CodyWillard: Recent Episodes
CodyWillard
Cody Willard's Cody Underground Podcast. Irreverent, straight-forward and sometimes funny. Stocks, investing, politics, economy, pop culture, sports, music and more.
Everybody’s getting theirs, but you don’t get yours
it's so so so obvious their disguise is see through the pendulum swings hypnotize the people a spell on you that's what you heard read straight out the book of the magic words the lines are blurred between right and wrong they won't fight hunger but they'll fight this song useless music the blues will stop two bit hooligans laugh at you when you locked in a maze runnin the rat race I chase for the cheddar/ american dream to get better I choke of cigar smoke from fat cats sayin follow the rules pay your dues and that's that the villian's still dressed in black & drops by with a suit and a tie a briefcase full of lies can't see the fineprint so I'd rather ignore and sign on the dotted line for toys I can't afford
Everybody’s getting theirs, but you don’t get yours
They'll be preemptive so be pre-preemptive and strike with common sense for instance freedom of thought is the only chance fools can't control the force, Jedi's don't dance speculate on armaggedon/ I'ma pull out my weapons a big book full of crooks and a history lesson on a rain slick precipice overlooking a deficit to fall for the traps is effortless not paranoid 'bout paranoia off the cuff paranoid 'bout not being paranoid enough I ain't drinking they stuff times is rough time to call their bluff and take back government gets bigger than Shaq at the playoffs poor guy gets laid off/ rich guy gets ripped off I ain't lying and you can ask Bernie Madoff
Everybody’s getting theirs, but you don’t get yours
Gotta be paranoid. I ain’t lying. Nobody’s getting theirs so you better get yours
freedom of thought’s your only chance, fools can't control the force, Jedi's don't dance
In this episode, Cody talks with investigative journalist and author David Cay Johnston about the redistribution of wealth, entitlement programs, tax credits, lobbyists and the U.S. media landscape.
On this episode, Cody talks with Jonathan Hoenig about individualism, politics, the markets and what it means to be an American.
In this episode, Cody talks about the stock market meltdown, political campaign attack ads and sports with Ross the Boss.
In this episode, Cody talks about the senate confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Facebook's worse hack ever and sports with Ross the Boss.
In this episode, Cody Willard talks to Author Thomas Frank. The two discuss the labels of "liberal" and "conservative," the Obama and Bush bailouts, the corporations that fund candidates, and how the New York Times, Washington Post and Fox News frame the debate for many these days.
In this episode, Cody brings context to the ten year anniversary of the 2008 crash. He also covers the booming economy and wages finally starting to creep up. Later in the show, Cody and Ross the Boss talk about week one of NFL football.
In this episode, Cody talks about Amazon joining the trillion dollar club, the crypto crash, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, plus sports with Ross the Boss.
Gerald Celente joins Cody Willard to discuss: What will crash the economy and the markets next? And when? Whether you should buy gold, GLD, gold futures or other precious metals. Is there a future for bitcoin and the cryptocurrencies? Can "blockchain democracy" save the United States? Ross the Boss joins with sports, including if Tom Brady should tweet "You mad bro?" to Richard Sherman. Cody tells viewers the best way to invest in stocks for the next 3-5 years and he reveals his favorite two Chinese stocks.
Cody explains how China will one day nationalize every US asset/factory/subsidiary in China; How we can do best for society when we give individually to other individuals; Why everybody hates Twitter; Everybody loves Apple; And why we should all be hating on syrup instead.
In this episode, Cody talks about Trump saying companies shouldn't have to report quarterly earnings anymore. He then asks if Elizabeth Warren is more capitalist than Trump. Plus, sports with Ross the Boss and more!
How will the collapse of Turkey's economy impact you?
What's the point of lobbying anyway (using the NM Governor Race commercials as examples)?
If Facebook becomes a bank, will we call it Facebank and will it be worth a trillion dollars?
Why gold will go up 500-1000% in my lifetime,
"Are they Revolutionary or are they Fitbit?
And sports with Ross the Boss. Ross Mark
In this episode, Cody talks about Elon Musk's drive towards taking Tesla private, Amazon vs. Apple vs. The World and the Alex Jones InfoWars shutdown.
Latest episode of The Cody Willard Show. I have a solution on how to pay for EVERY tax cut going forward; I discuss how easy it should be for Facebook (and you!) to fix Russian meddling; What's next for tech stocks and the market; Ross Mark The Boss joins me for segment on sports; How (not) to invest in 5G; Cory Turner joins us for his hilarious Amazingly Bad Movie Reviews; and more.
Cody hits on the latest news, including the Facebook stock crash, the $12 billion bailout for farmers, how the Great Trade War of the 21st Century will end, Michael Martin Murphy's song, "Geronimo's Cadillac," how activism is important but too hard for most people to do, Cryptocurrency in divorce and more.
In this episode, Cody talks about:
- Tariffs, trade wars and Brexit
- The Dow up 800 points in the last week
- Facebook Data Scandal
- Why Americans don’t trust autonomous vehicles
- The future of 5G
- Is it time to sell Twitter stock?
- Augmented reality
Cody Willard discusses how to invest in Revolutionary Technologies, how The Republican Democrat Regime is corrupted and how that affects your money plus which cryptocurrencies he owns and why he's so bearish on cryptos right now anyway.
Immigration, Family Separations, Zero Tolerance, Stocks, Economy and more by CodyWillard
We’ve just released the new IAm Cody Willard App for iOS and Android. Be sure to download it today so you can log in and ask me questions live in the video stream.
I’ll also take questions over the phone on our conference call line (Dial-in: 641-715-0700 Access Code: 709981), in the Trading With Cody chat room or just email us your question to support@tradingwithcody.com.
You can also watch today’s interactive live stream or the replay on my personal YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/clwillard
Subscriber: Cody, are you expecting/preparing for a crash? Is there an event that you are looking for to trigger a crash?
Subscriber: What percentage of my portfolio should be cash reserve for when there’s a pull back buying opportunity, in your opinion?
Subscriber: Cody, what are your top five Artificial Intelligence stocks?
And MUCH more.
In this podcast, I talk about what the most likely catalyst for the next stock market crash is, why I'm selling the bitcoin at $100 and am now the only former bull turned bear on bitcoin, whether or not you'll actually like the iPhone X, how Amazon could be one of dozens of trillion-dollar stocks and much more. Introducing The IAm Cody Willard App: Exclusive interactive Live Streams about stocks, politics and life, plus all of my tweets, Facebook posts, Trading With Cody, Podcasts, a Fan Chat Room and more. iPhone- https://goo.gl/95QJXu Android- https://goo.gl/1EG3E1
Jay Leno joined Cody Willard, Ross Mark and Mike Alexander on The IAm Show. Jay talks The IAm Jay Leno App, about if he'll be appearing on David Letterman's new show, what it would take for him to host another talk show (think $100 million), whether or not he'll do a TV show for Apple or Netflix next, why it's so fun to watch Jay Leno's Garage on The IAm Jay Leno's Garage App, why the best way to buy tickets for his stand up comedy is on The IAm Jay Leno App and much more!
Cody Willard discusses the how to predict and profit from the Fed's bubbles and crashes, why you have to just keep buying more Amazon stock (Alexa is changing the world), how to balance your portfolio and much more.
Visit http://TradingWithCody.com to subscribe and get one free month for a limited time!
Let’s talk markets. I guess right now you can’t talk markets without talking politics. Comey. Fired. The FBI Director fired by the President of the United States who is under investigation by the FBI for Russian influence in the elections. I guess that is the best way to put it. Comey's now former Bureau is in charge of that investigation. That is a big deal today and everyone is talking about it. The futures were down pretty good this morning after that news hit last night. Of course, things stabilized and the $DJIA is down fractionally and the $SPX and $COMP are up fractionally as I speak. Oil is up a couple of bucks.
Guys, we go through these geopolitical worries a lot. They very rarely turn into catalysts. Meaning, almost every day, especially with Trump because of his tweeting activity being so prolific, he is in the news every day. And, then something like this, it’s real news. Is it a catalyst? It’s a worry. I was sick to my stomach a little bit this morning when I started reading about all of this. I didn’t watch it last night because I was taking care of Lyncoln. Amaris is up in Albuquerque at the hospital by the way and I am going to get out here this afternoon to go see her.
I click on all these stories about Comey and read NY Times, Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, NY Post. The NY Times is the Democrat/Liberals’ version of serious news. Wall Street Journal is the Republican/Conservative’s version of serious news. The Post is Republican/Conservative for “tabloid-ish” take on the news and the NY Daily news is that for Democrat/Liberals. This is one of those things I talk about all the time. That even those fine institutions I read every day, those historic storied institutions I read every day like this, they are all partisan. When you read their takes on news like today, the partisanship always rings clearly through if you go back-to-back in reading those newspapers. Going back to it, it made me worried reading all of those newspapers today. Their partisan takes, you know the Republican rags try to make it sound like it is no big deal or real positive and the Democrat rags make it sound like it is betrayal. The last time it happened, of course, was when Clinton fired his FBI Bureau Chief in 2003 and it sounded essentially almost like the same reported reasons that there was no confidence in the Director and the Director lost the ability to manage the FBI efficiently or well.
So, I was worried about it. Yeah. I don’t like the optics of Trump the President being under investigation and firing the head of the Bureau that is supposed to be investigating him. A lot of what is happening with Trump and the volatility of it all worries me. Does that turn it into a catalyst though? That’s the rub. Does it become the catalyst that makes the markets crash or go lower even or get a 5% or 10% pullback to price in some of my internal worry and many other millions of Americans internal worries.
Remember how I kept saying that President Trump would turn out to be extremely friendly to giant corporations and banks and how he wouldn’t be anything like the so-called Populist he pretended to be? Long-time readers and those who used to watch me on TV would also remember that I kept saying that President Obama would turn out to be extremely friendly to giant corporations and banks and how he wouldn’t be anything like the so-called Hope and Change candidate he’d pretended to be.
Well, did you know that the guy Trump has put in charge of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was the head of the Morgan Stanley mortgage packaging unit and got himself and his firm in big trouble for selling crap to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac doing their part to help cause the Great 2008 Financial Crisis? “As the leader of Morgan Stanley’s mortgage desk during the peak mortgage-mania years of 2004 and 2005, he ran the operation that bundled loans and sold them to the two government-sponsored enterprises. When those loans blew up and the government sued Morgan Stanley, Mr. Phillips was a named defendant in the initial case — a case that resulted in the firm paying a $1.25 billion settlement.” (See NY Times: The Man in Charge of Fixing Fannie and Freddie Knows Them All Too Well.)
And also regarding Trump, did you see these headlines about Trump’s economic policy so-called “shifts”?
See all over today: 3 Trump Reversals Hint at Shift From Populism to Wall St. “Mr. Trump backtracked from labeling China a currency manipulator, said that he no longer wanted to eliminate the Export-Import Bank, and that he might retain the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.”
Does that sound like populism and/or reform?
Going back to Obama, you do remember that Obama expanded the trillions of dollars of bank bailouts when he took office, right? And just as I’d explained along the way, Obamacare, Frank-Dodd, and every other bill that passed during Obama’s Administration was written by corporate lobbyists. And just as I’d predicted, those policies did indeed help drive corporate and bank profits and profit margins and share of GDP to all-time highs along with the stock market.
There’s a lot of denial from any Republican or any Democrat who’s stuck in the partisan noise/distractions/propaganda and any pundit/writer you see is full of commentary about “Well, we need to see what the Trump administration…”
Let’s try to keep our http://TradingWithCody.com analysis, at least, partisan-free when we analyze the economy, the stock markets, the politicians in power, etc.
Here is the transcript to this week's Trading With Cody Q&A Conference Call.
Cody: Welcome to the first ever old-fashioned telephone conference call for Trading With Cody.
Let's start with today’s news: Everyone is looking at the healthcare bill. Will it be passed or not? What will the market’s reaction be to it after it is or is not passed?
Feet to fire, I don’t think it will get passed today in its current iteration and I think the market will be flattish to up afterwards. I think everyone is expecting the markets to sell off if it doesn’t pass. Everyone expected the markets to crash after Trump got elected or never come back after Brexit.
Over the course of the years, we’ve all seen especially in short term swings, short term day to day movements in the markets, sometimes look like there is a catalyst or reason behind them, but as I always tell people, it is really hard to read too much into 10s of 1000s of stocks and how they are trading intra-day with billions people with tens of billions of reasons for buying or selling them. Clearly, I wouldn’t try to game the vote one way or the other.
Now let’s just jump into questions:
Cody Willard and John Mooney discuss Trump vs Clinton, Bank Bailouts and more. Is The Donald part of the establishment? Which candidate is better for the markets.
Cody Willard interviews Tim Sykes about trading penny stocks, why you have to avoid the scams that so often plague penny stocks and much more.
Stepping back and looking at the broader economic trends, the anecdotal data from my NYC whirlwind trip and the replies I got — my analysis continues to point to this economy being stronger than the consensus expects it is and most signs currently point to the economy continuing to expand, with some acceleration in the employment numbers too. Given that economic analysis and forecast for more growth, I no longer expect the Fed to cut rates or issue any formal announcements of new forms of QE. This recently burgeoning tightening cycle from our US Central Bank appears more likely to continue than not. Remember that we want to be long when the Fed is in the early stages of a tightening phase, because for the last three decades the markets have boomed in the early- to mid- parts of the tightening phases (see 1996-1999, 2003-2007 for example). Conventional wisdom of “Don’t Fight the Fed” has been dead wrong during most of the cycles for the last thirty years. Recall that I’ve been more inclined to be bearish if I still thought the Fed was going to cut rates again. Being more bullish because the Fed’s likely entering a tightening cycle is counterintuitive, perhaps, but it’s a fact that free thinking is the only way one can ever outperform the (oft-wrong) consensus long-term. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of bearishness and general uneasiness about the markets’ ability to rally because of the Fed’s tightening cycle and the conventional wisdom being so widespread of “Don’t Fight the Fed.” Fund manager’s cash levels are nearing historic levels. Investor sentiment polls, not something I put much faith in but worth mentioning, are widely being reported as being at historic lows despite the markets relative strength of late. Net/net, there are quite a few bullish underpinnings for this stock market. But as it often does, the markets ability to truly rally to new all-time highs in the months ahead will likely come down to individual companies ability to grow their corporate earnings. Really, this looks like an ideal time to be investing in Revolutionary Companies that are set to benefit from both the cyclical economic/market set up as well as the secular growth they are creating on their own in new technologies and markets. I’m comfortable with our mix of some high growth mega-cap winners like Google, Amazon, Facebook with a few down-and-out smaller companies with compelling valuations like Twitte, with a variety of other Revolution Investment names like Nvidia and Sony and our other longs plus a few small shorts.
