All things STOCKS

[Go aeiou]

Sure has been a ****ty reversal today. Really good start that did a 180 in the late morning. Good day to not look at your account.

I don't know. Someties a good smack in the face brings you back to reality.
Was a depressing day though.
I started looking at the PE ratio on my stocks today, and I was surprised at some of them. BX up .48%; PE 48.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I don't know. Someties a good smack in the face brings you back to reality.
Was a depressing day though.
I started looking at the PE ratio on my stocks today, and I was surprised at some of them. BX up .48%; PE 48.

I think that private equity will do well in the rotation as rates drop. IMO the suggestions that rising inflation will return after only a couple of rate cuts is holding them back somewhat. There should be a lot of distressed companies for them to choose from the longer the economy remains tepid. Public policy could also hurt them. Higher taxes. Eliminating carried interest. Tariffs. A smaller pool of immigrant workers. China. Russia/Ukraine. Israel.

BX is my 7th largest non-fund or non-cash holding. I’m also long Apollo which has done well. I’ve got Carlyle Group which has been dead money. I also have shares of KKR. I’d like to sell covered calls on CG and maybe KKR but whenever I check the options prices just aren’t high enough to entice me to sell my potential upside. Selling covered calls doesn’t appeal to me right now except to substitute for limit orders and pocketing an extra fraction of a percent return for shares I’m considering selling.

 

[Majors]

Interesting to see how Microsoft and Crowdstrike open today with the worldwide flight delays.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Interesting to see how Microsoft and Crowdstrike open today with the worldwide flight delays.

CrowdStrike is off by 10%+.

PLUG is also off by a similar amount. That’s about 96% off of its ATH.

 

[Majors]

CrowdStrike is off by 10%+.

PLUG is also off by a similar amount. That’s about 96% off of its ATH.

How do you think this will effect the market today?

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

How do you think this will effect the market today?

Pre market averages were mixed with the DJIA lagging last time I checked. It might be a quiet day after a wild week.

Biden could get booted out of the race over the weekend. But it might not matter. The Ds are in disarray. Whether or not the Rs can get House and Senate majorities are becoming the main issue. Will the Trump corporate tax cut expiring after 2025 be extended? I don’t think they need to cut it again (to 15%). Just being on the lower end of the rate of the countries with the largest economies seems sufficient.

Suggesting isolationist policies and threats of huge tariffs are also going to be big economic issues to wrangle with. Hardline stances in those items probably leads to higher inflation which will result in higher interest rates. Higher interest rates (or the absence of several cuts in 2025) will be bad for the deficit.

Trump also wants our allies to pony up for defending them with our military. I think it’s a good approach, but it will piss them off to cut off their free handouts.

It’s not going to be a smooth ride. I might take a good sized crypto position if those investment options come back down. I shouldn’t have never sold MicroStrategy, but IMO that CEO seems kind of shady. I might go with a crypto ETF at some point.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I’ve received an industry wide, global outage alert from Schwab but not E*trade or Fidelity.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

The 21% corporate rate doesn’t expire after 2025. It is permanent.

Highly expect the Ds to hold that hostage (if they are able to) to extend provisions that do expire after 2025 or to force enactment of Pillar 2....

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

The 21% corporate rate doesn’t expire after 2025. It is permanent.

Highly expect the Ds to hold that hostage (if they are able to) to extend provisions that do expire after 2025 or to force enactment of Pillar 2....

So the individual rate cuts expire after 2025 and Trump is suggesting a 15% corporate rate?

“Nobody making under $400k will have their taxes raised”.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

So the individual rate cuts expire after 2025 and Trump is suggesting a 15% corporate rate?

“Nobody making under $400k have their taxes raised”.

I suspect the 15% corporate rate will be used in conjunction with implementing Pillar 2....

 

[Carp]

Time to jump into Crowdstrike? Seems risky, but I also feel like investors were panicking a bit. Fundamentals are very strong.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Time to jump into Crowdstrike? Seems risky, but I also feel like investors were panicking a bit. Fundamentals are very strong.

Too soon IMO. The breach could be an issue that drags out for a long time.

