputs we could never before imagine.

     

    Within each theme, Isobar unpicks key sub trends and explores how they come to life today, in the future, and what they mean for businesses and brands right now. The report celebrates the importance of emotion at every touchpoint; in this new landscape it will no longer be enough for technologists to ask “how does it work?” – they need to consider human emotion and drivers and ask “how does it feel?”.