Todd Harrison joins Cody Willard to talk about life, business, politics, Presidential Election and much more. Find out Todd's favorite stock, how the stock market used to "rhyme" and who he's (not) voting for. Find Todd Harrison, Cody Willard and other successful traders on https://www.scutify.com or on the Scutify apps.
The Smart Phone Revolution is dead. Long live the Smart Phone Revolution.
There's a rising backlash against the smartphone dominant culture we find ourselves living in these days and that backlash is finally catching steam. I read an article today called "We've reached peak smartphone" and it captures some of the smartphone angst that's growing every day right now, including this quote:
"Smartphones are in a ridiculously boring place."
Are they? Or does such a statement say more about the author than the state of smartphones. I don't find my smartphone boring when I'm getting the latest real-time commentary about the stock market from people I respect on Scutify or when I open the Marketwatch app to read the articles they're featuring. I don't think it's boring when I check my stock portfolios on my brokers' apps on my smartphone. In fact, I prefer to use the apps over their websites even when I'm in front of my computer these days. When I read headlines, answer emails, talk on the phone, update my social media, post pictures, text and message friends and so on, I'm pretty sure none of that is ridiculously boring.
Moreover, it's not like we've seen the end of innovation in smartphones. Smartphones are going to become ever more interactive with our voices, our gestures and our actions. Siri still sucks right now, but in another five years with lots of artificial intelligence and other improvements, it and other voice interactions will actually be helpful. Motion sensors in smartphones will make it easier to navigate from one app to another without having to touch your screen. Wearables will also tie into smartphones and will enable both voice, motion and other interactions and features -- in another five years.
You can't take the snapshot of smartphone technology in 2016 and think it will apply in 2020. Smartphones, and future versions of "smartphones" are going to be the dominant personal computing center for billions of people for the next couple decades.
Smartphone fatigue is another factor that's impacting the way people think about the smartphone market right now. I'm sick of people looking at their smartphones, checking facebook, group messaging friends, reading emails, checking the news or otherwise not focusing on the real world going on around them. And I'm as bad as most other people about doing that too. We're all sick of smartphone-dominant culture, but we all do our part to create that smartphone-dominant culture anyway. Is that going to change?
Tech investing legend and Venture Capitalist Brian Gallo talks about how he's become so successful investing in tech, how he lost so much money in Twitter and where his next big investment will be.
Over the next few years, virtual reality will carve out its own niche in the consumer electronics space if it can just prove to both consumers and investors that it is not a fad that will disappear and never be adopted by the mass market.
Despite all my harsh criticisms and outright anger over bailouts, corporatist government policies, a race to devalue our nation's currency, zero percent interest rates enabling public debt creation that our grandchildren will have to pay back and so on...
For the last twenty years, I've often written and said on TV that "There's never been a better time and place to be alive than right here in the US, right now." I have bet my career and money on continued technological revolutions creating prosperity and wealth. Over the last dozen years or so, I've been betting that career and money on such big drivers as the Search Revolution, the iPod Revolution, the Internet Video Revolution, the Smartphone Revolution, the Cloud Revolution, the App Revolution among others. Trillions of dollars of market value have been created by the companies that have driven these revolutions.
A few themes stick out when I look at the history of Tech Revolutions over the last twenty years. One is that the big get bigger and it's often a winner-takes-all or sometimes two or three winners take all. Another important theme is that even within these revolutions that end up creating long-term trillion dollar values, there are cycles of boom, bust, bubble and crash. How many times has Apple, Amazon, Google and crashed over the many years that I've owned them, only to come back and hit new highs as their earnings and/or revenue growth rocked everybody's world's over the years. And you have to be careful not to get into tech revolutions too early. Here's a great comment and picture that I saw on Scutify today:
LunaticTrader - Who doesn't remember 1963? A Luxemburg born inventor demonstrated his "television goggles", now better known as a VR headset. He was only 50 years too early with his idea. His name was Hugo Gernsback: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... #VR
You need to be careful about picking the technological revolutions you invest in. 3-D printing investors have learned the hard way that if you invest too early in the revolution, however real it ultimately might turn out to be, that you can still lose your shirt if the tectonic plates aren't actually moving yet. In contrast, you can already see the technological tectonic plates shifting for a Virtual Reality Revolution that will change the way we watch movies, surf the Internet, do surgery and socialize on Facebook.
The fact remains there has never been so many tech revolutions setting up to boom over a five to ten year period as there are right now. Each of the following six Tech Revolutions are likely to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue up and down the economy, from supply and demand and components and software and services and maintenance and security and so on. I put a couple of tickers to watch for each sector and in coming weeks, I'll feature each of the following Tech Revolutions and the ways to invest in them in much more detail.
Artificial Intelligence - IBM IBM, Nvidia NVDA, Microsoft MSFT, Facebook FB, Google GOOGL.
Chatbots - Facebook, Microsoft, TenCent.
Virtual Reality - Facebook, Sony SNE, Nvidia, Google.
Wearables - GoPro GPRO, Sony, Ambarella AMBA, Google, Nuance NUAN.
Drones - Aero AVAV, Amazon AMZN, GoPro, Ambarella.
Robotics - Intuitive Surgical ISRG, iRobot IRBT, Mazor Robotics MZOR, Honda HMC.
I don't suggest going out and blindly buying all the stocks in each of these Tech Revolutions. We've got to do homework on each company's strategies, technological roadmaps, defensive moats, critical mass, platform creations and so on. I work on this stuff all day every day and here's what I can tell you:
There's never been a better time to be a Revolution Investor in the history of the planet than right here, right now.
Patience with our investing and our money can be the key to long-term success. Here's a great quote from investing legend BenjaminGraham to start out today's report:
"People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers."
There's a time and place for being aggressive, for trading, for using options, for betting big, for buying baskets of cheap stocks, for buying something fun, or investing in something you can actually play with. Long-time subscribers know that I am always opportunistic and you can safely assume that my patience with my portfolio is partly predicated on the fact that I just don't see a whole bunch of great risk/reward pitches right now. You know that the next time you see me trading and investing more aggressively, it's because I think the time and place for doing so is right. Not because I simply want to put money to work, want to seek out an adrenalin rush or give you a trading idea that's not terrific simply to be giving you a trading idea at all.
Most trading and investing subscriptions fit into one or two categories:
Same old ideas and themes over and over, no matter the economy, the prices, or the markets. Gold bug newsletters, permabears, and permabulls -- you know these hot shot thinkers who can lay out a million reasons why they're right and the markets are wrong. Then there are the trading (gambling?) subscriptions that promise short-term trading ideas that are supposedly safer because you're not holding the trades long-term. Some target day-traders, others target swing traders, others promise riches from buying and selling complex option strategies. I don't think there's a lot of value in either approach.
I want to have a long-term sustainable approach for both my own money and yours. I tell you guys up front that I think it's a terrible idea to lock yourself into any dogmatic analysis. The markets and the economy and prices change over time. Tech and political revolutions happen all around us every year. So you need to be flexible in your analysis, your timing, your trading, your investing.
It's an even worse idea to try to make steady income off of short-term trading strategies of any sort. Because you'll always eventually run into a cold streak, maybe one that lasts a few weeks or even a few months or even a few quarters. And if you're depending on short-term trading or short-term option strategies to support yourself and your family, you're going to end up in making trades in desperation rather than grounding your trading and investing in sound risk/reward analysis.
Let's remember why we're risking our hard-earned capital in the first place. This isn't supposed to be fun or exciting (though it can be at times). Let's continue to take the long view on our trading and investing. Maybe there is something to all this being flexible, being patient and investing in the most revolutionary companies on the planet.
I do think there are some interesting longs and shorts out there to look at and I'm going to make one small options trade today that I'm writing up right now and will send to you momentarily, but I'm still not ready to move on any of the others that I've been working on lately.
What sector and what stocks will be targets as tech M&A heats up; virtual reality stock picks' what's up with IBM and AI; how will Hillary vs Trump impact the stock market; and why I'm running for President as a write-in candidate for 2016.
Here's a complete run down of the Virtual Reality sector, including the best and brightest and a few dark horse stocks to invest in.
Brian Bain from Investor in the Family asked me to join him on his podcast to talk about my new report, Everything You Need to Know About Negative Interest Rates. Here's the full interview where we hit on what negative interest rates are, why the Fed will always do what the big banks tell it to, why the economy and stock markets will have to undergo a major reset in my life, why gold is going to $5000 and much more.
Nobody ever believed that such a crazy concept as “Negative Interest Rates” could exist in the real world, and certainly not in developed economies around the world simultaneously. But such is reality today. Negative interest rates and negative interest rate policies (“NIRP”, not to be confused with 0% interest rate policies or “ZIRP”), where a central bank charges the banks it regulates to hold their money, are now being more widely deployed. Believe it or not, countries accounting for a full quarter of global GDP now have negative interest rates, including the eurozone, Switzerland, and most recently Japan. Here in the US, we’re likely heading we’re likely to see yet another easing cycle from the US Federal Reserve, which might very well include negative interest rates (but might not -- more on that later). Why? Well, the Fed’s got a whole lot of excuses/reasons to cut its own rates and create new forms of Quantitative Easing (QE) and/or negative interest rates of its own. As I’ve been saying since late 2015, when the Fed finally raised rates from 0 to 0.25%, I don’t think we’re actually heading into a tightening cycle. And I fully expect that Janet Yellen and the Fed will get much more dovish, eventually cutting rates back to 0% and probably bringing back some form of QE and/or negative interest rates. In the weeks since I first started floating the idea that the Fed would go to negative interest rates and/or create another round of QE, the idea of us seeing negative interest rates here in the US has gone from far-fetched to quite likely. Now everybody’s trying to figure out what it means for them individually, for the stock market and for the economy writ large. This report is an attempt to explain how negative interest rates and a new easing cycle from the Federal Reserve in the context of the world’s larger currency wars will impact our world.
The most important part of $AAPL’s earnings is this, as it underscores how big the Apple Ecosystem has become: Apple has more than 1 billion devices online — something it’s never revealed before. What you need to know about investing in Apple for the long-term. A Facebook earnings preview and what would make me buy Twitter?
Why the Fed is going to cut rates and bring back QE and what that means for the market. I outline the most likely scenario for the near-term market direction, and have a new trade to help profit from it. And much more in this four page report on the global and US economies, the stock market set-up and how to position yourself now.
I used to poke fun all the time at the permabears for not being able to recognize the boom times for what they were, say from 2010 to 2015. Peak oil, unemployment, valuations, currency wars, and China were always their reasons for pending Armageddon. Now though, here in 2016, peak oil is proven silly, deflation is real, currency wars are real and China’s a concern.
Let’s hit on each of these points...
A few themes run through my new ebook called "Stocks Wanted for 2016" that are worth noting.
First, despite all the carnage in the last few months in a lot of individual stocks, there isn’t but a handful of stocks rated 7/10 or higher in the book. In my own personal portfolio, I own about a dozen names and have a handful of short positions. My long names are almost all rated 7/10 or higher.
Specifically, there are no 10/10 or 9/10 rated stocks. There are three 8/10 rated stocks (GOOG on page 11, FFIV on page 40, QCOM on page 45), and a dozen 7/10 rated stocks including Amazon on page 12, Netflix on page 13, Akamai on page 34 and Twitter on page 51.
That lack of strong buy names is reflective of the fact that the markets just aren’t cheap right now as well as that earnings and topline growth just aren’t strong for many sectors.
Speaking of sectors, I was disappointed but not surprised that every single energy and other commodity stock requested for me to analyze for this book was highly leveraged and in trouble of being able to handle that debt in the next few quarters.
There were a lot of requests for smaller cap biotech stocks and most of those were rather like venture capital investment opportunities, as the companies have huge upside potential but tremendous risk of total failure too. I wouldn’t suggest investing in biotech stocks in general as the sector faces pricing headwinds going forward. But if you do enough homework on an individual company and its prospects in its industry and you speak to doctors from that industry and get strong feedback and so on, there are always 10-bagger and bigger opportunities in individual stocks that get approval and distribution for new cures, tests and other biotech products.
It's about to get even worse for satellite companies and the traditional broadcast television business model. Why? Look at the NFL and Howard Stern.
Why gold might be topped out near-term but is probably going up 5-10 fold over my lifetime. Why biotech is in a bubble and about to crash. Why Facebook remains the best app company on the planet and more.
People ask me all the time if the reason I am so bearish on companies that lean on the taxpayer to fund their businesses like Wells Fargo and other too big to fail banks or even Tesla is because I'm taking a moral stance against corporate welfare. The answer is no. I am an opportunist with my money and my investing/trading. And anyway, every single publicly-traded company in this country (and around the world) benefits from subsidization and competitive protection from government forces.
How the economy does and doesn't impact stock markets, why gold and silver are must-owns for the long-term, and why biotech stocks are probably going to crash.
