(JPM) Archives - Page 27 of 30 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Bad Omens are There

The Omens are there.

I am normally a pretty positive guy.

But I was having a beer at Schwarzee at the base of the Matterhorn the other day, just having completed the climb up to the Hornli Hut at 10,758 feet. I carefully watched with my binoculars three helicopters circle the summit of the mountain, around the Solvay Hut.

These were not sightseeing tours. The pilots were taking great risks to retrieve bodies.

I learned at the Bergfuhrerverein Zermatt the next day that one of their men was taking up an American client to the summit. The man reached for a handhold and the rock broke loose, taking both men to their deaths. The Mountain Guide Service of Zermatt is a lot like the US Marine Corps. They always retrieve their dead.

It is an accident that could have happened to anyone. I have been over that route many times. If there was ever an omen of trouble to come, this was it.

The markets are sending out a few foreboding warnings of their own. Friday’s Q2 GDP report came in at a better than expected 2.1%, versus 3.1% in Q1.

Yet the Dow Average was up only a meager 51.47 points when it should have gained 500. It is an old market nostrum that if markets can’t rally on good news, you get the hell out of Dodge. Zermatt too.

It is the slowest US growth in two years. The trade war gets the blame, with falling exports offsetting healthy consumer spending. With the $1.5 trillion tax cut now spent, nothing is left but the debt. 2020 recession fears are running rampant, so paying all-time highs for stock prices is not a great idea.

You might be celebrating last week’s budget deal which heads off a September government shutdown. But it boosts the national debt from $22 to $24 trillion, or $72,000 per American. As with everything else with this administration, a short-term gain is achieved at a very high long-term cost.

Boris Johnson, the pro-Brexit activist, was named UK prime minister. It virtually guarantees a recession there and will act as an additional drag on the US economy. Global businesses will accelerate their departure from London to Paris and Berlin.

The end result may be a disunited kingdom, with Scotland declaring independence in order to stay in the EC, and Northern Ireland splitting off to create a united emerald island. The stock market there will crater and the pound (FXB) will go to parity against the greenback.

The European economy is already in a downward spiral, with German economic data flat on its back. GDP growth has shrunk from 2.0% to 0.7%. It seems we are not buying enough Mercedes, BMWs, and Volkswagens.

Yields on ten-year German bunds hit close to an all-time low at -0.39%. The Euro (FXE) is looking at a breakdown through parity. The country’s largest financial institution, Deutsche Bank, is about to go under. No one here wants to touch equities there. It’s all about finding more bonds.

Soaring Chip Stocks took NASDAQ to new high. I have to admit I missed this one, not expecting a recovery until the China trade war ended. Chip prices are still falling, and volume is shrinking. We still love (AMD), (MU), and (NVDA) long term as obviously do current buyers.

Existing Home Sales fell off a cliff, down 1.7% in June to a seasonally adjusted 5.27 million units. Median Home Prices jumped 4.7% to $287,400. A shortage of entry-level units at decent prices get the blame. Ultra-low interest rates are having no impact.

JP Morgan (JPM) expects stocks to dive in Q3, driven by earnings downgrades for 2020. Who am I to argue with Jamie Diamond? Don’t lose what you made in H1 chasing rich stocks in H2. Everyone I know is bailing on the market and I am 100% cash going into this week’s Fed meeting up 18.33% year-to-date. I made 3.06% in July in only two weeks.

Alphabet (GOOGL) beat big time, sending the shares up 8% in aftermarket trading. Q2 revenues soared 19% YOY to an eye-popping $39.7 billion. It’s the biggest gain in the stock in four years, to $1,226. The laggard FANG finally catches up. The weak first quarter is now long forgotten.

Amazon (AMZN) delivered a rare miss, as heavy investment spending on more market share offset sales growth, taking the shares down 1%. Amazon Prime membership now tops 100 million. Q3 is also looking weak.

Intel (INTC) surged on chip stockpiling, taking the stock up 5% to $54.70. Customers in China stockpiled chips ahead of a worsening trade war. Q3 forecasts are looking even better. Sale of its 5G modem chip business to Apple is seen as a huge positive.

I've finally headed home, after a peripatetic six-week, 18-flight trip around the world meeting clients. I bailed on the continent just in time to escape a record heatwave, with Paris hitting 105 degrees and London 101, where it was so hot that people were passing out on the non-air conditioned underground.

