Mad Hedge Technology Alerts!
Yu'e Bao or "leftover treasure" in English has caught the attention of over 400 million Chinese investors.
This money market fund has exponentially grown into a $250 billion fund by the end of 2017, and is now the largest money market fund in the world!
This product isn't offered by Bank of China or another giant state-owned bank or financial enterprise, but Alibaba's (BABA) Ant Financial (gotta love those Chinese names).
Assets under management are up 100% YOY and it now accounts for a quarter of China's money-market mutual fund industry in just one fund.
These inflows coincide with the sudden migration into mobile payments. Common folk are comfortable with investing their life savings in these short-term instruments with a too big to fail, larger than life firm like Alibaba.
Yu'e Bao derives its funds from Alipay users, Alibaba's digital third-party platform, that allows consumers to pay for everything in life from theater tickets to utility bills.
Service is unified on a holistic graphic interface and users can easily divert their cash into this fund with a few screen taps on their app. Yu'e Bao's ROI offer a 7-day annualized yield of 4.02%, down from the introductory annualized rate of 6.9% around the launch in 2013.
Yu'e Bao's short-term yield outmuscles the 1.5% interest rate on one-year Chinese bank deposits and the 3.6% yield on 10-year Chinese government debt.
Weak banking regulation has spawned a mammoth FinTech industry in the Middle Kingdom. Only one yuan (16 cents) is enough to create an account and considerable retail flow has rushed in.
China has catapulted ahead of the rest of the world emerging as the leader of global FinTech (financial technology) innovation. The pace, sophistication, and scale of development of China's FinTech has surpassed the level in any other developed countries.
The country's digital metamorphosis has enhanced e-commerce, payment systems, and connected logistical services. The Chinese discretionary spender for the past decade has been the deepest and most reliable lever of global growth.
Mobile third-party payments in China, 90% cornered by Tencent's Wechat and Alibaba's Alipay, are estimated to reach a lofty $6 trillion in revenue by 2019, more than 50 times that of the US.
These omnipresent payment systems are now deeply embedded into the fabric of Chinese society. Its commonplace to witness homeless people on Shanghai subways waving around a scannable image for Wechat or Alipay money transfers instead of physical cash.
Even in rural farmlands, shabby convenience stores prioritize digital currency and sometimes don't accept paper currency at all. Yes, China is beating the US to a cashless society.
Digitization is changing the competitive balance, and global banks must embrace large-scale disruption caused by big tech platforms.
Banks in China regard these companies as potential collaborators resulting in a net positive long-term infusion of enhanced products and services.
Agreements have been forged between the Bank of China with Tencent, and the China Construction Bank has linked up with Alibaba.
China has incorporated the technical power of AI and machine learning into its Fintech platforms at every opportunity. Robo-advisors are also making inroads, creating a bespoke financial program for the individual.
This trend has so far failed to go viral in America, where individuals still prefer plastic cards or even paper cash. E-commerce clocked in a paltry 9.1% of total US retail sales in the third quarter of 2017.
Even though most of us have our heads buried deep in our smartphone virtual world, Americans are still programmed to whip out debit or credit cards at every opportunity.
Chinese that visit America carp endlessly about America's archaic payment system.
Ultimately, American payment systems are ripe for digital disruption.
The American consumer will ultimately cause severe damage to MasterCard (MA), Visa (V), and American Express who are happy with current status quo.
The lack of innovation in the US Fintech sector is a failure in the otherwise fabulous technological leadership of the US. American smartphones should already be a fertile digital wallet, not just a niche market.
Savvy Jack Dorsey even invented a firm based on this inefficiency, exploiting the lack of proficiency in domestic FinTech with Square (SQ).
American big tech will gradually utilize China's FintTech model and extrapolate it with "American personality". It is much more of a two-way street now than before with cutting edge ideas flowing both ways.
The next leg up after digital wallet penetration of FinTech are money market funds on tech platforms. In effect, the Chinese innovation of this industry has allowed more variations of potential financing for the ambitious Chinese, and the same trends will gradually appear on Yankee shores.
Ironically enough, Amazon's (AMZN) land grab in the field is more prevalent in China, as artificially low financing and juicier scale justify this strategy.
The scaling premium also explains why corporate China's early adopter advantage is so effective because not many countries boast a 1.3-billion-person consumer market.
Soon, Americans will wake up to the reality that American FinTech must advance or foreign firms will rush in.
Mediocrity is not good enough.
iPhones and Android consumers could direct savings into tech money market funds with compounding yield all on a single digital platform.
Tech companies could deploy some of the repatriated cash to invest in some fledgling FinTech expertise to smoothly execute this new endeavor.
Consequently, a successfully created money market fund on a tech platform would enlarge the already substantial cash hoard these firms have. Not only will the large tech get bigger, but the big will get absolutely massive.
The determining factor is financial regulation. Capitol Hill has drawn a large swath of mighty Silicon Valley tech titans to testify because they are stepping on too many toes lately.
A scheme to hijack the digital payments market and dominate the mutual fund industry will cause unyielding push back in Washington. Especially, when the Amazon death star continues pillaging select industries of their choosing and eliminating brick and mortar jobs by the millions.
JP Morgan (JPM), who has the largest institutional money market fund in the country, and retail stalwarts like Blackrock and Vanguard will be sweating profusely too if mega tech starts probing around its turf.
Alibaba is also coming for their bacon too with the failed purchase of payment transfer service, Moneygram International (MGI) temporarily shutting out Jack Ma from a foothold in the American payment system industry. How long will it take before they are allowed in?
The momentum for these financial instruments is robust as FinTech integrates deeper into consumer life. The global cash glut from a decade of cheap financing is causing profit hungry investors to starve for high yield vehicles.
