Global Market Comments
December 13, 2017
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE ONE STOCK YOU HAVE TO ABSOLUTELY BEG, BORROW, OR STEAL), (NVDA),
(BECOME MY FACEBOOK FRIEND)
(TESTIMONIAL)
Given the mind blowing information I picked up over the weekend about LAM Research (LRCX), you absolutely have to figure out how to beg, borrow, or steal your way into NVIDIA (NVDA).
Fortunately for you, the recent pullback in the big tech sector is giving you the ideal opportunity to steal it.
The leaders of the sector have suddenly become instant pariahs, and their globalization-based models are forcing portfolio managers to throw babies out with their bathwater.
That includes Nvidia, which gave up 17.05% from its high during last week's tech wreck.
I first recommended Nvidia on November 2, 2016 (click here for the link at "The Great Artificial Intelligence Stock You've Never Heard Of.")
In the piece I argued that the shares could double over the next three years.
I lied.
They rocketed by a stunning 43.93% in the following three weeks!
And after what I heard last week, I now believe that my doubling call is ultra conservative.
If you have any doubts about such a bold call, simply take a look at the company's blockbuster Q3 earnings.
The company crushed all expectations, announcing revenues of $2.64 billion, up a mind numbing 123.84% YOY. Earnings per share rocketed to $1.33, giving it a price earnings multiple of 47.93.
The company has just announced its Titan V (it likes to name its products after famous rockets), the most powerful PC based GPU (graphics processing unit) ever created.
The super advanced chip has the ability to turn your home desktop into an artificial intelligence powerhouse.
In addition, (NVDA) wants to combine AI and supercomputing, unlocking the power of AI for large-scale problems like autonomous vehicles, modeling fusion reactors, and a plethora of breakthroughs where deep learning would be a good fit for the problem at hand.
I have been covering Silicon Valley since it was a verdant, sun kissed peach orchard in Northern California.
I have to say that in the half century that I have followed the technology industry, I have never seen the principals, gurus, and visionaries so excited about a major new trend.
That would be artificial intelligence, or AI.
Asking if AI is relevant now is like pondering the future of Thomas Edison's new electricity in 1890.
If you think that AI still belongs in the realm of science fiction, you obviously didn't get the memo. It is all around us all the time, 24/7. You just don't know it yet.
And here's the rub.
It is impossible to invest purely in AI.
All new AI startups comprise small teams of experts from labs and universities financed by big venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Andreessen Horowitz.
After developing software for a year or two, they are sold on to major technology firms at huge premiums. They never see the light of day in the form of a public listing.
Alphabet (GOOG) acquired Britain based, Deep Mind, in 2014. Later that year, Google's AlphaGo program defeated the world's top ranked Go player.
Last year, Microsoft (MSFT) purchased Equivio, a small firm that applies AI to advanced document searches on the Internet.
Amazon (AMZN) recently bought out Orbeus, a startup known for machine learning tools for image recognition.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos now says that his Amazon Fresh home food delivery service is using AI to grade strawberries.
Really!
We're not talking small potatoes here.
The global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 44.3% a year to $23.5 billion by 2025.
Nearly half of all applications now use some form of AI that by 2020 will earn businesses an extra $60 billion a year in profits.
And from what I have learned from speaking to the major players over the last few weeks, I am convinced that these are low numbers by an order of magnitude.
It gets better than that.
If you have in any way been involved in the stock market for the past five years, AI has invaded your life.
High frequency trading and hedge funds now account for 70% of the daily trading volume on the major stock exchanges, and almost all of this is AI driven.
Having spent my entire life trading stocks, I can confirm that in recent years the market's character has dramatically changed, and not for the better. Call it trading untouched by human hands.
Algorithms are trading against algorithms, and whoever wins the nuclear arms race brings home the big bucks.
You used to need degrees in Finance and Economics, or perhaps an MBA, to become a professional fund manger. Now it's a PhD in Computer Science.
Remember the May, 2010 flash crash, when the Dow Average plunged 1,100 points in minutes, wiping out $4.1 billion in equity value? AI's fingerprints were all over that.
And only weeks ago, the British pound lost 6% of its value in a mere two minutes, a move unprecedented in the history of foreign exchange markets. The culprit was AI.
Don't expect the path forward to AI to be an easy one.
Indeed, the machines already have the power of life and death over all of us.
Since we aren't venture capitalists, we can't buy into pure AI firms in their early stages. And I'm too old to get a PhD in computer science.
We therefore have to be sneaky and get in through the back door via an indirect play, which still has plenty of upside leverage.
What is the one medium sized, publicly listed company that most benefits from the AI explosion?
I have found exactly such a company (it was small at the beginning of the year) that represents the marrying of the four biggest trends in technology today: AI, self-driving cars, big data, and virtual reality.
That would be Nvidia (NVDA).
The Santa Clara, California based company manufactures graphics processing units (GPU's) for the gaming market as well as system on a chip units (SOC's).
It is heavily involved in super computing and mobile computing, producing processors for tablets, IPhones, and vehicle navigation systems.
Nvidia, named after the Roman god Nemesis, was founded in 1993. It was the original supplier of processors for the Microsoft Xbox and Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3.
In 2011, it demonstrated the first quad-core processor for mobile devices.
Nvidia has been on an acquisition tear over the past decade, picking up more than a dozen companies to expand its reach in the most advanced AI and manufacturing technologies, as well as picking up some first class talent.
Nvidia has more engineers working on AI than any other company, or institution, in the world.