Why the hardest trade to make is often the right one. What is the hardest trade to make right now? The reasons why investors and traders are so scared right now and why you shouldn't be.
Why you shouldn't try to nail the tops and bottoms. When the markets will turn up again. What's going on in the actual economy?
Brian Bain interviews Cody Willard about how Cody finds stocks, how he decides to pull the trigger, how much money to allocate to each position, how to find the next Apple, Google, Facebook and what's the next big Tech Revolution to invest in.
How I found Apple at $1 per share back in 2003 and what tech stocks are that kind of "cheap" out there right now. Why do stocks crash so low that they are trading at less than net cash and why it's so rare to see that happen. Why 2015's tech stock crashes pale compared to 2003.
How big will the Apple Car be when the Apple Car finally gets here? How much competition does GoPro really have from Chinese and other wearable camera makers? What are some of the names and themes to invest in for the Internet-of-Things Revolution?
There’s an old saying on Wall Street that you 'can’t fight the Fed,' but it’s dead wrong. For the last 20 years, you always want to buy when the Fed is getting done lowering rates and sticking around til the Fed starts to lower rates. Here's why a Fed tightening phase can be so bullish.
My take on Donald Trump, immigration, wars, Obamacare, bank bailouts, Republicans vs Democrats and much more.
Perhaps the question I hear most often these days when I talk stocks to other money managers and anyone else is: Where are we in the cycle? It's like everyone's ready for the other shoe to drop and for the next market crash to come sooner rather than later.
Cody Willard talks about how to game this wildly volatile market, how to find a 100 bagger, why Periscope is so important to Twitter and much more. Follow CodyWillard on Periscope to see a video of this podcast.
Cody Willard interviews music business legend, Bob Lefsetz, about how young artists can make it in today's music business, who will win between Apple and YouTube and Pandora and Spotify, and why today's music artists are a bunch of corporate sell-outs.
Here's the latest Cody & Constable Underground Podcast, this time with a video on YouTube in addition to the podcast being available on SoundCloud and iTunes. Today we hit on the Greek default/EU, the #TPP #TransPacificPartnership and where to find the biggest money flowing in the whole US economy. https://youtu.be/x-AR6Yj8U-U
Cody Willard and Simon Constable talk about how Tim Cook and Apple are stumbling, why Greece shouldn't matter to your portfolio but should matter to your heart and why FIFA's finally getting taken down for long-time corruption.
Cody Willard and Simon Constable introduce their new combined "Cody & Constable Underground Podcast" and talk about why the economy is better than most people understand, what stocks to buy now, and why you should only invest in US securities.
Cody Willard talks to Igor Gonta about Social Networking's impact on stocks, trading, the markets and you.
Cody Willard interviewed on Ken Roberts' Bull & Bear Radio Show. Topics include: Cody lists some of his personal holdings. How to Revolution Invest. How to time the market's long-term cycles. How to handle the next market crash. Best stocks for the Wearables Revolution. Why he owns Sony.
Tech trailblazer Brian Gallo talks to Cody about his biggest mistakes in his career, how to give away your services forever and still get paid, when to sell a stock, and much more.
Cody Willard talks with Brian Gallo about how to diversify (or not), how to find the next Tesla, Facebook and Apple, when to sell (or not) and why you should be willing to lose everything on any stock you invest in.
Cody Willard interviews Wall Street legend, Robert Marcin, about: How much to invest in stocks vs cash vs bonds, How to avoid the next market crash, How the government impacts the markets, What stocks he would be buying or shorting right now and much more.
Cody Willard talks at length about how to invest in tech, how to avoid market crashes, how to see asset bubbles and why technical analysis and charting are never rewarded by the trading gods.
Kirk Spano of Blue Mound Asset Management joins the Cody Underground Podcast with Cody Willard for an in depth discussion of the energy markets, biotech and other markets, including stock picks for each sector. Find Cody Willard and Kirk Spano on the Scutify.com site and the Scutify apps and on Marketwatch.com.
Cody Willard and John Authers with explanations and analysis of the Global Currency Wars, Central Banks, imbalances and how it all affects you at home.
Grand manipulation - Is manipulation of markets itself a growing trend? how long can it last? Communist vs Socialist vs Capitalist vs Anarchist -- what are we in the US today? Wildcat times Currency wars, a race to de value the currencies of the developed world? Invest in stocks for the long run?
I sit down for an extended one-on-one interview with investor, guru, pundit, trader, money manager, blogger, etc extraordinaire, Barry Ritholtz from Bloomberg, Ritholtz.com, the Washington Post and Ritholtz Wealth Management. We talk about topics ranging from where we met 15 years ago (hint: Lenny Dykstra?!) to how to build a long-term career path on Wall Street if you didn't go to Harvard/Goldman to the state of the economy and why you shouldn't pigeonhole your analysis. Here's the article Barry references: My Unusual Career Path in Finance http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/05/my-unusual-career-path-in-finance/ Follow Cody on Scutify at http://www.scutify.com/profiles/leader.aspx?q=codywillard
Cody: Howdy folks, let's rock n roll.
Q. As you know, I'm in technology sales, Cody. The mood out here is Silicon Valley is getting a little more somber. Don't know if you've heard that or not. The VC's are starting to be stingier with next rounds of funding, company spending, profitability...there are starting to be some reductions in force (layoffs) as well. I see you are moving a little more to the safe side. Any thought on this phenomenon and might this be the canary in the coalmine for high beta, low revenue growth stocks?
A. "Mood" is a tough thing to gauge, but as bubbled up as we've been in the tech world, a little bit of somber and worry in Silicon Valley would probably be a good thing. I do think the bubble in tech is far from over and that there might be much more upside in social networking and Twitter and Facebook, but I do think you want to be more selective now and less aggressive now than we were back in 2010-2013 or so.
Cody: This just came through on Scutify from a very successful VC dude about Silicon Valley's mood: '@CodyWillard We definitely felt it a month ago.... Just a general "check yo self before u wreck yo self" consensus moment.... *Not however about valuation but about burn rates...anecdotes of competitive spending reminding some of 2000. Overall though the startup/app market is robust. We just raised a bunch for an app coming next month, and our first Angel almost has too much money.... Early innings still and the "somberness" is healthy. No one, founders and angels alike wants to be an idiot.'
Comment: That's what I'm seeing too, Cody. Wanted to flag that for you. Burn rates are under scrutiny, manpower buildouts are being pulled back, travel policies being revised...
Q. Are you putting money into non-tech investments or are you keeping cash to invest at the bottom? If there is a serious downturn in the future does it make sense to stay in cash waiting for a good entry point or to try high quality bonds?
A. I've no idea if and when the "serious downturn in the future" will happen, and I'm not going to try to time it perfectly. Just ebb and flow. Scale in with tranches. Raise cash levels slowly when markets are at all-time highs. Same as usual stuff. I might get outright bearish again like I was in 2008, but for now, just being a bit more defensive. Remember that you're not in the same risk profile as I am and you don't have a http://Scutify.com Social Network company that is accounting for a growing part of your assets as it grows. As the largest shareholder of Scutify's parent company, I'm much more exposed to tech right now than I've ever been in my life no matter what I do with my stock portfolio and more levered to tech than probably anybody here reading this.
Comment: Thank you very much for your help. I do have my non-home assets in tech however. I need for it to grow steadily but not explosively over the next 20 years as I need to leave money behind for a child who won't be able to care for herself.
Q. What new direction out of Technology, Cody?
A. Cash for now, just ebbing as the markets flow. Added some Whole Foods recently too. No rush into anything new.
Some highlights from this week's Live Q&A Chat on TradingWithCody.com.
Q. Cody: an investing 101 question. What are your thoughts on WEEKLY options -- when would one use those instead of the standard monthlies? When a near-term move/event is expected? (Then why is that better than doing the monthly and just bailing when the event happens?) Do they carry higher premiums? (This question from a guy who just admitted that sometimes "risk tolerance" goes into the crapper!)
A. I find the weeklies do sometimes carry higher premiums, if only because Street veterans like me have never gotten entirely comfortable with them -- 3rd Friday of each month for expiration dates of my options is sorta ingrained in my head.
Q. I think we all know that the eco system at $AAPL is very valuable. Buying an iPhone for the first time may lead an individual to buy a Mac or an iPad, etc. Do you see ApplePay bringing value to the $AAPL eco system or do you view it as a stand alone product.
A. ApplePay is another key ingredient and differentiator for Apple's ecosystem. It's going to be huge. And it's going to be very profitable. ApplePay in your watch next? GooglePay in your GoogleGlasses next? This is all coming.
Q. Any tea leaves to be read with the report that Alibaba is in talks with SONY Pictures to jointly fund films?
A. Sony knows they've got a tiger by the tail in their huge library of Hollywood-level movies and shows. Distributers like Amazon, NetFlix, Apple, Google et al are desperate for that content and Jack Ma of Alibaba is apparently trying to figure out how to get in that game too. Good stuff in theory, but nothing fundamental from it yet.
Q. Whats your opinion on selling $ko and buying $sne?
A. Coke, $KO, sort of reminds me of a beverage version of McDonald's. How long can Coke continue to expect to make huge profits and margins on chemically-colored, chemically-sweetened drinks that basically kill people who consume them too often. Juices, water and other drinks seem like a better place to invest than dirty sugar water. Coke's trying to morph to meet that trend change, but I wouldn't count on them succeeding in reinventing a 150 year-old company. Sony I own, but it's got plenty of risks ahead of it too. Good luck!
Cody talks about the best ways to invest in the Wearables Revolution and other ways to make money in the stock market. http://www.scutify.com/profiles/leader.aspx?q=codywillard
Howdy folks, let's ride.
Q. Cody, what's your take on the market at this point?
A. Feet-to-fire, I'd say the path of least resistance for the markets will be a wide range between 15,900 and 17,000 on the DJIA for the next few weeks. I'm not trying to game that action though.
Q. Hi Cody, how do you see the real estate market reacting if/when this bubble blowing bull market does end? Thanks.
A. Good question, but I don't think there's much reason to believe that real estate will be all that directly correlated to stock market prices in coming years, as it hasn't really been very correlated over the long-term. I was a huge real estate bull in the depths of the collapse back in 2010-2011. But I am less so as prices are now stabilized at much higher levels nationally and wildly up in some areas where I was suggesting a bottom was being put in like in Las Vegas and Miami back when I was a real estate buyer and bull.
Q. What is the market expectation for $FB into earnings next Tuesday?
A. Market expects big things from $FB earnings report next week. So do I. Will it be enough to pop the stock or will the stock take a hit after the report? Sheesh, let's see how it trades before now and next Tuesday night when the report hits. Longer-term, all systems go on $FB as a must-own.
Q. When a company announces their earnings for the quarter and they announce a dividend with it. Like when Apple announced, "The dividend is payable on November 13, 2014, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on November 10, 2014." If I were to buy shares of the company on November 9, would I get these dividends? And then be able to turn around and sell it on the 14th?
A. The short answer to your question about getting the dividends is that you'd probably want to make sure you were a shareholder of record even a couple days before November 9 to make sure the trades have settled and what not. Technically, You need to see what the shareholders of record date is. As long as you own before that date you will receive the dividend.
Q. Do you have any thoughts / interest on $AMD? Long term hold?
A. Let's look at $AMD for a second together and see what we come up with. The company's balance sheet is wrecked with billions in debt and little cash. http://www.scutify.com/company-balance-sheet.html?ticker=AMD Balance sheet concerns alone will stop me before I go any further, but let's continue. $AMD's burning cash fast too, not creating cash flow. http://www.scutify.com/company-cash-flow.html?ticker=AMD. And revenues are growing less than 5% per year and are expected to be down next year. I'd call that a sell, I suppose. Good luck. I much prefer and own Intel.
Q. Cody, The mining stocks continue to be very out of favor, almost loathed.
A. Market is saying that the gold miners aren't profitable enough below $1300/oz to be a good trade/investment. I have been patiently waiting to get back into a miner or two, but it doesn't look like it's going to be anytime soon frankly.
Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.
Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.
Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.
Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.
Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.
Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.
Crazy volatile out there. This is all part of the cycle though. As for the trying to game it -- if the reason the market is selling off the last 5% or so is because of #Ebola concerns then I expect a bounce back to new highs relatively quickly. If there's an economic/financial Black Swan (including if #Ebola spreads further), then it's going to be a long way down. I am indeed putting a little capital to work as I raised cash at much higher levels all year. Easy does it tho. Scaling in with tranches as usual.
Q. Hi, Facebook FB is one of your largest holdings. Did I read right that you are buying some more now? What price are you looking for?
A. Yes, I think $FB is monetizing the heck out of their users and that there's upside to the fundamentals. Earnings report is next Tuesday...and I'm admittedly nervous about it. Speaking of which, buying FB is hard right now. See my article today about why making the hardest trade is usually the right one.
Q. What happens to FB stock price if monetization is up but finally the specter of slow user growth/attrition raises its head?
A. That sounds like a phantom-permabear-not-actually-meaningful catalyst for Facebook and if it got hit on concerns about "slower user-growth/attrition" I'd probably start to scale into some longer-term calls like I did when it got crushed into the teens after its IPO LINK.
Q. What, if any, Apple Calls do you recommend into the next quarterly report or after today's Apple Product Event?
A. I'm not sure $AAPL's got a lot of near-term catalyst and/or upside, so I'd stick with common not call options for now. I don't think any of the new iPads that Apple introduced at today's event are a catalyst either.
Q. Cody, any opinion on oil?
A. Ebola concerns, right or wrong, are definitely impacting people's travel plans. If they can choose not to travel, they're not. I don't think oil can rally until #Ebola is contained globally and here in the US. That said, I do expect them to contain Ebola in coming days and weeks and months and that Ebola Oil Discount would disappear and other catalysts will be driving oil's price at that point.
