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Tag Archive for: (AMZN)

Mad Hedge Fund Trader

July 15 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the July 15 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: Do you expect foreign equities to begin to outperform US equities sometime soon?

A: I expect them to outperform imminently simply because Europe did their shutdown properly, a total shutdown, and got rid of the virus, so their economy and schools are opening. We did a partial shutdown, some states did not shut down at all, and as a result, the epidemic is on fire here, and our shutdown will have to last an extra six months to a year. So that means you’ll probably want to be rotating out of US stocks and into emerging stocks, and the (EEM) is the ETF to go with there.

Q: Would you buy gold LEAPS at this point?

A: Normally, I say only buy LEAPS on capitulation selloffs like we had in March. We actually put out 25 LEAP recommendations on the long side in tech and biotech in March and they all proved spectacular winners. However, at this point, gold is just short of an all-time high; if you break the high you could get a $500 or $1,000 move very quickly to the upside. If you want to do LEAPS, I would go out one year, I would go fairly close to the money, something like a $200-$210 LEAP in the (GLD) ETF. Your much bigger bang, by the way, would be to do LEAPS on the individual stocks; go 10% or 20% out of the money, you might make 100%-200% on those and the stocks to do there would be Newmont Mining (NEM) and Barrick Gold (GOLD).

Q: Would the US or any other country consider backing their currency with gold?

A: Absolutely not. We went off the gold standard in 1972 for a reason. That’s because they're not making it anymore; there isn't enough gold to support growth in a global economy. On the other hand, a supply of paper is unlimited, and that's why we've had such terrific economic growth since we’ve gone off the gold standard.

Q: I’m seeing some really great deals in energy. Should I get involved?

A: Absolutely not. Don’t confuse “gone down a lot” with “cheap.” We think the oil business is long term going out of business. It can't compete with alternatives and electric cars; the economics for investing in a non-scalable energy form just are not there. It’s like asking an analog adding machine to compete with a computer.

Q: Is it too late to sell the US dollar or the Invesco DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund ETF (UUP)?

A: No, we’re only in the very early stages of the collapse of the US dollar, so you want to be buying all of the nondollar ETFs like the Australian dollar (FXA), the euro (FXE), and the Japanese yen (FXY). Massive over issuance of currency will destroy its value, that’s one of the seminal lessons of currency markets. The US is not immune to that.

Q: Biotech is getting overheated here—should I buy the rumor, sell the news?

A: We’re also just in the opening stages of the biotech golden age. Even if they cure corona tomorrow, there are another 100 diseases they will cure over the next 10 years using all of the new advanced technology that has just been developed, like gene editing, monoclonal antibodies, and quantum computers. It’s another reason to subscribe to the Mad Hedge Biotech and Healthcare Letter for $1,500 a year (click here).

Q: I see Bill Gross is bullish on value stocks—would you go with that view?

A: No, leave the value stocks for Bill Gross. He's semi-retired and hasn’t been as good on the stock market lately as he used to be, as much as he is a dear friend. This is a chasing-a-winner type market. I would wait for value stocks. You could die a long horrible death by the time value stocks turn around so I would avoid them. Go for earnings growth, that’s the only thing that counts in the future.

Q: What would you recommend as a portfolio starter?

A: I would recommend 100% cash. I know you don’t want to hear that you should keep cash if you just bought an expensive trade alert service, but the fact is the risk now is the highest it’s been in years. I only add new trade at market sweet spots, and you don’t get those every day of the year. I will send you an alert if I see a low-risk high-return trade. Wait for the summer correction—that will set up another bet-the-ranch opportunity. Don’t worry about trade alerts, we’ll be doing about 400 of them this year, but they do tend to come in bunches at market bottoms and market tops.

Q: Do American companies have much of a chance against Chinese tech?

A: The US has an overwhelming lead, which will probably increase at an exponential rate. I think the threat of Chinese tech is vastly overstated by the administration. They needed an enemy to protect us from to stick around. The reality is that the US is so far ahead it’s unbelievable; that’s the reason they steal our technology. And they only have leads in very specific areas, such as surveillance of large populations. I wouldn’t worry too much about tech—if the Chinese really had a lead on tech, would Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), Facebook (FB) all be going to new highs every day, while Baidu (BIDU) lagged?

Q: Should we close out the Regeneron call spread?