Is Palo Alto still the best in the space? I haven’t been paying much attention to it lately - seemed priced for perfection. Also Cramer pumps it which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Morningstar likes CrowdStrike:

CrowdStrike: Content Update Chaos May Represent a Time for Long-Term Investors to Buy
Analyst Note Malik Ahmed Khan, CFA, Equity Analyst, 19 Jul 2024

Narrow-moat CrowdStrike said a faulty update was the reason behind the massive technology outage that affected millions of users in the early hours of July 19. Customers using CrowdStrike's security platform were locked out of their Windows devices. While details are still emerging, CrowdStrike's initial response emphasized that this incident was not a security breach and that the faulty update has been rectified. We find some credence in this response, considering that within hours of the outage, companies with operations affected by CrowdStrike's update have been able to gradually resume their services. Investors appear to have been spooked by recent high-profile security incidents and sold CrowdStrike's shares in premarket trading, with the stock dropping more than 10%. We think this market reaction is overly punitive, especially considering that the update doesn't represent a breach of CrowdStrike's security apparatus. While the shares still trade in 3-star territory after the premarket drop, we think the current pullback represents a good buying opportunity for long-term investors looking for high-quality
security/software exposure.

While we don't have a full postmortem on the faulty update that led to this morning's chaos, we suspect that CrowdStrike's central cloud, which pushes updates across its entire customer base simultaneously, played a key role.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Morningstar:

Malik Ahmed Khan, CFA, Equity Analyst, 6 Mar 2024

Bulls Say:
uCrowdStrike has strong secular tailwinds given that the endpoint, cloud, identity, and security
operations markets are projected to grow rapidly

uCrowdStrike has market leadership in endpoint security and has high enterprise penetration within the space.

uThe company stands to benefit as clients consolidate vendors and opt for a platform-based cybersecurity approach.

Bears Say;
uLarge public cloud vendors often offer their own cybersecurity solutions, which could hamper CrowdStrike’s growth opportunities.

 

[Velo Vol]

Finally happened.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Finally happened.

Exclude the trillion dollar Mag7s and the pull back is far less extreme. NVDA gave up 50% or more a few years ago. It’s off about 20% this time, but it is a far larger drag on the cap weighted averages.

I think that energy, industrials, defense, healthcare, and maybe materials are well positioned sectors and industries right now. Utilities should generate good returns with rate cuts looming and demand quickly growing with AI, EVs, and crypto mining. Plus lower interest rates make utilities shares more competitive relative to bonds and borrowing for CapEx projects will result in lower interest expense on income statements.

 

[walkenvol]

Jumped in yesterday and grabbed some more NVDA, AMD, and AVGO - hope they were over sold and there’s a bounce back.

 

[Carp]

I think NVDA has more to bleed. Maybe another 5-10%, before we see any sort of bounce. Probably will see more horizontal movement as it consolidates before earnings. I'm waiting for around the $108 range before I jump back in.

 

[Majors]

I think NVDA has more to bleed. Maybe another 5-10%, before we see any sort of bounce. Probably will see more horizontal movement as it consolidates before earnings. I'm waiting for around the $108 range before I jump back in.

I think it can go to that $108 as well before it rebounds to set up the next earnings call.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I think NVDA has more to bleed. Maybe another 5-10%, before we see any sort of bounce. Probably will see more horizontal movement as it consolidates before earnings. I'm waiting for around the $108 range before I jump back in.

I’m an NVDA “hold”. I don’t think it will have another run like it’s had, but I also think that it’s in the process of being over sold right now. It’s impossible to pick exact tops and exact bottoms in share prices. But I think that NVDA has too much demand right now to justify a 50% drop.

Averaging at least a 20% annual appreciation for a decade or so is probable IMO. I’ll feel better once Taiwan Semi has shifted a lot of its manufacturing to a US based footprint.

 

[Carp]

I missed the drop! Damn it. Hiopefully another dip here in a bit.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

I missed the drop! Damn it. Hiopefully another dip here in a bit.

Waste Mgmt (WM) is on sale today.

They’re buying Stericycle though, so that could hit earnings. But the Stericycle board is giving away SRCL. The WM shares might not come under pressure.

 

[TVOLS]

Ford took a dump today.

 

[Go aeiou]

Ford took a dump today.

I've owned ford for years, and finally had a profit. Pooof, it disappeared.

 

[walkenvol]

I've owned ford years, and finally had a profit. Pooof, it disappeared.

I picked Ford up a couple years back when it dropped into the $5’s and was considering parting ways - a day late it appears, just like I bought too early yesterday. Timing the market is tough.