Mad Hedge Technology Letter
July 3, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(HERE'S AN EASY WAY TO PLAY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE),
(BOTZ), (NVDA), (ISRG)
Tag Archive for: (NVDA)
Suppose there was an exchange traded fund that focused on the single most important technology trend in the world today.
You might think that I was smoking California's largest export (it's not grapes). But such a fund DOES exist.
The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (BOTZ) drops a golden opportunity into investors' laps as a way to capture part of the growing movement behind automation.
The fund currently has an impressive $2.28 billion in assets under management.
The universal trend of preferring automation over human labor is spreading with each passing day.
Suffice to say there is the unfortunate emotional element of sacking a human and the negative knock-on effect to the local community like in Detroit, Michigan.
But simply put, robots do a better job, don't complain, don't fall ill, don't join unions, or don't ask for pay raises. It's all very much a capitalist's dream come true.
Instead of dallying around in single stock symbols, now is the time to seize the moment and take advantage of the single seminal trend of our lifetime.
No, it's not online dating, gambling, or bitcoin, it's Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).
Selecting individual stocks that are purely exposed to A.I. is a challenging endeavor. Companies need a way to generate returns to shareholders first and foremost, hence, most pure A.I. plays do not exist right now.
However, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader has found the most unadulterated A.I. play out there.
A real diamond in the rough.
The best way to expose yourself to this A.I. trend is through Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (BOTZ).
This ETF tracks the price and yield performance of 10 crucial companies that sit on the forefront of the A.I. and robotic development curve. It invests at least 80% of its total assets in the securities of the underlying index. The expense ratio is only 0.68%.
Another caveat is that the underlying companies are only derived from developed countries. Out of the 10 disclosed largest holdings, seven are from Japan, two are from Silicon Valley, and one, ABB Group, is a Swedish-Swiss multinational headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.
Robotics and A.I. walk hand in hand, and robotics are entirely dependent on the germination prospects of A.I.
Without A.I., robots are just a clunk of heavy metal.
Robots require a high level of A.I. to meld seamlessly into our workforce.
The stronger the A.I. functions, the stronger the robot's ability, filtering down to the bottom line.
A.I. embedded robots are especially prevalent in military, car manufacturing, and heavy machinery.
The industrial robot industry projects to reach $80 billion per year in sales by 2024 as more of the workforce gradually becomes automated.
The robotic industry has become so prominent in the automotive industry that it constitutes greater than 50% of robot investments in America.
Let's get the ball rolling and familiarize readers of the Mad Hedge Technology Letter with the top 5 weightings in the underlying ETF (BOTZ).
Nvidia (NVDA)
Nvidia Corporation is a company I often write about as its main business is producing GPU chips for the video game industry.
This Santa Clara, California-based company is spearheading the next wave of A.I. advancement by focusing on autonomous vehicle technology and A.I. integrated cloud data centers as its next cash cow.
All these new groundbreaking technologies require ample amounts of GPU chips. Consumers will eventually cohabitate with state-of-the-art IoT products (Internet of Things), fueled by GPU chips coming to mass market like the Apple HomePod.
The company is led by genius Jensen Huang, a Taiwan-born American, who cut his teeth as a microprocessor designer at competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Nvidia constitutes a hefty 9.43% of the BOTZ ETF.
To visit the website please click here.
Yaskawa Electric (Japan)
Yaskawa Electric is the world's largest manufacturer of AC inverter drives, servo and motion control, and robotics automation systems, headquartered in Kitakyushu, Japan.
It is a company I know well, having covered this former zaibatsu company as a budding young analyst in Japan 45 years ago.
Yaskawa has fully committed to improve global productivity through automation. It comprises 5.79% of BOTZ.
To visit Yaskawa's website, please click here.
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG)
Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) trades on Nasdaq and is located in sun-drenched Sunnyvale, California.
This local firm designs, manufactures, and markets surgical systems and is industriously focused on the medical industry.
