Tech Letter Archives - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Google’s Breakfast of Rotten Eggs

In a recent interview Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted he is “not a morning person” and maybe that was his argument for skipping out on the grilling that his contemporaries Facebook (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg and CEO of Twitter (TWTR) Jack Dorsey received in front of Congress.

Or maybe Pichai managed to down a rotten egg that morning when eating his favorite staple breakfast “omelet with toast," because his decision to abort his date with Congress was a shocking error of judgment for a CEO that has had a flair for controversy lately.

With the whole world watching, the empty chair with a simple name tag with Google plastered over it represents the arrogance and excesses of Silicon Valley all mixed into one incongruous mixture.

This rookie move will open a can of worms for the company made famous by its search algorithm that dominates the developed world.

Google will have a target on its back going forward while creating a massive public relations backlash for a company that must fiercely defend its ad-laden profit engine going forward.

Instead of taking it on the chin like Facebook and Twitter, Google has voluntarily veered into a sticky situation, and all to avoid a few stomach wrenching questions from Congress.

How did this all happen?

In the beginning of June, Google decided to scrap its relationship with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Project Maven, as it was known, provided Google’s artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology to systematically analyze drone footage for the U.S. government.

Pichai chose to avoid renewing the contract, and Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene agreed it was a black eye for the company that applied its own technology to conspire against damaging human life.

Throwing fat on the fire, Pichai followed up by dismantling Project Maven and giving the thumbs up for code-name Dragonfly. This was a secret project aimed at the mainland Chinese market and rolling out a censored version of Google’s search engine by altering its construction of unique search algorithms for a mainland Chinese audience.

This incensed the higher-ups on Capitol Hill, as this move was largely viewed as pandering toward the Chinese communist government for monetary purposes at an uber-sensitive time between the two powerhouse nations, which remain mired in a tumultuous trade war.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Pichai.

Dragonfly is already in beta mode and could be rolled out in the near future. However, I see it as dead on arrival, because there is no hope that Google can penetrate the fortress that is the Chinese business world.

Naturally, Google employees were dismayed and shocked by these startling revelations.

Pichai’s conspicuous no-show was in part driven by the potential wrath he would have faced by these recent reckless decisions that seemed to put the American government’s interests below the Chinese communist government.

The circus was there for everyone to see.

Sheryl Sandberg put on her bravest face.

It was obvious she had rehearsed every word to the utmost precision while Dorsey vehemently guarded his brainchild with honesty and zeal.

The testimonies made social media look perceivably criminal with a congressman even hinting the reason they aren’t allowed to do business in China was mainly a business model issue, and more specifically a legal issue.

Another congressman from West Virginia suggested Facebook’s Instagram was the source of the opioid epidemic ripping apart his state.

The only thing getting ripped apart during the intense grilling was Sheryl Sandberg’s well-practiced smile.

Dorsey and Sandberg were visibly uncomfortable with the line of questioning and rightly so.

Google would have looked worse if it showed up. But it managed to look 10 times worse than that by stonewalling the government’s invitation.

In a recent Pew Survey, data revealed 44% of youth between 18 to 29 last year deleted Facebook on their mobile phones.

Facebook is already a legacy platform in the throes of disruption cannibalized by its own asset - Instagram.

Instagram will be the sole survivor of Facebook by taking out Facebook itself, and that is bearish for overall business.

And that is if social media can hang on that long before it’s taken down by the hawks circling above in Washington.

When Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, the government was at sixes and sevens at attempting to figure out what on earth was going on behind the smoke and mirrors of the big data theatrics.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg was let off the hook with questions he wriggled out of, and Facebook shares powered on unabated.

This time it’s different.

Regulation is an imminent threat to social media revenues and could hurt earnings this quarter.

Investors need to migrate to higher tide, meaning Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT), because the waves still aren’t yet reaching those levels.

Amazon and Microsoft need to send a thank you note to Alphabet for screwing the pooch.

