(BBY) Archives

Why the FANGs are Breaking Into Your Home

The house is the new smartphone and I will tell you why.

The projected market growth of 18% in smart home technology sales according to Acumen Researching and Consulting will deliver opportunities to shape and prioritize this sector.

The revenues up for grabs from the smart home mean that internet of things’ (IoT) companies will create systems that mesh together with the bare minimum human participation, meaning that tech will have a dramatic influence in our daily lives.

I get several moans and groans a day that the Mad Hedge Technology Letter only shines the spotlight on the FANGs.

But it is hard not to when it comes to the future of the home.

Just look at recent M&A activity.

Automation and connected smart appliances have consumed Amazon by recently acquiring Eero, producer of routers for apartments, houses, and multi-story homes, and after already paying $1 billion to acquire Ring, a doorbell-camera startup. It had also bought Blink, a smart camera maker in 2017.

Google hasn’t shied away either by investing in smart home products pocketing Nest, a firm producing smart home products, for $3.2 billion.

Nest took a few years to sort out its production phase but finally managed to launch new temperature sensors, a video doorbell, and an outdoor smart camera.

What are the trending IoT products now?

The flavors of the day are smart lights, security, entertainment systems, and temperature control.

They are the low hanging fruit of the smart home industry – a de facto gateway into this world.

Most of these smart devices operate with voice assistants, but because of the nature of competition, certain products are aligned with certain ecosystems and compatibility issues will persist until the competition flushes itself out.

A layman’s example would be Apple’s Homekit dovetailing nicely with Apple’s Siri.

Companies are in the first innings of the product iteration cycle and the variations of smart home products are endless stemming from showers that remember preferred water temperature and flow rates or climate-control systems that change in real-time to suit the user.

Security of home networks and connected devices are still a controversial question mark because the receiver of this type of data has the keys to the most intimate details of personal lives.

Even avid technologists are hesitant to dive in and put up smart home products all over the house, and most are being cautious.

In fact, privacy issues are the most distinct headwind to fresh adoption rates.

Many people simply aren’t willing to make the jump yet until they are more convinced of its use case.

Even with all the reservations, an alternative global shipment company believes smart home devices will post 24% in growth next year.

For the smart home device believers, this cohort averages 6 smart home devices per household and will certainly rise to 7 or 8 by the end of 2020.

Popular items include the Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple (AAPL) HomePod.

Smart speakers are already present in 36% of American homes and rising.

Consumers are also worried about technology invading their daily lives along with allowing artificial intelligence to dominate personal decision making.

Others have concluded that items such as smart microwaves are a waste of money and are unneeded when analog devices function admirably.

Another legitimate reason is that the software and technology involve a perceived steep learning curve to operate which many people do not have the patience for.

And some are just burnt out by the volume of technology thrown in our faces.

Who wants to operate 50 apps on their phone to control their smart home devices when there are other pressing needs in life?

Companies with skin in the game are Alarm.com (ALRM), ADT (ADT), Arlo Technologies (ARLO) and Resideo Technologies (REZI) and they will be outsized winners if they can solve many of the industries lingering issues.

The value thesis in the case of home automation companies is that they are financially efficient, time-effective, boost wellness and will be easy to use.

About 11% of U.S. broadband households have smart thermostats and Nest’s smart thermostat is the most popular.

Networked security cameras by Arlo are in 10% of homes.

Video doorbells from Amazon.com (AMZN), Google are in 8% of homes and help deter theft of e-commerce packages.

Smart light bulbs and lighting are at 8% market share while smart door locks are at 7% penetration.

There are several second derivates bet on this as well.

The most common user interface for the smart home is apps on a smartphone or tablet and voice commands to smart speakers are second.

The conundrum of installation complexities leads to the demand of professional installers.

This demand has delivered opportunities for companies like Comcast's (CMCSA) Xfinity and Vivint.

Electronics retailer Best Buy (BBY) has stepped up its footprint in this market as well.

Another stock play would be cybersecurity companies because they will win contracts protecting the software that smart home products rely on.

Hackers are getting more sophisticated and a private cybersecurity company Firewalla can track where data is flowing to and from your devices.

Firewalla management recommends buying devices from reputable home automation companies like Amazon and Google because they have more accountability and are of higher quality.

There will be a huge onramp of cybersecurity contracts doled out to the likes of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (PANW), CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (CRWD), Fortinet, Inc. (FTNT), and Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO).

We are in the first mile of a marathon and smart home product manufacturers, cybersecurity companies, 5G internet, and semiconductor companies will all benefit from the broad-based integration of these next-generation home consumer products.

