Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 27, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE SAD TRUTH ABOUT DIGITAL MARKETING),
(FB), (YELP), (GOOGL)
Posts
Granted that technology companies have been the mule carrying the load for the broader market, beneath it is an ugly underbelly of venomous spirits.
Digital tech companies are frauds.
This could crater the broader market if the worst-case scenarios play out.
What do I mean by labeling them frauds?
Well, first, not all tech companies are charlatans. The ones producing components like semiconductor companies and others creating hardware are not the target of my wrath.
Since content has migrated into an all-out assault on traditional media, there is a dirty little secret that is festering because the new online media isn’t regulated.
The numbers are all a lie.
Much of the analytics and calculus involved with crafting cost to the other side is being entirely gamed by tech companies quoting prices based on fake analytics.
Instagram switched over its algorithm to displaying photos chronologically, to now display posts that engage the most, more specifically, what gets clicked the most.
Consumers have complained about it being significantly harder to gain likes and followers because, for the ones that don’t have many clicks, it’s harder to get those added clicks if your post is relegated down the feed.
The platform has also been a breeding ground for fabricating likes, friends, views, clicks and so on. Companies can be hired per like, resulting in a beefed-up profile built on fantasy.
Ad companies gauge each Instagram profile by the amount of engagement generated and if most of them are fraudulent likes, there will be weak follow-through in sales after ad purchases since a good chunk of the potential audience is a mirage.
Instagram is the preferred social platform of most influencers and Facebook is attempting to merge both assets into one in order to claim to regulators that they can’t be separated.
Much of digital marketing has migrated down the path of growing a large following for the reason to qualify as an effective brand ambassador and siphon off influencer marketing budgets from corporates who desperately want to penetrate a target audience.
In an age of automated robocalls and strict email rules, companies hesitantly confess that the only way to reach their end buyer is through social media channels.
Corporates are wasting billions of dollars because they aren’t getting what they really pay for and are basically being fleeced by tech companies.
And if you think this is mutually exclusive to Facebook (FB) and Instagram, it happens in every tech company that involves data.
Tech companies are monetarily incentivized to flat out lie about their data, partially because the penalties are minimal or absent in many cases.
Marginal tactics to fast-track the process by buying likes should be rooted out of the eco-system.
They are not only hurting the trust users have with the platform, but misrepresenting the brand that associates with a product.
Tech firms ward off anyone and everything from taking a peek at internal data by claiming it is their proprietary IP causing them to effectively police themselves.
That is not even the worst part of it all.
Parent company Facebook is turning a blind eye to something that could crash the company.
Mark Zuckerberg's old classmate Aaron Greenspan published a report complaining that over 50% of Facebook accounts are fake.
Facebook is on record admitting that between 2-3% of accounts are fake, but that number is a dream and artificially low by a country mile.
If it is true that half of Facebook accounts are fake, this would mean that Facebook sits on over 1 billion fake accounts.
Never mind the fake likes or clicks issue, Facebook shareholders could lose most of their worth in this stock if the truth is ever discovered.
Remember, the network effect works on the way down just like it works on the way up as a de-facto force multiplier.
Facebook and many other tech firms are a black box just like the Google (GOOGL) search algorithm.
Yelp (YELP), the online review company, could potentially sub-contract out fake reviews and never disclose how many of them are truly fake, they have no incentive to.
I recently stayed in an Airbnb rental whose active management was sub-contracted to a local property manager.
When I met him, he told me “This apartment was just bought and you are the first guest to stay in this apartment, so if there are any issues, please contact us as soon as possible.”
Wait, hold on, in my head, I am thinking, how did I see 45 great reviews from the apartment’s profile if I am the first guest?
I logged on to reread some reviews and some of the responses were completely inaccurate about the apartment.
It was clear these were made up and paid for and I was, in fact, the first to stay in this apartment like the property manager said.
Expectedly, there was more wrong with the apartment than just the fake reviews.
The television, stove, and hot water didn’t work, the key to the apartment was half broken and I had to perform miracles just to get the front door open.
There is a reckoning coming to technology companies because of the rampant misuse of the technology by nefarious actors monetizing the platform while perverting it.
Companies look the other way because they don’t want a revaluation of their business model which would add costs and, in some cases, bankrupt a company if the problem isn’t fixable.
As we move forward, the problems enlarge.
In a nutshell, this is why everyone hates tech now and its already stomach-churning enough that these firms steal your personal data and sell it to whomever they want.
A harsh reckoning will eventually hit the involved companies, but until then, tech business models are manipulated to the extreme and they continue to print real and fake growth mixed together as one.
