Global Market Comments
September 12, 2018
Fiat Lux
THE FUTURE OF AI ISSUE
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Mad Hedge Technology Letter
September 4, 2018
Fiat Lux
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The technology-laced film Ready Player One gives viewers a snapshot into the future where technology, income inequality, and society have run their course, and the year 2045 looks vastly different from the world of 2018.
Set in a semi-dystopian backdrop, the movie offers us a deeper insight into how certain technology trends will permeate into everyday life.
The first and most obvious future trend is the copious use of avatars.
Avatars will become the new normal. The first place that humans will find them is through the use of social media and entertainment, as children eventually becoming a part of us like our social media profiles today.
The Mad Hedge Technology Letter has incessantly hammered home about the phenomenon of gaming, and this will incorporate virtual reality allowing gamers access to a new digital world.
This was the on show in the film where the likes of protagonist Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan spent most of his life playing in the virtual world of Oasis using his character Parzival.
This could be your child in the future.
Wade Watts character is the new cool for Generation Z, as they are largely unconcerned about underage drinking and partying like the generations before them.
Gaming and hanging out on their preferred social media platforms are the new cool.
The companies dictating the current video game industry will have the first crack at it to realize profits and develop new businesses such as Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (TTWO), and Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI).
Children just aren’t going outside like they used to and per most studies, they are addicted to the smartphone you bought them at age 10.
Most studies have found that once a child becomes hooked on technology, it is hard to reverse the habit, as once they enter into adult life and start their career, they become even more reliant on the technologies that got them to that point in the first place.
If your kid is already staring at tech devices three to four hours per day now for activities other than school work, expect that to grow to a minimum of six to seven hours per day once he hits puberty and smartphone time limits begin to fade away.
This all means that VR and gaming could be the handsome winner in all this, and the use of social media platforms will reap the benefits as well.
Generation Z just surpassed Millennials in terms of population comprising 25% of the American populace.
Neither of these generations have grown up with VR in their daily lives because the technology wasn’t advanced enough to really make a dent in their lives.
More than 75% of Generation Z has access to a smartphone, and they can truly be called the first generation of digital natives.
Avatars will push deeper into everyday life because the facial tracking technology has advanced by leaps and bounds.
Instead of cartoon-like avatars, lifelike avatars have replaced the less refined versions. It will be a tough time going forward distinguishing what is real and what is fake.
If you think fake news is a problem now, imagine how fake it will become in the future.
This could devastate the news industry as news organizations run the risk of melting down at any point, or just being completely taken over by tech companies and their algorithms, which is already happening now with Alphabet (GOOGL).
The future looks bleak for all newspaper assets, and the ones with the most advanced digital strategies will survive.
Newspapers only have so much time they can hang on with digital ad revenue, the reason they are still in business.
Viewers don’t want to see ads – period. And at some point, they will be disrupted as well.
Swashbuckling youth already have downloaded ad-blockers to completely remove ads from their lives, and refuse to open any website that forces them to white list a website.
There are children in Generation Z who might never have seen an ad before because their digital native capability allows them to navigate around ads with adept skill.
Or the easy solution for many Millennials is just watch Netflix because the platform is ad-less. The aversion to ads is so strong that traditional media giants such as Fox are experimenting with six-second ads because that is all a viewer can tolerate these days.
The traditional media giants were forced to adopt this new format after Alphabet’s YouTube rolled out micro-ads.
Popular browser Mozilla announced it will block all tracking scripts by default beginning in 2019, thwarting unregulated data collection and relentless ad pop-ups.
The reason why digital ads will have an existential crisis is because companies will be able to monetize the pure data, forcing companies with huge digital ad businesses such as Facebook (FB) to battle with the new competition that only wants your data and not hawk ads.
This is already happening in the e-brokerage space with disruptors such as Robinhood, which charges no commission and is more interested in collecting data and getting by with interest payment revenue.
Let’s face it, digital ads are not a high-quality business even though they are a high-margin business. As tech moves forward, the quality of tech will rise eliminating all low-grade tech that is still profiting in 2018.
On the business side of things, automation is replacing humans faster than humans realize, and the replacement will be an avatar representing the face of a company.
For lower-end services, an avatar chosen by the customer will populate to often give better service than a human can provide.
If this type of service is scaled, it would offer a massive cut in costs for American corporations saving on employee costs.
It will have the same effect that self-checkout kiosks have at supermarkets, wiping out another position at the low-end.
The front-end avatar that will service you is all possible because of the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.
Every possible situation will be programmed in the software and executed briskly.
If customers desire the human touch, they will have to pay up.
