It was 38 years ago today that Apple (AAPL) went public and has generated a 43,000% return since its $22 IPO price. If you bought one share of Apple way back then for $22 it would be worth a breathtaking $95,000 today.
I waited until the next crash and then bought it at $4, and it sits in one of my “no touch” ultra-long-term retirement portfolios today.
Suddenly, the torture I endured taking Steve Jobs around to visit the New York institutional investors during the early 1980s was worth it.
The great rule of thumb I have learned after 50 years of investment is that if you hold a stock long enough, the dividend will exceed your original capital cost, giving you a 100% a year annual cash flow.
Three months ago, Apple was the Teflon stock of the entire market, the company that could do no wrong, the only “safe” stock that traded. Any selling met a wave of buying from Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffet and Apple itself, limiting corrections to a feeble 4%.
What a difference three months make!
Now the shares have become a market pariah, targeted by algorithms and hedge funds alike, and beaten like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. As a result, the shares have plunged an eye-popping 29.61%, vaporizing $311 billion in market capitalization.
Which begs one to ask the question, “What’s the matter with Apple?” How can things go from so right to so wrong?
Just like success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.
The harsh truth is that Apple became too much of a good thing to too many people. Expectations had become excessive and it had become too widely owned by traders with weak hands. In other words, people like me.
I had been cautious of Apple for a while because if its massive China exposure. You don’t want to own a company that relies entirely on Middle Kingdom production during a running trade war. Apple sold an incredible 216 million iPhones in 2017, and all of them are made at the Foxconn factories in southern China.
Apple has become the whipping boy for both sides in the trade conflict. The company has always run the risk of its Foxconn workers arriving at work late someday, or not showing up at all at the prodding of Beijing. Recently, Trump said iPhones imported from China could be subject to the current 10%, soon to be 25% tariff.
The final nail in the coffin came on Monday morning when we learned of a lower Chinese court’s ruling against Apple in a lawsuit from QUALCOMM (QCOM). Never mind that the suit was years old and applied only to the company’s older phones. With the shares in free fall, that is just what investors DIDN’T want to hear.
However, Apple is not dead, it is just resting. Or, call it ripening.
Not only could Apple recover strongly from these abysmal levels, IT COULD DOUBLE IN VALUE.
The core of my argument (no pun intended) is that Apple is in the process of fundamentally evolving its business model. It is rapidly morphing from a one-time sale only hardware company to a recurring subscription services company. And that is where the big money is in the future.
Microsoft (MSFT) is already doing it, so are Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX). In fact, everyone is doing it, even the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader.
In fact, Apple's services revenue could balloon to $100 billion in five years, compared to its estimated total sales this year of $265 billion.
This accomplishes several important things. It moves the company out of a 30% gross margin business to a 70% gross margin. It converts Apple from a highly cyclical to stable earnings growth. Stable earnings growth companies are awarded much higher share price multiples.
Look no further than my next-door neighbor, Clorox (CLX), which trades at a much loftier 23X multiple and Coca-Cola (KO) which can be found at generous 19X multiple. Earnings visibility is worth its weight in gold. This could make Apple’s current 14X multiple a thing of the past.
Of course, we are not going to see a straight line move from one dominant business to another, and the road along the road could be bumpy. We could easily see one more meltdown which takes us to the subterranean $160 handle.
But $10 of downside risk versus $170 of upside? I’ll take that all day long. I bet you will too!
Time for a Nibble?
https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png00Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2018-12-13 06:10:042018-12-13 06:08:30What’s the Matter With Apple?
If you can’t handle the heat, then get out of the kitchen.
Well, the kitchen is getting a little bit toasty right now.
Apple (AAPL) was handed down a demonstrably negative verdict when a regional Chinese court ruled that they infringed on two patents belonging to Qualcomm (QCOM).
The Qualcomm chips were connected to photo editing and another to swiping on a touch-screen device.
This means that Apple won’t be able to sell legacy iPhone models in China which is a damaging blow to revenue prospects because older iPhone models in China offer attractive price points to wallet-light Chinese.
And when you add this all up, the ban includes over half of the iPhones on sale in China.
In general, less affordable, sleeker, fresher iterations price out many Chinese who want a piece of the Apple dream.
Even though this was a nice victory for Qualcomm, it spells trouble for the broader tech sector.
Apple’s myriad of chip suppliers who have grappled with a torrent stream of woeful news this year relating to Apple’s supply of iPhones and supply forecast of iPhones are first on the chopping block.