Q. Hi Cody, just wanted to say thanks and good job. Do you expect the markets at all time highs next year? Any comments on gold and gold stocks?
A. Thanks for the kind words -- nice to hear that kind of feedback on an ugly day in a down market and not just when stocks are at all-time highs! That said, yes, I do think stocks will get back to all-time new highs in the next year and then maybe on higher from there. We'll play it as it comes though. Gold is suddenly a safe-haven again and it's got an Ebola-premium that's not quite as large as oil's Ebola-discount. I own my physical gold coins and bullion that I bought over the last couple years and plan on holding it pretty much forever.
In his letter to Apple today, Carl Icahn lists a litany of reasons why Apple’s stock is undervalued and how to get it up closer to what he thinks is fair value right now. I’d like to welcome Carl Icahn, once again, to the “Apple’s undervalued” camp. But I think he’s missing the main reason that Apple isn’t at $200 right now — and that is because it is and always now will be, Steve Jobs-less.
I’ve proudly owned Apple since it was trading for less than the cash on its balance sheet, back $1 per share back in March 2003, in large part because I thought that with Steve Jobs having returned as CEO that Apple was poised to become a great Revolution Investment.
One of Steve’s greatest attributes was that he was willing to take huge risks and develop crazy new products (like an MP3 player with a scroll wheel on it or a tablet computer called iPad) and platforms (like iTunes or iOS). The biggest (only?) risk that Tim Cook’s had Apple undertake is the upcoming Apple Watch. If Steve Jobs were running Apple today, the Apple Watch would definitely have been called iWatch (remember how Apple had to pay up to buy the iPhone name from Cisco?). And the Apple iWatch would have been out last year or the year before.
If Steve Jobs were alive today, I bet the iPhone wouldn’t have changed the size of its screen as Steve Jobs famously thought he’d found the perfect size for the iPhone screen. Rather, we’d now be closer to a credit card thin iPhone running an iOS that would already include live widgets. Steve Jobs would have been pushing innovation in the iOS rather than playing catch up with Android as Tim Cook has done.
Finally, if Steve Jobs were alive today, I don’t think that Apple would be paying a dividend. And ask Warren Buffett about trying to advise Steve Jobs to buy back Apple stock. Rather, Steve loved his cash hoard. Scutify Factoid of the day for you: If Apple had never paid a dividend or bought back any shares, it would likely have another $130 billion in net cash on its balance sheet — or more than $40 per share, or twice its current cash balance under Tim Cook.
Clearly, nobody knows exactly what left turns and changes and other products and ideas the late, great Steve Jobs would be working on right now. But having owned the stock throughout the greatest run in its history, from March 2003 to October 2011 when he passed, I remember a lot of lessons and insights that Steve Jobs provided us over the years. In the 2006 interview below, I was totally channeling my inner (wannabe) Steve Jobs.
As for Carl Icahn’s $203 price target? Here’s an article from back in 2010 called when $AAPL was at $35 called “How Apple could get to $1500 by 2015.” That $1500 price target is actually a $214 price target (factoring in the 7-to-1 stock split since then). Icahn’s late!
Apple is cheap by many metrics, that’s for sure. At a similar multiple to, say, $GOOG, $AAPL would over $200. If Steve Jobs were still running Apple and the company had $40 per share in net cash plus the higher sales from more innovative product rollouts over the last few years that I just outlined, the stock would probably be over $200 a share. So call it the Tim Cook discount, and tell Carl Icahn all of us Apple shareholders, even us long-termers, feel his frustration. I’d also bet that Carl Icahn would not be going activist on Apple if Steve Jobs still ran Apple.
As I told Sony’s Doug Morris when I met him a few weeks ago and we talked about technology ”I’ve been riding the Apple train for more than a decade.” He said to me, “That’s a great train to have been on.” It still is, even with the Tim Cook discount. Stick with Apple.
Samsung Electronics warns on growth expectations as it forecasts 60% fall in quarterly profit (it could have been worse frankly, probably will get worse). Guess who’s been short $EWY as a way to short Samsung in the US and predicting the downfall of Samsung? That’s right, we have.
Details include specifics that are exactly what we’d expected when we first put on our short EWY South Korean ETF to get exposure to Samsung’s peak and now, subsequent fall. “The world’s biggest mobile phones and TV maker said it expects an operating income of 4.1tn won ($3.8bn; £2.5bn) for the three months to September. That is below analysts’ expectations for earnings of 5.2tn won. Samsung’s mobile division, its biggest business, has been struggling to maintain its dominance against rivals such as $AAPL and Chinese smartphone-makers Xiaomi and Lenovo.”
As I wrote back in January 2013, “Samsung’s products, especially the Galaxy S III, have been selling like gangbusters, but not all reviews I’ve read are stellar. At some point, it’s inevitable. The Samsung wave too will crash. Hard. And the risk to a manufacturer like Samsung is that when that tide changes, its margins can plummet. Do you have a Samsung ecosystem? Or an Android ecosystem? Isn’t Google the platform play that I preach about so much. Platforms create revolutions. Revolutions make great investments. Hardware vendors with nothing to lock you in to their brand do not create revolutions.”
I’d also explained at the time that Samsung was “riding a wave of popularity and sales that’s reminiscent of Nokia in 2008. Or of Motorola in the Razr heydays. Or of Research In Motion when everybody wanted a BlackBerry. But wait a minute. How’s Nokia doing today? Or RIM? Google swooped in to play white knight for Motorola last year — for a fraction of the price the company was valued at in its Razr prime, and it remains to be seen how quickly (if?) the handset manufacturer can be turned around.”
So here we are and I hate to say because South Korea’s economy needs the earnings from Samsung, but I do think Samsung’s future is playing out exactly like the Motorola, Blackberry, Nokia cycle’s did as they fell from dominant to single digit marketshare over the years after they peaked. Thusly, I want to remain short the EWY and would look to build up short positions in the EWY and/or buy some long-dated puts on EWY.
Q. Cody, I think it could be very interesting to hear your thoughts on this market situation and please let us know what are you thinking as possible action for a market rebound or if it keep falling. Thanks
A. Feet to fire, my take on the market for the near-term is that I think all this day-to-day volatility and big sell-offs are wearing out the bulls and the longs and weak-handed traders. That has probably turned the path of least resistance lower for the next few days or weeks. Again this is feet-to-fire analysis and not something I'm trying to game. I'm going to scale into the best stocks on an opportunistic basis in the context of the broader market near-term moves. My overall analysis continues to point to further bubble-blowing bull market action in years ahead. And regardless, I want to buy Revolutionary stocks that we can own, at least part of our positions in, forever.
Q. Right now I am 42% cash as hedged but I think it could be more interesting work on shorting something. Just now I am thinking we could have bought $SPXU, or something like that, Just ideas...
A. Are you sure trying to game a near-term market action move is a sustainable and helpful kind of trade for you and your money personally? Just think about that 10,000 days concept I keep trying to hammer home before you do anything. Other than that, I do think $BKS is acting like it might break down lower again, so maybe look at starting something short-wise there if you do decide to take some risks on the short-side. I'm also constantly trying to find the hyped-up bubble stocks like $JRJC and $DGLY, both of which, by the way, are getting absolutely crushed again today and are at new lows since I cited them.
Q. How do you handle not stopping yourself out of all your stocks in a down market?
A. There's no easy way to manage broader market sell-offs sustainably, but you need to make sure you have a plan for them anyway. Here's the simplest way to answer your question: If the broader market sells off 10% and many of our highest-beta stocks, including, say $FB and $GOOG and $AMBA and $SNDK and so on were down 15% or more from their current levels, would you be able to sleep at night? Would you have the money and the guys to nibble some more on them while they're down? If you manage your buying and trimming and nibbling and selling your stock portfolio properly, the broader market moves can fade in importance anyway.
Q. Cody, high five on $HIMX. Guess "discipline' has two meanings, huh? -- discipline to trim when things are great and flying high, and then discipline the next day not to say." Why did I trim only a fifth of what i had,"( But I'm being strong.) BTW, although I guess it's usually a judgment call, but when you advise to trim, let's say, one-fifth (and sometimes you say "one-fifth of my profit or one-fifth of my gain"), is it roughly one-fifth of total market value/one-fifth of shares or options you're holding/literally one-fifth of your gain . . . or what?
A. I mean 1/5 of my total number of shares in that particular stock when I say "I'm going to trim 1/5th of my common stock position." As for the "why did I only sell 'part' at the high, instead of all of it?" logic, read this. I wrote it seven years ago when I was about to quit running my hedge fund to go to TV: "For the past five years of running money I didn’t even have an alarm clock. There was no need. The knot in my gut that came with the pressure of running other people’s money swelled long before the sun rose each morning. For four and a half years I was up and attentive at every single market opening. Such steadfast dedication was exhilarating . . . and exhausting. Running money is unlike any other job because you can quantify your results at any moment. And then you and your investors can gauge just how stupid or smart you are at that moment. Of course, a good money manager never really thinks he’s smart – there’s no place on Wall Street for successful complacency. You lost money? You’re an idiot. You had a good streak but still underperformed a booming market? You’re an idiot. You blew away the market but had too many hedges, which capped the gain? Yup, you’re an idiot." http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b50a535a-896c-11dc-b52e-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3EuxOm8zX
The dollar is on fire and it has been for months now which means it's going to start impacting economies, earnings and expectations around the globe. The impact of of the dollar's big moves could be a short-term phenomenon, but if the move continues with this kind of momentum and magnitude, it will start to have mid- and longer-term economic ramifications (most of which are good for Main Street, but not so good for global conglomerates or Wall Street per se).
An old mentor of mine, now Chief Market Strategist at Rosenblatt Securities, Brian Reynolds, taught me long ago that when it comes to currencies and rates that it's not necessarily the direction of the move that counts, but the quickness and the magnitude of the move that matters. Another old mentor of mine, Jim Rogers, writes in his book and used to explain to me on TV that currency trends usually last much longer and go much further than most other markets' trends.
Plenty of economists/analysts (me included) have been more focused on the possibility of the dollar losing its long-term "reserve currency" LINK designation around the world. Russia definitely wants a new currency, but China's own currency wishes are more muddled as they own so many Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets that appreciate with the dollar. Not to mention a stronger dollar helps them export to the US cheaper/more profitably. The lucky/better professional currency traders have actually caught most of this dollar move higher as the breakout at about the 82 level forced them to cover and/or go long the dollar. But just about every doomsday permabear who might try to trade currencies has been short the dollar and still is.
The primary driver of this extended recent dollar rally has simply been that the US Dollar is the least dirty shirt in a laundry basket full of stinky clothes. The Euro and the EU economies are struggling to maintain growth. Japan's markets and economy is suffering from inefficient corporate earnings policies both from the government and within the local corporations there.
You can try to game it a few ways. In general, the stronger dollar trend should be a headwind for many of the megacaps which have large foreign exposure. Dollar strength probably won't hit this quarter in a big way, but it will impact in the guidance and consensus earnings estimates for 2015 for export-heavy companies. Likely beneficiaries of a stronger dollar include retailers, tech, consumers and savers. Boeing is another name that comes to mind that might get hurt from a strong dollar. Boeing BA has the tailwind of war but the competition from Airbus plus the strength of the dollar vs the Euro that Airbus uses has got to hurt the company's near-term prospects. Is it enough to get a warning from the company in the next few months, I'm less than certain.
I would look at any funds or stocks I have that are heavily-dependent upon exporting sales and consider selling them. I happen to think that most of our individual Revolution Investing stocks that we own are poised to continue to bubble higher regardless of the dollar's rally impact on the economy.
Since back in 2009, I’ve long been predicting a bigger and badder stock market bubble than ever before. And we’re now in it. But that doesn’t mean it’s all about to come crashing down.
Corporate profits, corporate profit margins continue to shock most economists (not me though). The Fed is still in “emergency measures” mode with 0% interest rates and QE and other stealthier forms of helping banks and corporations minimize financial costs (as I’ve outlined for years). The Republican/Democrat regime at the federal, state, county and local levels still kowtow to corporations with ever more excessive subsidies and protection. Every saver and/or retiree is still desperate to find some sort of yield and decent gains on their money.
When will it end? The seemingly insanely huge advances in productivity our economy has gained from apps, smartphones, tablets, PCs, Internet, etc., is what has enabled the Fed to play these games much longer and has likewise enabled the Federal government’s debt/low-rates addiction to grow much larger than they would have been able to in other times. And so it continues for foreseeable future. Is it an endless bubble-blowing cycle after another?
But to be sure, the U.S. isn’t destined to have a hard landing if/when all rates go up on all that debt upon which interest has to be paid. Indeed, this version of a 1%-3% slow-growth GDP economy is a self-fulfilling dynamic whereupon destructive policies always suck out anything above that, but never more than would cause it all to crash down. And it that could be here for years to come, no?
In an article called ”Why you must fight the Fed and get ready for a new stock market bubble,” and in this interview with WSJ’s Simon Constable, both from 2010, I wrote the following to explain why we were likely headed into a stock market bubble — and it looks like we’re headed into an even bigger one today:
“Both the fundamentals and the macroeconomic (i.e., Fed’s relentless liquidity/money pumping) forces seem to point to much higher prices… We’re done lowering rates and easing. But I do think the most likely scenario is, indeed, for a booming or even a bubble in the stock market again.”
Sectors that I expect to bubble next includes wearables, robotics and drones and stocks like Ambarella, Apple and Sony. Be careful though and start slowly. What do you think? Tell me in the comments below or come join the discussion on Scutify.
Here’s (at least part of) what every serious investor and trader needs to know this weekend.
Bill Gross Leaving Pimco for Janus: Bill Gross leaving Pimco is pretty big news in the Wall Street world. First thought is why doesn’t Bill just retire? He’s 70 years old and worth, literally, billions. Isn’t there more to life? Second, I’m sure nobody will ever discuss it really, but I wonder if the investigation into his bond-fund pricing mechanisms by the SEC made this decision easier for him.