A: At this point, we’re so far in the money I would just wait two more days and it will expire at its maximum $10 value, and you can avoid all the fees. You’ll end up making $1,600 or 16.28% 15 trading days.

Q: Presidential candidate Joe Biden has just had a huge surge in the polls in battleground states. Will he be damaging to the market?

A: No, ever since he started his rise in the polls, the stock market has been rising almost every day, and that’s even after announcing in advance that he’s going to raise corporate taxes from 21% to 28%. He’s also going to eliminate the carried interest, which should have been eliminated a long time ago. I imagine there will be some super punitive Roosevelt style 90% tax on net taxable income over a billion dollars—a real billionaire’s punishment tax, as they’ve basically made all the money for the last 30 years. The stock market is voting with confidence for the future Biden government, who am I to disagree? The market is always right.

Q: Will gold hit a new high?

A: Yes, I think we will have a new high in a couple of weeks. That's why I said it’s a rare case when you actually buy LEAPS in a rising market, especially if you go one or two years out. Guess where gold will be in two years? My bet is $3,000, so a $200/$210 LEAP in the (GLD) could bring in a 1,000% return, The overwhelming fundamentals are in favor of gold. I'll keep hammering away at that in the newsletter.

Q: I only trade stocks; how can I take advantage of your recommendations?

A: First of all, buy the stocks. Second, you can buy stocks on margin, which gives you double exposure. Third, there are many 2X ETFs on the stocks or sectors we recommend, like the (TBT), which you can also trade in a stock account. For example, for biotech, you can get your exposure there through the (IBB), and through tech, you can buy the 2X (ROM); but I wouldn’t buy it today because it is too high. In fact, only about 25% of our followers do options, the rest trade stocks or use it to manage their own long-term portfolios.

Q: Will we hit 0% yielding US Treasuries (TLT)?

A: Probably not, that move is behind us. We got down to a 31 basis points yield at the lows. Now, massive oversupply from the US government will be the primary factor dictating Treasury prices, and that means going down a lot.

Good Luck and Stay Healthy

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

 

 

 

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/john-thomas-fishing.png 488 366 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-17 09:02:292020-07-17 10:29:23July 15 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

July 15, 2020

Tech Letter



Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 15, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(CLOUD 101)
(AMZN), (MSFT), (GOOGL), (DOCU), (CRM), (ZS)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-15 14:04:432020-07-15 17:10:42July 15, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Cloud 101

Tech Letter

If you've been living under a rock the past few years, the cloud phenomenon hasn't passed you by and you still have time to cash in.

You want to hitch your wagon to cloud-based investments in any way, shape, or form.

Amazon leads the cloud industry it created.

It still maintains more than 30% of the cloud market. Microsoft would need to gain a lot of ground to even come close to this jewel of a business.

Amazon (AMZN) relies on AWS to underpin the rest of its businesses and that is why AWS contributes most of Amazon's total operating income.

Total revenue for just the AWS division would operate as a healthy stand-alone tech company if need be.

The future is about the cloud.

These days, the average investor probably hears about the cloud a dozen times a day.

If you work in Silicon Valley, you can triple that figure.

So, before we get deep into the weeds with this letter on cloud services, cloud fundamentals, cloud plays, and cloud Trade Alerts, let's get into the basics of what the cloud actually is.

Think of this as a cloud primer.

It's important to understand the cloud, both its strengths and limitations.

Giant companies that have it figured out, such as Salesforce (CRM) and Zscaler (ZS), are some of the fastest-growing companies in the world.

Understand the cloud and you will readily identify its bottlenecks and bulges that can lead to extreme investment opportunities. And that's where I come in.

Cloud storage refers to the online space where you can store data. It resides across multiple remote servers housed inside massive data centers all over the country, some as large as football fields, often in rural areas where land, labor, and electricity are cheap.

They are built using virtualization technology, which means that storage space spans across many different servers and multiple locations. If this sounds crazy, remember that the original Department of Defense packet-switching design was intended to make the system atomic bomb proof.

As a user, you can access any single server at any one time anywhere in the world. These servers are owned, maintained, and operated by giant third-party companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (GOOGL), which may or may not charge a fee for using them.

The most important features of cloud storage are:

1) It is a service provided by an external provider.

2) All data is stored outside your computer residing inside an in-house network.

