Global Market Comments
August 17, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(JOIN THE AUGUST 24-26 MAD HEDGE TRADERS & INVESTORS SUMMIT),
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, or WELCOME BACK FROM YOUR CRUISE),
(INDU), (TLT), (GLD), (TBT), (FB), (AMZN), (AAPL), (BAC), (JPM)
I have long advocated a long cruise as the best of all long-term investment strategies. After all, over the past 100 years, stocks have gone up 80% of the time, including the last Great Depression and WWII. Almost all news is negative, so ignoring should boost your investment returns immensely.
The last six months offer the most recent example. If you had departed on February 14 and return on Friday, August 14, the index return would have been absolutely zero, but you would have collected 1% in dividends. If you had been overweight in technology and biotech stocks, as I have been advocating for the past decade, you would have been up 20-30%.
Of course, this year, cruising presented its own risks, not from a sinking ship, pirates, or the norovirus, but from Covid-19. Many guests departed in the best of spirits to return DOA in the ship’s overcrowded meat locker.
The stock markets are offering more than the usual amount of risks as well. Think of an irresistible force, massive liquidity, meeting the immovable object, record-high valuations.
Only action in Washington could break this stalemate to the upside, a deal between the House and the White House that brings yet another stimulus package. Most of whatever money gets approved will head straight for the stock market, either directly or indirectly. Until then, we will be trapped in a narrow range.
These conditions could last into September, or until after the election. Nobody knows. That’s why eight of my nine positions expire on Friday, in four trading days.
Trump took executive action to help the economy but offers not a penny in funding. He expects states running record deficits to pay for a big chunk. It’s a symbolic act that will have no impact on the economy. The bottom line is no more stimulus for the economy. Stocks will hate it. Trump fiddles while America burns.
A bond market collapse is imminent, with record new issuance in the coming week and a strong July Nonfarm Payroll Report last Friday. Expect ten-year Treasury yields to go back to 0.95% and prices to collapse. Inflation is ticking up, with Consumer prices rising to 1.6% YOY. Fed buying of $80 billion a month is already in the price. I am selling short the (TLT).
Warren Buffet was a major buyer of His own stock, picking up a record $5.1 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B). With $146.6 billion in cash on hand, what else is he going to do? Berkshire Class A shares were down 7.4% for the year through Friday’s close, compared with the 3.7% gain in the S&P 500. It’s his way of betting on the long-term future of industrial America at a discount.
Russia claimed Covid-19 Vaccine, causing stocks to pop. The rotation trade continues with a vengeance, with tech (I’m short), bonds (I’m short), and gold down big and “recovery” stocks like cruise lines, hotels, restaurants, and banks (I’m long) on a tear. Some $5 trillion in cash is pouring in from the sidelines, so there is only “UP” and “UP BIG”. (SPY) hit a new all-time high.
Tesla announced 5:1 stock split on August 21, which is the options expiration day. Long expected, it is just the latest in a series of Elon Musk attacks against the shorts, of which I am now one. The shares are up only 7% on the announcement. The impact won’t be so great, as it only takes the shares back to where they were in March.
Biden picked Kamela Harris as VP. It is the safe choice, not that California was ever in doubt in the electoral college. A moderate choice clearly takes aim at the conservative Midwest. Markets will rally because she is not Elisabeth Warren, who would have pilloried the banks and big tech and is essentially anti-capitalist.
College Football is postponed for 2020-2012, delivering a $4 billion hit to sponsoring colleges and another drag on GDP. No more free Corvettes for USC players. It's another example of local government taking the lead on Corona measures where the federal government is totally absent.
Van Eck targets $3,400 for gold. One of the original players in gold mutual funds who I know from the big bull market during the 1970s sees a 72% increase in the barbarous relic coming. With the government running the printing presses 24/7 to end the Great Depression collapsing the US dollar, it’s a no-brainer.
Consumer Prices unexpectedly jump, up 0.6% in July and 1.6% YOY. It’s a legitimate “green shoot” and provided yet another reason for the recovery trade. Rebounding inflation is always a great time to be short the US Treasury bond market (TLT). Keep selling every rally in the (TLT).