Bill Gross exit weighs on Treasury market: You’ve got to be kidding me that traders and investors in bonds actually base their buy and sell decisions on where Bill Gross is hanging his hat? That’s not a sustainable way to make money in the markets.
Starboard is pushing Yahoo to join forces with AOL: I want to short Yahoo (YHOO), as I can hardly believe their lack of revenue growth during the last five years as mobile-ad growth has exploded and online ads have grown steadily. Maybe another few days of rally like this, and I might finally step in by buying some longer-dated Yahoo puts
Derek Jeter’s unbelievable closing act at Yankee Stadium and Understatement of the year: ”OK. Thursday I posted I was taking the afternoon off to watch Derek Jeter’s last home game and that it better be worth it. Was that the understatement of the year? Thank you, #Derek, for the last 20 years. Couldn’t write a better ending. OK. Back to work now for the rest of us.” Talk about a winning trade. Watching Jeter instead of a collapsing market.
Buoyant Dollar Recovers Its Luster, Underlining Rebound in U.S. Economy: Anybody else ever wonder if the seemingly insanely huge advances in productivity our economy has gained from apps, smartphones, tablets, PCs, Internet, etc., is what has enabled the Fed to play these games much longer and has likewise enabled the Federal government’s debt/low-rates addiction to grow much larger than they would have been able to in other times?
China’s ‘Hard Landing’ Approaches: Which leads to the next question – Does the U.S. have to have a hard landing if/when all rates go up on all that debt upon which interest has to be paid? Could this version of a 1%-3% slow-growth GDP economy be a self-fulfilling dynamic whereupon destructive policies will always suck out anything above that, but never more than that?
Q. There is a company called Search Initiatives that is looking for investors. It is supposedly going public sometime in the next year or so. Have you heard of it and if so, do you have any opinion on it? Thanks. "We have a firm commitment underwriting from Maxim Securities to raise at least $50 million. The IPO will not only provide our investors with liquidity but will provide Search Initiatives with the funds necessary to maintain our leadership in the U.S..."
A. I've never heard of Search Initiatives, but a quick Google Search of "Search Initiatives IPO" reveals more than enough to make me run in the other direction. https://www.google.com/search?q=search+initiatives+ipo http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Search-Initiatives-Elocal-Listing/nationwide/Search-Initiatives-Elocal-Listing-Investment-Scam-Temecula-California-338359 Scam Pre-IPO's – Company shares are offered directly to unsuspecting investors based on the premise that the company will be going public in the very near future. This exploitation plays on an investor's eagerness to partake in what could be a lucrative Initial Public Offering but, these companies either do not exist or are marginally successful and are not financially ready to "go public". And why doesn't anything about the supposed IPO with Maxim Securities leading the way come up if you Google https://www.google.com/search?q=search+initiatives+ipo+maxim
Q. Any interest in $BABA sub 90?
A. I think $BABA will go up. I don't want to risk my own hard-earned money on $BABA, a Chinese-based company based in Cayman Islands with a very convoluted share structure. Read this: "It is not clear after looking over the structure just what the hell the holder of the stk actually owns if anything, except for a piece of a shell corp in the Cayman Islands. It is like a modern derivative, a betting vehicle, more a state of mind that a productive piece of anything when push comes to shove. http://bit.ly/1DoO1Qf"
Q. Are you expecting a big correction in Nasdaq??
A. No, I've been writing for the last week or so that, including in my report this morning that: "The path of least resistance for the broader stock markets remains sideways with a slight upward bias."
Q. $AMBA: What are your expectations for $AMBA? I feel like I have missed the move up. Thanks.
A. $AMBA'S been on fire but not as much as its higher-profile customer $GPRO. Looking out five years from now, I think you'll see teens wearing AMBA-based cams everywhere they go. I could see a HD-cam sales hitting 3-4 billion per year. Mobile phone unit sales are climbing towards 2 billion already and most all of those will have cameras in them, so a 3-4 billion unit per year market for HD cams and the chips that run them isn't that far off.
Q. Hi Cody, Can you add color on $SNE? Aside from their library of titles, what attracts you to them? Also, do you think their recently announced TV box is a good move considering there are established competing products? Are you planning to add to lower your cost basis here?
A. I've added near $18-19 on $SNE and am just letting that ride for now. I'd probably add if it got down closer to $16 and would definitely buy another tranche of SNE if it got down $15 or so. As for the reasons why-- remember $HPQ at $15 when it'd been crushed for messing up its businesses and overpaying for bad acquisitions and stuff? I think $SNE is similarly crushed for messing up its businesses right now and if they get the ship righted at all, the stock would double. If Sony wearables or TVs ever take off, the stock would triple or quadruple. And if everything on the planet goes right for Sony in the next few years, the stock could be a 5-10 bagger by this time next decade. Of course, if it doesn't right itself, the stock will be dead money and/or lower than its current $17ish quote.
Q. Cody, what would be a good entry point for $AAPL?
A. Glad you asked. I thought I'd included this paragraph in this morning's report too, but it seems it got cut off at the end for some reason (probably because I hit "Cut" to move it at one point and forgot to hit "Paste" later). "If I didn't own any $AAPL, I'd start scaling into it with a small tranche of about 1/5 of whatever a full position is for you without waiting for a pullback. Then I'd look at buying a second tranche if it gets hit even just 3-4% in the near-term. And then just be patient about buying the next two-three tranches. It's always possible that $AAPL gets hit 20% or more at some point, and although I don't expect that to happen any time soon, I've owned it for 11 years and it does happen."
Q. Hi Cody. Love your service. Invaluable!! I get the tranche approach and always apply that strategy. I haven't established any positions in the 3-D printing basket, would you do so now? If so, just $SSYS? Or would you do $DDD as well? Thank you so much for your hard work and everything you do. As an aside, Scutify is the best!!
A. We made some decent money owning $DDD early on in the 3-D Printing Bubble but I sold it long ago back in the $80s or so when I got sick of management's hype-ful press releases and the way I always felt like they were trying to sell me something when I heard them talk or met them. I'm sticking with SSYS but would definitely use a small tranche approach and start slowly with it and give it some room to pull back as you scale in over time. It's a very volatile stock and sector. Good luck. Thanks for the kind words too!
Q. Cody: I am hearing lot of positives on $TWTR stock. What are you thinking of it for a near term into next earnings or so?
A. I think $TWTR's doing much better monetizing their user base but I think they're struggling to grow that user base. Depending on what the markets weigh more in the next report, is how the stock will trade. I'd rather own $FB than $TWTR and I do.
Q. Cody: I see that $AMZN is not getting any love and all the comps and some investors I know are positive $AMZN. Its earnings in October. I see you have $AMZN at 8 ratings and for short term do you see it goes up into earnings?
A. Feet to fire, I'd rather be long than $AMZN into year-end and that's why I have it rated an 8 out of 10 right now. The company's lack of earnings power and margin power is in focus as Alibaba's $BABA's own earnings and margin power is so much stronger. Not a fair comparison, but who said the market is fair? I do think $AMZN can double from here over the next couple years if they keep growing top-line as fast as they have been for years now.
Q. Cody, are you thinking of adding more physical gold at these levels or do you think there's more risk/lack of upside coming up?
A. I've done my physical gold buying at these levels in months past and am not in any rush to add to my gold anytime soon. Gold and silver might be dead money and/or stuck in a down trend while this dollar rallies, as it has been and as it looks like it might for the foreseeable future.
So, here are the seven must-have apps for traders and investors:
-
Scutify (Free) - By far the most value-add and outright best app for every investor and trader.
-
ChartIQ (Free) - Best stock charting app and the free version is packed, but it'll cost you for real-time data.
-
FRED (Free) - Best economic app, bar none.
-
KCast Gold Live! (Free) - An impressive amount of relevant information on commodities like precious metals.
-
WolframAlpha ($2.99) - Amazing amount of information about stocks and another other topic you can think of to research.
-
Stock Guru Pro ($19.99) - Don't mistake the snapshot of each stock's fundamentals here for actual "fundamental analysis", but newbie investors especially might learn a lot using this app to research their stocks.
-
Marketwatch (Free) – Needs to be updated but still offers great content.
You have to be aware of these speculative bubbled frenzies and paid-promotion scams even if you're just an average Joe investor. I personally have received dozens of thank you's from readers who listened to my advice to stay away from these lousy investments and themselves saved millions of dollars in unnecessary losses. Remember my simple rule: don't ever buy a penny stock.
Here's an audacious real-life, real-time example of how this penny stock promotion game works. Indeed, this is the most brazen stock promotion game I've ever seen, and I've seen them all.
This company gets paid $17,500 dollars by BreedIT, a lousy penny stock trading at 19 cents per share, to write an article touting the BreedIT stock which they then pay to get sent out over the newswire services and which then even gets picked up on Marketwatch's Newswire feeds.
This in particular article is all the more outrageous as it quotes yours truly and cites Marketwatch to try to gain some semblance of credibility: "As noted by Marketwatch contributor and major Scutify shareholder Cody Willard, Aegion items like 'water and wastewater, Brinderson, corrosion engineering and cathodic protection' will be in direct demand. It's notable that Willard is adamant about only investing in blue chip plays. Monsanto and billionaire investor George Soros have gotten their hands dirty and pushed to get into the marijuana business."
Ironically, the article they're citing that I wrote for Marketwatch is all about avoiding penny stocks like BreedIT. Here's a better, more apropos quote from me in that same article where I mentioned Aegion as a great long-term marijuana play: "I’ll give you one more public service announcement that penny stocks up 1,000% on hype will take you to the poorhouse. Do you think I’m wrong that these penny pot stocks like $PHOT, $CBIS, $HEMP and $MJNA are going to leave retail investors with big losses when it’s all said and done? Comment below or come join the discussion on this stuff over on my Scutify page."
You can click on any of those symbols and you'll see my track record and historical analysis for each one. In fact, every single one of those four pot penny stocks I mentioned in that article are down 60%-90% since I wrote that. Just in the last couple days, I've added 150% to my performance on Scutify Sentiment rankings as two pot penny stocks and one other penny stock Bearish Sentiment Views expired.
Meanwhile, Aegion is up about 10% since I wrote that article. But back to BreedIT -- BreedIT has generated some $6,000 in revenues each of the last two years (you read that right, six thousand dollars in sales in 2012 and 2013) and would need to grow that number 30,000% to get to sales to 1x market cap. And the kicker is that up until the recently popped marijuana penny stock bubble got started, this BreedIT company which currently says it's in the business of "develops, licenses, and markets agro-breeding solutions for plant breeders and researchers" was actually called ProGaming and touted itself as "an online gaming platform for multiplayer skill game competitions on the internet."
So let me be clear since this company and it's hypester shills have tried to associate my name with it -- I predict that BRDT will be right back down to its 52-week low of 3 cents per share and that it's headed much lower than that over the next few years. I don't think it has any product for "agro-breeding solutions for plant breeders" that will ever sell enough to make this company worth $1 million, much less the current $17 million market cap it has.
After I mention how much money I have saved warning retail investors about pot penny stocks, the attacks commence immediately. Insiders and hypesters are sensitive about people calling out their scams. My favorite attack from the hypsters recently is the guy on Twitter who calls me an idiot for having nailed an 80% crash in ERBB. Now the hypesters are deleting their tweets to me cuz I made them look stupid by calling out their scams. Sigh.
Forget penny stocks. The key is to have a strategy for finding the best revolutionary stocks on the planet and navigating the broader market swings with them. I covered much of this recently on a panel I sat on with Bill Harris of Personal Capital, Jim Hurd of Green Science Exchange, talking about how "disruption from drones, robots, wearables, nanotech, and cleantech is coming our way."
Sticking with the best revolutionary stocks that I've outlined for years such as Apple, Google, Facebook while avoiding penny stocks and other scams will put you far ahead of most retail investors. It still won't be easy and it will be stressful, but a good game plan for the long-term is what it's all about.
I don't know when the ongoing bubble-blowing bull market will pop or what will actually cause it to pop. I am doing my best to look out over the next year or two and get a feel for where the economy, earnings and stocks and other financial assets are headed, but when it comes to investing, I want to just slowly scale into the most revolutionary stocks on the planet and use tranche-trading to maximize my gains and minimize my risks over the next decade or two.
If and when the markets do crash, which could be another 3 or 5 years out for all I know, I expect I will have navigated it by having lots of cash on the sides to continue building my favorite revolutionary stocks. Longer-term I think we'll have 10x our money on another Google or another Apple kind of 100x gain in some of our stocks, and that's the reason I risk my hard-earned capital to begin with.
In the meantime, there are also great pitches being thrown at all traders as the markets bubble and swing. I've recently been focusing some on finding great bubbled up tech shorting opportunities, and there are a plethora of them in this bubble-blowing bull market.
- 0% interest rates. After the great Y2K stock market bubble popped in 2001-2005 or so, analysts used to filet former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, for having caused that bubble with his dovish approach to interest rates. He kept rates artificially under historically normal levels, eventually taking them all the way to an unprecedented 1% level as the calendar flipped to the new millennium. For the last five years, every developed nation on the planet has been keeping rates near 1% or even lower. And with interest rates simply being the reflection of the cost of borrowing money for huge corporations, and with the cost of borrowing money for huge corporations being artificially manipulated below their fair value, there’s been trillions of dollars borrowed to finance share buybacks, dividends, and other financial engineering mechanisms.
- QE. From wikipedia: “A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying specified amounts of financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions, thus raising the prices of those financial assets and lowering their yield, while simultaneously increasing the monetary base.” Think about what QE truly means then for a moment. QE sends a set amount of money to giant Too Big To Fail banks each month in exchange for some sort of “financial asset” that might or might not be worth whatever the taxpayer is paying for it. Can you imagine running a business knowing that each and every month you will be able to unload your worst inventory for above market prices?
