Here’s the transcript from this week’s Live Q&A Chat, including ongoing 5G discussions, crypto getting jiggy and why gold is climbing.
Q. Cody: Re your trade alert today, can you provide some info on the expiration date and strike prices for the puts you purchased?
A. Yes, They were the March’s just about 5% out of the money. Just a tiny bit of hedging, especially since I’ve squeezed myself out of most of those short hedges I’d tried to put on earlier.
Q. Cody, for the future chats, how reliable or better yet, any reason to listen to the “Seeking Alpha” article saying NVDA going to $34? Most other analysis correlates with your takes.
A. It’s possible that the SA article could turn out right. Then again, I remember when Barron’s had articles after Google’s IPO at $75 that it was headed to $30. Gotta do your own homework and draw your own conclusions in the end.
Q. Curious crypto action as $ETH and others are breaking out of long term resistance trend lines. The potential amount of Ethereum that could be locked up in the years to come is compelling.
A. Yes, cryptos got jiggy this week. Not sure it’s a long term bottom for all of them or even most of them, but some including $ETH just might be putting in bottoms.
Q. Cody, JPM starting its’ own fixed value crypto. How IYO will that affect the other cryptos?
A. In five years, I’m not sure we will remember JPM’s first venture into crypto.
Q. Question for Cody – Barron’s recommended some robotic companies. What do you think of ABB and TER?
A. I’ll run ABB and TER through my WiNR Ratio algo after I do some updated homework on them and will let you know if they come out as highly enough rated to be compelling.
Q. Cody – noticed VZ market cap is 223 billion. Multi trillion move in 10 years would be 10 fold. Slow and steady. How much you think TWTR can do in 10 years ? thnx
A. My gosh, let’s not get carried away with trying to predict just how much these stocks might go up in the next ten years because they could also go down! Anyway though, with Verizon having net neutrality killed and 5G rising, there will likely be all kinds of new service revenues for the company or the ability to charge for faster lanes or for quality assurance etc. that it could change the trajectory of valuation for the company over the next ten years and that it could go up 5-10 fold. Twitter could be a half trillion dollar company and that would mean that it went up 20-fold. But there’s a whole lot of navigation, execution, earnings, growth and revolution that Twitter will have to win on for that to happen!
Q. @Cody: Been hearing a lot about XLNX lately which probably means I am late to the party. Any thoughts on them?
A. I’d mentioned last week that Xylinx is on my radar as a potential 5G long. The valuation is a bit stretched though.
Q. Cody Are you still down on Calx and disposing position entirely?
A. Yes, I moved on.
Q. Hi Cody – Thinking out loud I just sold the rest of my Apple calls with a great return. What, if any, future calls on Apple should I consider or should I wait before trading?
A. Remember how I said earlier that sometimes the best trade to make is no trade at all? It gets easy sometimes to think that a stock “owes you money”. It doesn’t. Easy does it would be my advice. I’ll let you know if I buy more AAPL call options of course.
Q. When do you think SEDG will be ripe for another tranche?
A. I’d wait out the next quarterly report. I’m holding my SEDG steady right now.
Q. Time to harvest Sony and reallocate to better opportunities? What about Samsung as a 5G play as they appear to be investing $22B to go after Huawei business in EMEA?
A. Yes, I’m probably going to send out a Trade Alert this week about harvesting the SNE gains and moving on. Samsung’s just too big of a conglomerate for me to use it as a 5G play. Too many other moving parts.
Q. CIEN: Any new thoughts on this company as a 5G play? Having a great day today… No news. Would a good valuation compare for CIEN be ANET? Thanks.
A. I’ve looked at CIEN like 5 times in the last six weeks and just never bought it. It’s not a bad stock here, but the valuation isn’t terrific any more and the chart is getting stretched. I wish I’d bought some a few weeks ago, but wishes ain’t helpful.
