(AMZN) Archives

The Death of Retail

I stopped at a Wal-Mart (WMT) the other day on my way to Napa Valley.

I am not normally a customer of this establishment. But I was on my way to a meeting where a dozen red long stem roses would prove useful. I happened to know you could get these for $10 at Wal-Mart.

After I found my flowers, I browsed around the store to see what else they had for sale. The first thing I noticed was that half the employees were missing their front teeth.

The clothing offered was out of style and made of cheap material. It might as well have been the Chinese embassy. Most concerning, there was almost no one there.

So I was not surprised when the company announced that it was closing 267 stores worldwide. The closures amount to only 1% of Wal-Mart?s total floor space. Some 10,000 American jobs will be lost.

The Wal-Mart downsizing is only the latest evidence of a major change in the global economy that has been evolving over the last two decades.

However, it now appears we have reached a tipping point, and a point of no return. The future is happening faster than anyone thought possible. Call it the Death of Retail.

I remember the first purchases I made at Amazon 20 years ago. The idea was so dubious that I made my initial purchases with a credit card with a low $1,000 limit. That way, if the wheels fell off, my losses would be limited.

This is despite the fact that I knew Jeff Bezos personally as a former Morgan Stanley colleague. And how stupid was that name, Amazon? At least he didn?t call it ?Yahoo?.

Today, I do almost all of my shopping at Amazon (AMZN). It saves me immense amounts of time while expanding my choices exponentially. And I don?t have to fight traffic, engage in the parking space wars, or wait in line to pay.

It can accommodate all of my requests, no matter how bizarre or esoteric. A WWII reproduction Army Air Corps canvas flight jacket in size XXL? No problem!

A used 42-inch Sub Zero refrigerator with a front door icemaker and water dispenser? Have it there in two days, with free shipping.

In 2000, after the great ?Y2K? disaster that failed to show, I met with Bill Gates Sr. to discuss the foundation?s investments. It turned out that they had liquidated their entire equity portfolio and placed all their money into bonds. It turned out to be a brilliant move, coming mere months before the Dotcom bust.

Mr. Gates (another Eagle Scout) mentioned something fascinating to me. He said that unlike most other foundations their size, they hadn?t invested a dollar in commercial real estate.

It was his view that the US economy would move entirely online, everyone would work from home, emptying out city centers and rendering commuting unnecessary. Shopping malls would become low rent climbing walls and paint ball game centers.

Mr. Gates? prediction may finally be occurring. Some counties in the San Francisco Bay area now see 25% of their workers telecommuting.

It is becoming common for staff to work Tuesday-Thursday at the office, and from home on Monday and Friday. Productivity increases. People are bending their jobs to fit their lifestyles. And oh yes, happy people work for less money in exchange for personal freedom, boosting profits.

The Mad Hedge Fund Trader itself may be a model for the future. We are entirely a virtual company, with no office. Everyone works at home across the country and around the world.

You may have noticed that I can work from anywhere and anytime (although sending a Trade Alert from the back of a camel in the Sahara Desert was a stretch).

The cost of global distribution is essentially zero. Profits go into a bonus pool shared by all. Oh, and we?re hiring, especially in marketing.

You can see this in the business prospects of traditional brick and mortar retailers last year, which were dire.

As a result, Macy?s (M) stock plunged by a shocking -53%, Nordstrom (JWN) by -43%, and Best Buy (BBY) by -39%. Value players have mistaken the present low prices and subterranean price earnings multiples for a ?Black Friday? sale.

It has been like leading lambs to the slaughter.

Yes, some of this was caused by record warm temperatures on the US East coast, which led many to cancel their purchases of a new winter coat. But it is also happening because the entire ?bricks and mortar? industry is getting left behind by the march of history.

Sure, they have been pouring millions into online commerce and jazzed up websites. But they all seem to be poor imitations of amazon, with higher prices. It is all ?Hour late and dollar short? stuff.

In the meantime, Amazon soared by 150%, and was one of the top performing stocks of 2015. It is thought that Amazon accounted for a staggering 25% of all the new growth in US retail sales last year.

And here is the bad news. Bricks and Mortar retailers are about to lose more of their lunch to Chinese Internet giant Alibaba (BABA), which is ramping up its US operations and is FOUR TIMES THE SIZE OF AMAZON!

There?s a good reason why you haven?t heard much from me about retailers. I made the decision 30 years ago never to touch the troubled sector.