Its integrated stack of imaginative chip designs is unmatched.
Its principal competitors are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel (INTC) and QUALCOMM (QCOM).
To learn more about Nvidia, please visit their website at Nvidia by clicking here.
Dear MHFT,
I've just completed my third year trading under your guidance. I'm intensely interested in events that move markets and I find your knowledge to be quite insightful. 2016 was a breakout year for me as I made $382,000 on a trading account that started the year with $700,000. Keep sharing your wisdom!
Steve
Basel, Switzerland
"People are investing with a rear view mirror. Last year, you had people legitimately scared out of the market. Unfortunately, you are losing a generation of investors at a time when they ought to be thinking about buying high quality stocks." said Hersh Cohen of Clearbridge Advisors.
While the Global Trading Dispatch focuses on investment over a one week to six-month time frame, Mad Options Trader, provided by Matt Buckley, will focus primarily on the weekly US equity options expirations, with the goal of making profits at all times. Read more
While the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader focuses on investment over a one week to six-month time frame, Mad Day Trader, provided by Bill Davis, will exploit money-making opportunities over a brief ten minute to three day window. It is ideally suited for day traders, but can also be used by long-term investors to improve market timing for entry and exit points. Read more
When John identifies a strategic exit point, he will send you an alert with specific trade information as to what security to sell, when to sell it, and at what price. Most often, it will be to TAKE PROFITS, but, on rare occasions, it will be to exercise a STOP LOSS at a predetermined price to adhere to strict risk management discipline. Read more
While the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader focuses on investment over a one week to six-month time frame, Mad Day Trader, provided by Bill Davis, will exploit money-making opportunities over a brief ten minute to three day window. It is ideally suited for day traders, but can also be used by long-term investors to improve market timing for entry and exit points. Read more
Global Market Comments
December 12, 2017
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THURSDAY DECEMBER 28 MINNEAPOLIS STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(DINNER WITH LAM RESEARCH),
(LRCX), (AMAT), (ASML), (TOELY),
(THERE ARE NO GURUS),
(TESTIMONIAL)
It was one of those normally mundane end of year seasonal events.
But what I heard blew my mind and will substantially shape my trading and investment strategy for 2018.
By now you already know that I used some of my stock market winnings this year to buy a vintage Steinway concert grand piano (click here for "The Inflation Hedge You've Never Heard Of.")
Well, you can't own a Steinway without a recital, and ours was held last weekend.
After listening to an assortment of children display their skills with Pachelbel, Ode to Joy, and The Entertainer, we adjourned for a celebratory buffet dinner.
Making small talk with the other parents, I asked one particularly articulate gentleman what he did for a living. He too had enjoyed an excellent year, and also used his profits to buy a Steinway, although his was a cheaper upright model.
It turned out that he was the chief technology officer at LAM Research (LRCX).
Had I heard of it?
Not only did I know the company intimately, I had recommended it to my clients and caught the better part of the nearly 400% move since the beginning of 2016. Furthermore, I was expecting another double in the share price in the years ahead.
Was I right to be so bullish?
The man then launched into a detailed review of the company's prospects for the next three years.
The blockbuster development that no one outside the industry sees coming is China's massive expansion of its semiconductor production.
More than a dozen gigantic fabrication plants are planned, the scale of which is unprecedented in history. Some of these fabs are ten times larger than those built previously.
This is creating exponential growth opportunities for the tiny handful of companies that produce the highly specialized machines essential to the manufacture of cutting edge semiconductors, including Applied Materials (AMAT), ASML (ASML), Tokyo Electron (TOELY), KLA-Tencor, and LAM Research (LRCX).
Everyone in the industry has boggled minds over the demand they are seeing for their products.
The reality is that artificial intelligence is rapidly working its way into all consumer and industrial products far faster than anyone realizes, creating astronomical demand for the chips needed to implement it.
Bitcoin mining is also creating enormous new demand for chips that no one remotely imagined possible even two years ago.
As a result, the industry has been caught flat footed with severe capacity shortages. They are all racing to add capacity as fast as they can. Profit margins are exploding.
On October 17, (LRCX) announced Q3 revenues of $2.48 billion, a staggering increase of 51.84% over the previous year, and a gross margin of 46.4%. The operating margin was 28%, generating net income of $591 million.
That gives the shares a very reasonable price earnings multiple of 16.95X, a 10% discount to the 18X multiple for the S&P 500. That is an incredible deal for one of the fastest growing companies in America.
Samsung of South Korea was far and away it largest customer, accounting for 38% of total sales.
On November 14 the company announced an eye-popping $2 billion share repurchase program that is certain to drive the price higher.
If there is one dark cloud on the horizon, it is the loss of the research & development tax credit embedded deep in the proposed Republican tax bill.
This will have a noticeable and negative impact on (LRCX)'s bottom line. Still, my friend thought that the company could offset this loss with faster sales growth and margin expansion.
However, many other technology companies in Silicon Valley won't be able to bridge that gap. It is a hugely anti-technology move for the government to take.
My fellow Steinway owner thought that LAM Research could easily see sales double in three years as long as there is no recession, which I believe is at least two years off. As for the share price, he couldn't comment, but remained hopeful, as he was a large owner himself.
Of course, the trick is how to buy a stock that has just risen by 400% in two years. Right here at $185.15 we are 15.84% off the all-time high of $220. So you could start scaling in here, and build a larger position over time.
You only get opportunities like this a couple of times a decade, and it's better to be too aggressive than too cautious.
To learn more about LAM Research, click here to visit their website.