One day, that fake growth will vanish and these companies will have to explain why to their shareholders.
In the meantime, just assume all online reviews are fake and enjoy the bull market in tech.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 18, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(THE FANG’S BIG MOVE INTO BANKING),
(GOOGL), (MSFT), (APPL), (MA), (V), (PYPL), (SQ), (GS), (FB)
First, Apple (APPL) collaborates with Goldman Sachs’ (GS) offering of a credit card even giving credit access to subprime borrowers.
And now Google (GOOGL) has its eyes on the banking industry — specifically, it’ll soon offer checking accounts.
In a copycat league where anything and everything is fair game, we are seeing a huge influx of big tech companies vie for the digital wallets of Americans.
The project is aptly named Cache and accounts will be handled by Citibank (C) and a credit union at Stanford.
Google’s spokesman shared with us admitting that Google hopes to “partner deeply with banks and the financial system,” and further added, “If we can help more people do more stuff in a digital way online, it’s good for the internet and good for us.”
I would disagree with the marginal statement that it would be good for us.
Facebook (FB) is now offering a Pay option and how long will it be until Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and others throw their name into the banking mix.
I believe there will be some monumental failures because it appears that these tech companies won’t offer anything that current bank intuitions aren’t offering already.
Moving forward, the odd that digital banking products will become saturated quickly is high.
Let’s cut to the chase, this is a pure data grab, and not in the vein of offering innovative services that force the consumer down a revolutionary product experience.
As the consumer starts to smarten up, will they happily reveal every single data point possible to these tech companies?
Big tech continues to be adamant that personal data is secure with them, but their track records are pitiful.
Even if Google doesn’t sell “individual data”, there are easy workarounds by just slapping number tags on aggregated data, then aggregated data can be reverse-engineered by extracting specific data with number tags.
The cracks have already started to surface, Co-Founder of Apple Steve Wozniak has already claimed that the credit algorithm for Apple’s Goldman Sach’s credit card is sexist and flawed.
Time is ticking until the first mass data theft as well and let me add that the result of this is usually a slap on the wrist incentivizing bad behavior.
I believe big tech companies should be banned from issuing banking products.
Only 4% of consumers switched banks last year, and a 2017 survey by Bankrate shows that the average American adult keeps the same checking account for around 16 years.
As anti-trust regulation starts to gather more steam, I envision lawmakers snuffing out any and every attempt for big tech to diversify into fintech.
It’s fair to say that Google should have done this 10 years ago when the regulatory issues were nonexistent.
Now they have regulators breathing down their necks.
Let me remind readers that the reason why Facebook abandoned their digital currency Libra was because of the pressure lawmakers applied to every company interesting in working with Facebook’s Libra.
Lawmakers threatened Visa and Mastercard that they would investigate every part of their business, including the parts that have nothing to do with Facebook’s Libra, if they went ahead with the Libra project.
The most telling insight comes from the best tech company Microsoft who has raised the bar in terms of protecting their reputation on data and trust.
They decided to stay away from financial products like the black plague.
Better to stay in their lane than take wild shots that incur unneeded high risks.
When U.S. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat on the Senate panel that oversees banking, was asked about Google and banking, he quipped, “There ought to be very strict scrutiny.”
Big tech is now on the verge of getting ferociously regulated and that could turn out positive for the big American banks, PayPal (PYPL), Visa (V), Mastercard (MA) and Square (SQ).
I heavily doubt that Google will turn Cache into a meaningful business unless Google offers some jaw-dropping interest rates or elevated points to move the needle.
Google has canceled weekly all-hands meetings because of the tension between staff members and Facebook is also just as dysfunctional at the employee level.
Whoever said it's easy to manage a high-stake, too-big-to-fail tech firm?
Even with all the negativity, Google is still a cash cow and if regulatory headwinds are 2-3 years off, they are a buy and hold until they are not.
The recent tech rally, after the rotation to value, has seen investors flood into Apple, Microsoft, and Google as de-facto safe haven tech plays.
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
November 11, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(WALKING A TIGHT ROPE IN MENLO PARK),
(FB),
The countdown has started.
Will regulation meaningfully hit Facebook (FB) where it hurts in 2020 – the wallet?
There is only so much that Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg and executives in Menlo Park can do to keep regulators at arm’s length.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) want to rearrange Facebook’s business model potentially making it uncompetitive.
In an unusual move, the California's State Attorney General publicly stated that his office has been investigating Facebook's privacy dealings over the past 18 months and the reason we know that is because Facebook is stonewalling the process and actively avoiding the authorities.