Human interaction will command a premium price because human interaction cannot be automated.
The financial industry has a huge target on its back, and swaths of financial advisors could be sacked in favor of avatars with the functional software behind it to produce profits.
In fact, many financial advisors are instructed to refrain from recommendations now and urged to collect input to enter into a proprietary algorithm that will decide the customers’ portfolio.
Big banks have enjoyed their time in the sun, but technology will disrupt them in the near future. This is why you have seen huge run-ups in innovative fintech companies such as Square (SQ) and PayPal (PYPL).
Many forms of outside entertainment are on the chopping block, as well as indoor entertainment such as Hollywood.
Hollywood A-list actors command hefty premiums to contract their services, and that could all crumble if younger audiences prefer avatar-based films with the human roles performed by unknowns.
Johnny Depp earns more than $50 million for one movie, and these insane amounts could deflate rapidly if human participation in films becomes marginalized.
Ready Player One was a test case for how much technology could be infused into a movie, and the audience easily absorbed it.
I could argue that audiences could argue even more in this VR format.
The movie had a budget of $175 million, and returned $582 million at the box office.
The resounding success will encourage more directors to inject technology into their movies, and they will have to, if they hope to tempt younger audiences to the movie theater.
Going to the movie theater is another activity that has struggled to cope against the rise of Netflix and technology.
Theaters have been forced to improve the overall experience of watching a film with prime seating, comfortable seats, and other extras that never existed.
Every industry is going through the same headache of competing with technological disruption.
Stagnation is akin to surrendering in 2018.
And it wasn’t just a fringe director creating Ready Player One, it was visionary director Steven Spielberg, one of the most famous movie directors to ever exist.
This will pave the way for other lesser-known movie directors relying on technology to pump out the profits.
They wouldn’t be the first people or the first industry to go down this road either.
The Avatars Used In Ready Player One
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Quote of the Day
“The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is it's too easy,” – said American media scholar Henry Jenkins III.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 22, 2018
Fiat Lux
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Tech margins could be under pressure the second half of the year as headwinds from a multitude of sides could crimp profitability.
It has truly been a year to remember for the tech sector with companies enjoying all-time high probability and revenue.
The tech industries’ best of breed are surpassing and approaching the trillion-dollar valuation mark highlighting the potency of these unstoppable businesses.
Sadly, it can’t go on forever and periods of rest are needed to consolidate before shares relaunch to higher highs.
This could shift the narrative from the global trade war, which is perceived as the biggest risk to the current tech market to a domestic growth issue.
Healthy revenue beats and margin growth have been essential pillars in an era of easy money, non-existent tech regulation, and insatiable demand for everything tech.
Tech has enjoyed this nine-year bull market dominating other industries and taking over the S&P on a relative basis.
The lion’s share of growth in the overall market, by and large, has been derived from the tech sector, namely the most powerful names in Silicon Valley.
Late-stage bull markets are fraught with canaries in the coal mine offering clues for the short-term future.
Therefore, it is a good time to reassess the market risks going forward as we stampede into the tail end of the financial year.
The shortage of Silicon Valley workers is not a new phenomenon, but the dearth of talent is going from bad to worse.
Proof can be found in the controversial H-1B visa program used to hire foreign tech workers mainly to Silicon Valley.
A few examples are Alphabet (GOOGL), which was granted 1,213 H-1B approvals in 2017, a 31% YOY rise.
Alphabet’s competitor Facebook (FB) based in Menlo Park, Calif., was granted 720 H-1B approvals in 2017, a 53% YOY jump from 2016.
This lottery-based visa for highly skilled foreign workers underscores the difficulty in finding local American talent suitable for a role at one of these tech stalwarts.
Amazon (AMZN) made one of the biggest jumps in H-1B approvals with 2,515 in 2017, a 78% YOY surge.
The vote of non-confidence in hiring Americans shines an ugly light on American youth who are not applying themselves to the domestic higher education system as are foreigners.
For the lucky ones that do make it into the hallways of Silicon Valley, a great salary is waiting for them as they walk through the front door.
Reportedly, the average salary at Facebook is about $250,000 and Alphabet workers take home around $200,000 now.
Pay packages will continue to rise in Silicon Valley as tech companies vie for the same talent pool and have boatloads of capital to wield to hire them.
This is terrible for margins as wages are the costliest input to operate tech companies.
United Technologies Corp. (UTX) chief executive Gregory Hayes chimed in citing a horrid “labor shortage in the U.S. and in Europe.”
He followed that up by saying the company will have to grapple with this additional cost pressure.