3) A simple Internet connection will allow you to access your data at any time from anywhere.

4) Because of all these features, sharing data with others is vastly easier, and you can even work with multiple people online at the same time, making it the perfect, collaborative vehicle for our globalized world.

Once you start using the cloud to store a company's data, the benefits are many.

  1. No Maintenance

Many companies, regardless of their size, prefer to store data inside in-house servers and data centers.

However, these require constant 24-hour-a-day maintenance, so the company has to employ a large in-house IT staff to manage them - a costly proposition.

Thanks to cloud storage, businesses can save costs on maintenance since their servers are now the headache of third-party providers.

Instead, they can focus resources on the core aspects of their business where they can add the most value, without worrying about managing IT staff of prima donnas.

  1. Greater Flexibility

Today's employees want to have a better work/life balance and this goal can be best achieved by letting them telecommute. Increasingly, workers are bending their jobs to fit their lifestyles, and that is certainly the case here at Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

How else can I send off a Trade Alert while hanging from the face of a Swiss Alp?

Cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, offer exactly this kind of flexibility for employees.

With data stored online, it's easy for employees to log into a cloud portal, work on the data they need to, and then log off when they're done. This way a single project can be worked on by a global team, the work handed off from time zone to time zone until it's done.

It also makes them work more efficiently, saving money for penny-pinching entrepreneurs.

  1. Better Collaboration and Communication

In today's business environment, it's common practice for employees to collaborate and communicate with co-workers located around the world.

For example, they may have to work on the same client proposal together or provide feedback on training documents. Cloud-based tools from DocuSign, Dropbox, and Google Drive make collaboration and document management a piece of cake.

These products, which all offer free entry-level versions, allow users to access the latest versions of any document so they can stay on top of real-time changes which can help businesses to better manage workflow, regardless of geographical location.

  1. Data Protection

Another important reason to move to the cloud is for better protection of your data, especially in the event of a natural disaster. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on local data centers in New York City, forcing many websites to shut down their operations for days.

The cloud simply routes traffic around problem areas as if, yes, they have just been destroyed by a nuclear attack.

It's best to move data to the cloud, to avoid such disruptions because there your data will be stored in multiple locations.

This redundancy makes it so that even if one area is affected, your operations don't have to capitulate, and data remains accessible no matter what happens. It's a system called deduplication.

  1. Lower Overhead

The cloud can save businesses a lot of money.

By outsourcing data storage to cloud providers, businesses save on capital and maintenance costs, money that in turn can be used to expand the business. Setting up an in-house data center requires tens of thousands of dollars in investment, and that's not to mention the maintenance costs it carries.

Plus, considering the security, reduced lag, up-time and controlled environments that providers such as Amazon's AWS have, creating an in-house data center seems about as contemporary as a buggy whip, a corset, or a Model T.

cloud storage

 

cloud storage

 

cloud storage

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-15 14:02:202020-07-16 09:05:33Cloud 101
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

July 13, 2020

Tech Letter



Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 13, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(WILL A.I. SAVE US)
(TSLA), (AMZN), (FB)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-13 09:04:552020-07-13 09:49:24July 13, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Will A.I. Save Us?

Tech Letter

Anti-A.I. physicist Professor Stephen Hawking was a staunch supporter of preserving human interests against the future existential threat from machines and artificial intelligence (A.I.).

He was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 1963 at the age of 21 and sadly passed away March 14, 2018 at the age of 76.

Famed for his work on black holes, Professor Hawking represented the human quest to maintain its superiority against quickly advancing artificial acculturation.

His passing was a huge loss for mankind as his voice was a deterrent to A.I.'s relentless march to supremacy. He was one of the few who had the authority to opine on these issues.

Gone is a voice of reason.

Critics have argued that living with A.I. poses a red alert threat to privacy, security, and society as a whole. Unfortunately, those most credible and knowledgeable about A.I. are tech firms.

They have shown that policing themselves on this front is remarkably unproductive.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook (FB), has labeled naysayers as "irresponsible" and dismissed the threat. After failing to prevent Russian interference in the last election, he is exhibiting the same defensive posture translating into a de facto admission of guilt. His track record of shirking accountability is becoming a trend leading him to allow politicians to post untrue marketing material for the 2020 U.S. election.