This is truly a needle-in-the-haystack type of company and is not well known outside of the corridors of Silicon Valley.
The company's da Vinci Surgical System converts surgeon's hand movements into corresponding micro-movements of instruments positioned inside the patient.
The products include surgeon's consoles, patient-side carts, 3-D vision systems, da Vinci skills simulators, and da Vinci Xi integrated table motions.
This company comprises 9.55% of BOTZ and has one of the best charts out there in the tech sector.
To visit its website, please click here.
Fanuc Corp. (Japan)
Fanuc was another one of the hit robotics companies I used to trade in during the 1970s, and I have visited its main factory many times.
Thus, it's not a shocker to find out that Fanuc Corp. is the fourth-largest portion in the (BOTZ) ETF at 6.87%.
This company provides automation products and computer numerical control systems, headquartered in Oshino, Yamanashi.
It once was a subsidiary of Fujitsu, which focused on the field of numerical control. The bulk of its business is done with American and Japanese automakers and electronics manufacturers.
It has snapped up 65% of the worldwide market in the computer numerical control device market (CNC). Fanuc has branch offices in 46 different countries.
To visit the company website, please click here.
Keyence Corp. (Japan)
Keyence Corp. is the leading supplier of automation sensors, vision systems, barcode readers, laser markers, measuring instruments, and digital microscopes.
It offers a full array of service support and closely works with customers to guarantee full functionality and operation of the equipment. Its technical staff and sales teams add value to the company by cooperating with its buyers.
The company consistently has been ranked as one of the top 10 best companies in Japan and boasts an eye-opening 50% operating margin.
It is headquartered in Osaka, Japan, and makes up 7.70% of the BOTZ ETF.
To visit its website please click here.
(BOTZ) does has some pros and cons. The best A.I. plays are either still private at the venture capital level or have already been taken over by giant firms such as NVIDIA.
You also need to have a pretty broad definition of A.I. to bring together enough companies to make up a decent ETF.
However, it does get you a cheap entry into many of the illiquid, premium foreign names in this fund.
Automation is one of the reasons why this is turning into the deflationary century. I recommend that all readers who don't own their own robotic infused business to pick up some Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (BOTZ).
The macro headwinds have beaten down this sector in 2018, and shares are currently oversold.
Cautiously scaling in at this point would be perfect for the long-term buy and hold investor.
Audacious traders should take a look at Intuitive Surgical and buy any dip that offers entry points near the 100-day moving average.
This support level has acted as ironclad support, as the price action elevates to the sky.
To learn more about (BOTZ) please visit the website by clicking here.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Quote of the Day
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people," - said English mathematician, astronomer, theologian, author and physicist Sir Isaac Newton.
Global Market Comments
July 2, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE MARKET OUTLOOK FOR THE WEEK AHEAD, OR THE FUTURE IS HAPPENING FAST),
(HOG), (TLT), (ROM), (MU), (NVDA), (LRCX),
(SPY), (AMZN), (NFLX), (EEM), (UUP), (WBA),
(THE WORST TRADE IN HISTORY), (AAPL)
I feel like I'm living life in fast forward these days.
First we got a slap across the face with a wet mackerel on Monday with a 328 plunge in the Dow Average on yet another trade war escalation.
Harley Davidson (HOG) said it was moving a factory out of the country to bypass new European duties imposed in response to ours. If Harley is doing this you can bet there are 10,000 other companies thinking about it.
And even though robust economic growth should assure us that we remain in a new bear market for bonds, traders think otherwise. A 10-year Treasury bond (TLT) yield at 2.81% says that we're already in the next recession, we just don't know it yet.
As always happens with the ebb and flow of the trade war, technology got hammered. My favorite early retirement vehicle, the ProShares Ultra Technology 2X ETF (ROM), plunged some 11.19% to an even $100. Chip stocks such as Micron Technology (MU) and Lam Research (LRCX) get particularly hurt as China buys 80% of their processors from the U.S.
