Category: Financial Markets | Page 2

Beaten-down Nvidia is diligently preparing to pounce on its rivals

Published by Beth Kindig on August 16, 2019

Nvidia’s stock went from unstoppable to nearly uninvestable in the matter of a few weeks last year and has not recovered. The sudden drop in Nvidia’s stock price and a competitive ecosystem that’s hard to understand are two reasons the chipmaker has scared away growth investors, who have opted for momentum bets such as cloud-software companies. The fact that semiconductor companies are cyclical, and mired in the U.S.-China trade war, has further overshadowed Nvidia’s growth potential. But the real story is that Nvidia is spring-loaded as its product offerings quietly gather strength in a market of enormous magnitude: artificial intelligence (AI). The path…

Uber and Lyft: Unprofitable Powerhouses

Uber and Lyft: Unprofitable Powerhouses

Published by Beth Kindig on August 9, 2019

Ride-share earnings this week proved that if you lower the bar to the ground, any earnings performance can leap over it. Both companies reported staggering losses that were delivered with positive PR spins. Lyft reported “record second quarter results” while losing roughly the same amount of money as previous years. Uber had an epic $5 billion loss that is closer to $1.3 billion adjusted. The second number only looks acceptable in the parallel universe where a $65 billion market cap company can report any losses at all, let alone $4 billion per year. Likewise, Lyft looks digestible compared to its counterpart…

How to Pick Growth Stocks in the Tech Sector

Published by Beth Kindig on August 2, 2019

“What makes a solid tech stock?” may be one of the most important questions an investor can answer. Over the last decade, tech companies started to penetrate the top ten list of global companies by market cap. Today, tech dominates this list with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Alibaba. Not all tech stocks are winners, of course, with IBM and Yahoo flatlining over the past decade and Cisco unable to reclaim its valuation from nearly twenty years ago. This is why it is important to follow guidelines for individual tech stocks regardless of a broader bear or bull market. Basic…

Blockchain Technology Interest Waning – OSCON

Published by Beth Kindig on July 25, 2019

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) is an annual convention for the discussion of free and open source software. Open source has seen tremendous support over the last decade after going through a dark winter of software commercialization in the 80s and 90s. A historical turning point was when Netscape released the Netscape Communicator internet suite as free software in 1998 and the source code was used to spur Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and KompoZer. Background on Open Source: Proponents of Free and Open Source (FOSS) during the 90s included heavy weight Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. For instance, a Microsoft…

AWS DocumentDB and MongoDB Atlas: Friend or Foe?

Published by Beth Kindig on July 25, 2019

MongoDB outperformed the tech sector a few times over the past 12 months, most notably during Q4, when MongoDB managed to trade between $65 and $80. The stock recouped losses by early December, when MongoDB reached new highs at $90 per share. By March, MongoDB had gained more than 50% off its new highs to $152 in March. MongoDB’s Atlas has proven to defy gravity even in the face of AWS launching a competing product called Amazon DocumentDB in January. This sent shares of MongoDB down 15 percent, with a few larger investors exiting based on the news, but the…

Is Bitcoin a Good Investment? Phase 3: Bitcoin Mobile Payments

Published by Beth Kindig on July 19, 2019

Bitcoin’s ultimate opportunity will be reached when the coin provides seamless and low-cost digital transactions. The free market is already moving towards capitalizing on bitcoin as many corporations do not want to miss out on this opportunity. Starbucks is partnering with Bakkt, and this will create a payment gateway for the security-backed exchange.

Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment? Phase 2: Economic Uncertainty

Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment? Phase 2: Economic Uncertainty

Published by Beth Kindig on July 12, 2019

Bitcoin has emerged as a solid alternative to Venezuelan bolivars. Even when Bitcoin loses value from $19,000 to $3,000, it’s still out-performing the inflation of Venezuela’s currency. On the flip side, when bitcoin rises in value from $5,000 to $11,000 in one month, it allows global populations to hold an appreciating asset. Despite market volatility, bitcoin makes Venezuelans money, offers them accessible protection, and they are able to escape an autocratic regime.

Although many consider countries with the most dominant GDPs as the countries who set the world’s stage for economic conditions, the emerging markets play an important role as the unrest in these regions can lead to disruption.

Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment? Part 1: Institutional Adoption

Will Bitcoin Make a Good Investment? Part 1: Institutional Adoption

Published by Beth Kindig on July 4, 2019

The largest bitcoin conference in the world took place last month in San Francisco with many early pioneers discussing why bitcoin has made a good investment for them and why bitcoin investments will do well long-term. You can view highlights from the Bitcoin conference here. Bitcoin buyers fall into two camps (primarily). Those who trade the cryptocurrency and those who “stack Satoshis,” a term for stockpiling on bitcoin as a means of building long-term wealth. Stacking Satoshis may be the most successful tactic due to a few key iterations that bitcoin will go through to ultimately strengthen its price and…

Highlights from Bitcoin Conference 2019

Highlights from Bitcoin Conference 2019

Published by Beth Kindig on July 3, 2019

Last week, the world’s largest bitcoin conference took place in San Francisco. Despite bitcoin holding a $200 billion market cap in Q2 2019, cryptocurrency conferences receive less press than tech conferences from companies with comparable market caps, such as Oracle World, Dream Force or even Oktane, a conference by a company with a fraction of the market cap that receives ample press coverage. Despite naysayers, Bitcoin has proven to be a revolutionary, digital asset. Worst case scenario, if you had invested in bitcoin as a long-term investment at the height of each bubble and sold at the bottom of the…

CrowdStrike IPO: Price at 2x Addressable Market

Published by Beth Kindig on June 21, 2019

Crowdstrike is another Silicon Valley startup that recently went public with triple-digits across the board including revenue growth, net retention rate, and annual revenue-run rate, which may have you wondering, how does one tell all of these Silicon Valley IPOs apart? For the Crowdstrike IPO, as with most cybersecurity companies, competitive landscape is crucial and requires bulletproof product differentiation as security is a very crowded space. This analysis will look into the product differentiation between Crowdstrike and its competitors for endpoint security to achieve an understanding of valuation and to form a prediction of how Crowdstrike will perform as a…