It’s also an excruciating blow to American business in China and this could potentially rule out any American management taking future business trips to China.
Apple looks set to join its chip company compadres on the sidelines as a stock to avoid like the plague at the moment.
Apple is a great company and a perfect hold to eternity stock, but this is not the time to jump in and out of it.
Let me explain why.
The trade war centered on future technological hegemony is directly connected to the domination of current technology in artificial intelligence, chip development, and 5G.
China has been furiously catching up to American tech the last two decades through its vast program of foreign technological forced transfers and outright intellectual property theft.
I remember testing my first shoddy Chinese smartphone from the Chinese company Coolpad to gauge a sample of the burgeoning Chinese consumer device market on a blistering hot day in Beijing in the summer of 2010.
It was one of the first iterations of Chinese smartphones on the local market and the 3G smartphone was simply terrible.
The hardware was iffy, software was untenable, design was hodgepodge and it ceased working after 3 painstaking months of testing.
I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew it would be years before Chinese tech could ever produce something material.
Since then, China and the love given to its tech sector through the state protecting its homegrown companies have come a long way since those teething years filled with shabby products and inferior expertise of yesteryear.
Chinese cell phones are now comparable to iPhones for a fraction of the cost especially the new Huawei and Xiaomi models and the companies want recognition for their success.
I have interviewed scores of Huawei engineers who describe a life of grinding out a modest existence in mega-cities dotted around China.
They lament the 12-hour back-breaking work days, suffocating authoritarian management style, and the 3am on-call staff meetings, but they rejoice in the accomplishment of collecting that down payment for a standard Chinese apartment in a subpar constructed building.
They earn 30% of what Apple engineers make per year just to seize an average life in a second-tier Chinese city.
They don’t complain and accept it as a consequence of cut-throat competition in a country of 1.3 billion trying to hustle the best they can.
These unbearable timelines and the crunch to develop the national brand of Huawei and its other protected tech behemoths is how China rose up from the ashes of irrelevancy to become arguably competitive with the American tech machine that is Silicon Valley.
Even through all of the local hyper-growth, there was one unwritten rule that allowed one squeaky clean American company from Cupertino to evade all of the fractious competition and make an absolute killing in China.
Apple was protected in China before until now that is.
I find it dubious that the timing of the court verdict was the first business day after the arrest of CFO of Huawei Meng Wanzhou.
By connecting the dots, this appears as if it was an indirect ruling from the higher-ups signaling that Apple won’t be handed a free pass anymore and a warning shot fired to Washington.
Even worse, the Chinese regulatory environment is opaque at best-giving discretion to Chinese authorities to do as they see fit.
The opaque nature of Chinese regulation can draw out cases for years potentially drowning out the sales of iPhones and banishing Apple and its products in China to the history books.
That is the worst-case scenario that probably won’t happen.
For Apple to even appeal this ruling offers Steve Jobs' brainchild a rare dose of reality in China, and the bruised Apple brand will go back to the drawing board after receiving severe harm to its previous image of an ultra-luxury brand on the Chinese mainland.
For other American companies, there is no way to flush out additional clarity, and they will get stonewalled if they want more details regarding the path forward and that in itself will damage the price action of stocks tilted towards China because of the wave of uncertainty.
At the extreme minimum, this escalation of pressure will make it arduous to maneuver to some sort of trade agreement let alone in the abbreviated 90-day window agreed on in Buenos Aires.
The Chinese national psyche cares a great deal about saving face and this dig at its national prize will be hard to forget.
And China has a habit at looking at these types of events as inclusive actions tallied up broadly inside a comprehensive portfolio labeled and pigeonholed as America, Canada, and so on.
This conspicuous move has pushed forward Canada into the forefront of the firing line which could become the silver lining to this quagmire because Canada will have more incentive to join in on the China rebukes with America if they get blacklisted by Beijing.
Uniting together as one pan-North American and the European task force would be the best method to combat China’s stealthy business acumen whose capital and influence are far-flung and hard to quantify because of its various gateways to global western pressure points.
I can tell you right now that after doing a quick jaunt of Belarus, the Ukraine, and Hungary this winter, China’s deep pockets and nationals have completely taken over Central and Eastern Europe.
Chinese companies and products are plastered all over the place in each Russified city center and cityscapes built in the Soviet era.