In the meantime, Tesla (TSLA) continues its phoenixlike rise from the ashes yet again, burning the shorts for the umpteenth time. The shares are now taking another run at a new all-time high. You would think people would learn but they don't. Einstein's definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
While bearish analysts predicted the imminent demise of the company, I saw a steady stream of trucks delivering new Tesla 3s from the Fremont factory while driving back from Los Angeles last weekend. Nothing beats on-the-ground research.
I'm sorry, but there is definite disconnect from reality with this company. The most hated company in America has produced the fifth best performing stock in over the past eight years, up more than 2,000%. I guess that's what happens when you disrupt big oil, Detroit, the U.S. dealer network, and the entire advertising industry all at the same time.
Interestingly, we caught three of the five best performers early on, including Tesla, NVIDIA (NVDA), and Netflix (NFLX).
Emerging markets (EEM) continue their death spiral, pummeled by the twin threats of trade wars and a soaring dollar (UUP). Most big emerging companies have their debt in dollars.
Sometimes you have to forget what you know to make money, and that has certainly been the case for me with emerging countries, where I spent a large part of my life.
The future is happening fast. Amazon (AMZN) single-handedly demolished the drug sector when it announced its takeover of online pharmacy company PillPack. The traditional brick-and-mortar retail pharmacy sector lost $9 billion in market capitalization just on the announcement. Walgreens (WBA) alone dropped a gut churning 10%.
If anyone can slash America's bloated health care bill it is Jeff Bezos. Just ask any former bookseller or toy maker.
And for a final middle finger salute to investors, the president said he wants to withdraw from the World Trade Organization, which the U.S. itself created after WWII. That means the United Nations is next on the chopping block.
America is rapidly becoming rogue nation No. 1, the next failed state. And failed states don't have great stock markets. Just check out the Somalia Stock Exchange.
They net of all of this is that the rest of the global economy is rolling over like the Bismarck, while the U.S. remains a sole beacon of strength. That's not good when half of S&P 500 earnings come from abroad.
However, that strength is based on a temporary one-time-only stimulus from massive deficit spending and corporate tax cuts that runs out of juice next year.
So keep tap dancing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. We'll miss you when you're gone. And before you ask, the best hedge in this kind of market is cash, which has huge option value that almost no one recognizes.
Despite all the chaos, uncertainty, and massive headline risk, I managed to tiptoe between the raindrops, keeping the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Alert Service performance just short of a new all-time high.
I closed out the month of June at a healthy 4.45%, my 2018 year-to-date performance rose to 24.82% and my 8 1/2-year return catapulted to 301.29%. The Averaged Annualized Return stands at 35.10%. The more narrowly focused Mad Hedge Technology Fund Trade Alert performance is annualizing now at an impressive 38.69%.
This coming holiday shortened week will be all about the jobs, jobs, jobs. Also, the Fed will raise interest rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday to an overnight rate of 2.00%.
On Monday, July 2, at 9:45 AM, the May PMI Manufacturing Index is out.
On Tuesday, July 3, at 10:00 AM, the May Factory Orders are published.
On Wednesday, July 4, U.S. markets are closed for Independence Day. I will be watching the fireworks display over New York's Hudson River from the top of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper.
Thursday, July 5, sees a huge bunching up of data thanks to the Fourth of July. It leads with the ADP Employment Report for private sector jobs at 8:15 AM EST. The Weekly Jobless Claims follow at 8:30 AM EST, which saw a rise of 9,000 last week to 227,000. Also announced is the all-important 25 basis point interest rate rise from the Federal Reserve and the FOMC Minutes at 2:00 PM, a reading of what was discussed at the last Fed meeting.
On Friday, July 6 at 8:30 AM EST, we get the June Nonfarm Payroll Report. Then the Baker Hughes Rig Count is announced at 1:00 PM EST. I will be sipping a glass of champagne as I board the Queen Mary 2 at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. I look forward to all those who signed up for my Seminar at Sea.