- Stimulus. Back in 2008, Bush and the Republican side of the Republican Democrat Regime, created an economic stimulus package that included sending a check of a couple hundred bucks each to people not in the top 5% of income earners. In 2009, the Republicans went back to pretending that they are anti-stimulus as Obama and Democrat side of the Republican Democrat Regime created an economic stimulus package of their own. 99% of the stimulus bills that are passed are simply tools for giant corporations to profiteer on taxpayer largesse.
- Tax policies. We have a 100,000 page tax code full of obsequious and convoluted laws that are not uniformly applied. Every new subsidy, tax break, and/or law that’s proposed and passed in any of the state’s or nation’s capitals around the developed world is done so because some corporation will directly benefit with larger profits. I recently had a Democrat state lobbyist in NM tell me that “unless the potential client has tens of millions of dollars at their disposal,” he wouldn’t be interested in lobbying for them. He considers himself liberal, by the way. Nobody’s lobbying for the benefit of public good these days, so don’t ever believe their hype.
- New laws. With each new giant governmental spending program that has come out in the last five years, including the aforementioned bond manipulation programs, the Dodd Frank banking system, and Obamacare, we’re spending more taxpayer money that could have and would have gone into something more efficient and productive for our economy and society. These laws were written by corporate attorneys, accountants and lobbyists and they are licenses to steal taxpayer money. If we really wanted to provide universal health care to our nation’s people, we’d pay the health care providers directly. Why does a health insurance company exist at all if the government’s the one writing the check anyway? To profiteer on taxpayer largesse, that’s why. These manipulations don’t happen in a vacuum of course. Every dollar that is lent out at below the natural rate is another dollar that won’t go to where the market place would have found reasonable risk/return. That’s why these artificial manipulations creating all this long-term malinvestment is so destructive to our economy and society over the long-term. And more to the vacuum point for the the near- and mid-term time frame, we are in a global currency / corporate economic world war. Every government around the world in every developed nation from China to the US to EU to Brazil to Russia are actively mimicking the US artificial manipulation policies and programs. And this escalating global economic world war is perhaps the sixth bullet point to our list. Most citizens of the world are being even more oppressed by even more damaging policies which continues to lead them to try to put their money in US-based securities and assets. And that is good for our own stock market and economy for the near-term. But when I’ve positioned us for as well as when I’ve talked about the ongoing bubble-blowing bull market we’re going through right now, these factors are a large part of my analysis. The flipside of the bubble blowing bull market good times will be something ugly. But we are not to the flipside yet. These policies are still going strong and will probably continue for at least the next couple years, Bonds are in big trouble over the next ten years. There are just too many trillions of dollars worth of artificial manipulation of currencies and rates going on for the last five years or so to think that there’s any semblance of normal price discovery going on in the bond markets around the world.
The fog of war is thick now, which makes the markets less certain, which over time can contract multiples and bring down valuations. I’ve talked before about how we are in a currency war and how the “fog of war” is building, making this and other geopolitical conflicts potential Black Swan events. And you can bet that there will be continued escalation and U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Did you forget this all-important factoid about Ukraine/U.S. ties and the conflicts of interest therein?
Biden’s Son Joins Board of Gas Company Linked to Ousted Ukrainian President — The facts: Ukraine Energy Co. has lots of “legal rights” to lots of energy fields in Ukraine. If Russia takes over Ukraine, those “legal rights” will be gone forever. Best way to save your company? Weeks after Joe Biden visits, you appoint his son to your Ukraine Oil Co., and now the U.S. will say its got U.S. interests in Ukraine. Much more “aid” from U.S. taxpayers to support the Biden kid’s company and the regime now in power in Ukraine and perhaps a full blown war in Ukraine is the most likely outcome with this development.
It’s crucial to be aware of as many interests at play as possible. At any rate, I’m not making any major changes to my portfolio as a result of this analysis. But Ukraine/Russia/U.S. tensions remain a volatile piece of our puzzle as well as being something to pray about.
In 2009, I started writing columns about what I was calling the App Revolution. I made predictions about the potential size, scope and growth of apps, smartphones and tablets, and how they would change our lives forever.
Most of my predictions like “the ultimate size of a market that will entail billions of people using trillions of apps” from back then seemed outrageous at the time.
Now they seem prescient:
When you find the single largest target market in the history of the planet, it’s time to get excited — perhaps even consumed — by apps. I’ve certainly been obsessed with all things apps since I started looking at the growth ahead and the ultimate size of a market that will entail billions of people using trillions of apps. Seriously, those are real numbers, and as I wrote in “ Invest in the app revolution any way you can ,” I’m not only obsessed with finding the best publicly traded plays on the app revolution, but I’m even launching app companies like Scutify .
I explained to people that apps were going to become the “largest target market in the history of the planet.” Even though we all use apps and even though the App Revolution did indeed change everything and become the largest target market in the history of the world, I’ve just come to the realization that the App Revolution is actually just getting started. The Wearables Revolution, which only works because we’ve become such an app-centric economy, is going to make an even bigger impact than the Smartphone and Tablet Revolutions did with apps.
That is, wearables are to the smartphone and tablet what the smartphone and tablet were to PCs. Wearable technology that keeps people and companies connected to the Internet through simple-to-use apps is the single most evolutionarily revolutionary technology to hit since the smartphone was first rolled out.
I’ve been testing out Google Glass for the last few weeks, and I have seen the future. The future is one where you will talk and/or tap on your Smartglasses and Smartwatches and Smartrings and other smart jewelry (i.e., wearables) to interact with the data, information and personal content with more ease than ever before.
The reason apps for wearables is so important is because of the very simple interfaces required by the wearable-form factor. When you want to control and manipulate your data, information and content deeply, you’ll go to your PC. In the same way that it’s much easier to sign up for and type and view on your Facebook profile page or your Google Analytics on your PC than it is on your smartphone, the same is true for wearables. Wearables won’t “replace” your smartphone entirely in the same way that your smartphone didn’t “replace” your PC entirely.
You can still record a video with a camera accessory to your desktop computer and upload it to YouTube or Facebook. For another decade at least, you’ll always have the option of pulling out your smartphone or tablet to record a video and upload it to YouTube or Facebook. But do you have any idea how much easier it is to simply tap your Google Glass and say “OK, glass, record a video,” and then to say “OK, glass, share this with YouTube (or Facebook)”? It is so much easier.
With holographic projectors and wearable eyepieces and other display-form factors coming out as the wearable technology polishes itself up for primetime, the possibilities and potential for wearable technology is unrivaled.
Scutify.com Investor's Deep Thought of the Day. Imagine the medical, health and training applications from having non-invasive wearable sensors on your body to track your blood, hormone, or whatever other levels you need tracked. It's not even that far out there.
The Wearable Revolution isn't about Fitbit tracking how far your walk and how many calories you burn. And it's not about a Smartwatch that tracks your heartbeart while letting you read your emails or talk on the phone.
It's about health monitors. It's about having a video recorder on you at all times if you so desire (and millions of people will desire such record-ability). It's about keeping track of your kids and your pets (and your spouse, etc). It's about logistics and data and streamlining efficiencies in your workforce. It's about safety and accountability.
Wearables and what people do with them will change society. Invasion of privacy is going to be an ever bigger issue with wearables and drones and robots and their ability to track and keep data, video and other private information.
Some of the best plays on the future of wearables include:
-
Google. With Android and Google's ubiquitous cloud presence in all of our lives via Gmail, YouTube, Search, etc, not to mention Google Glass itself, Google's clearly got its eyes on the wearables prize(s).
-
Apple. Most every major wearable and the apps that run it will interaction with your iOS and/or Mac device via apps and sites. Apple's iOS long ago hit critical mass and it won't be losing it anytime soon.
-
Oracle. All those apps and all that data and information will be increasingly complex to manage. Oracle's database is the de facto standard and best of for handling that kind of mess.
-
Sandisk. There will always be demand for local storage and the amount of storage demanded by these apps, smartphones, and wearables of the future will be huge. Huger than that. Ginormous.
-
Intel/Arm/Micron/etc. All those wearables will themselves require lots of chips, lots of processing power, lots of memory, etc.
The uses/marketplace/applications for wearables don't even exist yet. The fitbit and the Nike wearables you see around today are like 8-track players before anybody had even invented the Walkman. People like to live better, longer and easier lives. That's what the future of wearables promises to deliver. Get on board now before you look back in eight years and wonder why you didn't see it coming like the people on my Cody Cam didn't see the online video revolution coming eight years ago.
When you're looking at long-term, revolutionary-type investments, you're obviously trying to find markets and companies that are growing quickly with huge potential in front of them. There are two types of growth, secular and cyclical. Cyclical growth happens when a company and/or a market see upside along with the broader economic cycle. Energy companies, metals markets, chemicals, housing and many commodities fall into this type of category. That is, when times are good, so too will their businesses likely be good and when times are bad, all the boats sink together.
Secular growth, on the other hand, happens when a nascent industry is taking off, about to grow into revolutionary proportions as it displaces old business models and technologies. Two factors contribute to secularly growing industries -- they create entirely new demand and they steal demand from other industries. Netflix, YouTube and other web/app video sites, for example, are contributing to more people consuming more video than ever before. But people are also spending some of the time that they used to spend watching network and cable television on Netflix and YouTube. That's a double shot of growth for the web/app video industry.
Likewise, wearables, robots and drones are going to be secularly-growing, eventually reaching new revolutionary proportions, creating new end-markets, consumption habits and prosperity for our economy as well as our society at large.
How many wearable computing devices do you own right now? None, is the most likely answer. How many times a day do you interact with a drone right now? Unless you're in Afganistan, Syria or somewhere like that being targeted by the RepublicanDemocrat Regime or a hobbyist with a quadcopter camera, your answer is most likely, never.
And robots? Factories are filled with robots, but our day to day consumer doesn't interact with robots much just yet.
Meanwhile, over the next five to ten years, billions of new wearable gadgets in hundreds of new form factors with millions of new applications will be sold to consumers and enterprises around the world. Drones -- from Google's and other's driverless cars to pilotless aircraft to quadcopter package delivery -- will be everywhere in our daily lives within the next decade too. Facebook and Google will be using Drones to deliver Internet access. Robots, which, if they're fully mobile, would also be known as drones, are going to sell us routine tickets, provide safety checks and who knows what else over the next decade.
The wearable/drone/robot revolutions get even better for investors who are willing to do their homework because each and every one of those wearables, drones and robots needs ever more computing power and sensors.
The first iteration of the iPhones and Android smartphones had about three sensors each, including accelerometer, proximity and light sensors. Today's smartphones and tablets have ten to fifteen sensors each, including all those three already mentioned along with 3- or 6-axis gyroscopes, fingerprint, gesture and even heart-rate sensors.
Each wearable, drone and robot will likewise have ten times or more as many sensors as these early versions of wearables, drones and robots that we see coming out today.
So if you can find a market that will grow from almost nothing currently to selling billions of units a year in the next decade, you're probably onto some good investments. But if you can find component plays in that industry that will sell ten or twenty or a hundred components into each one of those units, you're probably onto the kind of investment that Intel was when PCs were nascent and before it went up 1000-fold from 1970s to the 1990s.
I'm building a portfolio of these kinds of stocks right now, knowing that I'm probably still a year or two ahead of the demand curve that's building for these companies right now. So far I've started with toe-hold positions in Invensense and JDSU, both of which have got sensor/component products that should do well in these new industries over the next five to ten years. I'm still researching all of this and trying to put it into something we can analyze, quantify and grasp. Stay tuned and if you're got some plays on these revolutionary trends, let me know on http://Scutify.com.
I talk about the Drone Revolution and the best ways to invest in it with drone entrepreneur, Terry Holland. Plus how to play with drones and other apps that we'll see hitting the markets in the next year or two.
Each and every investor and trader is different for a million different reasons.
Some people love to take big risks in hopes of big rewards. Others are strongly risk-averse and cringe at the thought of any, even temporary, material losses from trading and investing.
Some people are born into big money and have traded stocks before they're even out of high school. Some people are born into even bigger money and have a trust fund with millions of dollars already invested in stocks in your name. Most investors and traders, on the other hand, have to work for at least half their lifetime before ever having enough savings to consider buying a stock.
Some of you are in careers that have huge upside and you're already making more cash flow than you can spend each month. Meanwhile, some of you are in a career where you know exactly how much you'll be making for most of the rest of your life and its not much more than you make right now.
Each of these plus a million other factors go into you making decisions about how and where and when and with whom you're investing your money.
Last week, I talked about how I learned the importance of listing your portfolio positions in order of weighting and giving each of the positions a rating between 1 and 10. That's a crucial and easy to use tool to help you maintain the balance in your portfolio, but it does little by way of helping you make sure you're headed towards your long-term investing and trading goals.
Consider the bigger picture and your own long-term goals and reasons for investing and trading before you ever move a dime.
Here are a few other questions each and every investor should ask themselves.
Want to be a good Revolution Investor? It won't ever be as easy as just buying some great stocks and forgetting about them. You have to continually stay on top of each of your positions, of your portfolio itself as well as continually making sure that you're on track for your longer-term goals while keeping your risk profile appropriate for you too. Like I said, it won't be easy. But with a good playbook, consistent diligence and appropriate money allocation, you can do it.
For now, GOOG is sort of perceived as a "safe" stock in tech, and that can be good for the short-term but will hurt on the downside hit whenever it comes next as the people who thought it was "safe" then decide it's not after they've lose money on it. The game/cycle/mentality of trading never changes, it's just easier to look out five or ten years and see that $GOOG and Android will likely be much bigger and more valuable and making more money then than they are today and that means the stock will likely be higher too.