Chinese students and workers have flooded these markets as they line up around the fringes of the Western world armed with gobs of capital and a land-grab mentality that borders Amazon’s ambition.
The Budapest property market has been cornered by Chinese citizens looking for the cheapest entry point to permanent residence in the Eurozone.
If you want to rent a flat in Budapest, odds are a Chinese owner will be glad to accept your monthly rent payments.
China believes that to truly have its tentacles deep inside the Western apparatus, they must initially corner the peripheries of the Western World that thirst for capital to build up local economies to match the power and stature of the Western big boys.
This has all added up to the Chinese government having an influential voice in European affairs because they have direct sway with conservative Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban who has accepted Chinese capital.
US executives are praying to the celestial heavens that Meng is not extradited to America and made the scapegoat of the broader trade war.
This would be a bitter pill to swallow for Huawei’s founder Ren Zheng Fei whose family is considered royalty inside the upper-level Chinese establishment.
I assume that Ren will not back down quietly and is pushing and pulling the behind-the-scenes levers to do what he can for his daughter.
What does this all mean?
Headline risk has shot through the roof and investors could hear any day of the rumblings to the next chapter of the trade saga that is enveloping more and more corporate collateral damage.
Apple’s next quarter’s earnings are also on the line, and CEO of Apple Tim Cook could conveniently use it as a throwaway quarter hyping its progression as a new software and subscriptions company which is indeed in the works.
I figure this is the base case for Apple especially if there is no quick solution to this new iPhone ban.
The transition has been dramatically painful and happened a year or two too early for Apple’s liking.
Consequently, Apple reigning in its expectations has crushed the stock recently.
Certain global banks could set to be punished after the Wall Street Journal reported that HSBC and Standard Chartered facilitated the illegal payments for Huawei.
The British bank problems don’t stop there with Britain as a country barreling towards a complete ban of Huawei products after New Zealand just announced their own ban.
The three biggest Japanese telecommunication companies dumped fuel on Huawei’s bonfire citing security issues for excluding Huawei products from Japanese 5G development.
The roller-coaster action could also give impetus to Chairman Xi to execute a power grab on Chinese domestic technology sector gifting him additional control over tech behemoths in the name of national security fortifying his multiplying power in China.
He did the same with the People Liberation’s Army and I see no reason why he wouldn’t do the same with the Chinese tech sector especially if western countries avoid Huawei products.
The Chinese regulatory presence has already reared its ugly head banning new video game licenses to Tencent slashing revenue streams in 2018.
That is why Tencent shares have grossly underperformed this year.
Theoretically, Xi could use this moment as a springboard to seize the reigns of Huawei citing illegal payments to Iran which would calm the trade tensions but beef up his clout in the tech community, a net negative for Silicon Valley.
In any case, there is substantial amount of uncertainty permeating the heart of the technology movement that could potentially splinter off violently into an American tech and Chinese tech world.
This hard landing would deprive China-based revenue and kill supply chains for American technology that have spent decades procuring these intricate systems.
For Chinese technology, they could be cut off from the important components required to develop the technology and chips they need to achieve its “Made in China 2025” state-subsidized targets aimed at rapidly expanding its high-tech sectors and developing its advanced manufacturing base.
The next few months will reshape the 2019 Silicon Valley landscape and certain companies are hoping their business models aren’t fully destroyed.
I can’t lie but I saw this coming when I became aware of the complicated relationship between foreign tech companies and its precious Chinese revenue, and I also never bought another Coolpad smartphone.
https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png00Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2018-12-11 08:21:242018-12-11 08:15:54The Real Story About Apple
The only good thing to be said about last week is that it only lasted four days. If it had been open a fifth, the Dow Average (INDU) might have fallen another 800 points.
This is the first time since 1972 that every single asset class lost money for the year, and we were in the heat of an oil shock back then.
To earn money to pay for college, I was running a handy little business buying junk heap Volkswagen Beetles in California, getting them repainted in Mexico, and then selling them for huge profits in Los Angeles. That’s me, ever the entrepreneur.
As it was, three consecutive 800-point drops are the sharpest selloff we have seen since the 1987 crash. But despite all the violence and handwringing, the market is exactly where it was nearly two months, six months, ten months, and one year ago.
Talk on the street is rife of hedge funds blowing up, fat finger trades, and algorithms run wild. This could be the first stock market correction untouched by human hands.
What we have seen is some of the most extreme volatility in history with no net movement. And you wonder why institutions are so relaxed.