Avoid energy stocks. The outcry over global warming is about to get very loud. I’ll write a more detailed report on the trip when I get a break in the market.

My strategy of avoiding stocks and only investing in weak dollar plays like bonds (TLT), foreign exchange (FXA), and copper (FCX) performed well. After spending a few weeks out of the market, it’s amazing how clear things become. The clouds lift and the fog disperses.

My Global Trading Dispatch has hit a new high for the year at +18.33% and has earned a robust 3.09% so far in July. Nothing like coming out of the blocks for an uncertain H2 on a hot streak. I’m inclined to stay in cash until the Fed interest rate decision on Wednesday.

My ten-year average annualized profit bobbed up to +33.23%. With the markets now in the process of peaking out for the short term, I am now 100% in cash with Global Trading Dispatch and 100% cash in the Mad Hedge Tech Letter. If there is one thing supporting the market now, it is the fact that my Mad Hedge Market Timing Index has pulled back to a neutral 60. It’s a Goldilocks level, not too hot and not too cold.

The coming week will be a big one on the data front, with one big bombshell on Wednesday and the Payroll data on Friday.

On Monday, July 29, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index is out.

On Tuesday, July 30, we get June Pending Home Sales. A new Case Shiller S&P National Home Price Index is published. Look for YOY gains to shrink.

On Wednesday, July 31, at 8:30 AM, learn the ADP Private Employment Report. At 2:00 PM, the Fed interest rate decision is released and an extended press conference follows. If they don’t cut rates, there will be hell to pay.

On Thursday, August 1 at 8:30 AM, the Weekly Jobless Claims are printed.

On Friday, August 2 at 8:30 AM, we get the July Nonfarm Payroll Report. Recent numbers have been hot so that is likely to continue.

The Baker Hughes Rig Count follows at 2:00 PM.

As for me, by the time you read this, I will have walked the 25 minutes from my Alpine chalet down to the Zermatt Bahnhoff, ridden the picturesque cog railway down to Brig, and picked up an express train through the 12-mile long Simplon Tunnel to Milan, Italy.

Then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend winging my way home to San Francisco in cramped conditions on Air Italy. Yes, I had to get a few more cappuccinos and a good Italian dinner before coming home.

Now, on with the task of doubling my performance by yearend.

Good luck and good trading.

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

June 3, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
June 3, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(MONDAY, JUNE 24 MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA STRATEGY LUNCHEON)
(MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, OR WHAT A WASTE OF TIME!),
(SPY), ($INDU), (JPM), (MSFT), (AMZN), (TSLA)

The Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or What a Waste of Time!

Diary, Newsletter

“Sell in May and go away” has long suffered from the slings and arrows of non-believers, naysayers, and debunkers.

Not this time.

Looking at the trading since April 30, we have barely seen an up day. Since then, the Dow Average has plunged 1,900 points from a 26,700 high, a loss of 7.1%. We are now sitting right at my initial downside target of the 200-day moving average.

The Dow has now given up virtually all its 2019 gains, picking up only 2.0%. In fact, the market is dead unchanged since the end of 2017. If you have been an index investor for the past 17 months, your return has been about zero. In other words, it has been a complete waste of time.

There are a lot of things I would have preferred to do rather than invest in index funds for the past year and a half. I could have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail….twice. I might have taken six Cunard round-the-world cruises and met several rich widows along the way. I might even have become fluent in Italian and Latin. Such is the value of 20-20 hindsight.

You would have done much better investing in the bond market, which has exploded to a new two-year high, taking the ten-year US Treasury yield down to a once unimaginable 2.16%. During the same period, the (TLT) has gained 11 points, or 9.0% plus another 3.0% worth of interest. You did even better if you invested in lower grade credits.

Which leads us to the big question: Will stocks bottom out here, or are we in for a full-on retrace to the December lows?

Unfortunately, recent events have conspired to point to the latter.

The United States has now declared trade wars against all neighbors and allies around the world: China, Mexico, Europe, and Canada. On Friday, it announced 25% punitive tariffs against Mexico before NAFTA 2.0 was even ratified before Congress, thus rendering it meaningless. Businesses are dropping like flies.

As a result, GDP forecasts have been falling off a cliff, down from 3.2% in Q1 to under 1% for Q2. The administration’s economic policy seems to be a pain now, and more pain later. It is absolutely not what stock investors want to hear.