Retail Sales jump 1.2% in July, despite rising Corona cases, taking it back above pre-pandemic levels. Industrial Production picked up 3%. A lot was bought on credit. The problem is that all of those stimulus and unemployment dollars are now gone. In the meantime, further aid is frozen in Washington. No shopping, no growth.
Weekly Jobless Claims drop below one million for the first time since March. It’s still terrible, but it’s progress. Take what you can get. However, the rate of decline is flagging, and the next report could well bring an upturn.
When we come out the other side of this, we will be perfectly poised to launch into my new American Golden Age, or the next Roaring Twenties. With interest rates still at zero, oil cheap, there will be no reason not to. The Dow Average will rise by 400% or more in the coming decade. The American coming out the other side of the pandemic will be far more efficient and profitable than the old.
Nothing refreshes and clears the mind like a vacation.
As a result, my Global Trading Dispatch blasted through to a substantial new all-time high. August is running at a blistering 6.03%, delivering a 2020 year to date of 34.66%, versus -2.00% for the Dow Average. That takes my eleven-year average annualized performance to a new all-time high of 36.61%. My 11-year total return has rocketed to 390.57%.
It certainly helped being short big tech (AAPL), (AMZN), (FB), short US Treasury bonds (TLT), (TBT), long banks (JPM), (BAC), and long gold (GLD).
The only numbers that count for the market are the number of US Corona virus cases and deaths, which you can find here.
On Monday, August 17 at 8:30 AM EST, the August New York Empire State Manufacturing Index is published.
On Tuesday, August 18 at 8:30 AM EST, Housing Starts for July are released.
On Wednesday, August 19 at 10:30 AM EST, the EIA Cushing Crude Oil Stocks are out.
On Thursday, August 20 at 8:30 AM EST, the Weekly Jobless Claims are announced.
On Friday, August 14, at 10:00 AM EST, Existing Home Sales for July are printed. At 2:00 PM The Bakers Hughes Rig Count is released.
As for me, with six days of 100-degree temperatures forecast, I attempted to go to the beach. A car crash on the Richmond Bridge trapped me in traffic for an hour. By the time I made it to the coast, the beaches were unreachable, thanks to unprecedented crowding.
With the local real unemployment rate at 25%, people have a lot of free time on their hands these days. It’s all part of the times we live in.
Stay healthy,
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
August 14, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AUGUST 12 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(GLD), (TLT), (TSLA), (AAPL), (FB), (AMZN), (VXX), (VIX), (JPM), (BAC), (GDX), (NUGT), (MRNA), (BRK/B), (SLV), (FCX)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the August 12 Mad Hedge Fund Trader Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Lake Tahoe, NV with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!
Q: I just joined your service. Can you explain the logic to your current model trading portfolio?
I always try to balance long positions with short position. That greatly mitigates the risk of an out-of-the-blue crash, like we saw in February. Also, every individual position has a long and short, further reducing volatility. And you never can lose more money than you put up, so your risk is defined. That’s another classic risk control measure.
There is a further four hedge in that the portfolio is spread across all asset classes. So, I am long banks (JPM), (BAC), short US Treasury bonds (TLT), short a basket of big tech stocks (AAPL), (AMZN), (FB) and long gold (GLD). Something is always working where you can take profits. Our proprietary Mad Hedge Market Timing Index is always a big help in judging the best time to enter and exit these asset classes.
That is the short course on hedge fund risk management 101.
Q: Is it a good time to add in gold (GLD) here?
A: Yes, my long-term target for gold is $3,000/oz, possibly higher—it’s very common once you get a breakout from a 7-year bottoming process to get a big move like that. You always go back and retest that breakout level, that’s what’s happening now. I would use this dip to buy gold. You can look at (GLD) itself, the (GDX) gold miners which will give you 4:1 leverage over gold, or any of the 2x or 3x gold leveraged ETFs like (NUGT). There are lots of ways to play gold this time left from over the last bull market in gold ten years ago. So yes, bullish on gold with a temporary pullback in store. This recovery trade, which is buying banks, casinos, hotels, restaurants, weak dollar, weak buy market, weak gold—this is all temporary, this is just a trade. Those will all reverse themselves, probably by September if not sooner. So, if you missed the first round in the gold bull market, there’s certainly another chance to get back in.