The administration has felt it convenient to barrage Silicon Valley to solidify the Republican base, and this tactic has resonated with the administration’s diehards.

A smorgasbord of FANG-bashing was the recipe to this madness. But now sights will be zoned in on dismantling Google, and Microsoft and Amazon will benefit from avoiding nasty, gut-churning headlines that turn up in the form of Twitter blitzkrieg.

Yes, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook was “too slow” to react to foreign interference in the elections. But it is more accurate to characterize the battle social media faces against outside nefarious forces as impossible.

It is impossible for these social media platforms to police themselves while policing the whole world.

The incessant whack-a-mole scenario is the best-case outcome for the self-policing prospects of social media.

Once social media algorithms figure out how to stopgap one method of circumvention, the bad actors will move on to a more advanced way to manipulate the algorithmic police.

What does this mean for social media?

Costs are going up and will seep into profit margins.

Highlighting the upward trend of rising expenses for social media platforms is the daily cost of keeping CEO Mark Zuckerberg safe.

And remember, he lives in Palo Alto, California, one of the safest places on planet earth with a medium household income of $137,000.

In 2017, Facebook divvied up $7.3 million for Zuckerberg’s security detail and costs associated to it.

In 2018, shareholders approved a $10 million security package to keep Facebook’s head honcho safe. This underscored the ballooning risk of leading this controversial technology forum littered with conflict of interests, and on the verge of potentially perverting western democracy.

By the end of 2018, Facebook will increase its security division from 10,000 employees to 20,000.

And that is just the beginning.

Facebook’s security division is the fastest-growing division of fresh hires at Facebook.

Before Facebook and Twitter can ring in the profits, they face an exorbitant war against foreign “bot armies” intent on muddying the free flow of accurate information on domestic shores that target individuals deemed unaligned to the foreign actor’s interests.

There will be collateral damage and lots of it.

This does not sound like an easy road to profits, and it is not.

As midterm elections creep closer and closer, Facebook and Twitter must confront elevated headline risk, and any trading day could see shares wacked with a 10% haircut.

Following the government question-and-answer period, Twitter and Facebook will be designing a new resistance to stymie villainous foreign infiltration.

Ultimately, spending the bulk of employees’ work days realigning their business models to protect democracy, instead of creating new growth drivers, is not bullish for the stock price.

It is hard to breed much confidence in social media stock’s long-term narrative after listening to Dorsey and Sandberg speak.

They kept touching on needing help from government intelligence sources to aid them in catching the miscreants.

It makes sense to gradually nationalize social media platforms to unite the disconnect between social media’s war against foreign forces and the intelligence communities war against them.

It is clear hackers are exploiting the dislocation in cohesiveness between the cracks in social media and government intelligence.

But if that ever happens, it would be the end of Facebook and Twitter as we know it, as normal users would be averse to providing free content on a government-enabled platform as well as a strong blow to democracy itself.

It all makes sense now why Dorsey and Sandberg gave the answers they gave.

Their answers were akin to a faint plea for help while appearing contrite, hoping to persuade Congress to give them more time to figure it out.

This thinly veiled attempt to elongate the profit-making process and find a solution for a problem with no solution could end badly for these two companies.

Migrate to higher quality tech names in the short-term.

The resilient American economy powers on with the heavy lifting done by Silicon Valley albeit it with fewer lifters.

If social media stocks can get through the midterm elections unscathed, there is a trade on the table for these beleaguered companies rounding out a tumultuous year.

But getting to that point will be volatile, as this group of stocks have a rocky road ahead of them for the rest of the year.

I’m Not A Morning Person

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Quote of the Day

“I'm not a regular smoker of weed. Almost never,” – said CEO of Tesla Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

September 6, 2018

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
September 6, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(THE SMART PLAYS IN FINTECH),
(SQ), (PYPL), (JPM), (COF), (WFC), (BAC),
(MGI), (GRUB), (BABA), (NFLX)

The Smart Plays in Fintech

Tech Letter

Fintech is all the rage now, and it’s time for investors to grab a piece of the action.

