Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 14, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AIRBNB DOES JUST ENOUGH)
(ABNB)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 14, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(AIRBNB DOES JUST ENOUGH)
(ABNB)
Americans still have money to travel, so ignore all those wacky reports that the consumer is about to go missing.
Granted, I wouldn’t say people are flush with cash, but enough to go on holiday and pay for short-term rentals from the likes of good ‘ol company Airbnb (ABNB).
The big takeaway from Airbnb’s earnings report is that the tech rally will continue albeit it in a choppier form than we are generally used to.
But it will keep chugging along, translating into traders and investors buying the big dips when tech stocks go on discount.
That dip buying is what prevents stocks from real weakness, which is something more like a 10% or 20% drop.
Have you noticed that tech stocks hardly go down anymore?
Well, there is money waiting like a parachute to a paratrooper, and this dynamic will underpin the market even though I admit that tech stocks are expensive and losing steam in their internal business models.
Cross-border travel drove a majority of nights booked in the APAC region.
Its North American business, where there were signs of slowing demand last summer, also saw faster growth with a “mid-single digits” gain in nights booked during the holiday season. That’s “driven by broad strength of underlying travel trends within the region,” the company said, while also citing higher pricing of stays and strength in short-term bookings and entire homes.
Booking’s growing 8.5% is nothing to throw a parade over, but the market delivered the stock a 14% return at the time of this writing.
I remember for that type of sumptuous pop, we used to need 30% or more in revenue expansion, and tech just isn’t delivering on that, and it is a sign of the times of Silicon Valley running out of great ideas.
We are still living on Steve Jobs’ ideas for better or worse.
Zuckerberg is still doing the Facebook and Instagram thing, and CEO of Airbnb Brian Cheksy is still doing the short-term rental thing.
His other ideas aren’t stupid, but they won’t move the needle.
Chesky is doubling down on “other products.”
Airbnb will invest $200 million to $250 million into launching and scaling those new products starting in May. His plans are to build on the experiences business for tours, classes, and workshops, and offering add-on amenities during stays such as personal chefs, midweek cleaning, and in-home massages.
Airbnb’s co-host marketplace, which allows homeowners to hire fellow hosts to manage their rentals, is really a nothing-burger.
Getting someone more ruthless to squeeze out higher profits from a rental is not some revolutionary idea, nor will it attract new shareholders.
It is basically hiring a property manager for a short-term rental. It also scales very poorly and is not an efficient use of time.
I am also not sold on the “experiences” business and find it overreaching.
Just the other day, I opened Airbnb’s homepage only to be forced and overruled into an “experience” page of the location I was hoping to search for even though I still hadn’t found a rental unit.
I had to click out of it, wasting my precious time.
Luckily, after I reloaded the page, Airbnb didn’t force-opt me again into their marginal experience page, and I was able to search for my rental.
After all these years, call me arrogant, but I think I know enough to plan my trip and don’t need tech companies to hold my hand or put digital sensors up my butt.
In fact, I will call Airbnb out, their service has been getting incrementally crappier the last few years, but they have a monopoly so they get away with it. Life is unfair, isn’t it?
Tech companies risk alienating many customers, but Airbnb is still a great buy-the-dip company and gives us brilliant insight into the health of the North American consumers.
Buy the dip in tech and ABNB until you shouldn’t.
“I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.” – Said Tesla CEO Elon Musk
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 12, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WHEN THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD)
(PHD), (FED), (AI), (MAG 7)
It’s funny that the Fed ever thought they could initiate an interest rate cut cycle with gold bullion at $3,000 per ounce and bitcoin at $100,000 per coin.
Whatever they are smoking – please pass some of it over here.
These indicators show that there is too much paper out there following too few good and services.
This is why eggs are about to become 4 bucks per dozen.
The Federal Reserve employs 100,000 PhDs to botch the only job they have (decide what to do with interest rates) by refusing to deploy common sense.
Apparently, PhDs don’t deliver much these days either, which is why nobody goes to college anymore.
The consequence is that the bond market has dictated to the Fed what to do, and we have seen that over the past few years.
The US 10-year interest rate lurching closer to 5% means that tech stocks will have a tough grind and small tech companies get disproportionally penalized in this whipsaw environment.
On cue, Magnificent 7 are going strong because it put to use a strong balance sheet that many other tech firms don’t have.
It is funny to think about that once upon a time, these Mag 7 tech companies were the scrappy upstarts.
They have turned into total corporate monoliths like a titanic unable to steer.