Share prices will materially nosedive if A.I. is stonewalled and development stunted. Many CEOs who stake careers on doubling or tripling down on A.I. cannot see it die out. There is too much money to lose – even for Mark.

The world will see major improvements in the quality of life in the next 10 years. But there is another side to the coin which Zuckerberg and company refuse to delve into...the dark side of technology.

Tesla's (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has shared his anxiety about robots flipping the script on humans. Elon acknowledges that A.I. and autonomous vehicles are important factors in the battle for new technology. The winner is yet to be determined as China has bet the ranch with unlimited resources from the help of Chairman Xi and state-sponsored institutions.

The quagmire with China has been squarely centered around the great race for technological supremacy.

A.I. is the ultimate X factor in this race and whoever can harness and develop the fastest will win.

Musk has hinted that robots and humans could merge into one species in the future. Is this the next point of competition among tech companies? The future is murky at best.

Hawking's premise that evolution has inbuilt greed can be found in the underpinnings of America's economic miracle.

Wall Street has bred a culture that is entirely self-serving regardless of the bigger system in which it finds itself, with one of the few winners of the coronavirus being the stock market.

Most of us are participating in this perpetual money game chase because our system treats it as a natural part of life. A.I. will help a select few do well in this paper chase to the detriment of the majority and even more so that the pandemic shed 50 million U.S. jobs with many of them to never come back.

Quarterly earnings performance is paramount for CEOs. Return value back to shareholders or face the sack in the morning. It's impossible to convince anyone that America's capitalist model is deteriorating since the ones who are set to gain are the exact people in power.

Wall Street has an insatiable hunger for cutting-edge technology from companies that sequentially beat earnings and raise guidance. Flourishing technology companies enrich the participants creating a Teflon-like resistance to downside market risk.

The issue with Stephen Hawking's work is that his timeframe was too far in the future. Professor Hawking was probably correct, but it will take 25 years to prove it.

The world is quickly changing as science fiction becomes reality.

People on Wall Street are a product of the system in place and earn a tremendous amount of money because they proficiently execute a specialized job. Traders are busy focusing on how to move ahead of the next guy.

Firms building autonomous cars are free to operate as is. Hyper-accelerating technology spurs on the development of A.I., machine learning, and enhanced algorithms. Record profits will topple, and investors will funnel investments back into an even narrower grouping of technology stocks after the weak hands are flushed out.

That is exactly what is happening with 6 tech companies dominating during the health crisis with everyone falling out of the race.

Professor Hawking said we need to explore our technological capabilities to the fullest in order to avoid extinction. In 2020, exploring these new capabilities still equals monetizing through the medium of products and services.

This is all bullish for equities as the leading companies associated with A.I. to reap the benefits.

And let me remind you that technology is still the least regulated industry on the planet even with all the recent hoopla.

It is having its cake and eating it too. Hence, technology is starting to cross over into other industries demonstrating the powerful footprint tech has extracted in economics and the stock market.

The only solution is keeping companies accountable by a function of law or creating a third-party task force to regulate A.I., but as many can see, global governance is failing miserably already with keeping global citizens safe from the health crisis.

In 2020, the thought of overseeing robots sounds crazy.

...The future will be here sooner than you think.

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-13 09:02:592020-07-13 22:42:21Will A.I. Save Us?
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

July 8, 2020

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
July 8, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(TRADING THE BLUE WAVE STOCK MARKET),
(FB), (AAPL), (MSFT), (AMZN), (ADBE), (SQ), (PYPL), (CRM), (SGEN), (REGN), (ILMN) (FEYE), (PANW), (AMD), (MU), (NVDA), (TSLA), (LEN), (PHM), (KBH), (XOM), (CVX), (XOM), (RTN), (NOC), (LMT), (KOL), (X), (GE)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-08 09:04:532020-07-08 08:57:08July 8, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Trading the Blue Wave Stock Market

Diary, Newsletter

At this point, it is possible that the president may lose the November election.

He is 14 points behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the polls. The odds at the London betting polls have him losing by a similar amount. My old employer The Economist magazine in London gives him a 10% chance of winning using a mix of economic and polling data.

And this assumes the election is held today. The fact is that the president is digging himself into a deeper hole every day, taking the wrong side of every issue confronting the country today. He seems to be refighting the Civil War….and taking the Confederate side when even the State of Mississippi is taking its symbol off its flag.