The tech sectors’ stellar performance in 2018 is a little taste of things to come as every industry forcibly pushes toward software and artificial intelligence to enhance products and services.

Bull markets don’t die of old age and some of these tech stalwarts are truly defying gravity.

The fintech sector is no exception.

Square (SQ) led by tech visionary Jack Dorsey has been a favorite of the Mad Hedge Technology Letter practically from the newsletter’s inception.

But another company has caught my eye that most of you already know about – PayPal (PYPL).

PayPal, a digital payments company, has extraordinary core drivers and a splendid growth trajectory.

Its arsenal of services includes digital wallets, money transfers, P2P payments, and credit cards.

It also has Venmo.

Venmo, a digital payment app, is the strongest growth lever in PayPal’s umbrella of assets right now, and was the first meaningful digital payment app in America.

It was established by Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, who were roommates at the University of Pennsylvania, and the company was bought out by PayPal for $800 million in 2014, marking a new chapter in PayPal’s evolution.

Funny enough, Venmo’s original use was to buy mp3 formatted songs via email in 2009.

Venmo is wildly popular with tech savvy millennials. A brief survey conducted illustrates how fashionable Venmo is by recording higher user statistics than Apple Pay.

The app is commonly used for ordering pizza through Uber Eats or Grubhub (GRUB), or even shelling out for monthly rent.

If you want to stir up your imagination even more, Venmo has a prominent social feed where users can view other Venmo users’ purchases.

Financial models suggest Venmo could contribute $300 million to the PayPal top line in 2021. If Venmo executes perfectly, revenue could surpass the $1 billion mark in 2021, with much higher operating margins than PayPal’s core products.

Even though management declines to speak specifically about Venmo, the dialogue in the earnings call usually provides some color into what is going on underneath the hood.

Xoom, a digital remittance distributor app with offices in San Francisco and Guatemala City owned by PayPal, along with Venmo grew payment volume by 50% YOY, surging to $33 billion annually.

Of that $33 billion in volume, $19 billion was contributed by Venmo and Xoom chipped in with $14 billion.

More than 60,000 new merchants joined PayPal’s array of platforms, adding up to more than 19.5 million total merchants.

All in all, PayPal locked in $3.86 billion of sales last quarter, which was a 23% YOY jump in revenue, at a time where widespread acceptance of fintech platforms is brisk.

PayPal raised its end-of-year forecast and rewarded shareholders with authorization of a $10 billion buyback.

Upward margin expansion, expanding market share, multiple revenue stream, and untapped pricing power is the recipe to PayPal’s meteoric rise.

PayPal’s share price has climbed higher from a base of $73 at the beginning of the year to an all-time high of more than $90.

Offering more proof fintech is alive and kicking is Jack Dorsey’s Square’s dizzying rise of more than 200% YOY in its share price.

The company is exceeding all revenue growth expectations and is poised to ramp up subscription revenue.

As with the Venmo app, Square’s Cash app has unrealized potential and will be one of the outperforming profit drivers going forward.

Square hopes to be the one-stop-shop for all types of digital payment needs including consumer finance, equity purchases, possibly international transfers, and cryptocurrency.

All of this is happening amid a robust secular story that could have seen traditional banks swept into the dustbin of history.

Rewind a few years ago, perusing the data about the movement to digital payments must have frightened the living daylights out of the executives from major Wall Street mainstays.

Digital wallets assertive migration into mainstream money payment services could have detached traditional banks’ core businesses.

Slogging your way to a physical bank to put in a wire transfer was not appealing.

Archaic methods of business are painful to see, and traditional banks were still operating this way as of 2015.

Time is money and technology has crashed the traditional waiting time to almost zero.

The way these tech companies operate is simple.

They compete to hire a hoard of advanced computer developers or shortcut the process using the time-honored tradition of poaching the competition’s best talent.

Then snatch market share at all costs and grow like crazy.