December 13, 2019/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

October 18, 2019

Diary, Newsletter, Summary

Global Market Comments
October 18, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(OCTOBER 16 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SPX), (C), (GM), (IWM), ($RUT), (FB),
(INTC), (AA), (BBY), (M), (RTN), (FCX), GLD)

October 18, 2019/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

October 16 Biweekly Strategy Webinar Q&A

Diary, Newsletter

Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader October 16 Global Strategy Webinar broadcast from Silicon Valley, CA with my guest and co-host Bill Davis of the Mad Day Trader. Keep those questions coming!

Q: How do you think the S&P 500 (SPX) will behave with the China trade negotiations going on?

A: Nobody really knows; no one has any advantage here and logic or rationality doesn’t seem to apply anymore. It suffices to say it will continue to be up and down, depending on the trade headline of the day. It’s what I call a “close your eyes and trade” market. If it’s down, buy it; if it’s, upsell it.

Q: How long can Trump keep kicking the can down the road?

A: Indefinitely, unless he wants to fold completely. It looks like he was bested in the latest round of negotiations because the Chinese agreed to buy $50 billion worth of food they were going to buy anyway in exchange for a tariff freeze. Of course, you really don’t get a trade deal unless you get a tariff roll back to where they were two years ago.

Q: Did I miss the update on the Citigroup (C) trade?

A: Yes, we came out of Citigroup a week ago for a small profit or a break-even. You should always check our website where we post our trading position sheet every day as a backstop to any trade alerts you’re getting by email. Occasionally emails just go completely missing, swallowed up by the ether. To find it go to www.madhedgefundtrader.com , log in, go to My Account, Global Trading Dispatch, then Current Positions. You can also find my newly updated long-term portfolio here.

Q: How much pain will General Motors (GM) incur from this standoff, and will they ever reach a compromise?

A: Yes, the union somewhat blew it in striking GM when they had incredibly high inventories which the company is desperate to get rid of ahead of a recession. If you wonder where all those great car deals are coming from, that's the reason. All of the car companies want to go into a recession with as little inventory as possible. It's not just GM, it’s everybody with the same problem.

Q: When does the New Daily Position Sheet get posted?

A: About every hour after the close each day. We need time to process our trades, update all the position sheets before getting it posted.

Q: What do you think about Bitcoin?

A: We hate it and don’t want to touch it. It’s unanalyzable, and only the insiders are making money.

Q: Are you predicting a repeat of Fall 2018 going into the end of this year to close at the lows?

A: No, I’m not. A year ago, we were looking at four interest rate increases to come. This year we’re looking at 1 or 2 more interest rate cuts. It’s nowhere near the situation we saw a year ago. The most we’re going to get is a 7% selloff rather than a 20% selloff and if anything, stocks will rise into the yearend then fall.

Q: Why are we trading the Russell 200 (IWM) instead of the ($RUT) Small Cap Index? We pay less commissions to brokers.

A: There's more liquidity in the (IWM). You have to remember that the combined buying power of the trade alert service is about $1 billion. And that’s harder to do with smaller illiquid ETFs like the ($RUT), especially the options.

Q: If this is a “Don’t fight the Fed” rally for investors, where else is there to go but stocks?

A: Nowhere. But it’s happening in the face of an oncoming recession, so it’s not exactly a great investment opportunity, just a trading one. 2009 was a great time not to fight the Fed.

Q: Do you want to buy Facebook (FB) even though there are so many threats of government scrutiny and antitrust breakups?

A: The anti-trust breakups are never going to happen; the government can't even define what Facebook does. There may be more requirements on disclosures, which means nothing because nobody really cares about disclosures—they just click the box and agree to anything. I was actually looking at this as a buy when we had the big selloff at the end of September and instead, I bought four other Tech stocks and (FB) had moved too far when we got around to it. I think there’s upside potential for Facebook, especially if we can move out of this current range.

Q: Would you sell short European banks? It seems like they’re cutting jobs right and left.

A: I always get this question after big market meltdowns. European banks have been underpricing risks for decades and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Some of these things are down 80-90% so it’s too late to sell short. The next financial crisis is going to be in Europe, not here.

Q: Is it time to short Best Buy (BBY) due to the China deal?

A: No, like Macys (M), Best Buy is heavily dependent on imports from China, and the stock has gotten so low it’s hard to short. And the problem for the whole market in general is all the best sectors to short are already destroyed, down 80-90%. There really is nothing left to short, now that all the bad sectors have been going down for nearly two years. There has been a massive bear market in large chunks of the market which no one has really noticed. So, that might be another reason the market is going up—that we’ve run out of things to short.

Q: Do you like Intel (INTC)?

A: Yes, for the long term. Short term it still could face some headwinds from the China negotiations, where they have a huge business.

Q: Would you buy American Airlines (AA) on the return of Boeing 737 MAX to the fleet?

A: Absolutely, yes. The big American buyers of those planes are really suffering from a shortage of planes. A return of the 737 MAX to the assembly line is great news for the entire industry.