Q: Do you think Biden and Harris will crash the stock market if elected?
A: No, since Biden started to run away in the polls, the stock market basically went straight up every day, and I prefer the stock market’s judgment on these things to opinion polls or talking heads. As far as Harris is concerned, she was the most middle of the road conservative pick of the 12 or so people they were looking at for vice president. Certainly, she’s a favorite with Wall Street, and isn’t it interesting they’re looking for the talents of a prosecutor in the White House? Who do you think they have in mind? So yes, that’s a net positive for the market. If anything, a new administration will bring a whole new round of Quantitative Easing and deficit spending, except it will be focused on bailing out Main Street, not Wall Street.
Q: Is the vaccine drug maker Moderna (MRNA) overbought here at 70?
A: Yes, I think to get any more appreciation you need to get an actual result on the many vaccines that are out there.
Q: Will Tesla (TSLA) pass 2,000 by year end?
A: I tend not to think so; Tesla had a once-in-a-lifetime 10-fold increase over a year. That is a very big move to digest, and while I’m saying people should keep their Tesla longs for the long term, short term you want to be selling calls against your long positions to hedge any downside and to take in some extra income.
Q: What caused ten-year US Treasury yields (TLT) to jump 14% yesterday? What will yields do from here?
A: Yields will go up and retest the 95-basis point level we saw a couple of months ago. That means we’re going to have a clear shot at adding shorts, probably for the next several weeks or months.
Q: I got the first TLT trade, but when I added the second one, I had to automatically close out my 175 short position to add the long 175 put position.
A: That is the correct way to do this. And what you end up with is a wider spread with a much larger size. So, you take all three positions we currently have, and you now have a (TLT) August $170-177.5 bear put spread in triple the original size and triple the profit, which expires in 5 trading days. It’s a trade with a very high return over a very short time frame. It’s the kind of trade that’s only available with very high volatilities in the market—at $25 in the (VIX), and you get very high accelerated time decay going into the close. So, it really was a two-week expiration play on the (TLT).
Q: Apple (AAPL) has been able to avoid any major damage in its share price in this trade war. How long can it last?
A: It can last 3 more months, until the election. It’s really quite amazing that the Chinese have not retaliated against Apple in all of these trade wars, and the reason for this is that Apple employs a million people in China, and they make a ton of money out of it. Apple has also managed their relationship with the communist government perfectly. So, that’s why they haven’t been hit. General Motors, other US companies—they could get expropriated. If the US can expropriate TikTok, what’s to stop China from expropriating General Motors, Starbucks, or even Apple for that matter?
Q: How do we know who has a real vaccine and who has a fake one? There’s so much information out there, I have a hard time filtering through what is real.
A: Wait for 100,000 people to try it out first—that’s what my plan is. That will be the safe way to do it. And if that means quarantining another couple of months to make sure you get the real deal, it’s worth the investment. Most industry safety standards, like animal trials, have been ditched by the FDA in order to get Trump a vaccine before the election. Putin is doing the same in Russia.
Q: Why is Warren Buffet buying back shares of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B) in record amounts? Is it because he sees no good investments?
A: He’d rather buy his own shares at parity or at a small premium than pay record PE multiples for essentially anything else in the market. Because the government rushed in so quickly to support the stock market, there never were any real deals in stocks, they never really got cheap. Yes, it sounds like down 40% in 2 months is cheap, but stocks weren’t, not even close to cheap, on a PE multiple basis. We never got close to the 9 ½X we saw in 2009. Also, if you believe in a recovery play, the ultimate recovery play is Berkshire Hathaway because they own predominantly old-line industrial cash flow stocks, which will lead any real recovery in the economy. So, at this point, Berkshire Hathaway will probably get you a higher return on a 12-month view than say Apple, Facebook or Amazon.
Q: Gold (GLD) vs Silver (SLV)? Which is better? And what about Copper (FCX)?
A: Silver always outperforms gold by at least 2 to 1 in any real economic recovery. Copper prices have risen 30% in 4 months; that is discounting a real economic recovery someday, so I would be buying copper on dips also.
Q: How do we learn more about options?