As for me, I will be hurriedly packing for the 2018 Mad Hedge European Tour.
Unfortunately, traveling in the grand style of the 19th century Belle Epoque involves bringing 200 pounds of luggage.
Now where are those darn black dress socks? And why am I missing a stud for my formal shirt?
Good Luck and Good Trading.
Time to Get Off the Merry-Go-Round
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 26, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE CHIP DILEMMA)
(MU), (NFLX), (AMZN), (NVDA), (AMD), (RHT)
The hawks are circling around 2019 chip guidance and that is bad news for chip equities.
Perusing through recent earnings reports, it's not a surprise that investors are uncertain whether tech can bail the rest of the equity market out of this slow macro malaise.
The deterioration in the macro climate has given added dependence to the tech vanguard with investors piling into large cap tech as a flight to quality ensues.
It helps when the tech sector is at the heart of every and any future business.
Names such as Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX) are so far above their 50-day and 100-day moving averages that investors will take this mild sell-off as a healthy sign of consolidation.
This also means that traders will pin down Netflix's and Amazon's 50-day and 100-day moving averages as the line in the sand for technical support.
The equity weakness underscores that not all tech names are created equal, and firms without moats have been the leakiest.
Red Hat, the up-and-coming enterprise cloud company, became the scapegoat for mid-cap cloud companies triggering a massive sell-off dipping 14.23% instigated by weak guidance.
It was one of the first cloud snafus for a few quarters fueling an intense risk off surge in cloud and chip names.
It seems not a day goes by where the administration does not announce another provocative countermeasure to the tit-for-tat trade skirmish being played out at the highest levels of government.
Analysts have been trigger-happy as the few bears out there are incentivized to be the first one to call the peak of the chip market.
Careers are made and lost with these bold calls.
As bad as the Red Hat (RHT) miss was to the tech narrative, Micron (MU) made a big splash on its quarterly earnings report boding well for large cap tech names.
Micron beat estimates and surprised on the upside on guidance.
Micron was the first recommendation of the Mad Hedge Technology Letter at a cheap $41.
To read the first article of the Mad Hedge Fund Technology Letter about Micron, please click here.
The stock rocketed to more than $60 at the end of March and the end of May, each time dragged down by big picture headwinds.
Micron is a great long-term hold and the volatility in the stock is not for everyone.
If you want to avoid mind-numbing volatility, then stay away from chip stocks as the boom-bust nature of this sector has created a paranoia bias among analysts generating stock downgrades.
Cloud stocks are succinct, zeroing in on the few growth metrics that matter.
The guesswork involved in chip stocks is the perfect formula that leads to downgrades, because the silicon is distributed to other companies for end products of which are hard to keep tabs.
Hence, the chips industry has experienced a tidal wave of wrong analysts calls that unfairly taint chip stocks and the price action that follows.
Micron's data center cloud revenue, a huge driver of DRAM chips, were up 33% QOQ.
The cornerstone of Micron's business and the reinvestment into cloud products has made this stock best of breed in the chip sector and a top 3 chip stock of the Mad Hedge Technology Letter.
The only other stocks that compare with this outstanding growth story and that are at the cutting edge of innovation are hands down Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in that order.
Next year's profit margins are the next conundrum for the chip industry.
The huge sums of money required to stay ahead of competition could crush profitability.
Pricing is currently stable but stagnant.
The additional marginal costs could be the reason for investors to flee.
More specifically DRAM pricing for 2019 is under the microscope and soft numbers could spell doom for a company that extracts 71% of its revenue from DRAM chips.
All these negative whispers come at a time where DRAM chips are lifting Micron shares to the heavens. And if there was no international friction, the share price would be substantially higher than it is today.
As of today, the chip industry is still grappling with DRAM supply shortages causing costs per unit to spike.
When you consider that DRAM demand is so healthy that China is once again investigating large cap chip companies, investors should be jumping for joy.
These probes are unfounded and are brought about because DRAM pricing is one of the main inputs to setting up data centers and self-driving technology among other businesses.