The State Attorney General has asked for additional information related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked Facebook shares last year and the company has yet to fully recover from that strong blow.
Undoubtedly, Facebook wants to conceal its self-inflicted wounds and actively rebuff document request signals that Facebook is ready to withstand the pain.
This is also after Zuckerberg decided to allow politicians to buy ads without any sort of third-party fact-checker.
My guess is that Facebook management has been blackmailing companies left and right and only working with companies in a reasonable way if they are paying Facebook for digital ads.
This is a massive conflict of interest at the heart of Facebook’s practices.
If any company could be labeled amoral and completely indifferent to the gargantuan social cost piling up in the U.S. because of the fallout from their toxic services, Facebook is at the top of the list.
But as long as Zuckerberg keeps inflating the bottom line, which mind you he definitely is and great at, board members dare to speak up.
It’s not like they can do anything anyways, Zuckerberg cannot be fired because of holding generous voting rights.
Facebook is also at the heart of several lawsuits claiming that as soon as Facebook identified them as a serious competitive threat, Facebook pulled their file and denied access to data.
Many companies cannot function without access to Facebook’s platform.
The attorney general is attempting to scoop up the meatiest part of communications between Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg detailing changes to the social network's privacy settings, as well as documentation of the company's privacy program.
There is no way in hell Facebook will let the cat get out of the bag and certainly there is explosive material that would dig the ditch even deeper.
Recently, Zuckerberg has been on the warpath shouting from the hills urging the government to shut down Softbank funded short-form video app TikTok created by Chinese company Bytedance which has gone viral as a social media alternative to Instagram.
Even with a storm brewing ahead, Facebook continues to be a buy on the regulatory dip as investors should not ignore the cash cow digital ad business.
Digital ad buyers aren’t yet diverting ad budgets elsewhere mostly because there aren’t other places to allocate huge amounts of ad dollars to and Facebook knows this.
Another front has opened up as well in the privacy wars with Facebook suing Israel’s NSO Group for selling software allowing governments to spy by breaking into their WhatsApp chat history.
The tracking software named Pegasus even allows for comprehensive access to the camera and microphone and was meant to “fight terrorism.”
As you might believe, governments have liberally applied this software to individuals across the board for their own zero-sum interests.
These revelations could slow down the rollout of digital ads on WhatsApp which Zuckerberg is hellbent on in the next calendar year to drive revenue growth.
A recent report showed that 93% of global internet users are tracked posing a serious threat to the integrity of the internet.
Not only is the government using it for their own economic and political gains, but Facebook is up there pulling the strings behind the scenes too and Facebook’s shares keep climbing.
Until users refuse to log in to Facebook in droves and stop gifting them free data, Facebook continues to be a buy on any pullback.
Sure, the regulatory pressure could eventually blow up in Facebook’s face, but until we receive meaningful signals that Facebook’s ad model is dead, investors shouldn’t write off Zuckerberg and his digital ad money-making machine.
Global Market Comments
November 1, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(OCTOBER 30 BIWEEKLY STRATEGY WEBINAR Q&A),
(SQ), (CCI), (SPG), (PGE), (BA), (MSFT), (GOOGL), (FB), (AAPL), (IBB), (XLV), (USO), (GM), (VNQ)
Below please find subscribers’ Q&A for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader October 30 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: Would you buy Square (SQ) around here?
A: I don’t want to buy anything around here—that’s why I’m 90% cash. Would I buy Square on a market selloff? Absolutely, it's one of our favorite fintech stocks for the long term. The fintech stocks are eating the lunch of the legacy banks at an accelerating rate.
Q: What's the best yield play currently, now that bonds have gone so high?
A: High-quality REITs—especially cell tower REITs. We’re going to get a significant increase in the number of cell towers, thanks to 5G, and there are REITs specifically dedicated to cell phone towers. An example is Crown Castle (CCI), which has a generous 3.45% dividend yield. The worst REITs are the mall-based like Simon Property Group (SPG).
Q: PG&E (PGE) has just had a huge selloff of 50%. Should I buy it now or is it a potential zero?
A: I wouldn’t touch PG&E at all—They’re already in bankruptcy, and they are now accepting responsibility for starting another eight fires this week, including the big Kincaid fires. You could have the state government take over the company and wipe out all the shareholders— the liabilities are just growing by the second, so I would turn my attention elsewhere. Don’t reach for new ways to get in trouble.
Q: Regarding Boeing (BA), it looks like you caught the bottom on the last dip—should I buy it here or wait for another dip?
A: Wait for another dip. The company seems to have an endless supply of bad news. That said, if we visit $325 a share one more time, I would buy it again. We caught about a $10 dollar move in Boeing to the upside. Keep buying the dips. The bad news story on this is almost over.