A: I suggest you go to the “How to Trade” section on our website, and that has links. Every trade alert we send out also has a link to a video that tells you exactly how to do the options part of that trade. And if you don’t want to do options, we also propose ETF and single stocks.
Q: What year end effect on the market do you see from a Biden tax plan on long term capital gains and qualified dividends at the ordinary income rate?
A: Well, if he actually proposes that, there will be a rush to sell assets by the end of the current year so people can take advantage of the very favorable capital gains tax that exist now. However, it’s not known whether that is actually the tax increase he’s proposing; it’s more likely he’ll simply return to the pre-Trump tax rates. However, I do expect him to come up with highly punitive tax rates on any real estate-related investment as a way of getting back at Trump. And that’s like loss carry forwards, steps up in the cost basis, 1031 exchanges—things specific to the real estate industry.
Q: If you think markets are going to come off, why aren’t you more aggressive buying the iPath Series B S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX)?
A: (VXX) has become such a professional market it really has become a day trading vehicle. It’s hard to get customers in and out of this thing fast enough to make them money, as most of my followers are not set up to be day traders. It’s a market where 90% of the professionals are playing from the short side, so when you get moves up, they essentially happen over 1 or 2 days, and then they spend weeks or months bleeding off. It really is a tough trade for a retail trader to do; and it is an area where the insiders in Chicago trade this thing and really do have an in-house advantage that I would rather not try to bet against.
Q: I sold the top on all precious metals positions and started buying back today. Was that the right thing to do?
A: Yes, I have a feeling it is. Start scaling in—if you’re nervous about buying gold here, buy a third of a position now, a third if it’s higher or lower, and a third if it’s higher or lower again. That’s what any pro would do.
Q: Do you see another big economic crisis in 2021?
A: I don’t think so; I think any continued weakness will be hit with massive liquidity from the Fed and more government spending. Now that they found the model to keep the economy going, they’re going to just keep at it, no matter who is in power. Roosevelt kept at it for 5 years to end the Great Depression, until he was bailed out by WWII, so hopefully we don’t have to bail our economy out the same way with WWIII.
Q: What about Bitcoin here?
A: We don’t trade Bitcoin as we think the whole thing is a giant scam. There’s also no value added by anyone. Insiders have a huge advantage, the people who are creating the bitcoin to sell. So, it’s a security with no fundamentals—thus unanalyzable.
Good Luck and Stay Healthy
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 10, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(SCRAPING THE BOTTOM OF THE TECH BARREL WITH UBER)
(UBER), (LYFT), (FB), (AMZN), (GOOGL), (NFLX), (AAPL), (MSFT)
The coronavirus and the resulting effects from it have had the single most sway on tech companies since the 2001 tech bust.
Marginal tech companies or even quasi-fraudulent ones have been exposed for what they are, while the secondary effects from the virus have supercharged the behemoths of the industry.
The stock market has no earnings growth in the past 5 years without the earnings from Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), and Netflix (NFLX). That means that without the Republican corporate tax cut, there has been negative earnings growth in the past five years.
One of those tech companies at the bottom of the barrel has been chauffeur service company Uber (UBER) and their latest earnings report is a glaring indictment of a shoddy business model that operates in a gray area.
The only reason this stock is at $33 is because of the piles of easy money printed by the central bank.
Uber needs all the help they can get, and shares are still trading 20% below the IPO price.
Competitor chauffeur service Lyft (LYFT) is doing even worse registering a 50% decline since the IPO.
Let’s do a little snooping around to see why these companies are doing so poorly and why you shouldn’t even think about investing in these companies long-term.
No matter how you dice it up, Uber’s core business, the one where they refuse to properly compensate their drivers, had a disaster of a quarter with gross ride volumes down 73% year-over-year.
Before we go any further with this one, I would like to point out yes, other areas of the business grew substantially, the problem is that the “other” part of the business is only 30% of total revenue.
Therefore, when 70% of your business that relies on pure volume to scale out crashes by 73%, it doesn’t really matter what else is in the report.
The only sensible idea now is capturing a snapshot of the silver linings, of which there were a few.
Delivery volumes through Uber Eats were up 49%, but the problem here is that first, it’s not profitable per delivery and second, it’s still a small part of the business.