New inflation data out Wednesday showed headline consumer prices rose more than forecast in January as core prices reversed last month's easing with the Federal Reserve's path forward in focus.
Seasonal factors contribute to higher inflation, like higher fuel costs and continued stickiness in food inflation, which kept the headline figures elevated. Notably, the index for eggs increased 15.2%, the largest increase since June 2015. It accounted for about two-thirds of the total monthly food at home increase.
Core inflation has remained stubbornly elevated due to sticky costs for shelter and services like insurance and medical care. Shelter did, however, show some signs of easing last month, rising 4.4% on an annual basis, the smallest 12-month increase in three years.
On Monday, President Trump announced global 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, which will take effect on March 12. 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada are set to come next month, while 10% duties on China have already been implemented.
The unpredictable volatility of interest rates will mean a choppy trading environment for tech stocks.
The Deepseek AI fiasco for OpenAI will also mean that tech companies will need to show investors soon if AI will profit or not.
This sets the stage for a polarizing short-term trading environment.
I will issue tech trade alert on big dips and ride them for defined time frames.
This is the best way to go about tech equities.
Readers need to understand that the time of just sitting and holding tech stocks to infinity is over.
This is when the rubber meets the road, and big drawdowns are susceptible when prices are this high and the system is creaky with institutions of centuries destined to bite dust.
At the very best, institutions like the Fed are ineffective.
Tech stocks will need to prove their worth in 2025 or else expect discounts across the board.
“Organizations are no longer going to receive vast amounts of taxpayer money for nothing. The people deserve good value for money.” – Said Elon Musk
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 10, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(SILICON VALLEY GHOST CITY)
(AMZN), (GOOGL), (MSFT), (DEEPSEEK)
This AI infrastructure build-out is starting to smell more and more like the Chinese ghost city phenomenon.
Yeh, I said it.
It is starting to feel more like that type of “growth”, and that is not good for the future of tech stocks.
If the AI build-out becomes something trending closer to a Chinese ghost city, then we can expect a sharp pullback in tech stocks.
When that abrupt pullback will be is the hard question to answer, but each day we inch closer to that scenario.
There are 65 million empty homes in China that were built by developers and registered as “growth.” This type of parallel growth or paper growth can’t be ignored, and the concrete producers and wiring folks made large fortunes off that whole racket.
Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, is starting to seem more like one of these construction contractors selling 65 million appliances and calling it a success while the apartments are unused and investors get fleeced.
Wasteful spending by corporations swept into the dustbin of history. Looks more like it by the day.
When tech managers are asked about the specific numbers about what kind of revenue we can expect from the AI investment, they tell us to “spend now and ask questions later.”
That is a massive red flag, and I am calling out the whole movement now.
That being said, I bought the dip in mid-January on the Deepseek news, and I am riding that technical reversion to profits as it stands.
If there are no short-term pullbacks, we will end the month up over 15% YTD.
Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) are expecting to spend a cumulative $325 billion in capital expenditures and investments in 2025, driven by a continued commitment to building out artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Taken together, this marks a 46% increase from the roughly $223 billion those companies reported spending in 2024.
The Chinese startup Deepseek rattled markets last week after it debuted open-source AI models competitive with OpenAI’s for a fraction of the price. Tech stocks sold off across the board as the model cast doubt on the rationale behind tech giants’ mammoth spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
But the DeepSeek surprise didn't seem to impact tech companies' big spending plans.
Amazon is by far the biggest spender on capital investments of the group, with its $78 billion for 2024 far eclipsing Microsoft's $56 billion and Alphabet's $53 billion.
Looking ahead, Amazon said in a post-earnings call Thursday evening that its spending of $26.3 billion in its most recent quarter is "reasonably representative" of its 2025 investment plans, suggesting investments will total roughly $105 billion this year.
Late last month, Meta confirmed that it would spend $60 billion-$65 billion in 2025, a massive bump from its prior guidance to investors of $38 billion-$40 billion in investment for the year.
Google said on Tuesday that it expects to spend $75 billion this year.
In the short-term, I expect earnings reports to be met with a selloff producing optimal buying opportunities.
These dips are bought by traders then take profits – rinse and repeat.
It’s not guaranteed that tech will go up in a straight line, so it’s better to use the volatility in your favor for some profits.
“The goal of auditing the Social Security Administration is to stop the extreme levels of fraud taking place, so that it remains solvent and protects the social security checks of honest Americans! That’s it. That’s the goal. End of story.” – Said Elon Musk
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
February 7, 2025
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(TESLA IS IN A PICKLE)
(TSLA)
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