Q: Do you think the earnings season will be better than expected? If so, which sectors do you think will outperform?
A: It’s always better than expected because they always downgrade right before earnings, so everything is a surprise to the upside. Some 80% of all stocks surprise to the upside every quarter. And what would I be buying on dips? Big Tech. Especially things like Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT) —that is where the only reliable longer-term growth is in the economy. If you want to buy cheap companies on dips, go for Biotech (IBB) and Health Care (XLV), which have gone up almost every day since we launched the Biotech letter a month ago. To subscribe to the Mad Hedge Biotech and Healthcare Letter, please click here.
Q: What does it mean that the Chile APEC summit is cancelled? What is Trump going to do now for signing on the trade deal?
A: There may not be a trade deal. It's another postponement and could be another trigger for a long-overdue selloff in the market. We've basically been going up nonstop now for 2½ months, and almost everyone's market timing indicators are saying extreme overbought territory here, including ours.
Q: Will there be a replay of this webinar posted?
A: Yes, we always post these on the website a couple of hours after it airs. Some 95% of our viewers watch the recordings, especially those overseas in weird time zones like Australia and India. You need to be logged in to access it. Just go to www.madhedgefundtrader.com, log in, go to My Account, then Global Trading Dispatch, then click on the Webinars button. It’s there in all its glory.
Q: Does Invesco DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund ETF (UUP) make sense (the dollar basket)?
A: No, I'm staying out of the currency market because there are no clear trends right now and there are much clearer trends in other asset classes, like stock and bonds.
Q: How do you see General Electric (GE)?
A: There are a lot of people shouting accounting fraud like Harry Markopolos, the whistleblower on Bernie Madoff. Sure, they had a good today, up a buck, but their problems are going to take a long time to fix. So, don't think of this as a trading vehicle, but rather a long-term investment vehicle.
Q: Could the Saudi Aramco IPO push the price of oil up?
A: You can bet they're going to do everything humanly possible to get the price of oil (USO) up and to get this IPO off their hands—that's why you shouldn't buy the IPO. The Saudis are desperate to get out of the oil business before prices go to zero and are pouring money into alternative energy and technology through Masayoshi Son’s Vision Fund. When you have the chief supplier of oil rigging the price, you don’t want to be anywhere near the distributor and that’s Saudi Aramco.
Q: What about selling the (SPG) (Simon Property) REIT?
A: It’s kind of too late to sell, but what you might think of doing is selling short just one deep out-of-the-money put, just to bring in a small amount of income. These things don’t crash, they grind down; so, it could be a good naked put shorting situation, but only on a very small scale. If you want to play REITs on the long side, look at the Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ), which pays a handy 3.12% dividend. Guess what its largest holdings are? 5G cell tower REITs.
Q: Is General Motors (GM) a buy on the union detent?
A: Only for a trade, but not much; the auto industry is the last thing you want to buy into going into a recession, even just a growth recession.
Q: Have we topped out on Apple (AAPL) for the year at $250?
A: If we did, it’s probably just short term. Remember their 5G phone is coming out next September and I expect the stock to go to $300 dollars just off of that. Any dips in Apple won’t last more than a month or two.
Q: Could we get another leg up for the end of the year?
A: Yes, not much, maybe another 5% from here, and I wouldn't do that until we get another 5% drop in the market first which should happen sometime in November. If that happens, then you’ll have a shot at making another 10% by the end of the year, which is exactly what I plan on doing for myself. That would take our 2019 performance from 50% to 60%.
Q: Is the Fed’s printing infinite money going to lead to runaway inflation crashing the value of the dollar?
A: Yes, but it may take us a couple of years to get to that point. So far, no sign of inflation, except inflation of things you want to buy, like healthcare, a college education, and so on. For anything you want to sell, like your labor or service, the prices are collapsing. That’s the new inflation, the type that screws you the most.
Good Luck and Good Trading
John Thomas
CEO & Publisher
The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader
Global Market Comments
October 29, 2018
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(PLAYING THE SHORT SIDE WITH VERTICAL BEAR PUT SPREADS), (TLT)
(WHY TECHNICAL ANALYSIS DOESN’T WORK)
(FB), (AAPL), (AMZN), (GOOG), (MSFT), (VIX)
Mad Hedge Technology Letter
October 28, 2019
Fiat Lux
Featured Trade:
(NEWSPAPERS REALLY KNOW WHO YOU ARE),
(TPCO), (AMZN), (FB), (GOOGL), (USPS), (SFTBY)