Uber acquired Postmates who is another loss-making delivery service and the idea behind this is to achieve significant cost savings by scaling out these powerful assets.
The problem here is that it is essentially throwing good money on top of bad money because it’s proven that deliveries don’t make money per ride and that won’t change in the near future.
CEO of Uber Dara Khosrowshahi is on record saying Uber will become “profitable on an adjusted earnings basis before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization before the end of the year.”
This is almost like saying we won’t lose as much money as before and ironically, Dara Khosrowshahi has withdrawn this statement as the ride-sharing model has been repudiated by the consumer during the coronavirus.
Nowhere in the earnings report is the explanation of how Dara Khosrowshahi plans to attract people to share a car ride with a stranger during a global pandemic.
He didn’t share a solution because there isn’t one, hence the 73% decline in ride volumes.
If we assume this company is semi-fraudulent, then the silver lining would be that ride volumes didn’t decline by 100%.
That is where we are now with U.S. corporate companies such as the airlines that fired their employees but have subsidized them to stick around even though there is no work.
Instead of re-imagining itself through bankruptcies, the Fed has encouraged many marginal companies by breathing life into their finances through cheap loans.
This gives failing firms a last chance to enrich management with the capital and “cash out” before they hand the business off to someone who will essentially plan to do the same.
I will say that traders might have a trade or two in this one, because it’s hard to imagine Uber posting another 73% loss in ride volume and a dead cat bounce trade could be in the cards.
Long term investors should steer clear of this one and allow Uber to struggle on its own and just maybe in 5 or 10 years, it might just be “profitable on an adjusted earnings basis before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization before the end of the year.”
With so many high-quality tech companies and even one that is about to add super growth elements like TikTok into its portfolio, there are so many superior names to deploy capital in the tech ecosphere.
Either you must be galvanized by a gambler’s mentality to invest in Uber, or losing money is something that is habitual in your routine.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 3, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MASTERY OF TIM COOK)
(AAPL)
Apple (APPL) is a $2 trillion company and their latest jaw-dropping earnings report was by far beyond a best-case scenario.
They crushed top-line revenue beating estimates by over $7 billion and profitability was just as impressive beating estimates by over half a dollar.
Going into the iPhone 12 product cycle, the results mean that moving forward, the company could benefit from 20% growth as the momentum becomes a true tailwind of sorts.
Surely, this was the quarter that Apple could have taken a quick siesta, they even had an out with the pandemic and all, right?
But no, they stuck to their guns and delivered another resilient earnings report.
Some investors were wary even second-guessing the company going into these earnings because of the health crisis forcing 25% of Apple stores to close.
But that proved immaterial and physical store sales actually only comprise 6-7% of sales.
The data was undeniable showing that customers went online to buy Apple’s products in droves.
Not offering guidance, second quarter in a row, plays into Apple’s hands.
This gives them the leeway to never give forward guidance again.
Apple has done enough that they are afforded the wiggle room from investors that feed into the “buy the dip” mentality.
This will be the biggest iPhone refresh cycle since iPhone 6 and it will come thick and fast.
Supply chain might bottleneck, and iPhone might delay by a month, but that is splitting hairs.
In a digital economy where wielding a smartphone is king, consumers will tough it out and upgrade to the iPhone 12.
It’s easy to cut out vacations, but impossible to get rid of your phone or car.
Other tech is stalling, such as the likes as Google who recorded 2% declining revenue growth for the first time ever.
Not all tech has been created equally.
Apple’s overperformance is just a taste of what we will likely see in performance over the next 9-12 months. It is highly unlikely they will botch the new iPhone distribution, servicing, and production of it.
The company was able to beat iPhone revenue projections by $4 billion last quarter and this segment comprises 46.6% of the total revenue now.
I see this number sliding down as services pick up more. In 2021, iPhone revenue could be in the high-30s which is a number management is more comfortable with.
Hardware isn’t the future and propping up and servicing the apps and software is where the real premiums hide.
Apple also did its best to prove it's not just an “iPhone company” anymore.
Air pods and Apple watch are doing particularly well. Air pods project 90 million units in 2020 after 65 million the year before, and 19 million in 2018.