Yahoo!7 launches new finance app for iOS and Overhauled Yahoo Mail App for Android - I get so frustrated with Yahoo finance on my iPhone because they changed to a mobile layout that doesn't include balance sheet and other info I used to use their site for. Then I get excited when I realize that their mistakes give Scutify an even bigger opportunity. Meanwhile, Android and its seamless integration with all your Google accounts and Gmail make even Apple's AAPL latest iOS and apps seem antiquated. Yahoo is not an app company. I am considering shorting that stock soon.
Best review EVER on the Scutify iPhone app: "This app will become a must have for all investors/traders around the world. But it's much more than finance. Cody Willard said recently on Scutify that, 'you gotta start somewhere', and it struck a chord with me. How will anything change toward fairness if we don't get started. Scutify is that venue. There's a moral and ethical foundation to the truth, as well as ideas for making our world a better place for all." Amen.
Speaking of telling you the truth: SEC warns investors about over-the-counter marijuana stocks - "The SEC’s warning trails a similar decree made by MarketWatch’s own Cody Willard months ago. Willard has warned against trading OTC stocks in general, citing marijuana stocks and e-cigarette companies as particularly shady." I've been tellin' ya.
Biden returns to Europe in wake of Ukraine crisis and Biden’s Son Joins Board of Gas Company Linked to Ousted Ukrainian President - The facts: Ukraine Energy Co has lots of "legal rights" to lots of energy fields in Ukraine. If Russia takes over Ukraine, those "legal rights" will be gone forever. Best way to save your company? Weeks after Joe Biden visits, you appoint his son to your Ukraine Oil Co, and now the US will say its got US interests in Ukraine. Much more "aid" from US taxpayers to support Biden's Baby Boy's Board company and the regime now in power in Ukraine and perhaps a full blown war in Ukraine is the most likely outcome with this development.
Jim Cramer had apparently become a fan of mine enough that when the Editor in Chief, the late David Morrow, told him that I wanted to launch a hedge fund, Jim reached out to me and invited me to his offices in NYC to discuss it. He gave me the names and numbers of various contacts of his at Bear Stearns, Goldman and other firms that provide what are called "prime brokerage services", and other resources for hedge funds and told me I could use his name when I called them so I'd be sure they'd take the call.
I'd long ago learned the importance of reaching out to anybody who can help you when you're starting a new venture or adventure, and Doug Kass was another Wall Street big shot who not only met with me at his place in Florida, but also introduced me to several "soft-dollar brokers," who help fund your hedge fund start up costs in exchange for doing a corresponding amount of trading at their firm over time.
Dr. Dre is awesome but neither he nor Maria Carey's ex, Iovine, are not techies and Apple needs to keep innovating with tech, not celebrity marketers on their payroll.
This acquisition of Beats at this time and place for this kind of money is indeed yet another indicator that we are in my App Revolution Stock Market Bubble, capitalized because it just keeps getting bigger.
I sure wish Apple were spending that money and time on much-needed improved operating systems and mind-blowing features for their gadgets instead of buying a fashion accessory tied to music app company instead.
That said, Apple remains one of my biggest positions since I'd recently built it back up a few months ago and I'm holding that position steady because they still have a lot more going right and are cheap enough that I still like the risk/reward for the next couple years at least in the stock.
Charts Say Stock Swoon May Have Farther to Go - I don't believe that the universe/capitalism will reward the drawing of straight lines on historical price patterns for a stock. Thusly, I do NOT do nor do I believe you can sustainably profit from any type of "Technical Analysis". Art, maybe, but not profits.
But one of the most insightful options traders and options data trackers you'll ever find, Jon Smart, made some great points: "Fundamental traders tend to run into the same problem, too many think a stock is under/over valued and it keeps going against what the majority believes should be happening... The sentiment on $NFLX and $TSLA in late 2012 was that they were way overvalued at $90 and $40 respectively."
Alibaba IPO search on Google News - 90,000 headlines in the last week about this topic. I have been patiently waiting to short Yahoo once Alibaba finally comes public. Talk about hype! How LONG have we been hearing about the Alibaba IPO and how Yahoo owns a chunk of it. Any upside for Yahoo from an Alibaba IPO has long since been priced into the stock. I expect $YHOO will make a great short side trade into the Alibaba IPO and there soon after for the near-term. Still gotta wait til closer to Labor Day though. Sigh.
How high can the drone revolution fly? - My latest Revolution Investing newsletter. "You see, the biggest problem that all these predictions and models for the Drone Revolution have is that they can't account for the brilliant, innovative and ever new uses that unmanned aircraft and smaller remotely- or automatically-controlled devices will be used for in the future." See also Monday's blog post: Profit from the coming drone revolution.
It ain't about government drone bombing and invasion of privacy. Some of the applications for drone/unmanned aircraft technology that I’m highlighting in the book include:
-
Farming/Agriculture/Environment — This is likely the largest market for drones, at least in the near-term
-
Defense – War – Military
-
Local Police Enforcement – State Government
-
Drones That are Robots
-
Medical Applications — Mind/thought controlled drones?
-
Natural Resource Mining-Business – Shipping
-
The Future of the Internet in Remote Locations – Communications
-
Weather Forecasting – Scientific Data
-
Criminal Usage
What will the markets do now? Why is Apple so strong? Will Twitter ever be a good stock to buy? What's the best software company in the world?
Happy Hour with @RebeccaDiamond and Cody Willard. Errr. I mean, Cody Underground. Featuring @MichaelHaynes CEO of Apmex. Do I buy gold coins or bars? U.S. or other countries? Fees? What about these gold companies that advertise on TV? This is for our kids' future!!!
- How I got to NYC
- Why and when I started writing
- The low point for my writing career
- How I got on TV the first time
- Don't ever give up because you're always just one perseverance away from success and the breaks won't come if you're not out there trying
- Do we have to have a crisis and crash for change to come?
- How do we get past Partisan politics and Republican Democrat radicalism?
- Gerald's new movement: Occupy Peace Movement. OccupyPeace.US
- Can the Internet Revolution save us?
- One of Gerald's favorite songs Here’s a full transcription of the interview too.
Cody: Let me just introduce … Gerald Celente is a … I consider him a friend. He’s been a frequent guest on my old show, Happy Hour, and I’ve stayed in touch with him since I left Fox, mainly because he’s brilliant, and he’s famous for forecasting trends and talking about geopolitical ramifications and forecasts, and economic outlooks, and just general commentary about the state of society, too.
I’m thrilled to have Gerald Celente join me today. He is the publisher of Trends Journal, and we’re going to jump right in and let him talk a little bit first about … What are you forecasting for the rest of this year, Gerald, and say maybe into next year for both the economy and any major geopolitical flashpoints that you’re worried about?
Gerald: Before I go any further, I just want to let you know that Happy Hour was one of the best shows on TV, and that’s no [Harvard 00:02:51] line. I was on everybody … Oprah, the Today Show … I used to go on every show out there, and that was the neatest show around.
Cody: Thank you so much. You were … we loved having you because you also had fun with us. It wasn’t a dry format.
Gerald: No. How could it be a dry format when you’re sitting around a bar.
Cody: I have to say, it was a brilliant concept, and it was a great … I loved it while it lasted; but truly, I don’t know that TV was my calling. I much more enjoy being underground, and being an entrepreneur, doing the things I’m doing with Scutify.com, and trading with Cody.com and some of my other ventures.
Gerald: I just want to let you know that that was … there’s been nothing like it before or since. Every show out there is dry and packaged, and there’s no life in them.
Cody: I really appreciate the kind words. This isn’t about me today for sure, Gerald. Can you please dive right in. What do you … what is your forecast?
Gerald: The forecast … on economic front, everybody knows the story. If they follow you, everybody knows the deal. As long as they keep dumping in cheap money into the system, whether it’s coming from China, whether it’s coming from the European Central Bank, whether it’s coming from the Federal Reserve, as long as they keep pumping dough into the system, it’s going to keep going on. It’s a pawnsie scheme.
The other thing is, of course, these record low interest rates. The only people that they’re enriching are the traders and the banks and the financiers. You see the merger and acquisition, the M&A markets booming because of all the cheap dough. The same thing with real estate. “Oh, look what just happened. The new numbers came out on new homes. They’re down. I wonder why they went down.” Well, the houses have gone up and the mortgage rates are going up, so as long as they keep dumping money into the system, keeps interest rates low, it’s going to continue to look the way it is now.
Cody: What would be the catalyst for the change, and do we have to have a heartache, a crash, a crisis, for the next foundation, something a little more healthy on an economic and political foundation for our country and the globe, itself? What’s the process? How do we get to something better, or do we just keep inflating these bubbles like you’re talking about until there’s biggest crisis, crash, depression of all time?
Gerald: Nothing is going to change, I believe, at this … I’ve been at this now 35 years, and I don’t see it changing until the individuals change.
It’s that hundredth monkey syndrome. You know the story about … how they taught a monkey how to do something on an island. Then all the monkeys did it. Then on an island that was very far away, the monkeys started doing it as well.
Right now they say that the fish rots from the head down. When you look at the major governments around the world, they’re run by fish at the head that are rotted. I mean, really.
Cody: I don’t disagree. I just love the phraseology. They truly … they’re rotten fish heads. That’s we have for leadership around the world in any developed country.
Address it, though. Do we have to have a crisis and a crash? Are they going to [crosstalk 00:06:44].
Gerald: No. I don’t believe in that. I believe that if you have a crisis or a crash, things could get worse and then get much worse after that. Just because things get worse, it doesn’t mean they get better.
It’s like a person … going back again to the individual. Let’s say a person doesn’t take care of themselves, they’re obese, they eat a lot of crappy food, they drink too much, and then they go … they get hit with a health crisis. How many people really, really change their lifestyle after the crisis, and how many continue to go on their old ways.
What I’m saying is: a crisis could even bring in more draconian measures. It could become much worse.
I don’t see it changing like that. Again, to me, where I am in my point of life, it’s going to have to take a national movement of people, regardless of the country you’re from.
Cody: I don’t mean to interrupt, but you’re making such an important point there. You’re saying that that national movement doesn’t have to be catalyzed by some sort of depression or crisis or crash … not just stock market, not just economic, not just social, but we can actually get on a better trajectory path from here without the crisis needing to be the impetus.
Gerald: Absolutely. Again, the vacuum has never been larger. You know me. I’m a political atheist. I look at both parties … I mean, they’re the Bloods and the Crips. I don’t mean it facetiously. They’re murderers and they’re thieves. How many more wars do they have to start, how many more people do they have to kill before people call them murderers? How much more money do they have to steal from us before they call them thieves?
Cody: You have no idea how many times I would get stopped in the elevator and hallways at Fox, or when I would go to appearances at ABC or any other channel ever, and they would say to me, “Can you please pull back a little bit on your political rhetoric? When you’re calling the Republican-Democrat regime a bunch of warmongering murderers, Cody, that’s really radical.” I would look at these people and be like, “No, the warmongering and murdering that the Republic-Democrat regime is doing is what’s radical.”
Gerald: It goes back again to the question: Look at what the people …
The same thing happens with me all the time, and I don’t get invited back because they don’t want to hear it; but again, going back to the question: does a crisis have to happen?
Here you have what you would think are people that are intelligent calling you a radical as they keep buying the crap and supporting it.
Cody: Correct, and propagandizing it for … in that case, when it’s in the hallways of a television network …
Gerald: Exactly, so that’s why I keep going back to: it’s the people. It’s the people.
Cody: How do we get to this better platform that is non-Republican, non-Democrat? As far as I’m concerned, I’m radical enough to be antipartisan at all. I don’t want there to be parties. I want people to be free-thinking. I think there’s enough of a literate base in this country that people can write in who they want to be elected, and we’ll just take whoever gets the most votes in each thing.
Gerald: I agree with you. Again, I would not use that term “radical.” As you said, the radicals are the ones that are the murderers and the thieves.
Cody: Thank you for clarifying and straightening me out there.
Gerald: Going back to it, here’s number one. The new Trends Journal is going to be coming out on Monday, and I’m starting a movement. It’s called Occupy Peace, and it’s going to be … the website, we’re building as we speak … OccupyPeace.us. This is only for Americans because, on top of the Occupy Peace is no foreign entanglements.
Cody: Oh, wow. That is a good platform and basis that you’re starting with there. Keep going.
Gerald: Here we are. I’m speaking from Colonial Kingston, New York, and this is the foundation of … that’s part of the foundation of the revolutionary war was right here. The British burnt this joint down in 1777. This is the …
Cody: [Crosstalk 00:11:27] you’re talking to me in Lincoln County, New Mexico, not famous only for the Lincoln County Wars with Billy the Kid, but I still am best friends with kids whose last names are Geronimo, Larry Geronimo and others, who also are part of the revolutionary national movement concept that you’re talking about. I wanted to connect some dots there.
Gerald: That’s great, and that’s what we’re talking about … again, the people. You said about enough people. Here’s the way I look at it. Eighty percent of the people will follow anything and do anything. You see them all over. They eat crap, they buy corporate food, they eat corporate food, they have no minds … they’ve lost it. They’ll follow good or bad. Whoever has the loudest voice, they’ll follow.
Other ten percent are … I call the destroyers. These are the people that are destroying things in front of us. These are the greedy, the immoral … and again, I’m no preacher. My whole life … I’d be the last guy to say, “Oh, yes, I did everything just right.” No. As you get older, you try to learn more and you try to make yourself better. I’m not telling people what to do or how to act. I want to make that really clear.
Cody: I’ll say it like you are a preacher, Gerald, because you’re preaching the word here. You’re doing God’s work. I do believe that. Keep going.
Gerald: Then there’s the ten percent that you’re talking about … the builders. Now it’s time for the builders to move into position, and that’s the way I see it now. The vacuum has never been greater. You look at the clowns around the world. Let’s go over to the UK … the little boy Cameron over there. Then you’ve got his neighbor, Hollande.