The stability and clean balance sheets of tech giants give them ample chance to successfully execute. So why can't they also become banks? Would you buy an Apple, Amazon, or Google money market fund if they offered a 4-7% annualized yield?
I believe most Americans would.
??
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 28, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(RED HAT'S TRIP DOWN THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD WITH LINUX),
(RHT), (ORCL), (MSFT), (CRM), (SAP), (VMW)
When a marvelous company with cutting edge technology keeps chugging along, you do not have to wonder why the heck its shares are surging.
This is the case with Red Hat (RHT) who is trading at an all time high even after a broad based correction.
The extraordinary development of this earnings season is the broad-based strength that second tier tech companies, the Non-Fang's, have displayed beating and raising guidance amid the backdrop of rising rates and inflation.
This is what happened when FANG share prices run too far, too fast. The Niagara Falls of cash pouring into the technology sector cash need other companies to spill into.
The pioneering Linux operating system company has exhibited emphatic strength after the tech sector led the equity recovery from the precipitous correction earlier this month and the Nasdaq has gained back almost all of its losses.
The broader market is concerned about higher remuneration costs and runaway inflation. Rising wages will inflict severe damage to wage bills.
Look no further than bitcoin software engineers who accept entry level positions of over $100,000/year and autonomous vehicle engineers who start out at net $300,000/year and quickly scale to $450,000/year because of the severe talent shortage in Silicon Valley.
Luckily, the Mount Everest wage levels are justified when gross revenue per employee is steadily gushing upwards such as at Red Hat. Technology companies are almost the only ones that can afford these wage hikes because they have the earnings to justify them.
In the company's latest earning's report announced, revenue was up a bubbling 22% YOY. Application development and emerging technology subscription revenues registered at $162 million, up 44% YOY.
Operating cash flow was up 18% YOY at $160 million. Upcoming earnings project accelerated revenue growth.
Red Hat (RHT) has been one of the many recipients of the secular growth trend of tech and is making all the right moves to command praise from industry analysts.
Similar to Amazon (AMZN), the company still trades relative to future growth projections and does not trade on bottom line performance - PE multiples are irrelevant.
A headquarter in Raleigh, North Carolina would have been a death sentence 15 years ago, but the city has turned into one of the hippest tech nerve centers for blossoming millennials.
It's affordability, low cost of living and abundance of high paying gigs has lured in young professionals in droves.
The research triangle circuit of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill that feeds off of Duke University, NC State University, North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Wake Forest, give employers a formidable opportunity to cultivate an expansionary talent pool to cherry pick from.
The main arteries, I-85 and I-40, marry all these metro areas together making North Carolina well positioned to facilitate distribution.
Red Hat development is bound to open source software and Linux operating system offerings. Other know-how and expertise come in the form of virtualization, middleware, cloud, and storage technologies that equip a successful enterprises software business.
The extensive training and consulting they provide reverberates down to their revenue at 12% growth.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), an operating system platform outperforming in hybrid cloud environments ensures a healthy infrastructure.
Red Hat JBoss Middleware, a key for developing, deploying, and managing applications; integrating applications, data, and devices; and automating business processes in hybrid cloud environments is another application on offer.
The stamp of supreme quality was validated when Red Hat joined forces with Alibaba (BABA) Cloud. The certification process required the completion of distribution of Red Hat's software.
It will be jointly available for both firms' customers, ISV's (Independent Software Vendor) and 3rd party developers to boost their infrastructure with a cost-effective, fluid solution.
With Alibaba Cloud's global audience, having Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Alibaba Cloud Marketplace offers customers better results from a platform capable of deploying enterprise cloud architectures to exponentially expanding business demands of digital transformation.
Red Hat, which compete with Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), Salesforce (CRM), SAP (SAP), and VMware (VMW), are in an enterprise cloud arms race and management sense they cannot back down from their pursuits. As with many before them, evolve or go extinct.
Red Hat has used their unique understanding of Linux and open source to consummate a mixed cloud product around OpenStack. This process began in 2014 as CEO, Jim Whitehurst firmly understood Red Hat could not flourish with Red Hat Enterprise Linux alone.
By becoming specialists in the open source sphere, it gave Red Hat the perfect podium to offer their cloud products. The Linux system and cloud software feed off each other and the recently acquired JBoss middleware layer that is required to hold these two together act as another revenue stream.
Jim Whitehurst has convincingly noted that the current offerings will easily see them march above $5 billion total annual revenue up from the less than $3 billion annually they procure today.
Salesforce's sheer size represents the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but Red Hat is advancing nicely and regularly surpasses growth targets which crucially sustains positive investment sentiment.
Open source projects are the new normal and will progress because of the diverse community of stakeholders that are particularly keen in making the software succeed.
It's important to recognize that open source outperformance will create better products globally and holistically advance the enterprise software market.
Open source software has the long-term vigor to outlast proprietary developers that aren't as committed. If products are continually improving, they become being incredibly sticky inside the ecosystem.
Red Hat has positioned itself smartly and share the lucrative pickings with others in its peer group.
Red Hat has prospered in a brave new world where business is catering to tech to enhance product levels and service explaining why Walmart (WMT) is turning into a tech company.
Red Hat is still ubiquitously famous for building a fresh version of Linux, specifically, an enterprise version, but it has begun reaccelerating with tools on their Linux platform such as cloud and container products that will pad profit margins.
These existing clients that already use RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) will continue to thirst for the new add-ons that harness innovative technologies.
Red Hat's share price is on a tear in 2018, already up over 17% and over 60% over the last 365 days. Use the next entry point to splurge on Red Hat.