Ironically, the earnings report was disclosed after Tim Cook’s government testimony to avoid the wrath of the politicians.
Granted, Apple didn’t want to offer more ammunition to the interrogators timing the blowout earnings report after the testimony ended.
Apple’s App store is the crown jewel of the business model and the 30% commission is something Cook and the company will defend at all costs.
Regulatory risks are mostly tilted towards Facebook and Amazon, and I do not think there is enough evidence against Apple to meaningfully penalize them.
The argument that if developers do not wish to agree to Apple’s 30% commission has always had the freedom to switch to Android hold water no matter if one likes it or not.
Investors are not viewing anti-trust problems as a major risk and that was evident in the price action last Friday when the stock rose over 10%.
The path to profits has been smoothed over and this clears the way for any dip to be bought until 2021.
The stock usually does not have major corrections, therefore, any 3-4% dips can be described as optimal entry points.
Apple continues to under promise and overdeliver.
If more companies did this, there would be fewer bankruptcies.
I am highly bullish Apple and the rest of big tech.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 31, 2020
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(BIG TECH IS UNSTOPPABLE)
(FB), (AAPL), (AMZN), (GOOGL), (MSFT)
The big loser at the Congress hearing grilling the top 4 CEOs in big tech was by far and away the U.S. government.
The U.S. government accused big tech of operating as illegal monopolies and big tech’s answer was largely indifference, betting that the government is too disjointed to actually hit them with some venom.
The only member of congress who was on point with her questions was Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who used internal Facebook documents to show data theft artist Mark Zuckerberg suppressing competition when he purchased Instagram in 2012.
Jayapal then cornered Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos into a corner, peppering him with questions about Amazon’s 3rd party data handling.
There has been a long-lasting campaign against Amazon in regard to them using internal data to hijack 3rd party sellers’ products deemed successful by recreating them as in-house products and catapulting their in-house branded products to the top of the Amazon search results.
The success of Congress stopped at Jayapal, as the rest of the motley crew appeared so out of touch with what real tech issues exist that it felt they were unfit to ask questions.
Playing into their inefficient display was the fact that they chose a time delegated for antitrust issues to complain about anti-conservative bias in social media, which is a separate issue entirely.
These arguments were armed with zero data to back up the claims, and gave the tech leaders an easy way out by just grandstanding about the issue.
The biggest winner was the company that was not invited to the session – Microsoft (MSFT).
They were the only tech company over $1 trillion that wasn’t in attendance, and for good reason.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been able to position the company as a trust-first cloud enterprise and refuse to traverse into that gray area where conflicting interests exist.
They are living proof that tech companies don’t need to swindle personal data to grow revenue, which is why I keep putting on call spreads in this brilliant company.
Microsoft is in great strategic position to expand their business, and the same cannot be said for Facebook because unlike Microsoft, Facebook produces nothing of meaningful substance.
This was evident as Congress picked on Zuckerberg’s company the most, even catching him in a bold face lie.
The most convenient line of reasoning for these tech companies doing what they do was the “American-first” playbook.
Highlighting China’s rise as tech competitor, fearmongering that China could one day be at the top of the tech pyramid but actually just demonstrating another way of avoiding the real issues.
Watching this discussion made me realize that these tech companies have reached a level of power that supersedes the government.
Politicians are only invested in short-term interest and protecting their tenure in government. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai can play the long game.
This is exactly why investors pour capital into these 4 stocks plus Microsoft.
Apple earns over $55 billion in profits annually on $260 billion of revenue.
Amazon makes up 40% of U.S. online sales.
Facebook (FB) has 2.6 billion users which is 34% of the world’s population.
Lastly, 90% of internet searches are done through Google (GOOGL) search.
The real question should be: when will these companies hit the $2 trillion mark?
And even if Congress could conjure up some meaningful regulation against these 4, they certainly have the resources to navigate around it, especially when half of Congress still doesn’t understand what they actually do.
As it stands, these data empires are left to go their merry way and Congress is failing to protect individual user data on an epic scale.
To put the cherry on top, I would argue that the coronavirus has done big tech’s dirty work wiping out many businesses while big tech gets stronger.
I am bullish big tech.