If China is forced to pay exorbitant prices for groundbreaking chips that can only be found at American and Korean companies, it makes producing every digital end product costlier. infuriating Chinese management.
SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron comprise more than 90% of the DRAM market, to which Chinese companies need unfettered access.
DRAM chips, unlike other hardware components, are traded on a transparent public market and the probe highlights the building anxiety if Chinese companies are priced out of this sector.
China views the price spike phenomenon in chips as entirely favoring foreign companies that lap up the DRAM profits like money falling from the sky.
Micron carves out half its sales from China, but it is untouchable because loads of chips are required to fuel its global technological supremacy initiative, which is being chipped at by the administration.
CEO of Micron Sanjay Mehrotra has continued to brush off the China threat because he knows Chinese firms cannot fabricate its products.
If this ever happened, kiss the preferential DRAM pricing goodbye, because China would flood the market with substitutes, which has happened to various end markets in the digital and non-digital ecosphere.
The investigation could end in some sort of monetary slap on the wrist and could be payback for blasting a massive hole in Chinese telecommunications hardware conglomerate ZTE's business model.
The administration's heavy-handed response to ban Chinese investment in technology is a long-term victory for Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung, which have the DRAM market cornered.
These three companies will corner the market even more going forward thanks to help from Washington, widening each moat.
China is not short on funds; it is short on technological expertise because a generation of copy and paste youth cannot compete with the best and brightest minds in Silicon Valley.
Not only can it not compete, it cannot lure the best and brightest to the mainland capitulating local innovation standards.
Its only hope was to pay premium prices for emerging American technology and now that spigot has been turned off.
Technology is in its infancy and is in the early innings of a stunning growth trajectory with a one-way ticket to singularity.
There will be zigs and larger zags on the way. If you thought the Chinese could just ignore Micron and buy from the Koreans, you were wrong.
The relentless demand for DRAM chips is wilder than a British soccer hooligan. Cutting off access to one massive avenue of DRAM chips would be a death knell for any scalable production process that relies on heavy shipments of DRAM chips.
Although markets have been haywire lately, these developments are incredibly bullish, unless China can suddenly produce high-quality chips, which won't be anytime soon.
For the short term, try to pick up the best chip names at yearly lows as tech will not stay suppressed forever.
If you want to scale down the risk, park your funds in the best cloud tech names to weather the storm.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Quote of the Day
"We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient," - said founder and CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
June 18, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE BATS),
(BIDU), (BABA), (AMZN), (AAPL), (MGI), (NVDA), (AMD), (GOOGL), (FB)
The Chinese BATs (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) are China's response to the American FANG group.
It's one of few sectors outperforming the vigorous American tech sector, and valuations have soared in the past year.
Former English teacher Jack Ma founded the Amazon (AMZN) of China named Alibaba in April 1999, which has grown to become one of the biggest websites on the Internet.
This company even has a massive cloud division that acts in the same way as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Alibaba also has Alipay on its roster, the fintech and digital payments subsidiary of Alibaba.
Baidu, led by Robin Li, is the de-facto Google search of China and is entirely tailored for the Chinese market without English language support.
Tencent, created by Ma Huateng, has an assortment of businesses from social media, instant messaging, online gaming, and digital payments.
Tencent's WeChat platform is the lynchpin acting as the gateway to the robust Tencent eco-system.
The BATs have heavily invested in autonomous vehicle technology set to roll out in the coming years.
These companies are some of the biggest venture capitalists in the world throwing around capital like Masayoshi Son's SoftBank.
Alibaba has seen its share price rocket from $135 in June 2017 to $206.
Baidu has also seen huge gyrations in its share price elevating from $174 in June 2017 to $270.
Tencent, public on the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index, has gone from $273 HKD (Hong Kong dollars) to $412 HKD.
And this is all just the beginning!
An economy growing a stable 6.5% per year with companies able to scale to a mind-boggling 1.3 billion people is something of which to take notice.