Let’s face it, we have all had it way too easy way too long. Who makes an average annualized return of 33.87% for 10 years? Oops, that’s me.
What happens next? One more dive to truly flush out the last of the nervous leveraged longs and then the long-promised Christmas rally.
Remember, markets will always do what they have to do to screw the most people, and that would be stopping traders out of their positions and then closing the year at multi-month highs.
Apple (AAPL) in particular was pummeled mercilessly, besieged by analyst downgrades almost every day. Steve Jobs’ creation is now down a stunning $65, or $27.9%. It dropped 40% when Steve died. I’m sure both Apple and Warren Buffet are in there soaking up stock every day with the shares at a half-decade earnings multiple low and laughing all the way to the bank.
But here’s the problem with that logic. Fundamentals can be very dangerous in an out-and-out panic. As my friend John Maynard Keynes used to say, “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain liquid.” Apple and Warren Buffet can wait out this correction, but can you, especially if you are a trader? If the stock falls further, they’ll just buy more.
The week started with such promise in the euphoria and afterglow of the G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires. It only lasted 24 hours when we discovered that nothing the administration said was true, all refuted by the Chinese when they got home to Beijing.
On Thursday, we learned that while the president’s team was negotiating, they arrested of the scion of one of China’s top tech companies while changing planes in Canada for a vacation in Mexico. It was equal to arresting the number two at Apple.
That little tidbit alone was worth a drop of 1,600 Dow points. As a result, half of all senior executive visit to the Middle Kingdom were instantly cancelled. Who wants to have “Hostage” listed on their resume?
If that were the only thing to worry about, the market would have bounced back sharply the next day and we would all be back in the Christmas mood.
But it’s not. Recession forecasts are starting to multiply like rabbits.
The Fed is growing cautious with 4 of 12 districts reporting slowing growth, said the Wednesday Beige Book report. The word “tariffs” is mentioned 39 times and is cited as a major reason for the lack of business clarity, and therefore capital investment for 2019.
The bond market is calling for a recession as “inversion” become the word of the year. The 2 year-10 years spread has shrunk to 12 basis points, an 11-year low, while the 3 year-5 year is already inverted. Massive short covering of bonds by hedge fund has ensued.
The ensuing bond melt-up was the most extreme in years as heavily short hedge funds ran for the sidelines. Now that they’re out, it’s safe to sell short again.
The November Nonfarm Payroll came in at a weak 155,000, but headline unemployment still hugs a half-century low. I saw the first really solid evidence of a recession when I drove by a high-end housing project in an upscale neighborhood and saw that it was abandoned with all equipment and tools removed. The developer obviously froze construction to get out of the way of a rapidly slowing economy.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that they may start getting good again. Instead of raising rate three times like clockwork in 2019, the Fed may adopt a “one and done” policy in December. That is where the bond market received its recent shot of adrenaline.
I doubt it as our nation’s central bank is a profoundly backward-looking organization. If the economy was hot a year ago, that means interest rates have to be raised today.
When will someone start spiking the eggnog? An awful lot of people are starting to discount a 2019 recession no matter what the administration says. If the Santa Claus rally doesn’t start this week, it will be too short to notice.
My year-to-date return recovered to +28.42%, boosting my trailing one-year return back up to 30.17%. December is showing a modest gain at +0.62%. That last leg down in the NASDAQ really hurt and was a once-in-18-year event. And this is against a Dow Average that is down a miserable -1.6% so far in 2018.
My nine-year return nudged up to +304.89. The average annualized return revived to +33.87.
The upcoming week is light on data after last week’s fireworks. The CPI is the big one, out Wednesday. Hopefully, that will give us all time to attend our holiday parties.
Monday, December 10 at 8:30 AM EST, the November Producer Price Index is out.
On Tuesday, December 11, November Producer Price Index is out.
On Wednesday, December 12 at 8:30 AM EST, the all-important November Consumer Price Index is released, the most important read we have on inflation.
At 10:30 AM EST, the Energy Information Administration announces oil inventory figures with its Petroleum Status Report.
Thursday, December 13 at 8:30 AM EST, we get the usual Weekly Jobless Claims.
On Friday, December 14, at 8:30 AM EST, we learn November Retail Sales.
The Baker-Hughes Rig Count follows at 1:00 PM.