Certain commodity prices are spiraling out of control and will dampen profits for some tech companies.
Uber and Lyft, ridesharing app companies, are sensitive to the price of oil, and a spike could hurt the attractiveness to recruit potential drivers.
The perpetually volatile oil market has been trending higher since January, from $47 per barrel and another spike could damage Uber’s path to its IPO next year.
Will Uber be able to lure drivers into its ecosystem if $100 per barrel becomes the new normal?
Probably not unless every potential driver rolls around in a Toyota Prius.
If oil slides because of a global recession instigated by the current administration aim to rein in trade partners, then Uber will be hard hit abroad because it boasts major operations in many foreign megacities.
A recession means less spending on Uber.
Either result will be negative for Uber and ridesharing companies won’t be the only companies to be hit.
Other victims will be tech companies incorporating transport as part of their business model, such as Amazon which will have to pass on more delivery costs to the customer or absorb the blows themselves.
Logistics is a massive expense for them transporting goods to and from fulfillment centers. And they have a freshly integrated Whole Foods business offering two-hour free delivery.
Higher transport costs will bite into the bottom line, which is always a contentious issue for Amazon shareholders.
Another red flag is the deceleration of the global smartphone market evident in the lackluster Samsung earnings reflecting a massive loss of market share to Chinese foes who will tear apart profit margins.
Even though Samsung has a stranglehold on the chip market, mobile shipments have fell off a cliff.
Damaging market share loss to Chinese smartphone makers Xiaomi and Huawei are undercutting Samsung products. Chinese companies offer better value for money and are scoring big in the emerging world where incomes are lower making Chinese phones more viable.
The same trend is happening to Samsung’s screen business and there could be no way back competing against cheaper, lower quality but good enough Chinese imitations.
Pouring gasoline on the fire is the Chinese investigation charging Micron (MU), SK Hynix, and Samsung for colluding together to prop up chip prices.
These three companies control more than 90% of the global DRAM chip market and China is its biggest customer.
The golden days are over for smartphone growth as customers are not flooding into stores to buy incremental improvements on new models.
Customers are staying away.
The smartphone market is turning into the American used car market with people holding on to their models longer and only upgrading if it makes practical sense.
Chinese smartphone makers will continue to grab global smartphone market share with their cheaper premium versions that western companies rather avoid.
Battling against Chinese companies almost always means slashing margins to the bone and highlights the importance of companies such as Apple (AAPL), which are great innovators and produce the best of the best justifying lofty pricing.
The stagnating smartphone market will hurt chip and component company revenues that have already been hit by the protectionist measures from the trade war.
They could turn into political bargaining chips and short-term pressures will slam these stocks.
This quarter’s earnings season has seen a slew of weak guidance from Facebook, Nvidia (NVDA) mixed in with great numbers from Alphabet and Amazon.
Beating these soaring estimates is not a guarantee anymore as we move into the latter part of the year.
Migrating into the highest quality names such as Amazon and Microsoft (MSFT) with bulletproof revenue drivers would be the sensible strategy if tech’s lofty valuations do not scare you off.
Tech has had its own cake and ate it too for years. But on the near horizon, overdelivering on earnings results will be an arduous chore if outside pressures do not relent.
It’s been fashionable in the past for market insiders to call the top of the tech market, but precisely calling the top is impossible.
The long-term tech story is still intact but be prepared for short-term turbulence.
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Quote of the Day
“By giving people the power to share, we're making the world more transparent,” – said cofounder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 21, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE CHIP MINI RECESSION IS ON),
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Now is not a good time to put new money to work in the semiconductor space.
American chip companies are some of the major exporters of domestic technology in a world that has been taken over by a contentious global trade war.
The administration shows no signs of backing down digging into the trenches and not giving up an inch.
Damocles' sword is hanging over chip revenues waiting for the final verdict giving investors a great short-term reason to avoid semiconductor companies.
It’s not the time to be cute in the market, but there is still one must-buy name in the chip space that is best in show and that is Nvidia (NVDA).
"Turing is NVIDIA's most important innovation in computer graphics in more than a decade," said Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang.
Huang made this announcement of the eighth-generation Turing graphics architecture at a conference in Vancouver last week.
There have been recent leaks in the press that Nvidia will roll out two new GPU products shortly, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti adding to its already stellar lineup of gaming hardware.
The quality shines through with the real-time ray-tracing offering gamers newly enhanced lighting effects.
Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 2080 series of graphics cards is derived from the company’s Turing architecture.
To check out a demo that shows off production-quality rendering and cinematic frame rates then click here.