If you are a business owner now, what do you do with the global supply chain being put through a ringer? Sit as firmly on your hands as possible and do nothing, waiting for either the policy or the administration to change. Stock investors don’t want to hear this either. The fact that stock markets entered this cluster historically expensively is the fat on the fire.

Having hummed the bear national anthem, I would like to point out that stocks could rally from here. We enter a new month on Monday. There will be plenty of opportunities to make amends and the G-20 meeting which starts on June 20. This should provide a backdrop for a rally of at least one-third of the recent losses, or about 600 points.

But quite honestly, if that happens, I’ll be a seller. The economy is doing the best impression of going down the toilet that I can recall, and that includes 2008. Only this time, all the injuries are self-inflicted.

As the trade war ramped up, China moved to ban FedEx (FDX) and restrict rare earth exports (REMX) to the US essential for all electronics manufacture. Most modern weapons systems can’t be built without rare earths. The big question in investors' minds becomes “Is Apple next?”

The OECD cut its global growth forecast from 3.9% to 3.1% for 2019 because of you know what. Stock markets are now down for their sixth week as the 200-day moving average comes within striking distance.

There was more bad news for real estate with April Pending Home Sales down 1.5%. If rates this low can’t help it, nothing will. Where are those SALT deductions?

The bear market in home prices continued in March with the Case Shiller CoreLogic National Home Price Index showing a 3.7% annual price gain, down 0.2%. Home price in San Francisco is posting negative numbers. When will those low-interest rates kick in?

The bond market says the recession is already here with ten-year interest rates at 2.16%, a new 2019 low. German bunds hit negative -0.21%. JP Morgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Diamond says the trade war could cause real damage to the US economy.

US Capital Goods fell out of bed in April, down 0.9%, in another important pre-recession indicator. No company with sentient management wants to expand capacity ahead of an economic slowdown.

Despite all the violence and negativity, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader managed to crawl to new all-time highs last week, thanks to some very conservative positioning on the long side in the right names.

Those would include Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Tesla (TSLA). All of these names were down on the week, but the vertical bull call spreads were up. You see, there is a method to my madness!

Global Trading Dispatch closed the week up 16.30% year-to-date and is up 0.51% so far in May. My trailing one-year declined to +19.71%.

The Mad Hedge Technology Letter did fine, making money on longs in Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN). Some 10 out of 13 Mad Hedge Technology Letter round trips have been profitable this year.

My nine and a half year profit jumped to +316.55%. The average annualized return popped to +33.32%. With the trade war with China raging, I am now 70% in cash with Global Trading Dispatch and 80% cash in the Mad Hedge Tech Letter.

I’ll wait until the markets enjoy a brief short-covering rally before adding any short positions to hedge my longs.

The coming week will be a big one with the trifecta of big jobs reports.

On Monday, June 3 at 7:00 AM, the May US Manufacturing PMI is out.

On Tuesday, June 4, 9:00 AM EST, the April US Factory Orders are published.

On Wednesday, June 5 at 5:15 AM, the May US ADP Employment Report of private hiring trends is released.

On Thursday, June 6 at 5:30 AM, the April US Balance of Trade is printed. At 8:30 Weekly Jobless Claims are published.

On Friday, June 7 at 8:30 AM, we learn the May Nonfarm Payroll Report is announced which lately has been incredibly volatile.

As for me, I am going to be leading the local Boy Scout troop on a 20-mile hike with a 2,500-foot vertical climb in the Oakland Hills. Hey, you never know when Uncle Sam is going to come calling again. I need to stay boot camp-ready at all times.

At least I can still outpace the eleven-year-olds. I’ll be leaving my 60-pound pack in the garage so it should be a piece of cake.

Good luck and good trading.

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

April 1, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
April 1, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE NEXT TECH BUBBLE TOP HAS STARTED)
(LYFT), (PIN), (UBER), (AAPL), (JPM), (FB)

The Next Tech Bubble Top Has Started

Tech Letter

Don't go chasing rainbows.

That is what the current tech IPO environment is hinting.

Even though market conditions are frothy, that doesn't mean I'm calling a market top today, hardly so.

I predicted that Lyft (LYFT) would storm out of the gate like a bull on ecstasy, and I was vindicated when the stock flirted intraday with the $87 mark.

The scarcity value of these gig economy companies is hard to quantify.