China hopes to wean itself from its industrial heritage betting the ranch on a rapidly expanding tech sector.
Does this put China on a collision course steamrolling toward the American FANGs?
Highly possible but not yet.
Even though the BATs modus operandi has been to follow in the footsteps of the FANG's business model, they do not directly compete.
Ant Financial, the fintech arm of Alibaba, was blocked from purchasing MoneyGram International (MGI), effectively, closing any doors leading to the lucrative American digital payments industry.
This also meant curtains for WeChat, the multi-functional app that half of the Chinese use as a digital wallet, in the digital payments space.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has made it crystal clear that BAT's capital will be scrutinized more than ever before because of China's open policy of transferring Western technology expertise to the mainland for the purpose of leading the world in technology.
China cannot have its cake and eat it.
The first stumbling block is that the American market does not suit the BAT's FANG business model with Chinese characteristics.
For example, the only other market Baidu search operates in is Brazil.
It has leveraged itself to the Chinese consumer whose purchasing power has spiked from its burgeoning middle class.
Another headwind is the lack of innovation caused by a rigid education system punishing freedom of thought in favor of rote memorization.
Innovation is American tech's bread and butter and investors pay up for this ingenuity that cannot be found elsewhere in the world.
This is also the reason why the BATs need to buy American technology and not the other way around.
Original concepts such as Uber and Airbnb were made in America first and Didi Chuxing and Tujia are rip-offs of these American companies.
The list is endless.
The BATs understand they cannot go head to head with American talent, but that does not mean they won't win out in the end.
To make matters worse, global tech talents do not want to work in China if they are reliant on America to develop something and copy it.
Why not just go work in Silicon Valley for a higher salary?
This was highlighted when the only tech talent to cross over to the other side quit in a blaze of glory.
Hugo Barra was poached from Alphabet in 2013, where he worked as vice present for the Android mobile operating system.
He was installed as the vice president of international development for smartphone maker Xiaomi, the Apple (AAPL) of China.
Barra suddenly threw in the towel at Xiaomi in 2017, offering a harsh critique stating, "What I've realized is that the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health."
Not exactly the stamp of approval the Mandarins were looking for.
In turn, China has focused its effort on recruiting Chinese-Americans who understand the working environment better and have roots or even family on the mainland.
The dire tech talent shortage is worse in China than Silicon Valley because Chinese tech companies have zero access to non-Chinese talent.
Even with a reverse in immigration policies by the administration, America continues to be the holy grail of tech jobs.
That is why you see hoards of Chinese, Indians, Russians, and every other country's best and brightest waiting in line to make the move.
Taiwanese American CEOs lead some of Silicon Valley's best companies such as the CEO for Nvidia (NVDA), Jensen Huang, and the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Dr. Lisa Su.
Only 1% of Baidu's revenues is extracted from American soil underscoring the BAT's China-first business model. Tencent isn't much better at 5%, and Alibaba heads the list at 11%.
Compare these statistics with Alphabet (GOOGL) making 53% and Facebook (FB) earning 56% of revenue from international sales.
Amazon is still very much an American business but 32% of revenue comes from international sales.
The bulk of this revenue is mainly from Europe where American large-cap tech companies are staunch mainstays.
China has focused on building out its business in Southeast Asia instead.
Those governments are cozy with Beijing and are willing to relinquish some sovereign influence to develop its poor digital infrastructure.
The nail in the coffin for potential BAT companies doing business in America is the total lack of data protection in China.
If you think what Facebook is doing doesn't make you sleep at night, the BATs are running riot with personal data in China.
Expect multiple attempts of hackers breaking into your email while your phone number is constantly harassed by spam messages and robo-calls galore.
This is a normal day in the life of a Chinese national and they are used to it.
China understands they are not ready to eclipse the juggernaut that is Silicon Valley.
The BATs are biding their time organically growing by investing into American tech firms helping their overall products and services.
The past five years have seen a gorge of American investment amounting to 95 deals totaling $27.6 billion.