Q: Do you like Raytheon (RTN)?

A: No, Trump has been the defense industry’s best friend. If he exits in the picture, defense will get slaughtered—it will be the first on the chopping block under a future democratic administration. And, if you’re doing nothing but retreating from your allies, you don't need weapons anyway.

Q: Will Freeport McMoRan (FCX) benefit from a trade war resolution?

A: Yes, the fact that it isn't moving now is an indication that a trade war resolution has not been reached. (FCX) has huge exposure to traditional metal bashing industries like they still have in China.

Q: Would you go long or short gold (GLD) here?

A: No, I'm waiting for a bigger dip. If you can get in close to the 200-day moving average at $129.50, that would be the sweet spot. Longer term I still like gold and it is a great recession hedge.

Good Luck and Good Trading!

John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Yes, I Still Like Gold

October 18, 2019/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

August 5, 2019

Tech Letter

Mad Hedge Technology Letter
August 5, 2019
Fiat Lux

Featured Trade:

(THE CHINA TARIFF BOMBSHELL AND TECHNOLOGY),
(AAPL), (NVDA), (INTC), (MU), (WDC), (BBY)

August 5, 2019/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The China Tariff Bombshell and Technology

Tech Letter

With one little tweet, the state of technology and the companies that rely on the public markets that serve them went haywire.

U.S. President Donald Trump levied another 10% on the $300 billion that had not been tariffed up yet compounding the misery for anyone who has any vested interest in trade with mainland China.

The tariffs will take effect on September 1^st.

How does this shake out for American technology?

Any brand tech name that has substantial supply chain operations can kiss their stay in the Middle Kingdom goodbye.

If management didn’t understand that before, then it's clear as night that they need to shift their supply chain out of the reaches of the Chinese communist party.

The U.S. Administration tripling down on China being our archnemesis means that any sort of cross-border economic trade or cultural exchange will be viewed through the prism of warped geopolitics.

The U.S. President Donald Trump has in fact taken a page out of the Chinese playbook turning everything he sees and touches into a transactional tool for what he is pursuing at the time or in the future.

Specific companies facing the wrath of the tariffs are companies as conspicuous as Apple filtering down to the SMEs that make local business local.

Semiconductor chips are a huge loser in this new development as the price of electronic goods will rise with the tariffs.

If you want a name that lies in the heart of electronic consumer goods, then BestBuy (BBY) would encapsulate this thesis and unsurprisingly they were taken out to the back of the woodshed and taught a lesson dropping 10% on the news.

Any technology outfit that imports goods from China will be hit as well and this means semiconductor chips along the lines of Nvidia (NVDA), Intel (INTC), Western Digital (WDC) and Micron (MU) among others.

Chips are the meat and bones that go into end products like iPads and a slew of smart devices.

Demand will be hit because of the cost of producing these types of consumer products will rise.

The softness is showing up in the numbers with Apple’s iPhone revenue down 12% year-over-year.

Samsung of Korea also showed that this isn’t just an American problem with their semiconductor division’s operating profits down 71% year-over-year.

The Korean conglomerate is in a spat with the Japanese government over war crimes from the second world war causing the Japanese government to bottleneck the supply of chemicals needed to produce high-level semiconductor chips.

The export restriction will drag down SK Hynix display business who is one of the largest producers of DRAM chips and also a Korean company.

Consumers are also using their phones longer with Apple iPhone customers holding their device up to 4 years delaying the refresh cycle.

The company that Steve Jobs built will have to repurpose themselves for a brave new tech landscape that includes heavier regulation, trade tariffs, and device saturation.

When investors talk about the “low hanging fruit,” at this point, Apple isn’t one of them.

And if you think the services business is a cakewalk, ponder about how many apps and behemoths that spit out a whole lineup of apps.

Apple still has its ecosystem and should guard it with its life, this is the same ecosystem that can charge Google around $10 billion per year to slap on Google search as the primary search engine on Apple devices.

Expect tech to telegraph a deceleration in revenue for the last quarter and next year.

The tech environment is brittle at this point and uncertainty wafts in the air like a hot stack of pancakes.

August 5, 2019/by Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Death of Retail

Diary, Newsletter

I stopped at a Wal-Mart (WMT) the other day on my way to Napa Valley.

I am not normally a customer of this establishment. But I was on my way to a meeting where a dozen red long stem roses would prove useful. I happened to know you could get these for $10 at Wal-Mart.

After I found my flowers, I browsed around the store to see what else they had for sale. The first thing I noticed was that half the employees were missing their front teeth.

The clothing offered was out of style and made of cheap material. It might as well have been the Chinese embassy. Most concerning, there was almost no one there.