As for me, I will be spending my weekend assembling the ski rack for my new Tesla model X P100D. I’ll be damned if I can get the pieces to fit together, and what is this extra bag of parts for? I hope the car is made better than this!
As for my VW trading business from 46 years ago, repair work done on US registered cars in Mexico was then subject to a 20% import duty. When the customs officer leaned against the car to ask if I had any work done recently, I fibbed. As he walked away I notice to my horror that the front of his pants was entirely covered with fresh green paint.
I never went back. Stocks looked like a better bet.
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png00Mad Hedge Fund Traderhttps://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.pngMad Hedge Fund Trader2018-12-10 03:06:262018-12-10 02:54:47The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or Where is Santa Claus?
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader November 28 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader.
Q: Is it time to get out of semiconductor stocks?
A: The time to get out is before it drops 60%, not afterwards. So, if you have semiconductor stocks, I would look for the next major rally to get out. I think we will get one of those rallies into December/January. We went negative on this sector in June, took all our profits, and didn’t go back in until last week.
Q: Is it time to buy semiconductor stocks?
A: No, that is the group you want to buy at the absolute bottom of the next recession which might be next year sometime. They lead on the downside, and they will lead on the upside as soon as they sniff a recovery in the economy.
Q: I held on to my position in Square (SQ). Should I sell now for a small profit?
A: Yes, in recessions, big companies prosper much more than small companies like Square; that’s why it had such a tremendous selloff; down 55% in six weeks. A small technology stock is not what you want to own in a recession. Big companies slow down, small ones die. At least that’s how conservative investors see it.
Q: What do you make of Fed comments this morning that asset prices are high?
A: I agree with them. They were certainly overpriced with a P/E multiple of 20 that we saw in September; they’re moderately priced now with a P/E multiple of 14.9. I think real estate markets are the overpriced assets that the Fed is talking about though, far more than the stock market, and markets like San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver are still way too high.
Q: What are your comments on Apple (AAPL)?
A: There’s an interesting thing going on here; you’ve just had a massive move out of hardware stocks like Apple, which basically makes phones and computers, into software stocks like Microsoft (MSFT), which is growing their cloud business like crazy. You may see this as a long-term industry trend, out of hardware stocks into software stocks. It’s all about the cloud now. The future is in software and that is where Apple is going to with services like the cloud, iTunes, streaming, and advertising, although they are doing it slowly.
Q: Will Trump be able to persuade Fed Chair Powell to stop hiking interest rates?
A: He will not, Powell is one of the few principled people in the government. He’s going to stick to his discipline, only look at the data, and that is going to require him to keep raising interest rates. One of the big black swans for 2019 may be that Trump fires Powell and gets a friendly rent-a-Fed chair in there who lowers interest rates on command. If Trump can hold on for nine months though, even Powell will see the economy’s in trouble and will have to respond accordingly by capping or even lowering interest rates.
Q: Why are you not stopping out of Roku (ROKU)?
A: We haven't yet approached our upper strike price on the December $30-$35 vertical bull call spread. That’s usually where I bail out; I like to give stocks plenty of room to do the right thing. Stocks have to breathe and I pick strike prices to compensate for that. Otherwise, you’d be stopping out of every trade immediately.
Q: Should we close the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX) trade or leave it open?
A: I’m looking for a bit more of a rally in stocks and a drop in the Volatility Index (VIX); then we’ll try to grab whatever additional couple of pennies we can get out of that.
Q: What do you think of Brazil (EWZ)?
A: Avoid emerging markets (EEM) as long as the U.S. is raising interest rates and the dollar is strong. Rising dollar means rising debt for emerging markets and less ability to service that debt, all bad for business.
Q: Morgan Stanley (MS) says “buy emerging markets”; are they nuts?
A: For the short term yes, for the multi-year long term they are a screaming buy. They are at historical lows in terms of valuation and already have a recession priced into them. But jumping in too soon could be painful.
Q: What are your expectations for the yield curve?
A: I expect all levels of the fixed income market to drop in price and rise in yield with the sharpest move in overnight rates. This eventually leads to a very steep inverted yield curve which causes recessions and bear markets.
Q: Thoughts on Master Limited Partnerships?
A: They could be relatively safe now that oil is at $50. There have been big selloffs recently. The yield on these are high and there is going to be big infrastructure building for energy going forward. I would say don’t put all your eggs in one basket and diversify your risk. In the Great Recession, many of these went bankrupt. I would look at the Alerian MLP (AMLP), which has fallen 15% in six weeks.