However, this smash-and-grab investment party is effectively over because CFIUS has clamped down on exporting local technology.
Consequently, the BATs will continue to focus on what they know best - the Chinese market.
Southeast Asia is also ripe to become the next stomping ground for the BATs. Expect them to dominate in this region for years to come.
The runway is long in domestic China. The 6.5% annual growth is entirely biased toward these three companies to prolong their hearty growth trajectories.
The communist party even has a seat on the board at each of these companies highlighting another area of conflict if these companies dive head into the American market.
Let's just say corporate governance in China is a shell of what it is in America.
One day there could be an all-out battle for tech supremacy, but these Chinese companies would need some assurances they would likely come out on top.
That is hardly the case yet and they make way too much money by copying Silicon Valley.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Quote of the Day
"The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow," - said Tencent founder and CEO Ma Huateng.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
May 29, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(HERE ARE SOME EARLY 5G WIRELESS PLAYS),
(T), (VZ), (INTC), (MSFT), (QCOM), (MU), (LRCX), (CVX), (AMD), (NVDA), (AMAT)
How would you like to be part of the biggest business development in the history of mankind?
This revolution will increase business functionality up to 10 times while flattening costs by up to 90%.
Still interested?
Enter the Internet of Things (IoT).
The Internet of Things (IoT) can be boiled down to Internet connectivity with things.
Your luxury juice maker, hair removal kit, and multi-colored Post-its will soon be online.
No, you won't be able to have Tinder chats with the new connectivity, but embedded sensors, tracking technology, and data mining software will aggregate a digital dossier on how products are performing.
The data will be fed back to the manufacturing company offering a comprehensive and accurate review without ever asking a human.
The magic glue making IoT ubiquitous and stickier than a hornet's nest is the emergence and application of 5G.
4G is simply not fast enough to facilitate the astronomical surge in data these devices must process.
5G is the lubricant that makes IoT products a reality.
Verizon Communications (VZ) and AT&T (T) have been assiduously rolling out tests to select American cities as they lay the groundwork for the 5G revolution.
The aim is for these companies to deliver customers a velocious 1 Gbps (gigabits per second) wireless connection speed.
Delivering more than 10 times the average speed today will be a game changer.
America isn't the only one with skin in the game and some would say we are not even leading the pack.
China Mobile (CHL) is carrying out a bigger test in select Chinese cities, and Chinese telecom company Huawei can lay claim to 10% of the 5G patents.
Americans should start to notice broad-based adoption of 5G networks around 2020.
Once widespread usage materializes, watch out!
It will go down in history books as a transformational headline.
The IoT revolution will follow right after.
Until the 5G rollout is done and dusted, tech companies are licking their chops and preparing for one of the biggest shifts in the tech ecosphere affecting every product, service, and industry.
The worldwide IoT market is poised to mushroom into a $934 billion market by 2025 on the back of cloud computing, big data, autonomous transport technology, and a host of other rapidly emerging technology.
The arrival of 5G will have an astronomical network effect. Companies will be able to enhance product specs faster than before because of the feedback of data accumulated by the tracking technology and sensors.
The appearance of this flashy new technology will spawn yet another immeasurable migration to technological devices by 2020.
In just two years, the world will play host to more than 50 billion connected devices all pumping out data as well as consuming data.
What a frightful thought!
IoT's synergies with new 5G technology will have an unassailable influence on the business environment.
For instance, industrial products in the form of robots and equipment will be a huge winner with 5G and IoT technology.
The industrial IoT market is expected to sprout to $233 billion by 2023.
Robots will pervade deeply into economic provenance acting as the mule for brute strength heavy labor plus more advanced tasks as they become more sophisticated.
Total global spending related to IoT products will surpass 1.4 trillion dollars by 2021, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).
IoT growth will become most robust in the thriving Asian markets fueled by a bonus tailwind of the fastest growing region in the world.
The advanced automation abilities of Germany and the U.K. will also give them a seat at the table.