Q. Cody – gold is going up nonstop. Is it sensing some worldwide economic or political trouble ahead? GLD already 126ish..it’s only Feb….at this pace it might outdo your prediction 150s by year end? thnx
A. I don’t know that gold prices have been climbing the last year because of some sense of worldwide economic/political trouble ahead — there are other factors like the rotation out of bitcoin to gold and the endless physical shipments being sent from the West to the East as India and China and other countries take physical gold delivery.
Q. Cody – since you a hoopster….basketball question…everyone making Zion Williams the next best thing since Michael Jordan. Aren’t they overlooking Kobe and Lebron that have come since MJ or is Zion that much of a beast?
A. I’ve never seen Zion play. Seen a couple highlights is all. He looks great, but I could have dunked over him and shut him down when I was in my prime at UNM 1995.
Q. Cody – saw a headline that Iran cryptocurrency could be based on Stellar Lumens..is that bad for XLM considering Iran situation on the world stage? Or you still like as one of the top few standing 10 years from now?
A. I’d think Iran using Stellar would be another validation of Stellar as a platform. Other than that, I’m not sure it’s relevant to Stellar Lumens.
Q. You seem to be adding a lot of smaller names while hedging against the indexes. That seems in line with the market action, however, many of our core names (FB, Appl, Amzn, Goog for e,g.) are the biggest names in the market, so index hedges particularly hedge those names. Just asking, since no one has an infinite amount of cash, do you like selling down some of these names to fund some of the smaller names you are liking recently? Any of those 4 + NVDA that you see as particularly vulnerable?
A. I’m using the hedges just as hedges in the hedge fund… not much more to it than that. I see lots of stocks I wanted to buy, so I did that too. Does this answer your question?
Q. It does answer the question, more or less, I just notice that you are buying smaller names and didn’t do as much on the bigger names, like fb, goog, appl…I think your philosophy is a bit value oriented so you are seeing more value in some “off the beaten path stuff” that is cheaper, more beaten down and kind of “off the radar”, while still having a thesis in 5g, so maybe you have slightly moved the port away from the big names, just a bit, by using new money on newer names.
A. Somewhat, yes. I also own AMZN, GOOG, AAPL, VZ etc. in the hedge fund.
Q. Also, I will always remember that you said that all of the talk of regulation of FB and others was also a net positive as the regulation creates a barrier to entry, giving Goog and FB a big moat. How do you feel about that now?
A. I still feel that regulators always get captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate and that FB, GOOG, and TWTR have a bigger moat than ever.
Q. Any thoughts about Impinj now that its been basing for a few years?
A. Another way to put it is that Impinj has been a terrible underperformer for the last few years. Not sure that’s ever going to change. I’ve moved on from Impinj and unless something drastic changes there, I doubt I’ll ever return.
Q. So how big is this 5G revolution really going to be???
A. The 5G Revolution will create tens of trillions of dollars of value for investors in it over the next decade or two.
Q. So basically I should put all my money in 5G stocks?
A. No, but certainly a decent chunk of it.
Q. Any thoughts on CEVA as a 5G play?
A. Will study it and run it through my WiNR Ratio algo and let you know.
Q. Cody,when you have time, can you write a slot on what is the difference between investing and gambling? For example when I buy VZ I feel like an investor, but when buying cryptos or options, usually like a gambler…
A. Yes, it’s a good topic and one that nobody can ever really answer. But I’ll pontificate on it sometime for you.
Q. Excellent call on VIAV, especially the calls. Any guidance on when we should parse back or sell out of the calls with a March 15th time value looming?
A. Yes it’s time to trim and sell down the call options.
Q. Question from a friend. What are best software AI and AR pure play stocks/companies? Also, wanted to mention I am father of 4 and I know you caught some slack here recently but to pull off what you did the past month or so is amazing. If my kid was in ICU for that long, I wouldn’t get anything accomplished. Family (especially children) is more important than any job. What you give us for a measly $100 a month is much appreciated and I am glad things are looking up for you and your family.
A. Thank you so much for the kind words. I’m working on the AI/AR Revolution names and will have more in coming months. I wouldn’t mind a market pullback so we could do some buying in a downturn instead of feeling like we have to chase names higher. Be cool.