Examples Uber unduly promise ambition and innovation leading to hopes of a possible air transport service and sharing network that I would need to see to believe.

The built-up expectations smell of over-promising and under-delivering, the majority won’t be able to deliver merely half of what their manifestos promulgate

As I put my analyst hat on, the 2019 IPO frenzy coming online has some of the same fingerprints of the infamous dot com bust of 2001.

The two main trends symbolic of the last time the tech industry disentangled were overly generous valuation, pricing in revenue expansion of 80% for the next five years when the leader of the pack Microsoft (MSFT) only grew at 50%.

A tantalizing clue was the utterly deficient cash flow generated back then.

The underlying premise revolved around putting the network effect on a pedestal irrespective of understanding that the network effect should have caused cash flow to accelerate which was conspicuously absent.

Losing money and losing a lot of it does lead to paralysis, examples were rife, for instance, priceline.com losing $30 on each air ticket sold.

Even more hard to fathom was that Priceline was stretching itself to the limits on the open market filling ticket orders because of a dearth of inventory steepening losses.

Priceline gushed about a unique business model of collecting excess ticket inventory that airlines couldn't sell at low cost and reskinning them to a digital audience hoping to take advantage of this price dispersion.

But in reality, this wasn’t always the case.

Priceline was on a suicide mission and expanding from 50 employees to 300 employees based upon misleading growth was madness.

In a nutshell, investors bypassed pragmatic arithmetic and were lifted by the fumes of exuberance that had manifested around the euphoria of the tech bubble.

Lyft is not revolutionary, they are a broker which occupy a low position in the spectrum of tech intellectual property.

Exploiting drivers, compensating them per hour, and letting them figure out their own cost structures for car insurance, fuel costs, and opportunity cost while offering zero benefits is a court battle waiting to happen in California.

And if your response was the way they craft value is by way of a proprietary app, well, Google, Apple, or even Netflix can produce the same type of app and quality of app in a few weeks with their legendary phalanx of top-tier engineering talent.

To Lyft’s credit, they have at least collected the treasure trove of data the app has compiled which is extraordinarily valuable.

The top of the tech bubble means that big tech is overreaching into any revenue they can get their hands on like a heroin addict yearning for the next syringe.

The environment has transformed into an eerily zero-sum game, such as Apple (AAPL) cooperating with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) to create Apple pay, and then instantly flipping around to compete with JPMorgan Chase in the credit card space with Apple Pay being an accomplice.

Big tech has sown the seeds of discord by quietly attempting to trample on any analog business they can get near.

Leveraging the network effect of billions of users in a proprietary walled garden to extract the incremental dollar for a new service is impossible to compete with for analog companies without a similar embedded on-demand audience.

Lyft co-founder and CEO Logan Green mentioned in an interview that in the next five year, he plans to deploy a subscription service coined as transportation-as-a-service like a software-as-a-service option which cloud platforms sell.

A fight to the bottom with Uber will cause major disruption in the pricing mechanisms of the subscription service and could force Lyft to earn less revenue per ride than the current pricing system.

Investors need to remember that Uber is bigger than Lyft and possessed more ammunition.

At the end of the day, the race to the bottom is never good for profitability or sustainability, and Lyft has yet to provide any substantial clues on how they will navigate through this quagmire.

My guess is that Lyft will have to do a deal with the devil of sorts to slang its branded broker app onto the cresting wave of Waymo as Waymo motors ahead and starts to materially monetize its self-driving program.

Remember that Alphabet already has a small stake in Lyft and these two could partner up with Alphabet dictating terms.

Lyft cannot compete with the holy grail of tech - self-driving technology – they are way down the tech value chain.

If we look at the bigger picture, the broader market has been riding the coattails of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s 180-degree turn from winter’s statement that interest rate tightening was on “autopilot.”

Now, there is only a 27% chance given by the market that the Fed will raise rates at all in 2019.

The market responded with strength begetting strength allowing the bull run to continue and even whispers of a possible rate cut later this year.

Sentiment will not change until we get to the point when earnings can’t surpass the expectation which have been lowered substantially.

I bet this won’t happen until late this year or next year.

This is inning 8 or 9 of the bull crusade, the closer is warming up in the bullpen.

Lyft’s opening day gallop is just one of the side effects from a market that is toppy.