Banks badly needed introducing some functions to their array of services such as linking with third-party payment APIs to facilitate online payments and enabling cross-platform digital payments.

Other functions such as establishing modern peer-to-peer payment systems or adopting QR code technology that are wildly popular in East Asia could enhance optionality as well.

These are several instruments they could have amalgamated into their arsenal of fintech technology that could have freshened up these dinosaur institutions.

Harmonizing banking tasks with mobile functionality was fast coming and would be the standard.

Anyone not on board would sink like the Titanic.

Ultimately, banking institutions needed to up their game and acquire one of these digital wallet processors or watch from the sidelines.

They chose the former when a consortium called Early Warning Services (EWS) jointly created by behemoth American banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Capital One (COF), Bank of America (BAC), and Wells Fargo (WFC) to “prevent fraud and reduce detection risk” made a game-changing decision.

(EWS) acquired digital payment app Zelle in 2016, and this was its aggressive response to Square Cash and PayPal’s Venmo.

Results have been nothing short of breathtaking.

Leveraging the embedded base of existing banking relationships, Zelle took off like a scalded chimp and never looked back.

In a blink of an eye, Zelle had already signed up more than 30 banks and over 100 financial institutions to its platform.

Banks couldn’t bear being left out of the fintech party.

With hearty conviction, Zelle is signing up users at a pace of 100,000 per day, and the volume of payments in 2017 eclipsed $75 billion.

Zelle projects to expand more than 73% in 2018, integrating 27.4 million new accounts in the U.S., head and shoulders above Venmo’s 22.9 million and Square Cash due to add 9.5 million more users.

Make no bones about it, Zelle was in prime position to convert existing relationships into digital converts. The banks that do not have an interest in Zelle have an uphill climb to stay relevant.

The United States is rather late to this secular growth story. That being said, already 57% of Americans have used a mobile wallet at least once in their lives.

Innovative ideas bring supporters galore and even more adoptees.

That is why the strong pivot into technological enhanced ideas bear unlimited fruit.

Using a mobile platform to just open an app then send funds within a split second with minimal costs is appealing for the Netflix (NFLX) crazed generation that can hardly get off the couch.

Ironically, it’s those in the emerging parts of the world leading this fintech revolution by skipping the traditional banking experience completely and downloading digital wallet apps on their mobile devices.

It’s entirely realistic that some fresh-faced youth have never been present at a physical banking branch before in India or China.

Download an app and your fiscal life commences. Period.

The volume of funds passing through the arteries of Chinese digital wallet apps surpassed $15 trillion in 2017.

And by 2021, 79.3% of the Chinese population are projected to use digital wallets as their main source of splurging Chinese yuan.

America lags a country mile behind China, but the Chinese progress has offered American tech companies a crystal-clear blueprint to springboard digital payment initiatives.

Chinese state banks are already starting to become marginalized, and the Wall Street banks are not immune to the same fate.

Devoid of a digital strategy will be a death knell to certain banking institutions.

Compare the pace of adoption and some must question why American adoption is tardy to a fault.

Highlighting the lackadaisical pace of American fintech integration was Alibaba’s (BABA) smash-and-grab attempt at MoneyGram International Inc. (MGI), as it sought to gain a foothold into the American fintech market.

The attempt was rebuffed by the federal government.

The nascent state of the digital payment world in America must alarm Silicon Valley experts. And the run-up in Square and PayPal includes calculated bets that these two standouts will leapfrog into the future with guns blazing along with Zelle.

The parabolic nature of Square’s mystifying gap up means that a moderate pullback is warranted to put capital to work in this name.

Investors should wait for a timely entry point into PayPal as well.

These two stocks have overextended themselves.

As the fintech pie extrapolates, there will be multiple victors, and these victors are already taking shape in the form of Zelle, PayPal, and Square.

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Quote of the Day

“In the not-too-distant future, commerce is just going to be commerce. It won't be online commerce or offline commerce. It's just going to be commerce. And that will happen because of the phone,” – said CEO of PayPal Dan Schulman.

