Global Market Comments
September 17, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHY TECHNICAL ANALYSIS IS A DISASTER)
(THE COOLEST TOMBSTONE CONTEST)
(SJB), (JNK), (HYG)
Mad Hedge Bitcoin Letter
September 16, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(ONE OF AMERICA’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS)
(BTC)
Mad Hedge Biotech & Healthcare Letter
September 16, 2021
Fiat Lux
FEATURED TRADE:
(RIDING THE COVID-19 VACCINE MOMENTUM)
(PFE), (BNTX), (MRNA), (JNJ), (SNY), (GSK), (TRIL)
Crypto is still controversial - still this bizarre, unruly, too-big-to-explain thing that half the population dismisses as nonsense and the other half swears will hit six figures “any day now.”
You’d think after all these years the debate would cool off, but if anything it’s turned into a running commentary on the world young people walked into.
Remember when Millennials and Gen Z were mocked for complaining?
“Well of course the economy is screwed. Nobody wants to pay a decent salary, and nobody wants to work.”
Funny how that line hits differently when inflation actually shows up, interest rates rocket higher, and the cost of living goes from “annoying” to “how is this even allowed?”
But here we are. And if you believed the economy was compromised, then naturally something else had to fill the ideological gap.
Crypto stepped in, not just as a speculative lottery ticket, but as a middle finger to a system that politely thanked young people for their degrees and then handed them a lifetime of rent payments.
The roots of this frustration aren’t mysterious. The US spent decades outsourcing manufacturing, suppressing wages, and printing money like a kid discovering the family label maker.
That era of zero-percent interest rates and endless quantitative easing felt like a cheat code until 2022–2023 ripped it away. Suddenly money wasn’t free. Inflation wasn’t theoretical. The bill had arrived.
And then remote work blew the doors off the old labor map. Wage arbitrage used to be something corporations did. Now individuals do it, too.
People work from Bali, Buenos Aires, or Boise while competing with candidates from everywhere. Geography melted. Job markets stretched. And wages…stayed stubbornly unimpressive.
Meanwhile, the cost of living decided to cosplay as a space rocket. Housing affordability didn’t just get worse - it went full dystopian. Real wages moved an inch while prices sprinted a mile.
Even well-paid professionals found themselves barely clearing the month. The “just get a good job” advice aged about as well as a bowl of shrimp in the sun.
Put all that together and it’s no wonder younger adults turned to crypto. Was it partly hope? Yes. Was it partly desperation? Also yes. Was it also a little bit of “screw it, the system isn’t giving me anything anyway”? Absolutely.
Crypto became the alternative ideology because the old one - work hard, buy a home, retire someday - stopped functioning as advertised.
But here’s the twist: by 2025 that original crypto narrative has mutated into something completely different.
After the spectacular blowups of 2022 (we all remember them), crypto didn’t die. It matured.
Bitcoin ETFs launched in 2024. The IRS finally drew up rulebooks instead of threats. Global regulators settled on actual frameworks. Big banks stopped pretending crypto didn’t exist and quietly rolled out services like it was no big deal.
We went from “crypto is too wild to regulate” to “crypto is now part of my retirement account.”
In other words, the industry that was supposedly “too big to fail” is now simply part of the same financial system it once tried to disrupt. Not exactly the revolution the early evangelists dreamed of, but certainly more stable than the critics predicted.
And yet, underneath all the regulation, all the institutional adoption, all the shiny ETF commercials on cable news, something deeper remains. Young people still want ownership. Of something. Anything. A stake in a world that constantly feels like it’s slipping further out of reach.
Crypto didn’t fix that existential ache. It just became one of the few places where the door didn’t slam shut on them.
But reality check: if crypto does end up creating massive new wealth (again), it will still go mostly to the people who had disposable income to invest.
The vast majority living paycheck to paycheck aren’t buying Bitcoin; they’re buying dinner. Volatility is not a luxury they can afford.
And now they’ve got a new anxiety: AI. Automation. Entire job categories looking shakier than a meme coin on a Sunday night. Younger workers aren’t throwing rocks at the system; they’re just trying to stay afloat while the rules change every five minutes.
This is why crypto still feels like a real option in 2025. Not because it’s a secret to getting rich (that’s over) but because it’s one of the few places where younger generations can participate without asking permission from gatekeepers.