Q: Should I be rotating out of the Tech (XLK) stocks on rallies into more defensive stocks like Staples (SPLS)?
A: That’s half right. You should be rotating out of Tech stocks and rotating into cash which yields up to 2-3% these days. Nothing does well in a real bear market except cash. Defensive stocks still go down, just at a slower rate.
Q: Is General Electric (GE) good for the long term?
A: Yes, if anyone can turn around GE it’s the current management. That said, it could be a long-term slog—that’s why I had a long-term leap in this thing before it collapsed. It could turn around and still go up but these are throwaway, chapter eleven level type prices that we’re getting now. And now they are going to have to do a turnaround going into a recession.
Q: Do you see GE as good for a long-term trade?
A: Long term and trade don’t belong in the same sentence; but I’d say for a long-term investment at these levels, probably yes. It certainly is a bargain from $30 down to $7.40 in a year.
Q: Is this webinar archived?
A: A: Yes, they are always posted on the website within two hours of recording. Just go to www.madhedgefundtrader.com/, login and then hover your cursor over “MY ACCOUNT” click on “GLOBAL TRADING DISPATCH,” “Mad Hedge Technology Letter” or “Newsletter” depending on your membership then click on the Webinars button. The last ten years of webinars should show up, with the most recent one at the top.
Good luck and good trading.
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
It’s been a grueling winter for tech stocks and countless number of positive earnings reports have fell on deaf ears.
Will the bloodletting stop?
Not if Salesforce (CRM) has something to say about it!
And if you thought that tech’s secular tailwinds had vanished, this latest earnings report confirmed that software stocks are alive and are as potent as ever.
That is why I have identified software stocks as the best tech play in the current late-stage economic cycle.
At the Mad Hedge Lake Tahoe Conference, I clearly telegraphed that companies do not pour capital into capex for large and risky projects at this late stage, they search for the additional incremental dollar by arming their staff with optimal and efficient software programs to squeeze more juice out of the lemon.
Salesforce is a great example of this.
Moving forward, Salesforce is on the A-team of the software squad, and ideally positioned to harpoon any whales that come near their boat.
Companies are looking to double down on software initiatives at this point which is another reason why annual IT budgets have shot through the roof.
I have met countless CEOs who guide thousands of staff throughout branches around the world and they told me that one of the big in-house additions has been integrating Salesforce as the main customer relationship management system deleting legacy systems of yore that have pooped out.
The switch bears fruits immediately with operations supercharged like a 5-star high school football prospect on his first month of ‘roids.
Simply put, everything just works a lot better with access to this software.
What CEO wouldn’t want that?
Even more salient is that Salesforce has promoted itself as the emblematic tech growth stock promising to smash $16 billion of annual revenue by next year.
I love that Salesforce commits to ambitious sales targets and always delivers the goods.
A talking head on a prominent financial TV show went on record saying that Apple is the key to the tech narrative perpetuating, I would completely disagree with this statement.
Everyone and his mother have absorbed that Apple iPhones sales have plateaued, I am honestly sick of hearing the same story in the news over and over again.
That is why Apple has been trying to morph into a software and service stock. They are doing a great job at it by the way.
The real conclusive acid test to the tech story are these high growth software stocks because they should be the ones outperforming at this stage in the economic cycle.
If companies tilted towards software like Salesforce, Twilio (TWLO), PayPal (PYPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Adobe (ADBE), just to name a few of the crown jewels of software stocks, start laying eggs then I would admit the tech story is dead.
But it’s not.
Salesforce is poised to continue its ascent and that basically means quarterly sales growth in the mid-20s for the foreseeable future.
There is an addressable market of $200 billion and the pipeline is rich as ever could be.
Salesforce has really turned the corner with free cash flow and profitability. It was only a few years ago they were turning in heavy losses, but this new Salesforce will be even more profitable as the network effect makes the sum of the parts and each add-on cloud-based software tool even more valuable.
Companies just love the breadth of functionality that Salesforce offers and their pension for product enhancement is really owed to CEO Marc Benioff who never shies away from calling his peers out and never cuts corners.
In fact, Marc Benioff is one of the good guys in an increasingly rotting Silicon Valley, part of this has to do with him growing up as a local lad in Burlingame, just a stone throw from his newly built palatial Salesforce Tower gracing downtown San Francisco’s picturesque skyline.