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra gushed about the future at Micron's investor day celebrating IoT and data as the way forward. Mehrotra explained that the explosion of IoT products will create a new tidal wave of "growing demand for storage and memory."
Chips are a great investment to grab exposure to the 5G, IoT, and big data movement.
Up until today, the last generation of technological innovation brought consumers computers and smartphones.
That world has moved on.
Open up your eyes and you will notice that literally everything will become a "data center on wheels or on feet."
To arrive at this stage, products will need chips.
As many high-grade chips as they can find.
Data centers are one segment in dire need of chips. This market will more than double from $29 billion in 2017 to $62 billion in 2021.
The general-purpose chip market for servers is cornered by Intel.
Industry insiders estimate Intel's market share at 98% to 99% of data center chips. Clientele are heavy hitters such as Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft Azure along with other industry peers.
The only other players with data server chips out there are Qualcomm (QCOM) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).
However, there have been whispers of Qualcomm shutting down the 48-core Centriq 2400 chip for data centers that was launched only last November after head of Qualcomm's data center division, Anand Chandrasekher, was demoted via reassignment.
AMD's new data center chip, Epyc, has already claimed a few scalps with Baidu (BIDU) and Microsoft Azure promising to deploy the new design.
IoT integration is the path the world will take to adopting full-scale digitization.
Microsoft just announced at its own Build 2018 conference its plans to invest $5 billion into IoT in the next four years.
The Redmond, Washington-based company noted operational savings and productivity gains as two positive momentum drivers that will benefit IoT production.
Consulting firm A.T. Kearny identified IoT as the catalyst fueling a $1.9 trillion in productivity increases while shaving $177 billion off of expenses by 2020.
These cloud platforms give tech companies the optimal stage to win over the hearts and dollars of non-tech and tech companies that want to digitize services.
Many of these companies will have IoT products percolating in their portfolio.
Examples are rampant.
Schneider Electric in collaboration with Microsoft's IoT Azure platform brought solar energy to Nigeria by the bucket full.
The company successfully installed solar panels harnessing its performance using IoT technology through the Microsoft cloud.
Kohler rolled out a new lineup of smart kitchen appliances and bathroom fixtures coined "Kohler Konnect" with the help of Microsoft's Azure IoT platform.
Consumers will be able to remotely fill up the bathtub to a personalized temperature.
Real-time data analytics will be available to the consumer by using the bathroom mirror as a visual interface with touch screen functionality giving users the option to adjust settings to optimal levels on the fly.
Kohler's tie-up with Microsoft IoT technology has proved fruitful with product development time slashed in half.
To watch a video of Kohler's new budding relationship with Microsoft's Azure IoT platform, please click here.
It is safe to say operations will cut out the wastefulness using these new tools.
Look no further than legacy American stocks such as oil and gas producer Chevron (CVX), which wants a piece of the IoT pie.
Chevron announced a lengthy seven-year partnership with Microsoft's Azure platform.
The fiber optic cables inside oil production facilities generate more than 1 terabyte of data per day.
In the Houston, Texas, offices, sensors installed six miles below the surface shoot back data to engineers who monitor human safety and system operations on four continents from the Lone Star State.
The newest facility in Kazakhstan, using state-of-the-art technology, will produce more data than all the refineries in North America combined.
Using the aid of artificial intelligence (A.I.), computers will analyze seismic surveys. This pre-emptive technology customizes solutions before problems can germinate.
The new smart-work environment will multiply worker productivity that has been at best stagnant for the past generation.
To get in on the IoT action, buy shares of companies with solid IoT cloud platforms such as Microsoft and Amazon.
Buy best-of-breed chip companies such as Nvidia (NVDA), Intel (INTC), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Micron (MU).
And buy tech companies that produce wafer fab equipment such as Applied Materials (AMAT) and Lam Research (LRCX).
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Quote of the Day
"Don't be afraid to change the model." - said cofounder and CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings.