I did this when I realized that management never knew beforehand which of their products would succeed, and which would bomb, and therefore were constantly clueless about future earnings.

The business for them was an endless roll of the dice. That is a proposition which I was unwilling to invest in. There were always better trades.

I confess that I had to look up the ticker symbols for this story, as I never use them.

However, I also missed the miracle at Amazon. I could never grasp their long tail strategy and their 100 X multiples. I have had to admire it from the sidelines. At least I wasn?t short.

You will no doubt be enticed to buy retail stocks as the deal of the century by the talking heads on TV, Internet research, and maybe even your own brokers.

It will be much like buying the coal industry (KOL) a few years ago, another industry headed for the dustbin of history. That was when ?cheap? was on its way to zero.

So the next time someone recommends that you buy retail stocks, you should probably lie down and take a long nap first. When you awaken, hopefully the temptation will be gone.

Or better yet, go shopping at Amazon. The deals are to die for.

To read ?An Evening with Bill Gates Sr.?, please click here.

The Death of Retail?

Why There is No Bubble in Stocks

Diary, Newsletter, Research

One couldn?t help but notice the outbreak of recollection, reminiscing and schadenfreude that took place yesterday when the NASDAQ briefly tipped over 5,000.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I am still amazed by the frenzy that took place, witnessing the kind of bubble one only sees twice a century. And I was right in the thick of it, living in nearby Silicon Valley.

Business school students were raising $50 million with a one-page business plan. An analyst predicted that Amazon (AMZN) shares would double to $400 in a year. It happened in only four weeks.

All of my attorneys quit, taking up prestige jobs as chief legal counsels at new start ups, taking stock in lieu of pay, dollar bills dancing in front of their eyes. They were replaced by the ?B? team. Other law firms started accepting stock as payment of legal fees.

I knew more than one office secretary who took pay cuts to $15,000 a year in exchange for stock, which they later sold for $2 million.

When I tried to expand my company, I couldn?t find a larger office to rent. San Francisco had run out of office space. So I bought a house for $7 million instead and worked from there. That was no problem, as everyone had $7 million then.

But what I remember most fondly were the parties. The beneficiaries of every IPO sought to celebrate with the biggest party in Bay Area history, each one eclipsing the last. An entire industry of creative party organizers sprung up, seeking to outdo every competitor.

I remember most fondly the Vodka luge carved out of a giant block of ice, where a pretty hostage poured 100 proof super cooled rocket fuel straight down your throat. By midnight, the passed out bodies started piling up on the periphery.

Those were the days!

Which brings us to today, when handwringing is breaking out all over. Investors are afraid that we are just now putting in the double top of the century in NASDAQ, with a very neat 15 years taking place between peaks.
Is it time to sell?

I think not.

Today, we see a completely different world from the one we knew in 2000. Global GDP then was a mere $32 trillion. Today it is 2.5 times higher at $78 trillion. Using this simplistic measure, the GDP adjusted value of NASDAQ should be 12,187.

The high tech index peaked at a price earnings multiple of 100 times earnings. Today it is 30 times. That means the multiple adjusted high for NASDAQ today would be 16,650.

Technology stocks then didn?t pay dividends. Today, look at Apple (AAPL), which pays a 1.50% dividend worth $11.25 billion in annual payouts. This revenue stream provides enormous support under the market, and almost makes Apple shares perform more like bonds than stocks.

Which brings me to a new investment thesis.

What if the stocks that peaked in 2000 are only now just breaking out and starting long bull runs? I am thinking of quality technology names that have completed long, sideways, basing moves. Ebay (EBAY), Broadcom (BRCM), and Cisco (CSCO) leap to the fore.

The possibilities boggle the mind.

I think that in order to get NASDAQ to really get the bit between its teeth, one thing has to happen. Apple has to stop going up.

You really only had to make one stock call in 2014. You had to be overweight Apple. If you did, you were a star. If you didn?t, then you are still probably looking for a new job on Craig?s List.

Managers are behaving as if the past were a prologue, loading the boat with Apple with their eyes firmly fixed on the rear view mirror. That explains the blowout 13% jump in Steve Jobs? creation so far in 2015, some $90 billion in market capitalization.

All you need is for investors to stop buying Apple for 15 minutes and rotate into other big tech names. That was my logic behind my Trade Alert to buy Cisco two weeks ago. If that occurs, it will be off to the races for NASDAQ once again.

Remember that old saw in technical analysis land, ?the longer the base, the bigger the air above it.?

A vodka martini, anyone?