September 5, 2018

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
September 5, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(WARREN BUFFETT’S GREAT TECH FIND IN INDIA),
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Warren Buffett’s Great Tech Find in India

Tech Letter

Warren Buffett preaches searching among your “circle of competence” to find those gems of companies that will offer abundant value in the far future.

His time horizon has always been long – 10, 20, 30 years where a company has sufficient time to execute its business strategy.

The celebrated investor’s track record is unrivaled.

Another critical rule to his playbook of uncanny success is to invest in companies within your area of expertise to avoid erroneous investment decisions.

If an investor is uncertain if a company is within its “circle of competence,” then it is likely outside the circle and best to skip investing in the company for now.

The Oracle of Omaha has taken his investment playbook to the chicken tikka masala-loving country of India, dropping a few Benjamín’s on One97 Communications Ltd., the parent company of Paytm, an Indian fin-tech firm.

This disrupting digital payments company based in Noida, India, is the nation’s largest mobile-payments firm and quite an achievement in a country that loves paper cash.

It boasts a popular smartphone app used in daily lives, and mirrors digital payment businesses of the likes of China’s Alipay or Tencent’s WeChat payment platform.

When the Indian government laid down the heavy hand of fiscal regulation on the paper currency market with an eye toward the digital currency market, an outsized winner was Paytm.

The cost of printing paper money in India per year is more than $90 million by itself.

I am not saying that the Indian government is going into overdrive adopting bitcoin tomorrow, but its pivot toward fin-tech mobile payments and Buffett’s vote of approval show where all the deep lying tech value is marinating in the world.

It is not Silicon Valley that gets more expensive by the day.

Silicon Valley is largely saturated with venture capitalist firms cherry-picking the best firms before they go public and making many times their investment once they hit the New York public markets.

Well, we are still in the early stages of India’s rapidly developing tech scene. And 2018 has seen some blockbuster cash injections such as Walmart’s investment in e-commerce juggernaut Flipkart.

Buffett has championed investing into companies with a “margin of safety,” allowing him to buy stakes at levels he believes that are well below market value.

This allows him to sleep at night because even if the company tanks short-term, he knows that eventually it will pull it together.

India can now lay claim to more than 390 Internet users, and 300 million of those use Paytm.

When 77% of a country’s population is using an app, you know there is some staying power, as the first mover advantage in the tech world has a powerful and long-term network effect such as the AWS’s foray into the cloud business.

Paytm does have a crowded lineup of heavyweights breathing capital into its company in the form of investments from Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund and Jack Ma’s Alibaba (BABA).

China’s presence in the Indian tech scene is strong, but it has not doubled down there as it has in Southeast Asia, where it enjoys a healthier political connection that is largely void of border skirmishes.

India is the largest democracy in Asia and a strong ally of the United States. Although American tech companies won’t be welcomed with a pristine red carpet, they do have ample opportunity to invest in the burgeoning Indian tech scene.

Buffett’s stake amounts to a 3% to 4% stake in Paytm, and the valuation has spiked to more than $10 billion.

This comes on the heels of Buffett’s adding to his position in Apple (AAPL) that sees him now own 5%.

Apple’s services division is its new cash cow and is on track to eclipse $50 billion in annual revenue next year.

Apple’s services division surpassed $30 billion in the first three quarters of 2018. Its evolution comes at a timely period where smartphone growth has peaked while invaded by low-quality Chinese substitutes.

After sliding to annual low’s in April 2018 of $160, Apple has literally gone ballistic, powering past the $1 trillion valuation mark and is trading at all-time highs around $230.

Apple is another example of why this bull market is predominantly propped up by tech companies that continue to grow earnings at an insane pace.

Only a few companies have fallen into booby traps set forth by the regulatory hurdles first set by the Europeans and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Apple is losing its smartphone battle in India, but Indians can’t afford iPhones yet and even Netflix (NFLX) is seen as an expensive streaming service.