Cody: Little Cameron, he’s so cute.
Gerald: Isn’t he? I think he went to one of those boys’ schools where they got a lot of problems when he was a kid, because he didn’t come back with both of them.
Anyway, then you got Hollande over there, and he’s in the same category. Another loud-mouth little boy with nothing behind him. You come to the states you got Obama … an empty suit if there ever was one, other than the empty suits before him with Bush …
Cody: We could have had Romney’s empty suit.
Gerald: We could have Romney … again … By the way, if anybody is tired of voting for a lesser or two evils, I’m saying Charles Manson 2016. Let’s put a real evil in there. Enough of these lesser of two evils.
Cody: Forget the lesser of evils. Go with the greatest evil you can do. If you’re going to vote for a Republic-Democrat, vote for Charles Manson.
Gerald: Let’s stop this lesser of two evils stuff. Let’s go the full route.
Then you keep going back, and I’m saying the vacuum has never been greater. Look at the politicians in play. What have you got? You got [Boner 00:14:29] over there, you got Pelosi, you have McConnell, you have Reed. Come on. How can anybody take these people seriously?
What I’m saying is the vacuum is so large it could be filled with anything, so number one, Occupy Peace, no foreign entanglements. Rebuild America. Bring all the troops home, close the bases, bring [Reese 00:14:57] … and the other part is: rebuilt America. All the money that we’re wasting in these foreign wars, bring it back home, restore the nation.
Cody: You mentioned … and amen. Let’s please plug OccupyPeace.us repeatedly throughout the rest of the program because that’s how you build a movement is by getting this kind of underground movement started and getting the word out.
Gerald: It’s an above-ground movement. It’s not underground.
Cody: Well, I … my podcast I want to remain underground for a little while. That’s all I’m saying.
Gerald: Yeah, but Occupy … this is going to be big. This could be one of the greatest movements that this nation has ever seen.
Cody: That’s what I guess I’m trying to say. I would like to help contribute from an underground angle to build OccupyPeace.us and the Occupy Peace movement, itself, into something that would truly help catalyze the change without the crash and crisis that goes back to that first question I asked you about: can we get there without these repeated … or a major next crisis and depression or something.
You hit on a word several times back. You’ve talked about how there’s a vacuum out there, and I think you’re talking about of leadership, perhaps, of some sort of tangible, meaningful … you can call it moral and ethical if you want … ideas and politics that are not entangled in corporatism and warmongering and bank bailouts … and Illuminati crap that I might call it. Why has the internet revolution not helped save us yet? What is the problem that we’re … that there hasn’t been an OccupyPeace.us succeed yet, and what will enable this one to go to the next level?
Gerald: There’s another part, and I’ll go to that in one second because you ask what could … also with the parties. The other concept I believe in is direct democracy. Let the people vote. They do in Switzerland. It’s one of the most prosperous nations in the world. Everybody has a gun and they don’t kill each other. The food’s real good. They haven’t been in a war since … what? … 1857.
Cody: Not a bad idea.
Gerald: Then people say, “Then you’d have mob rule.” You got mob rule now. They call it Republicans and Democrats.
Cody: It’s worse than mob rule.
Gerald: It’s much worse than … we have 535 people telling 316 million of us how to tie our shoes.
Cody: It’s elitist and wealth rule at this point, not anything … mob rule would actually, I think, be an improvement.
Gerald: Exactly. We get the future we deserve.
Cody: Why is it the internet and social media like Scutify.com … which, by the way, I’m going to ask you afterwards when we’re offline. I’d love to start featuring some of your articles and have you join Scutify.com which is a social network, and apps that I’ve bought … that my companies have built for Apple and Android, and we’ve got some really cool stuff that I think …
We’d love to be involved with this movement and help make it go mainstream, and take it to a true end game that enables the people to have some voice and power.
Going back to [crosstalk 00:18:32] working yet?
Gerald: Why isn’t it working? Here’s why. Look what’s going on with Ukraine. Look at the propaganda campaign. The major media, even though less and less people are listening and watching, they still have great influence.
I’ll tell you, that Putin … I heard it right from Hilary Clinton herself. He said he’s like a Hitler. I mean, she said it. I heard Schwable say it over there in Germany. “I’ll tell you, that Putin, he reminds me like Hitler.”
Cody: [Crosstalk 00:19:08] interviewed XYZ, and they said that Putin is definitely a bad guy, and over on CNN I also heard Putin was a bad guy.
Gerald: There you go. So now it goes back to the 80%, and they get … I’m telling you, I tell people, “Look, I don’t have time for this BS. I don’t want to talk to you about this.” “You know about Victoria Nuland?” “Well, I don’t need to know.” Yes, you do need to know about that. How could you make a comment …?
I got in a discussion with a guy that’s a journalist professor at one of the biggest colleges on the East Coast, and he didn’t know anything about anything, and all of a sudden had the Jews being murdered in Hungary if this thing continued. That’s how this guy’s mind was. If you’re a journalist professor and you don’t even want to dig deeper in this … I said, “No wonder why this system stinks.”
What I’m saying to answer your question: the power is still there. Look at those little green men, you know, “Them Russian guys over there without them insignias.” I picked up the paper of record, the New York Times, or I like to call it the toilet paper of record, and there they have a huge story about … straight from the State Department and their sources in the Ukraine government that those guys over there in Dansk and other areas, they’re actually Russian soldiers. Here are the photos that are proof. It look like the guy from Duck Dynasty. It was a joke.
Cody: They actually have face masks on. You can’t see their [beard 00:20:49].
Gerald: Again, it’s been proven. Now it’s a fact. It was false, but it did the job. It did the job.
Cody: That’s my question. I’ve got to wrap up the podcast or I won’t be able to get it uploaded right and everything. I want you to come back next time, and we … let’s do this in another week or two. I’ll reschedule it with [inaudible 00:21:10] your people. I want you to talk about where and how, logistically and in reality, we are going to mobilize the people and finally leverage the power of the internet and these social networks and their ability to get a voice out there without the mainstream media and corporate money.
Gerald: Okay. All right.
Cody: I got to ask you one last question before I let you go. Your favorite song … it’ll be the song of the day.
Gerald: That’s a tough one. Here’s one for you. Che La Luna, mezz’u mare … Louis Prima.
Cody: I didn’t ever understand what you said.
Gerald: Che La Luna, mezz’u mare … that’s “take a look at the moon.” There’s a great old song … you ever hear of Louis Prima?
Cody: I did [crosstalk 00:22:00].
Gerald: Louis Prima, L-o-u-i-s.
Cody: Here I think I am a music aficionado, and I know nothing.
Gerald: You don’t know Louis Prima. Oh, man.
Cody: I’ll go look up Louis Prima. That’s the song of the day. People thanks for tuning in to Cody Underground. It has been my honor to talk and get some wisdom … and you know what? … preaching. Amen. The gospel from the man, himself, Gerald Celente, publisher of Trends Journal. Thanks so much. I’m [inaudible 00:22:29] another one, and we’ll keep going with this.
Gerald: Thank you.
Cody: Thank you.
Gerald: Bye-bye.
Q: Cody, if FB pops from earnings at what level would you look to sell some of the position?
A: My first boss on Wall Street once screamed at me and sent me home for celebrating having opened a big account because "you don't want to jinx it. Don't celebrate until the check is in the bank and has cleared." I mocked the idea even as I stormed home with steam blowing out of my ears, angry that he was angry at me when I'd just seemingly opened him a good opening-sized account from a big investor. I understood what he meant weeks later when that check never came and the guy never answered our call again and I ended up eating a $3000 loss for the firm. Anyway, IF FB pops, I'll tackle how I'll trade it when it happens. I'd likely trim more if FB were to get back above $70 where I'd trimmed it last time anyway.
Have lots of irons in the fire for your own career. And spread your purchases and your risk out over time and over a several positions no matter your age or risk-averse level.
Before you pull any trigger and open up any stock account, I’d suggest asking yourself if that money might be better used in starting a new app company or website business that you have come up with and think could be a big winner. The experience of running a business and more to the point, the upside of betting on your own actions creating value rather than betting on other people at other companies ability to create value for you as a shareholder, is probably the best bet for your money at this age and stage of your life.
When it comes to investing, I spend a lot of analysis, articles and thought process on doing exactly that — trying to remember who I was and what I was doing in past cycles that I’ve lived through on Wall Street. So today, I have a special edition of "Cody Underground" — Stock Throwback Thursday.
- Any advice on when you get stuck like this? Go neutral if things look dicey?
- What makes you think $FB is at the near term bottom?
- What is a good way to get exposure to gold if I do not have real capacity to hold physical gold?
- Where's the tech M&A activity?
- How I lost money on my JP Morgan short.
- How I saved thousands of retail investors.
- How the regulators really work.
- Get in front for the Drone Revolution.
Q: After this pullback, assuming you had none of the names on your portfolio list, which stocks would you recommend scaling into with a first tranche right now? Q: Lots of talk about an iWatch Q3 for holidays, etc. and maybe more, but the talk is just that, Q3 and Q4. You still confident of a pop by July? Q: Hi Cody, I noticed that you trimmed both GOOG and GOOGL. How do you value the class A and C shares? Q: Got this question on Scutify.com: “How would you suggest someone youngish with, say, a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to put into gold or silver and looking to build a longterm position in some precious metals get started?” Q: What can you imagine FB becoming in the next 3 to 5 years? Q: Feet to the fire, with the Fed minutes just released – do you think we may have the start of a bottom on this latest pullback and will this bounce we are currently seeing being sustained?
Today's Cody Underground Podcast Topics include:
-
@MichaelHaynes: "Ukraine still posing complex problems and increasing intensity. Oil is up and Gold; watch the Gold/Oil ratio.http://www.apmex.com/Commentaries/2630/mid-day-gold-silver-market-report-4-8-2014" Good stuff. I'll be talking about $gold and $silver and Ukraine on my Cody Underground Podcast tonight. Here on Scutify.com, u guys are getting some incredible insights from@MichaelHaynes, the CEO of Apmex, one of the foremost experts on physical $GOLDand $SILVER According to my sources at giant Mitsubishi, the labor strikes in the Platinum mines of South Africa have taken as much as 600,000 ounces off the market. The strike has been continuing since January 23, 2014. According to Mitsubishi, even with a range of 200,000 to 600,000 ounces not reaching the market will have market impact. Platinum is a key component in auto manufacturing and with rising auto production, there could be price impacts. (Mine status: http://tinyurl.com/ons5wdv)
-
Stocks have bitty bounce. Ukraine still flashing. But trying to run your portfolio on geopolitics and flashpoints is a recipe for disaster for you anyway.
-
Where are all the penny pot stock promoters now? $PHOT $CBIS $HEMP $MJNAEvery single one of those penny pot stocks is down huge from when the penny stock lovers were bashing away at me for warning them to get the hell out of the pot penny stocks. Sigh.
-
Scutify.com Poll Time: Who's more scared right now, the bulls or the bears? Everybody please answer here on the Scuttles. Thanks.
-
On another note, I am psyched to watch The Red Planet rise in the east at sunset tonight. Puts stuff in perspective. http://usat.ly/PHy6YM
-
Womens' NCAA Championship. How long before players get paid? Will all players in all sports get paid the same? Will you be able to go to the highest bidding college for your individual services. Uconn vs Notre Dame for woment's title tonight.
Today's Cody Underground Topics include:
- Markets keep falling. Time to do some buying yet? I mention a couple trades I made today.
- Protesters in Ukraine’s East Call On Putin to Send Troops - Pro-Russian demonstrators occupying a government building in Donetsk also demanded a referendum on seceding from Ukraine, hours after a Ukrainian officer was killed in Crimea.
- Pandora vs Spotify vs iTunes vs the world. $P is now down in a straight line from $39 to $27 per share, and I’d re-entered the short position on its way down at $35 or so as noted here on Scutify.com. I’m going to lock in about half the gains in my Pandora short position here today.
- Yahoo gets into the TV business - local and production of a TV-like series. I'm beginning to think $YHOO is a 'House of Cards' so to speak and Marissa Meyer the CEO has bluffed herself into a corner. That sure is a near new font she helped her designers create for the logo, tho huh? As Robert Marcin put it today on Scutify.com "Yahoo is the Sears of the Internet."
- Deep thot of the day- Are u safe in your GM car since the co and the govt oversight and safety regulations protect u? Or maybe U'd be safer if they stopped all that and simply shut down any co like GM that sells cars that kill people and prosecute the individuals running it.
- Song of the day is "Pandora's Box" by Aerosmith. See point #3 for why.
- This episode goes out to my daughter's 96 year old great grandpa. Banking today vs when he did it. He still owns WFC tho and it's made him a ton of money in stock gains and in dividends over the last few decades.
- Big sell off in high beta stocks today. But markets are still at all time highs. Jobs report. Discussed.
- High frequency trading. What it is, why it's taking money out of your pocket. What if retail investors figured out a way to front run a bank's trades?
- Blankfein and other Goldman pay in a time when the Fed continues "emergency extraordinary measures designed to help banks manage the crisis" hits a cool $20 million.
- Obamacare. First remember it's 100% based upon the "successful" model that is known in Massachusetts. Is the only number that matters is how many people sign up for it? What about quality of care, access to good care, etc? And, is Obamacare going to crush the US economy?
- Song of the day is "Dance, dance, dance" by The Steve Miller Band. Listen to the opening line and you'll see why I chose it for today's Johnson Stearns episode of Cody Underground.
The first ever Cody Underground podcast. Cody talks about Scutify, Yandex, Russia/Ukraine Crisis, Facebook, and what Pimco's Bill Gross is really worth. Song of the night - Ryan Adams, "Come Pick Me Up"