The Endless Summer of 2014

Newsletter

We have just endured three weary months of tedious range trading, typical of a normal summer?s action. The problem is that the actual summer is about to begin. Are we going to suffer another three months of tedious range trading? Is summer trading this year going to last a full six months?

Is this the endless summer of 2014?

That is the alarming conclusion of the many hardened and seasoned traders I know. I have been saying all year that 2014 might be a fourth quarter year. It?s looking like my worst nightmare is coming true. Can you blame my friends for throwing in the towel?

The fact that almost all traditional trading tools have recently been utterly worthless hasn?t helped.

Take technical analysis. In a flat market, commentators urge you to buy every false upside breakout, and then sell every false breakdown, only to see it snap back in the opposite direction the next day. You don?t have to suffer too many round trips following this strategy before you run out of money.

Economic data isn?t useful either. It has been unrelentingly positive, as have corporate earnings, with a few notable exceptions (Amazon (AMZN), Fire Eye (FEYE)). Yet, the market can?t carry out a sustained rally, frustrating bulls to no end. It seems that one day, the market is discounting an heroic? 3% GDP growth rate this year, the next day only a disappointing 2%.

Talk about a bipolar market.

The (SPX) better get a move on. The dismal Q1 report showed that the economy actually shrunk by -0.2%-0.8%. That only allows for three more quarters to stage a comeback, requiring absolutely torrid growth rates. Maybe this is why stocks can?t go down either.

Everyone knows the market will be up on the year, and they don?t want to sell positions for fear they won?t be able to get back in when the long awaited breakout finally happens. That would bring a second year of relative underperformance in a row for most portfolio managers, not exactly a career boosting move.

So while the market is tearing the petals off my own 2014 performance with a ?love me, love me not? torture routine, I think I?ll stay on the sidelines. That?s why I bailed on my last remaining position, a small long in the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX), taking yet another shaving cut on my numbers.

The only way to survive in this industry for the long term is to stay out when you don?t understand what is happening. There are times when there is just no money to be made in the market. This is one of those times.

Screaming at it, throwing your handset through your monitor, or tossing your PC out the window, all things I have seen frustrated traders do, isn?t going to improve the situation.

Go watch a season of Game of Thrones instead.

Better Than Watching the Market

AT&T (T) is Dialing a Wrong Number

Newsletter

AT&T (T), or Telephone as we used to call it on the floor on the New York Stock Exchange when we hand traded its shares, enjoyed a nice little 50-cent pop yesterday, to $34, only the second day it managed to rise this year.

The move comes after a federal appeals court in Washington DC ruled that the FCC exceeded its authority when it told Verizon Communication (VZ) that it could not charge different prices to different content providers based on their bandwidth and numbers of users.

This is a reversal of the FCC's "net neutrality" rule and should allow both Verizon and AT&T to increase revenues and help protect their profits from customers who are costing them more money to service. ?Big users of broadband, like Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN), saw their shares suffer accordingly.

You would think it would be off to the races for (T). But it won?t, as not all is well with Ma Bell. One of my first jobs at Morgan Stanley some 32 years ago was to break this company up into the seven ?baby bells? at the direction of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department (I carried the shareholder ballots from one floor of our building to another). The company traded off its local telephone exchanges for the right to go into the computer business. I have been following it ever since.

For a start, (T) is suffering from some major internal cash flow problems. Revenues have been stagnant for years. Its hard-wired infrastructure has been corroding away for years. The capital spending needed to fix this will be a drag on any future earnings, and is unlikely to generate any real payoff. Do you know anyone under the age of 30 who owns a landline? It?s a wireless world, baby. Did I mention that their service sucks beyond belief?

Every pension fund manager in the country already owns this stock for its generous 5.30% dividend yield. One has to ask how long the company can maintain this in the face of a stagnant business in a highly competitive industry. Now that we are in a world of rising long-term interest rates, this yield will provide much less support than it has in the past.

The hedge fund community has been aware of these difficulties for a while, and has been pounding every rally. This is why (T) completely missed out on last year?s ferocious, record setting bull market, posting a zero return for 2013, versus a 26% increase in the main indexes.

AT&T is the oldest stock to inhabit the Dow 30, being a successor to a company founded by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. It has long been a pillar of the investment establishment (it took a brief vacation from the index after the breakup). Its history mirrors that of American capitalism.

With 100 million customers and a market capitalization of $179 billion, it certainly occupies a big footprint. Time to put this beast out of its misery and retire it to the dustbin of history.

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