The average Indian does not possess the purchasing power that North America and Europe have.

Apple has only extracted 1% of smartphone sales in India compared to leader Xiaomi, which leads the market with a 28% share. Further down-market Chinese phone maker Oppo lags with 10% and Vivo with 12%.

It doesn’t matter for Apple.

Apple continues to milk the North American and European markets to great effect padding profits with its high-quality services business.

China was the undeveloped market that launched Apple’s profits sky high. And American tech companies are ostensibly using this same strategy in India and hoping to cement the best strategy for revenue down the road.

Buffett’s investment is finally a green light for India if there ever was one, and every Silicon venture capitalist has to be licking their chops to squeeze value out of India.

The value is deep lying, but it will pay dividends within five to 10 years as India’s economy rises with its citizen’s discretionary income.

With every Tom, Dick, and Harry lusting after the India market, it will drive valuations firmly higher for the foreseeable future.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) will expedite the pivot toward India where many of the most conservative investors could ironically end up.

The tech relationship between America and India is demonstrably synergistic with Indian born CEOs heading Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) among other influential tech companies.

Berkshire’s (BRK/B) funds join the Chinese, Japanese, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist’s capital queuing at India’s front door awaiting to unlock value.

Buffett even opted out of investing in ride-sharing behemoth Uber, because apparently the “margin of safety” was not sufficient enough in the proposal.

Buffett was even quoted on a local Indian television station gushing about the country saying, “If you’ll tell me a wonderful company in India that might be available for sale, I’ll be there tomorrow.” That day has surfaced in the form of his investment in Paytm.

Apparently, Buffett’s expertise lies in India now and Indian-born Ajit Jain is one of four Berkshire executives running the company on a day-to-day basis.

This will pave the way for more tech investments in the swiftly evolving Indian tech scene, and Berkshire will ring in the profits of these Indian assets down the road.

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Quote of the Day

“Our favorite holding period is forever,” – said legendary American investor Warren Buffett.

September 4, 2018

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
September 4, 2018
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:
(READY PLAYER ONE’S INSIGHT INTO THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY),
(MSFT), (SQ), (TTWO), (AMD), (NVDA), (EA), (ATVI), (PYPL), (GOOGL), (FB)

Ready Player One’s Insight into the Future of Technology

Tech Letter

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.

August 30, 2018

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 30, 2018
Fiat Lux

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On Trump’s Technology Attack

Tech Letter

First Amazon (AMZN), now Alphabet.

In a strategic move to fortify his base ahead of critical midterm elections, the President of the United States Donald J. Trump has denounced tech behemoth Alphabet (GOOGL) describing search results using his name as “rigged.”

If Trump loses the midterm elections, it could open a can of worms and threaten his position.

It is no surprise that he plans to invest 40 days traveling around America campaigning for Republicans in November.

This is a big deal.

Silicon Valley has been a frequent bashing target for the White House.

The data privacy fiasco of 2018 has offered ample ammunition to pretty much anyone who wants to rain on big tech’s parade.

Big tech has experienced a wave of bad press shifting public opinion against them ruining future guidance for social media companies such as Facebook (FB).

How does the administration’s attack against Alphabet affect its stock price going forward?

It won’t even blink.

Alphabet’s stock barely budged after the President used his Twitter (TWTR) feed to sound off against the famous digital search engine company.

The stock closed down 0.83% on the day.

We have seen this story again and again with the administration lashing out at certain sectors or individuals, only for the stock market to shrug off any resemblance of weakness and power higher to new all-time highs.

Resiliency would be the best way to characterize this market.

Ironically, Trump found time yesterday to tweet that the Nasdaq had just surpassed 8,000 for the first time, showing off the tech strength underpinning the nine-year bull market.

The FANGs are front and center the stars of the show. Grumbling about a prominent member of this cohort will do nothing to stop the profit engines that tech companies have constructed.