So, what will the post-Trump world look like? Will taxes go through the roof? Will the market crash? Is it time to go 100% cash, change our names, and move to a country with no US extradition treaty?

I don’t think so. In fact, with stocks soaring to meteoric new highs every day, the market expects that a Biden administration will be great news for stocks, perhaps the best ever.

Taxes will certainly go up. Favorable tax treatment of the energy, real estate, and private equity funds will get axed. Carried interest will finally become history. Marginal tax rate on net income over $1 billion could get hiked to the Roosevelt levels of 80-90%.

Biden has already announced an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. That will cut earnings for the S&P 500 by $9 a share. But the stock market is not the economy, with S&P earnings only accounting for 10% of US GDP.

And the $9 companies lose in taxes they will make back and more from new government spending, which isn’t slowing down any time soon. Some 14,000 American bridges need to be rebuilt. The Interstate Highway System is a shambles. High-speed broadband needs to go rural. The electrification of the US needs to accelerate to accommodate the millions of electric cars headed our way.

I believe that eventually, 51 million Americans will lose their jobs as a result of the pandemic. Perhaps a third of those are never coming back because the future has been so accelerated. That will leave the broader U-6 Unemployment rate stuck in double digits for years, maybe for decades.

So, we’re going to need some kind of Roosevelt style programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) who built much of the monolithic infrastructure that we all enjoy today.

At least 300,000 educated workers could immediately be put to work in contact tracing. Millions more could be employed in national infrastructure programs. One thing is certain. A new administration won’t stop massive government spending, it will simply redirect it.

And let's face it. A Biden win would bring a big expansion of Obamacare. With the best healthcare technology in the world, private industry has done the world’s worst job controlling the pandemic.

Countries with well-run national healthcare systems like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore have almost wiped out the disease. This is why I am avoiding the healthcare sector for the foreseeable future.

Who are the big winners of all this? Big tech (FB), (AAPL), (MSFT), (AMZN), medium tech (ADBE), fintech (SQ), (PYPL), the cloud (CRM), and biotech (SGEN), (REGN), and (ILMN).

Cybersecurity will always be in demand (FEYE), (PANW). The global chip shortage will continue to worsen (AMD), (MU), (NVDA).

And Tesla (TSLA)? What can I say? It is already up nearly 100-fold from my initial $16.50 recommendation in 2010, and I’ve bought three Tesla’s (two S’s and an X).

Followers of the Mad Hedge Trade Alert service know that I am already long these names up the wazoo, and is why I am up 26% in 2020. It’s simply a matter of all pre-pandemic trends hyper-accelerating, which we were already tapped into.

If you have to add a purely domestic sector, a gigantic Millennial tailwind will keep homebuilders bubbling for years like (LEN), (PHM), and (KBH).

And while you won’t find me as a player here, retail will recover. The sector has not prospered during the current administration, thanks to a trade war with China and the pandemic.

And the losers? There is a classification of “Trump” stocks you don’t want to be anywhere near. Energy will do terribly (XOM), (CVX), (XOM), with Texas tea possibly revisiting negative numbers. If you take away the tax breaks, energy hasn’t really made money in decades.

Defense stocks (RTN), (NOC), (LMT) will take a big hit from budget cutbacks and fewer wars. Coal (KOL) will finally get shut down for good, probably sold to China in bankruptcy proceedings. Industrials will continue to lag (X), (GE), with no more free handouts from the government and no technology advantage.

So if Biden wins, you don’t need to slit your wrists, hang yourself from the showerhead, or cease investing completely. Just take your stock market winnings and go out and get drunk instead.

 

 

 

 

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-08 09:02:282020-07-08 08:56:44Trading the Blue Wave Stock Market
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

July 1, 2020

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 1, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(HOW THE “SPLINTERNET” IS TAKING OVER)
(TIKTOK), (FB), (GOOGL), (TWTR), (AMZN)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-01 10:04:042020-07-01 11:36:46July 1, 2020
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

How the “Splinternet” is Taking Over

Tech Letter

The balkanization of the internet is spiking in the short-term, knocking off the value of multiple Fortune 500 companies in one fell swoop.

In technology terms, this is frequently referred to as “splinternet.”

A quick explanation for the novices can be summed up by saying the splinternet is the fragmenting of the Internet, causing it to divide due to powerful forces such as technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, religion, and interests.