March 22, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
March 22, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(I HAVE AN OPENING FOR THE MAD HEDGE FUND TRADER CONCIERGE SERVICE),
(MARCH 20 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(BA), (FCX), (IWM), (JNJ), (FXB), (VIX), (JPM)

March 20 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader March 20 Global Strategy Webinar with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!

Q: What do you make of the Fed’s move today in interest rates?

A: By cutting short their balance sheet unwind early and ending quantitative tightening (QT) early, it amounts to two surprise interest rate cuts and is hugely “RISK ON”. In effect, they are injecting $2.7 trillion in new cash into the financial system. New highs in stocks beckon, and technology stocks will lead. This is a game changer. In a heartbeat, the world has moved from QT to QE, and we already know what that means for socks. They go up.

Q: Why buy Boeing shares (BA) ahead of a global recession?

A: It’s an 18-day bet that I’ve made in the options market. The US economic data is already indicating recession. The data will continue to worsen and that will continue until we go into a recession. But that’s not happening in 18 trading days. Also, we’re getting into Boeing down 20% from the top so our risk is minimal.

Q: Why are we in an open Russell 2000 (IWM) short position?

A: We now have three long positions— 40% on the long side with the Freeport McMoRan (FCX) double position. It’s always nice to have something on the other side to hedge sudden 145-point declines like we have today. Ideally, you want to be hedged at all times. But it’s hard to fund good companies to sell short in a bull market.

Q: Do you need some euphoria to get the Volatility Index (VIX) to the $30-$60 level?

A: No, you don’t need euphoria. You need fear and panic. The (VIX) is a good “fear index” in that it rises when markets are crashing and falling when markets are slowly rising. And for that reason, I’m not buying (VIX) right now. With a sideways to slowly rising market, we could see the $9 handle again before this move is over.

Q: What should be the exit on the Russell 2000 (IWM)?

A: One choice is taking 80% of the maximum profit when you hit it—that’s where the risk-reward tips against you if you keep the position. The other option is to be greedy and run it all the way into expiration, taking the full profit. It depends on your risk tolerance. Remember, we hit the 80% profit three times in March only to stop out of positions for a loss. The market just doesn’t seem to want to let you take the whole 100%.

Q: Why are all your expirations on April 18?

A: That’s when the monthly options expire; therefore, they have the most liquidity of any other option expiration. If you go with the weeklies before or after the monthlies, the liquidity declines dramatically, which can be very frustrating. Since I used to cover only the largest clients, we could only trade in monthlies because we needed the size.

Q: Will Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) survive all those talcum powder lawsuits?

A: They’ve been going on for 10 years—you’d think they’d know by now if they have asbestos in their talcum powder or not. I highly doubt this will get anywhere; they’ll probably win everything on appeal.

Q: What do you anticipate on Brexit?

A: I think eventually Brexit will fail; we’ll have a referendum which will get voted down, Britain will rejoin Europe, and the British pound (FXB) will go to $1.65 to the dollar where it was when Brexit hit three years ago, up from $1.29 today. It would be economic suicide for Britain to leave Europe, as they would have to compete against Europe, the US, and China alone, and they are slowly figuring that out. Demographic change alone over three years would guarantee that another referendum fails.

Q: My partner owns JP Morgan (JPM). Do you still say banks are not a good place to be?

A: Yes. Fintech is eating their lunch. If they couldn't go up with interest rates moving up in the right direction, they certainly won’t be doing better now that interest rates are going down. Legacy banks are the new buggy whip industry.

Q: Why are commodities (FCX) increasing with a coming recession?

A: They are a hard asset and do better in inflation. Also, they’re stimulating their economy in China and we aren't—commodities do better in that situation as China is the world’s largest buyer of commodities, as do all Chinese investments.

Q: Would you buy Biogen (BIIB) on the dip? Its down 30% today.

A: Canceling their advanced phase three trials for the Alzheimer drug Aducanumab is the worst-case scenario for a biotech company. Some $12 billion in prospective income is down the toilet and many years of R&D costs are a complete write-off. Avoid (BIIB) until the dust settles.

January 17, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
January 17, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(WHY FINTECH IS EATING THE BANKS’ LUNCH),
(WFC), (JPM), (BAC), (C), (GS), (XLF), (PYPL), (SQ), (SPOT), (FINX), (INTU)

Why FinTech is Eating the Banks’ Lunch

Tech Letter

Going into January 2018, the big banks were highlighted as the pocket of the equity market that would most likely benefit from a rising rate environment which in turn boosts net interest margins (NIM).