Stellar corporate earnings are the secret sauce in this recipe and investors would be crazy to veer away from that.

Investors have no reason to panic because the tech narrative will not go away anytime soon, and the market knows that.

Political turbulence has been baked into the pie, and it would be eerie if the airwaves went silent.

Investors have largely avoided pinpointing non-economic issues and focused on the economy and its robust 4% growth rate.

It helps that the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9%, and the full labor market is a net positive, even though inflation and wage growth has yet to contribute as much as initially hoped.

Of course, politics play a substantial role in influencing the stock market. But looking back at the past crisis, the stock market reacted the same as it will now and go much higher.

The market is still very much a tech story, and last week’s price action confirmed this.

The Mad Hedge Technology Letter is still net negative on chip stocks, but the two chip stocks that circumvent my negative calls are companies I recommended recently and that have seen a breathtaking leg up.

Not all chip companies are made equal and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) proved that by spiking 35% so far in August, 23% in the past week, and more than 140% this year.

The hockey stick move has seen (AMD) short sellers singed to a tune of $3 billion in 2018.

Chip stocks were supposed to get crushed by the weight of the trade war. However, these two stalwarts prove that if you are in the right names, you’ll avoid the carnage, which has beset many smaller chip companies that have the bulk of revenue tied to China.

Tech companies have bought back more than $1 trillion of their own stock since the beginning of 2009 because they have the money to do so.

Silicon Valley companies continue to purchase back their own stocks at a furious pace, putting a floor under many cash cow tech firms to the benefit of share prices.

Whether you want to believe or not, the market is metamorphizing into an all-tech story as every sector migrates to the cloud and the heavy use of big data.

Industrial giants are turning into industrial IoT companies.

Turn over any stone and you would be hard pressed to not find some sort of tech in new products.

Silicon Valley is on the cusp of rolling out its self-autonomous driving technology for commercial operations with Alphabet’s subsidiary Waymo.

If that wasn’t a good reason to buy Alphabet, then let’s review the other positive levers in their portfolio.

Alphabet is one member of a two-man team dominating digital advertising revenues with Facebook.

Global media spend is expanding at 13% YOY as the migration to mobile sees no end.

Google has the best search engine in the world. There are no competitors even close to supplanting its holy grail search engine business, unless you consider bing.com a worthy competitor, which it isn’t.

Data is the new oil, and Alphabet is able to douse itself in data because of the gobs it possesses.

This is the reason Google knows everything about most people in the world outside of China.

Alphabet will be able to leverage this enormous treasure trove of big data and monetize it using artificial intelligence technology.

Add it all up and Alphabet is massively profitable and positioned on the vanguard of every future groundbreaking technology in the world.

Picking on the big boys won’t do much, and the stock price will power on unabated for the foreseeable future.

As the midterm elections draw closer, Trump could also double down on his foreign exploits attempting to consolidate political capital.

That means virulently attacking China’s trade policy, which could go into overdrive as they could give him the source of expansive buffer for which he is looking.

However, it is a double-edge sword as many constituents in red states could be the recipient of higher costs that elevated tariffs would bring.

At the bare minimum, Trump has cast a light on China’s unfair trading policies that has tapped an uneasy nerve for many other countries quietly agreeing with the American president.

This could create a whack-a-mole scenario as China could experience growing problems with numerous undeveloped countries felt wronged, and these headaches could take on different forms such as the Forest City project in Malaysia.

Back in the equity world, the smaller chip companies are baring the brunt of the administration’s scathing rhetoric toward China, but the economy, stock market, and consumer health will hum along as if nothing happened.

The damage is limited, giving Trump sufficient leeway to speak out about side issues as the vital midterm elections roll around.

The bull market is not close to dying and there is still room to run.

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Quote of the Day

“Technology itself is neither good nor bad. People are good or bad,” – said former CEO of InfoSpace, Inc. and cofounder of Moon Express Naveen Jain.

August 29, 2018

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 29, 2018
Fiat Lux

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