Mad Hedge Technology Letter
October 16, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE CHIP TRADE IS STILL IN-TACT)
(ASML)
Computer chip equipment maker ASML said they will cut 2025 financial guidance, citing weakness in markets other than AI and delayed orders.
This triggered a steep sell-off in many chip names, and I view this as a healthy event.
We are bombarded with so much robust news from the chip sector that it is hard for investors to catch their breath before the next spike higher in underlying shares.
Once in a while, it is highly positive to recalibrate momentum and allow the stock to settle.
Chips are definitely boom-and-bust stocks, and we are right in the middle of the boom. and I wouldn’t be too worried for other chip companies as we head into earnings.
This is a great chance to buy the dip in many of the best of class.
Europe's most valuable technology company, ASML, as an essential supplier to chipmakers, is not in question. But doubts have emerged over short-term sales and, for the longer term, whether it can continue to outgrow the overall market.
ASML's dominance of the market for lithography tools needed to create circuitry triggered the stock to all-time highs before this recent weakness.
After the health crisis of the early 2020’s, customers stopped overbuying, which reduced demand.
Now, ASML said some customers had announced delays of new plants and upgrades, including makers of the logic chips used in smartphones, PCs, and other devices.
Manufacturers that make the memory chips that go into them also plan fewer expansions, meaning they can rely on existing equipment for longer.
That's especially the case for an upstream equipment supplier highly reliant on the spending plans of its manufacturing customers.
It’s highly likely that Taiwan Semiconductor was the company who decided to cut back on business with ASML.
TSMC has been spending rather low capex numbers so far this year, and they may do so again next year because their overall (plant) utilization is not as good as their sales numbers suggest.
Among ASML customers that make logic chips, Intel said in August it would cut capital spending by $10 billion in 2025, while Samsung has said it faces challenges at the factory it is building in Texas.
Roughly a quarter of chipmakers' spending on tools goes to ASML, though some analysts say changes in chip-making techniques could lead that to be lower.
Management also said that customer delays are also a negotiating tactic that may force pricing concessions from ASML, squeezing margins.
Ultimately, this is a temporary demand adjustment after years of outperformance, and I would allow the seasonality to work itself through the system.
I see no threat to the overall business model of ASML, and if bad news on ASML triggers hits to other great chip stocks, I would look at some short-term bull call spreads on strong chip stocks in the US.
At the very least, if you don’t buy the dip, don’t take the other side of the trade because, more often than not, this type of price action sets up a “rip your face off” rally to the upside.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
October 14, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(GREAT POTENTIAL FOR A TECH SUB-SECTOR)
(CIBR)
I know many people don’t talk about this, but they should.
Much of the insurance industry has been lapping up the profits, because of cataclysmic hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and mudslides.
Why not do the same with tech?
Now there is a new insurance sub-sector that could become equally as expensive for companies protecting against cybersecurity risks.
The demand for cyber insurance is set to grow amid a series of high-profile cyber-attacks and this trend is unrelenting.
From my channel checks, the cyber insurance industry is set to expand at an 18% compound annual growth for the next 5 years.
Instead of physically robbing a bank and exposing oneself to the violent harm, cyber criminals are sitting behind computers in remote parts of the world digitally looting from their laptops.
Even if they do get caught, they are often in countries that have no extradition agreements with victims from the nation state.
The low risk nature of the heist and asymmetrical gains are almost like options trading.
Let’s see some of the instance of recent cyber fraud.
United Healthcare’s Change Healthcare medical billing processor, which links one third of Americans to health-insurance payments, suffered a cyber-attack in February, crippling the payments systems of a significant number of hospitals.
The May attack on Ticketmaster compromising 560 million customer records was another win for the cyber bullies.
An estimated $8 trillion was lost globally to cybercrime in 2023, a significant increase vs. the $600 billion estimated in 2018.
This industry pays and a time will come when Fortune 500 companies will become the main target.
Some of these far flung places that have major cyber hacking operations are little known places in South East Asia where they took in over $200 billion last year.
Malware, generative AI, and deepfakes have been integrated into their operations while opening up new underground markets and cryptocurrency solutions for their money laundering needs.
As a result cyber frauds have continued to intensify from East and Southeast Asia.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but the message is clear.
If funds are illegal taken, it is almost impossible to recover them when they are funneled into China then laundered into a 3rd party jurisdiction.
Much of this type of cybercrime is now professionalized.
Ultimately, cybersecurity insurance is a variable that is set to mushroom in the coming years.
Cybercriminals are not only in the widely active East Asia, but many more from Eastern Europe and Africa, and each region is imitating each other as they see strategies succeed.
Ironically, according to the data, the only companies that feel it is worth paying up for cybercrime insurance and companies in North America and Europe.
If this starts to become a drag on the earnings, it could really drag down some smaller companies.
As what is usual for bigger companies, these types of costs are usually passed down to the end consumer and their pricing power allows big tech to do it.
Many have not heard of insurance in tech, and it might be the new tail risk to monitor moving forward in tech, because the monetary rewards for starting a hacking ring in a foreign country is too great to ignore.
I predict that in the next few years, one big tech name will fall due to a run on its security integrity creating a new massive windfall into cybersecurity firms.