Fast forward a year and take a look at the charts of Bank of America (BAC), Citibank (C), JP Morgan (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Morgan Stanley (GS), and each one of these mainstay banking institutions are down between 10%-20% from January 2018.

Take a look at the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) that backs up my point.

And that was after a recent 10% move up at the turn of the calendar year.

As much as it pains me to say it, bloated American banks have been completely caught off-guard by the mesmerizing phenomenon that is FinTech.

Banking is the latest cohort of analog business to get torpedoes by the brash tech start-up culture.

This is another fitting example of what will happen when you fail to evolve and overstep your business capabilities allowing technology to move into the gaps of weakness.

Let me give you one example.

I was most recently in Tokyo, Japan and was out of cash in a country that cash is king.

Japan has gone a long way to promoting a cashless society, but some things like a classic sushi dinner outside the old Tsukiji Fish Market can’t always be paid by credit card.

I found an ATM to pull out a few hundred dollars’ worth of Japanese yen.

It was already bad enough that the December 2018 sell-off meant a huge rush into the safe haven currency of the Japanese Yen.

The Yen moved from 114 per $1 down to 107 in one month.

That was the beginning of the bad news.

I whipped out my Wells Fargo debit card to withdraw enough cash and the fees accrued were nonsensical.

Not only was I charged a $5 fixed fee for using a non-Wells Fargo ATM, but Wells Fargo also charged me 3% of the total amount of the transaction amount.

Then I was hit on the other side with the Japanese ATM slamming another $5 fixed fee on top of that for a non-Japanese ATM withdrawal.

For just a small withdrawal of a few hundred dollars, I was hit with a $20 fee just to receive my money in paper form.

Paper money is on their way to being artifacts.

This type of price gouging of banking fees is the next bastion of tech disruption and that is what the market is telling us with traditional banks getting hammered while a strong economy and record profits can’t entice investors to pour money into these stocks.

FinTech will do what most revolutionary technology does, create an enhanced user experience for cheaper prices to the consumers and wipe the greedy traditional competition that was laughing all the way to the bank.

The best example that most people can relate to on a daily basis is the transportation industry that was turned on its head by ride-sharing mavericks Uber and Lyft.

But don’t ask yellow cab drivers how they think about these tech companies.

Highlighting the strong aversion to traditional banking business is Slack, the workplace chat app, who will follow in the footsteps of online music streaming platform Spotify (SPOT) by going public this year without doing a traditional IPO.

What does this mean for the traditional banks?

Less revenue.

Slack will list directly and will set its own market for the sale of shares instead of leaning on an investment bank to stabilize the share price.

Recent tech IPOs such as Apptio, Nutanix and Twilio all paid 7% of the proceeds of their offering to the underwriting banks resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Directly listings will cut that fee down to $10-20 million, a far cry from what was once status quo and a historical revenue generation machine for Wall Street.

This also layers nicely with my general theme of brokers of all types whether banking, transportation, or in the real estate market gradually be rooted out by technology.

In the world of pervasive technology and free information thanks to Google search, brokers have never before added less value than they do today.

Slowly but surely, this trend will systematically roam throughout the economic landscape culling new victims.

And then there are the actual FinTech companies who are vying to replace the traditional banks with leaner tech models saving money by avoiding costly brick and mortar branches that dot American suburbs.

PayPal (PYPL) has been around forever, but it is in the early stages of ramping up growth.

That doesn’t mean they have a weak balance sheet and their large embedded customer base approaching 250 million users has the network effect most smaller FinTech players lack.

PayPal is directly absorbing market share from the big banks as they have rolled out debit cards and other products that work well for millennials.

They are the owners of Venmo, the super-charged peer-to-peer payment app wildly popular amongst the youth.

Shares of PayPal’s have risen over 200% in the past 2 years and as you guessed, they don’t charge those ridiculous fees that banks do.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America charge a $12 monthly fee for balances that dip below $1,500 at the end of any business day.

Your account at PayPal can have a balance of 0 and there will never be any charge whatsoever.

Then there is the most innovative FinTech company Square who recently locked in a new lease at the Uptown Station in Downtown Oakland expanding their office space by 365,000 square feet for over 2,000 employees.

Square is led by one of the best tech CEOs in Silicon Valley Jack Dorsey.