Innovation has been a hallmark of Nvidia’s approach for quite some time and the high quality of products has always attracted a diverse set of customers.
Enhancing its GPU products is a boon because a myriad of gamers, professional and casual, will end up upgrading to these chips that vie to stay ahead of the fierce gaming competition.
Gaming is Nvidia’s core revenue stream comprising more than 58% of sales.
Global exports revenue projects to surge 30% higher in 2018, eclipsing $906 million and could swell to $1.65 billion by 2021.
The new Turing GPU is poised to elevate margins because of its $2,500-$10,000 price point.
The Turing architecture incorporates enhanced Tensor Cores offering six times the performance of the previous generation architecture.
The steep price will entice content creators and developers to drop a wad of cash on state-of-the-art GPUs improving their own products.
The step up in price reflects the addition of modern AI and ray-tracing acceleration into the design that previous generations lacked.
Ray tracing is the act of simulating how light bounces in the physical world smoothly transferring it to a virtual image.
The new Turing architecture will produce 25 times the performance of the previous generation.
Content creators are drooling over these new possibilities.
Profit margins will increase starting from the fourth quarter when shipping commences.
Nvidia has chimed in before describing that the GPU addressable market will rake in 50 million potential customers and will be a $250 billion industry.
Innovation is Nvidia’s bread and butter and instead of resting on its laurels, it has gone out and pushed the limits further with these new GPU technologies.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will have a hard time replicating Nvidia’s success after Nvidia’s second generation of products with integrated AI acceleration is lapping up praises by industry specialists.
Nvidia has adopted the playbook that so many tech companies have found useful. It has a mix of businesses that complement its core business.
The gaming division is by far its main driver. However, the rest of the 42% of revenue is made up of a collection of mainly the data center comprising 23.8% of sales, and its automotive segment bringing up the rear with 5.2% of revenue.
The total addressable market for artificial intelligence will be in the ballpark of $50 billion by 2023 offering a huge pipeline of potential deals in its data center and autonomous driving divisions.
Nvidia rings in just 5.2% of revenue from autonomous driving segment and the mass rollout of robot-taxis will ignite this segment into a meaningful part of its portfolio.
The first hurdle is the mass adoption of Waymo vehicles because they are first in line to make this futuristic industry into modern day reality.
Either way, Nvidia is advancing its technology to be in pole position to capitalize on the shift to automotive driving by developing a driverless car supercomputer named Drive PX Pegasus aimed at helping automakers create Level 5 self-driving vehicles.
Even though this industry is still in its incubation stage, a projected 33 million autonomous vehicles will be cruising around streets by 2040 ballooning from the 51,000 cars forecasted by 2021.
Nvidia’s have struggled as of late.
The post-earnings sell-off happened even though it beat the current quarter’s projections, but the all-important guidance was light.
Guidance fell short because of bitcoin’s fall from grace cratering from $20,000 to $6,000.
Low cryptocurrency prices suck the air out of the demand for GPUs required to mine cryptocurrency.
The softness in demand was reflected in last quarter’s crypto-based revenue coming in at a paltry $18 million.
The previous quarter was a different story with crypto-based revenue boosting top-line revenue substantially with quarterly revenue registering $289 million, which was 9% of total quarterly revenue.
Huang has confided that crypto-based revenue is not the main driver for Nvidia going forward. And latching itself to an unstable digital currency with governments out to drown out the fad is not sustainable.
The guidance, even though less than expected, is still healthy representing 23% YOY growth.
The sell-off offers a prime entry point in a stock that is the best publicly traded chip company in America right now.
No doubt the enhanced GPU chips will kick-start another round of increasing revenue. The lighter-than-expected revenue guidance sets the stage for Nvidia to resoundingly beat next quarter’s earnings estimate.
Crypto-based revenue was never an assumed part of Nvidia’s revenue engine and was at best a one-off boost to the bottom line.
Nvidia is still a great company producing hardware with duopoly playmate AMD, which has seen a double in its share price in the past four months.
As Nvidia retraces from its all-time high, $225 is the next level of support that would provide a timely entry point into a company that leads its industry.
These types of companies do not grow on trees and if you choose to buy into any chip stock, Nvidia would be the favorite because of its dominant position grabbing 66% of market share in the GPU market leaving runner-up AMD with the scraps.
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Quote of the Day
"It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket," – said Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk.
Global Market Comments
August 16, 2018
Fiat Lux
SPECIAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ISSUE
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Global Market Comments
August 15, 2018
Fiat Lux
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Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 15, 2018
Fiat Lux
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