So I was not surprised when the company announced that it was closing 267 stores worldwide. The closures amount to only 1% of Wal-Mart?s total floor space. Some 10,000 American jobs will be lost.

The Wal-Mart downsizing is only the latest evidence of a major change in the global economy that has been evolving over the last two decades.

However, it now appears we have reached a tipping point, and a point of no return. The future is happening faster than anyone thought possible. Call it the Death of Retail.

I remember the first purchases I made at Amazon 20 years ago. The idea was so dubious that I made my initial purchases with a credit card with a low $1,000 limit. That way, if the wheels fell off, my losses would be limited.

This is despite the fact that I knew Jeff Bezos personally as a former Morgan Stanley colleague. And how stupid was that name, Amazon? At least he didn?t call it ?Yahoo?.

Today, I do almost all of my shopping at Amazon (AMZN). It saves me immense amounts of time while expanding my choices exponentially. And I don?t have to fight traffic, engage in the parking space wars, or wait in line to pay.

It can accommodate all of my requests, no matter how bizarre or esoteric. A WWII reproduction Army Air Corps canvas flight jacket in size XXL? No problem!

A used 42-inch Sub Zero refrigerator with a front door icemaker and water dispenser? Have it there in two days, with free shipping.

In 2000, after the great ?Y2K? disaster that failed to show, I met with Bill Gates Sr. to discuss the foundation?s investments. It turned out that they had liquidated their entire equity portfolio and placed all their money into bonds. It turned out to be a brilliant move, coming mere months before the Dotcom bust.

Mr. Gates (another Eagle Scout) mentioned something fascinating to me. He said that unlike most other foundations their size, they hadn?t invested a dollar in commercial real estate.

It was his view that the US economy would move entirely online, everyone would work from home, emptying out city centers and rendering commuting unnecessary. Shopping malls would become low rent climbing walls and paint ball game centers.

Mr. Gates? prediction may finally be occurring. Some counties in the San Francisco Bay area now see 25% of their workers telecommuting.

It is becoming common for staff to work Tuesday-Thursday at the office, and from home on Monday and Friday. Productivity increases. People are bending their jobs to fit their lifestyles. And oh yes, happy people work for less money in exchange for personal freedom, boosting profits.

The Mad Hedge Fund Trader itself may be a model for the future. We are entirely a virtual company, with no office. Everyone works at home across the country and around the world.

You may have noticed that I can work from anywhere and anytime (although sending a Trade Alert from the back of a camel in the Sahara Desert was a stretch).

The cost of global distribution is essentially zero. Profits go into a bonus pool shared by all. Oh, and we?re hiring, especially in marketing.

You can see this in the business prospects of traditional brick and mortar retailers last year, which were dire.

As a result, Macy?s (M) stock plunged by a shocking -53%, Nordstrom (JWN) by -43%, and Best Buy (BBY) by -39%. Value players have mistaken the present low prices and subterranean price earnings multiples for a ?Black Friday? sale.

It has been like leading lambs to the slaughter.

Yes, some of this was caused by record warm temperatures on the US East coast, which led many to cancel their purchases of a new winter coat. But it is also happening because the entire ?bricks and mortar? industry is getting left behind by the march of history.

Sure, they have been pouring millions into online commerce and jazzed up websites. But they all seem to be poor imitations of amazon, with higher prices. It is all ?Hour late and dollar short? stuff.

In the meantime, Amazon soared by 150%, and was one of the top performing stocks of 2015. It is thought that Amazon accounted for a staggering 25% of all the new growth in US retail sales last year.

And here is the bad news. Bricks and Mortar retailers are about to lose more of their lunch to Chinese Internet giant Alibaba (BABA), which is ramping up its US operations and is FOUR TIMES THE SIZE OF AMAZON!

There?s a good reason why you haven?t heard much from me about retailers. I made the decision 30 years ago never to touch the troubled sector.

I did this when I realized that management never knew beforehand which of their products would succeed, and which would bomb, and therefore were constantly clueless about future earnings.

The business for them was an endless roll of the dice. That is a proposition which I was unwilling to invest in. There were always better trades.

I confess that I had to look up the ticker symbols for this story, as I never use them.

However, I also missed the miracle at Amazon. I could never grasp their long tail strategy and their 100 X multiples. I have had to admire it from the sidelines. At least I wasn?t short.

You will no doubt be enticed to buy retail stocks as the deal of the century by the talking heads on TV, Internet research, and maybe even your own brokers.

It will be much like buying the coal industry (KOL) a few years ago, another industry headed for the dustbin of history. That was when ?cheap? was on its way to zero.

So the next time someone recommends that you buy retail stocks, you should probably lie down and take a long nap first. When you awaken, hopefully the temptation will be gone.

Or better yet, go shopping at Amazon. The deals are to die for.

To read ?An Evening with Bill Gates Sr.?, please click here.