But let’s be clear: crypto is not a golden ticket. It’s not a lottery. It’s not the road to Lambo-land. It’s simply an asset that survived hype cycles, regulatory crackdowns, spectacular failures, and global uncertainty - and came out the other side as part of the mainstream.
We don’t need to overhype it. We don’t need to bury it. We just need to acknowledge what it actually is now: a tool. A legitimate piece of the financial puzzle. A place where the rules are finally written down. A sector driven not by chaos but by clarity.
Crypto isn’t a passport to extravagant dreams anymore. It’s a viable strategy in a world where traditional routes to stability have eroded.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe what younger generations wanted all along wasn’t a revolution but a chance to belong to the economy they were promised.
Crypto didn’t give them that. But it did tell the truth about the world that made them look for it.
The pandemic is exhibiting hints of easing, and one of the names playing a critical role in the vaccine rollout that has made this step towards normalcy possible is Pfizer (PFE).
Actually, Pfizer stock has hit an all-time high courtesy of its COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, which it developed with German biotech firm BioNTech (BNTX).
While this is undoubtedly an exciting time for the company, many investors wonder whether this period also marks the spectacular of Pfizer, and things will go downhill from here. After all, several of its patents are set to expire starting in 2025.
My short answer to this question is no. This isn’t the beginning of the end for Pfizer. Looking at the company’s history, pipeline, and trajectory, I can say that Pfizer’s rise is just getting started.
One of the key reasons behind my belief is Pfizer’s robust pipeline.
To date, the company has roughly 100 drugs queued for regulatory clearance, while others are slated for late-stage clinical testing.
That means that regardless of the patent expirations in Pfizer’s horizon, the company’s strong and diverse pipeline can easily counteract the blow from the loss of exclusivity.
Just last month, Pfizer received full approval from the US FDA for Comirnaty.
Since fellow vaccine developers like Moderna (MRNA) have yet to achieve the same, this makes Pfizer the first COVID-19 vaccine to gain this endorsement from the regulatory committee.
Needless to say, Pfizer could capitalize on this massive opportunity to boost its profits in the quarters.
The availability of a fully approved COVID-19 vaccine could allow establishments to oblige mandatory vaccinations, which could obviously lead to higher demand for Comirnaty, as over 100 million Americans have yet to receive at least a single jab.
In the second quarter of 2021, the company reported $19 billion in revenue, indicating a 92% year-over-year climb thanks to the $7.8 billion raked in by its COVID-19 vaccine.
Pfizer now estimates Comirnaty revenue to reach roughly $33.5 billion, indicating an expected 2.1 billion doses to be delivered within the year.
Excluding Comirnaty’s sales, Pfizer’s revenue increased by 10%. This strong momentum led the company to raise its 2021 full-year guidance to somewhere between $78 and $80 billion.
Before Comirnaty, though, Pfizer had already been known as a prolific vaccine developer.
One of its prized creations is the pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar, which generated $2.52 billion in revenue in the first 6 months of 2021.
Meanwhile, its tick-borne encephalitis vaccine, marketed as TicoVac, gained FDA approval in July and could bring in roughly $1 billion per annum.
Riding this momentum, Pfizer has been busy developing another potential moneymaker in this segment in the form of its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine candidate: RSVpreF.
And if the Phase 3 results for RSVpreF come anywhere near its Phase 2 trial, then Pfizer has another blockbuster in its hands.
This is because the RSV vaccine market is projected to grow to approximately $10 billion by 2030, and Pfizer’s candidate is targeting 72% of that population.
However, the RSV market will be a crowded space with the likes of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Sanofi (SNY), and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) working to fill this unmet medical demand.
So, realistically, Pfizer’s RSVpreF has the potential to capture 20% market share, translating to $2.1 billion in annual revenue.
Apart from its vaccine-related efforts, Pfizer’s core businesses have been growing as well. Top contributors come from its oncology arm, specifically Eliquis and Ibrance.
Its recent acquisition of Trillium Therapeutics (TRIL) is anticipated to serve as a catalyst for Pfizer’s cancer segment in the next years as well.
Overall, Pfizer has a blockbuster drug pipeline and an impressively successful COVID-19 vaccine rollout. These provide the company with a long runway for solid and steady growth.
“Bitcoin is like anything else: it's worth what people are willing to pay for it.” – Said Hedge Fund Manager Stanley Druckenmiller
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
Global Market Comments
September 16, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(TRADING FOR THE NON-TRADER),
(ROM), (UXI), (UCC), (UYG)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
September 15, 2021
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(TRY THIS RELIABLE DATA CENTER STOCK)
(EQIX)
One of the seismic outcomes from the current rollout of 5G is the plethora of generated data and data storage that will be needed from it.