Benioff has more skin in the game as a local and publicly supported Proposition C, effectively a bill that would charge a homeless tax on big earning corporations in San Francisco.
Benioff has also promised to fund any subsequent legal attack that attempts to unravel this homeless tax putting his money where his mouth is.
Benioff noted that he has seen no softness in the macro spending environment.
And even with all the crazy headlines spinning around in the media, there has been no material impact from any supposed peak or downshift in the business environment.
Not only is Salesforce dredging up SME deals at a fast rate, they are quickly targeting the big kahunas.
The number of deals generating more than $1 million was up 46% YOY in the third quarter.
The volume of $20 million-plus relationships is also growing significantly.
In the past quarter, Salesforce renewed and expanded a 9-figure relationship with one of the largest banks in the world.
Salesforce is able to upsell their cloud tools to customers and these firms eat up the Einstein built-in functionality that uses artificial intelligence to improve the existing software.
North America comprised 71% of total revenue which is why this software company will reap the rewards for any extension of this economic cycle because they are largely domestic and best in show.
Salesforce beat and raised its outlook calming the frayed nerves of investors looking to dump software stocks.
Just look at the billings growth that was anticipated at 19%, Salesforce smashed it by 8% coming in at 27%.
Not only are they scooping up new customers, but renewals have been just as robust.
The truth is that Salesforce can’t roll out enough cloud-based software products to meet the insatiable demand.
All of this backs up my thesis that software stocks will be the outsized winners of 2019.
The FANGs are not dead, I rather hold an Amazon (AMZN) or Apple (AAPL) long term if I had the choice.
But at this stage, investors should be piling into all the crème de la crème software stocks.
Avoid them at your peril.
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The administration’s threat of levying 10% on iPhones is a great sign for the technology sector as a whole.
The short-term media sensationalism has flipped this story the other way around crying about this as if it is a major penalty to Apple (AAPL).
Don’t get me wrong, these potential stiff tariffs have the possibility of triggering a $1 billion loss on Apple’s revenue, but this is all about protecting American technology long term.
This is not like taking a sledgehammer and ruining their business model, and it will not strip away this brilliant wealth creation vehicle.
Apple remains a cheap stock to buy for patient long-term holders and is one of the best run companies in the world with an operating maestro executing the roll-out of premium products named Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.
The administration might not like some of technology firms’ tactics, but in reality, they are a pivotal reason why the economy has been humming along in the longest bull-market ever.
Effectively, the administration has put Apple and its peers up on a pedestal and is defending them from Chinese competition.
What industry wouldn’t want this?
Most of 2018, the current administration presided over a stock market that was going up in a straight line and the bulk of those gains were harvested by the major tech companies, mainly the FANGs.
The administration was quick to take credit for a strengthening stock market and would like to see rates suppressed to engineer more upside.
The FANGs are going through a reversion to the mean after 100% gains and giving back 20% or 30% of profits offer opportune entry point for long-term investors.
The only FANG that needs a structural change is Facebook (FB) and has the funds to do it. The other three plus Microsoft (MSFT) will lead the tech charge when the short-term weakness subsides.
If you think Chinese consumers would bail on Apple products because of the trade war, then you are wrong.
Apple has been grandfathered into Chinese society and it is one of the few iconic American products that can boast this achievement.
Apple is a luxury brand produced by an epochal superpower.
The presence of Apple products reverberates around China’s economic landscape, and even if Chinese people do not like America, they respect its economic prowess and wish to learn from its capitalistic ways.
This is the main reason they send their kids to American universities.
Historically, China was once entirely dependent on Russia to fill in its economic and social vision with the communist party sending its best and brightest to Moscow to study the Soviet Union’s secret sauce.
If you go to Beijing now, most of the second ring road of flats conspicuously remind me of Khrushchyovkas, the unofficial name of a type of low-cost, concrete-paneled or brick three- to five-storied apartment building which was developed in the Soviet Union during the early 1960s.
During this time, its namesake Nikita Khrushchev directed the Soviet government.
Pre-Deng Xiaoping Soviet influences can still be found everywhere in central Beijing.
Once the Chinese communist government realized that the Soviet model impoverished large swaths of society, they went on the open market to find a more optimal method to run their economy that could take advantage of their monstrous man power.
The model they decided on was a fusion of communism and capitalism, and for 30 years, this system fueled Chinese peasants out of poverty and to the promenades of Saint-Tropez.