What investors are seeing now is a hard fork of the global tech game into a multi-pronged world of conflicting tech assets sparring for their own digital territory.

The epicenter of balkanization is now heart and center in West Asia polarizing the Indian and Chinese tech economy after a skirmish along the shared border.

This is fast becoming a winner-take-all affair.

India had to do something after 20 dead Indian soldiers felled by the Chinese Army stoked a wave of national outcry against regional rival China.

The backlash was swift with the Indian government banning 59 premium apps developed by China citing “national security and defense.”

The ban includes the short-form video platform TikTok, which counts India as its biggest overseas market.

TikTok was projected to easily breeze past 300 million Indian users by the end of 2020 and was clearly hardest hit out of all the apps.

India is the second biggest base of global internet users with nearly half of its 1.3 billion population online.

The government rolled out the typical national security playbook saying that the stockpiling of local Indian data in Chinese servers undermines national security.

The ruling will impact roughly one in three smartphone users in India. TikTok, Club Factory, and UC Browser and other apps in aggregate tally more than 500 million monthly active users in May 2020.

Highlighting the magnitude of this purge - 27 of these 59 apps were among the top 1,000 Android apps in India last month.

China dove headfirst into the Indian market with their smartphones, apps, and an array of hardware equipment. Now, that is all on hold and looks like a terrible mistake.

Chinese smartphone makers command more than 80% of the smartphone market in India, which is the world’s second largest.

One of the reasons Apple (AAPL) could never make any headway in China is because they were constantly undercut by predatory Chinese phone makers with stolen technology.

TikTok is also being eyed-up for bans in Europe and the United States recently as it constantly curries to Beijing’s every whim by banning content unfavorable to the Chinese communist party and rerouting data back to servers in China.

I am surprised it hasn’t happened yet with an abundant phalanx of Chinese hawks in the conservative administration.

To be fair, China has rolled out the same playbook before when the state spews out nationalist narratives triggering local furor that resulted in bashing Japanese-made cars or shuttering Korean supermarket.

Chinese tech is clearly the main loser for their government’s “distract its own people at all costs” campaign to shield themselves from the epic contagion of the lingering pandemic.

What does this mean for American tech?

For one, India will strengthen ties with the U.S., being the biggest democracy in Asia, meaning a massive foreign policy loss and loss of face for the Chinese communist regime.

The resulting losses for Chinese tech will usher in a new generation of local Indian tech with Silicon Valley being the next in line playing the role of a wingman.

Even though the U.S. avoided the carnage from this round of balkanization, the situation in Europe is tenuous, to say the least.

Fault lines will compound the problem of a multinational tech revenue machine and the relationship with France is on the verge of becoming fractious.

I believe if the relationship worsens with the Europeans - France, Germany, and Britain could ban big tech companies like Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), Google (GOOGL).

This would be a massive blow to not only revenue streams but also global prestige for American tech.

The U.S. is still licking its wounds after the EU announced a travel ban on American tourists who hoped to re-enter the Schengen Zone on its reopening on July 1st.

Not only do Silicon Valley leaders see a murky future outside its borders, but digital territories are also getting carved out as we speak domestically.

Amazon (AMZN)-owned Twitch and Twitter have clamped down on U.S. President Donald Trump’s account.

This could quickly spiral into a left-versus-right war in which there are competing apps for different political beliefs and for every subgenre of apps.

This would effectively mean a balkanization of tech assets within U.S. borders and division is the last thing Silicon Valley wants.

Silicon Valley wants products sold to the largest addressable market possible.  

The balkanization of the internet is now turning into an equally high risk as the antitrust and regulatory issues.

The issues keep piling up, but nothing has been able to topple big tech yet as they lead the broader market out of the pandemic.

The key point to understand is that these are growing risks until they blow up in front of your eyes and become the next black swan like Covid-19.

Let’s hope that never happens.  

splinternet

SUPERCHARGING THE BALKANIZATION OF THE INTERNET

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/balkans.png 199 484 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-07-01 10:02:012020-07-01 19:59:31How the “Splinternet” is Taking Over
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

June 29, 2020

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 29, 2020
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(TIME TO DO SOME SHOPPING AT ETSY)
(ETSY), (AMZN)

https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png 0 0 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2020-06-29 11:04:572020-06-29 12:50:23June 29, 2020
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