Not only is the company madly innovative looking to pounce on any pocket of opportunity they observe, but they are extremely diversified in their offerings by selling point of sale (POS) systems and offering an online catering service called Caviar.

They also offer software for Square register for payroll services, large restaurants, analytics, location management, employee management, invoices, and Square capital that provides small loans to businesses and many more.

On average, each customer pays for 3.4 Square software services that are an incredible boon for their software-as-a-service (SaaS) portfolio.

An accelerating recurring revenue stream is the holy grail of software business models and companies who execute this model like Microsoft (MSFT) and Salesforce (CRM) are at the apex of their industry.

The problem with trading this stock is that it is mind-numbingly volatile. Shares sold off 40% in the December 2018 meltdown, but before that, the shares doubled twice in the past two years.

Therefore, I do not promote trading Square short-term unless you have a highly resistant stomach for elevated volatility.

This is a buy and hold stock for the long-term.

And that was only just two companies that are busy redrawing the demarcation lines.

There are others that are following in the same direction as PayPal and Square based in Europe.

French startup Shine is a company building an alternative to traditional bank accounts for freelancers working in France.

First, download the app.

The company will guide you through the simple process — you need to take a photo of your ID and fill out a form.

It almost feels like signing up to a social network and not an app that will store your money.

You can send and receive money from your Shine account just like in any banking app.

After registering, you receive a debit card.

You can temporarily lock the card or disable some features in the app, such as ATM withdrawals and online payments.

Since all these companies are software thoroughbreds, improvement to the platform is swift making the products more efficient and attractive.

There are other European mobile banks that are at the head of the innovation curve namely Revolut and N26.

Revolut, in just 6 months, raised its valuation from $350 million to $1.7 billion in a dazzling display of growth.

Revolut’s core product is a payment card that celebrates low fees when spending abroad—but even more, the company has swiftly added more and more additional financial services, from insurance to cryptocurrency trading and current accounts.

Remember my little anecdote of being price-gouged in Tokyo by Wells Fargo, here would be the solution.

Order a Revolut debit card, the card will come in the mail for a small fee.

Customers then can link a simple checking account to the Revolut debit card ala PayPal.

Why do this?

Because a customer armed with a Revolut debit card linked to a bank account can use the card globally and not be charged any fees.

It would be the same as going down to your local Albertson’s and buying a six-pack, there are no international or hidden fees.

There are no foreign transaction fees and the exchange rate is always the mid-market rate and not some manipulated rate that rips you off.

Ironically enough, the premise behind founding this online bank was exactly that, the originators were tired of meandering around Europe and getting hammered in every which way by inflexible banks who could care less about the user experience.

Revolut’s founder, Nikolay Storonsky, has doubled down on the firm’s growth prospects by claiming to reach the goal of 100 million customers by 2023 and a succession of new features.

To say this business has been wildly popular in Europe is an understatement and the American version just came out and is ready to go.

Since December 2018, Revolut won a specialized banking license from the European Central Bank, facilitated by the Bank of Lithuania which allows them to accept deposits and offer consumer credit products.

N26, a German like-minded online bank, echo the same principles as Revolut and eclipsed them as the most valuable FinTech startup with a $2.7 Billion Valuation.

N26 will come to America sometime in the spring and already boast 2.3 million users.

They execute in five languages across 24 countries with 700 staff, most recently launching in the U.K. last October with a high-profile marketing blitz across the capital.

Most of their revenue is subscription-based paying homage to the time-tested recurring revenue theme that I have harped on since the inception of the Mad Hedge Technology Letter.

And possibly the best part of their growth is that the average age of their customer is 31 which could be the beginning of a beautiful financial relationship that lasts a lifetime.

N26’s basic current account is free, while “Black” and “Metal” cards include higher ATM withdrawal limits overseas and benefits such as travel insurance and WeWork membership for a monthly fee.

Sad to say but Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and the others just can’t compete with the velocity of the new offerings let alone the software-backed talent.

We are at an inflection point in the banking system and there will be carnage to the hills, may I even say another Lehman moment for one of these stale business models.

Online banking is here to stay, and the momentum is only picking up steam.

If you want to take the easy way out, then buy the Global X FinTech ETF (FINX) with an assortment of companies exposed to FinTech such as PayPal, Square, and Intuit (INTU).

The death of cash is sooner than you think.

This year is the year of FinTech and I’m not afraid to say it.