Because of Chinese laser-like obsession on social status, material possessions are the most important way for them to differentiate against each other.
For Chinese women, the x-factor is skin tone, but for Chinese men, it is the brand, quality, and volume of possessions.
Even if rich Chinese hate Apple and their iPhones, they are permanently married to this product because owning a Chinese smartphone would be a monumental faux pas on the same level as American First Lady Melania Trump shopping for her new clothes at Walmart (WMT).
This is the same reason why every political who’s who in China drives an Audi A6, and every successful Chinese business executive drives a BMW.
Luxury brands are closely associated to the person’s social status in China and these unwritten rules have even more weight than the official rules in China partly because most Chinese over 40 are uneducated, plus China’s lack of public trust.
Apple’s tentacles reaching deep into Chinese society have in fact led to a situation where Apple-related jobs for Chinese citizens add up to over 5 million jobs which is over double the number of jobs Apple supports in America.
The result of Apple morphing into a pseudo-Chinese company is that pain for Apple means a loss of Chinese jobs on a large scale at a time when the Chinese economy is becoming more precarious by the day.
The Chinese economy is softening under a massive burden of crippling public and private debt that is putting the cap on growth.
As a result of the trade skirmish, China has temporarily halted its deleveraging effort that was intended to remedy the health of the economy and has reverted back to the China of old, low-quality infrastructure projects and heavily polluted coal production.
China’s rapid ascent to prosperity could also mean the Chinese consumer and economy could go through a reversion to the mean scenario with private and public companies loaded to their eyeballs with debt going bust and a looming economic stimulus in the cards if this plays out.
All this means is that Apple is too big to fail in China and CEO of Apple Tim Cook absolutely knows this.
Theoretically, Chinese consumers absolutely have access to local smartphone substitutes for $200 that would do the same job as a $1,000 iPhone.
I have tested out Huawei and Xiaomi premium smartphones costing $400, and they have more than enough firepower to be a reliable everyday smartphone and some.
The fact is that Chinese consumers intentionally choose not to substitute Apple products.
And I would go deeper than that by saying Steve Jobs is revered in China like a demigod and his passing turned him into a sort of tech martyr with a level of status that not even Alibaba (BABA) originator Jack Ma can touch.
Jack Ma performed miracles by copying eBay’s (EBAY) blueprint of e-commerce from a shabby Hangzhou flat ditching his former job as an English teacher then copying Amazon (AMZN) to juice up growth.
But Jack Ma never created the iPhone, iPod, tablet, or Apple app store from thin air. That he never did.
Making matters even more ironic is that most Chinese communist members actually use an Apple iPhone for the same reasons I mentioned earlier.
Not only that, the children of Chinese communist politicians take lavish vacations to Silicon Valley to take selfie’s in front of Apple’s spaceship headquarters in Cupertino and upload them onto social media.
They then proceed to visit the nearest Apple store right next door at the Apple Park visitor center which is essentially an Apple store on steroids to make bulk purchases of Apple tablets, watches, computers, iPhones for their extended circle of friends and distant relatives because they are “cheaper in America than in China” mainly due to the heavy import duties levied on Apple products in China.
As for tech equities, what this does is blunt short-term positive sentiment for tech stocks and particularly chip stocks that I have told readers to stay away from like the plague.
Apple’s supply chain frenemies don’t have the luxury of selling 80 million luxury phones at $1,000 per quarter and are often the recipient of indiscriminate sell-offs shellacking shares.
Even with the overhanging issue of rising tariffs, tech stocks should produce great earnings next year.
Look at Apple and the consensus EPS outlook for next quarter comes in at $4.73 and that is after EPS increasing 41% sequentially from the quarter before.
Apple will soon become a $300 billion of sales per year company with profitability expanding at a rapid clip.
They are a company that prints money then buys back their own stock profusely. Not many companies can do that.
These negative reports that have been coming fast and furious don’t help the momentum, but the share’s weakness solely means that better entry points are available for investors before Apple launches over $200 again.
There is a high chance that the administration is using Apple as a bargaining chip and nothing will come of it.
Think about it, after all this commotion about the trade war with China, revenue was up almost 20% last quarter in greater China, so what gives?
It means that things aren’t as dire as it seems. A lot of hot steam over nothing is a gift to long-term investors, but short-term traders will feel the pain of the temporarily elevated headline risk.
APPLE PARK VISITOR CENTER – CHINESE TOURIST ATTRACTION
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