In the land of tech stocks — more data means more money.
If one fashions themselves as a cloud purist and wants to bet the ranch on data being the new oil (and one would be daft not to realize it is) then look no further than Equinix (EQIX).
This is a tech firm that connects the world's leading businesses to their customers, employees, and partners inside the most interconnected data centers.
We are really talking about the backbone of the internet.
This is what the company represents and without this spine, the internet would be way more primitive and not as robust.
On this global platform for digital business, companies fuse together worldwide on five continents to reach everywhere, interconnect everyone and integrate everything they need to reap a digital windfall.
And whether we like it or not, the future will be more interconnected than ever because of the explosion of data and the 5G that harnesses the data.
This is precisely why the data will motivate businesses to extend their reach across the globe and expand their addressable audience.
It’s not me just talking up these bunch of overachievers; the numbers back me up fully.
This past quarter Q2 revenues were $1.658 billion, up 8% over the same quarter last year due to strong business performance across EQIXs platform, led by the Americas region.
And as expected, nonrecurring revenues increased quarter-over-quarter to 7% of revenues due to a meaningful step-up in joint venture fees in Asia and Europe and custom installation work across all three regions.
As we must grapple with, nonrecurring revenues are inherently lumpy and therefore, as a result, EQIX expects Q3 nonrecurring revenues to decrease by $8 million compared to Q2. Cloud and IT verticals also captured strong bookings led by SaaS as the cloud diversifies towards a hybrid multi-cloud architecture.
High single digits might not look so glossy at first, but this is not a $1 billion per year in revenue company.
It’s probably one of the most stable businesses around since, unlike software, they can go out of fashion quite quickly if the next version bombs, yet storage space is more about economies of scale.
Other won deals lately include a leading SaaS provider expanding to support growth in new markets and with the Federal Government as well as an AI-powered commerce platform upgrading to enhance user experience support a rapidly growing customer base.
As digital transformation accelerates, the enterprise vertical continues to be Equinix’s sweet spot led by healthcare, legal, and travel sub-segments this quarter and the main catalysts to why I keep recommending readers this data storage company.
Other expansions this quarter included Zoom, a leading video communications platform, expanding coverage and scale to support market demand, and a cloud-delivered enterprise network security provider deploying infrastructure to support offerings in new locations.
EQIX’s enterprise vertical achieved record bookings, with broad global strength punctuated by an exceptionally strong quarter in the Americas across several subsegments, including healthcare, consumer services, business and professional services, and retail. New wins and expansions included Red Bull, a major sports energy drink manufacturer, deploying infrastructure across all three regions to take advantage of EQIX's cloud ecosystem.
EQIX can boast 65 consecutive quarters of increasing revenues, which eclipses every other company in the S&P 500, and it anticipates 8%-10% in annual revenue growth through 2022.
But now they are rolling out upgraded 2021 guidance by $15 million, forecasting to grow 10% to 12% year over year.
This represents a company that cuts across every nook and cranny of the tech sector by taking advantage of the unifying demand and storage requirements of big data.
This company will only become more vital once 5G goes blooms and being the global wizards of the data center will mean the stock goes higher in the long-term.
The momentum behind digital transformation is as robust as ever and shows no signs of letting up.
As a world digital infrastructure company, Equinix plays a unique role in this evolving story and is positioned to be both a catalyst and a key beneficiary as they partner with customers to unlock the enormous promise of digital.
They will continue to scale, doubling down on the strength of their core business, investing to further scale a go-to-market machine to win new customers, putting capital to work to add capacity in existing markets, and executing on targeted operational improvements to standardize, simplify and automate, driving expanded operating margins and providing a better experience for customers and partners.
Delivering advanced features to sustain momentum in EQIXs market-leading interconnection franchise and driving adoption of digital infrastructure services to deepen our relevance to customers is still paramount for the firms’ prospects.
I recommended this stock at $491 and now it sits nicely at $840.
My premise of buying and holding long term still holds true and any dip should be bought to take advantage of dollar-cost averaging.
I expect Equinix to be a slow and steady climb because let’s face it, it’s not a 40% per year growth story, but the stock does the job and rarely declines while providing a stable dividend.