Readers should not fall asleep at the wheel and invest in First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR).
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
October 11, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(DISASTER MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE GOES BALLISTIC)
(PLTR)
In a world where natural disasters and global war has never been more common, there is one tech company whose fortunes are directly correlated in this types of chaos.
The tech firm and stock is Palantir (PLTR).
They specialize in disaster management software and even can sign contracts to prevent disaster management.
They apply unique software to deliver the best solutions for those they service, whether it is the U.S. military, a Fortune 500 company, or a state government looking at how to best allocate scarce resources during a torrid hurricane.
PLTR knows what to do, when to do it, and in what doses, and in 2024, that is a potent cocktail that has seen the company sign contract after contract.
It was only just a few months ago when PLTR was green lighted for a $99.8 million contract to extend access to the Maven Smart System to all military branches, including the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, Space Force, and Marine Corps.
The pact is a five-year firm-fixed price contract from the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory aims to streamline access to current Maven Smart System capabilities, which utilize advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Work is expected to enhance coordination between strategic and tactical operations, allowing the military to make informed decisions and fast actions.
Terms of the contract include support for AI-enabled battlespace awareness, global integration, force management, contested logistics, joint fires, and targeting workflows.
Combat vehicles from every military department will be outfitted by Maven to help them make the best decisions on the ground in real time.
The U.S. military and PLTR are also a common operational piece as part of its response efforts to aid in Hurricane Helene relief.
Maven specializes to facilitate battle space awareness, global integration, contested logistics, joint fires, and targeting workflows, but is being deployed to aid in the hurricane relief efforts.
While common operational tools and data systems have been used for disaster relief in the past, this marks the first time the Maven capability has been used for a hurricane.
The military is working to feed the data it is gathering directly to FEMA and other first responders. That includes general mapping data and data from various sensors that provide insights into things like road closures, communications, force movements, and which areas have yet to be serviced.
The system can also help with logistics by bringing in that data so that in real-time, based on the point of need and survey data from FEMA, food, water, medical supplies, or other goods can be reallocated to the best locations to serve citizens.
I’m not the one to wish ill on the populace, but it is almost a fact that the percentages of calamities that include natural disasters and kinetic wards have increased a great deal during the past 4 years.
There is not a company better positioned to take advantage of this through their best of breed software.
One thing I must note, management often dilutes shares by giving themselves vested shares, the stock tends to sell off big when these executives sell shares.
Wait for a big dip to jump in and ride the volatility higher.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
October 9, 2024
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(SQUEEZING COMPETITION)
(GOOGL)
Regulators are inching closer to Mag 7, and that has major ramifications for the trajectory of tech stocks.
It has been a time coming for tech as they have turned from market darlings to quasi-monopolies.
Look at your daily life, and it is hard to get away from some of these services like Google.
That is why the US Justice Department said in a new court filing that it may break up of Google (GOOGL).
Its anti-competitive practices have made it hard for smaller companies to add to the American economy.
It seems as if Google has benefited too much from its success.
Naturally, Google did not agree.
That makes sense because executives at Google would be crazy to want to break itself up simply because they can extract larger compensation when presiding over the current model.
People like the CEO Sundar Pichai have no incentive to splinter the company into many different divisions.
He simply would get paid less, and he would finally have to compete harder.
The move by DOJ also sends a signal to other tech giants currently facing antitrust cases from DOJ and other Washington regulators as part of a wide-ranging effort by the Biden administration to rein in what it views as anticompetitive behavior across a number of industries.
The case against Google targeting its dominance in search resulted in a landmark decision and concluded Google illegally monopolized the online search engine market and the market for search text advertising.
The judge concluded that Google’s agreements with browser providers and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system stifled rivals from entering and growing within the markets.
Google pays as much as $26 billion per year to maintain its position on mobile devices such as Apple (AAPL) and Samsung smartphones.
The DOJ could also ask the judge to force Google to share the data that it uses to refine its search algorithms with rival browsers and search providers and limit the company's dominance over search text ads.
DOJ suggested the judge should also consider blocking Google from illegally monopolizing related markets, in addition to the search and search text advertising markets.
It may ask the judge to force Google to give websites more ability to "opt out" of "any Google-owned artificial-intelligence product."
Forcing Google to reveal its algorithms would be devastating to the business model.
Everyone would know their secrets, and other big tech could take anything usable and inject it into their own algorithms.
Algorithms are the secret sauce to many tech companies, and it will only become more valuable when infused by AI.
In the medium term, this caps any upside to Google shares.
In the short-term, I could see a bounce back after the bad news is priced in.
In the long term, if standalone divisions of Google’s businesses are created, like the ad and search business, being unshackled from old management could make some of these parts into new growth companies.
The unprofitable parts like Waymo might get terminated.
It would be sink or swim time because management isn’t going to prop up anything wasteful.
It would be good for the tech market as a whole, add more value, and deliver more equal competition, which the Feds are set out to do.
Either way, the breaking up of Google is more like a marathon and not a spring, but tech now has to wake up to existential threats that were never there before.
“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.” – Said American Investor Warren Buffett