Google pays Apple billions, Twitter, Snap vs FB, Flamethrowers, Marijuana stocks and more
A buddy of mine who has been CEO and/or Founder and/or Chairman of three technology companies that he’s taken public in the past three decades just called me because I’d asked him if we could talk about blockchain and cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding, etc. Very interesting discussion. So much to learn, to analyze, to study, to expect Revolutions from, etc.
Q. I read something about Google has high vulnerability to Apple changing the default search in mobile, or something like that? Any thoughts on mobile paradigm moving away from Google??
A. Google pays Apple billions of dollars to be the default search on Apple devices. I don’t think the Google Apple default search issue is big enough to truly matter to Google or Apple’s stocks in the long run. And as long as Google owns Android, there’s no way the “mobile paradigm moves away from Google” IMHO.
Q. Hi Cody – thought on Twitter earnings? Thanks.
A. Expectations are high for Twitter’s earnings report tonight/tomorrow morning especially after SNAP’s own blowout earnings report last night. Long-term, I think TWTR is a good Revolutionary investment. Short-term, no idea right now with this crazy market doing these wild swings.
Q. Cody, I just recently bought some shares of TWTR @25, any thoughts about earnings tomorrow?
A. As noted earlier, expectations are high for Twitter’s earnings report tonight/tomorrow morning especially after SNAP’s own blowout earnings report last night. The fact that we’ve got two questions about TWTR earnings in the chat might underscore that expectations are high, actually, yes? Anyway, like I said, long-term, I think TWTR is a good Revolutionary investment. Short-term, no idea right now with this crazy market doing these wild swings.
Q. I recall one chat session where you mentioned doubts about Blackberry, and might retract it as a buy??
A. I wanted to see Blackberry give us a tangible win in the driverless car platform side of things, and they did recently. So I’m holding onto BB for now.
Q. Blackberry is edging toward the bottom of it’s channel. Thoughts on adding?
A. Sitting tight for now. Might nibble a bit more but not in a rush.
Q. I’ve heard criticism about solar manufacturers being a flawed business model because, 1) government subsidies might disappear, 2) not really tech companies but components manufacturers, which can easily be killed by China’s ever-lower costs, blah, blah. Not sure about the other reasons, but you get the idea. Any thoughts on First Solar one day getting killed by these kinds of forces??
A. I’d noted last week during the Live Stream: “I think probably your question has somewhat to do with subsidies from the Republican Democrat regime that they shower of … instead of helping poor, hungry children, they send it to First Solar and Solar Edge as shareholders. Again, I always fight that stuff politically, including the tone of my voice as I say that and how I phrase it right now. But the fact is that I don’t think those subsidies are going anywhere, and beyond that I think First Solar has a business model here in the US that is going to be dominant. They’ve got the balance sheet to back themselves up. And I think Solar Edge has some technology that could revolutionize the solar cells, taking them from analog to digital. And so the subsidies matter somewhat, but the reason I own solar energy stocks isn’t for subsidies. It is because I believe that solar energy is the future. I think it’s better than any other renewable energy that we’ve got right now, and I think the cost factors, partly because of companies like Solar Edge and First Solar driving them down with technology, the costs of solar are going to drop again another factor of 10. Solar will be a very big player in energy over the next 10 or 20 years, and I think these are two of the players that could drive that. So, good question.”
Q. What about SEDG and FSLR, buy before earnings?
A. I do think that $SEDG and $FSLR could go much higher in coming years and decades, so if you don’t own any, you might want to start with a 1/3-sized tranche and then add to it after the report. I’ve no idea how the companies did the last 75 days of business (90 calendar days) and what the market is expecting from those prior 75 days.
Q. Cody, Did you purchase a flamethrower from the Boring company? I wish I had known about it I would have bought one. Would love to short TSLA going into earnings but this stock went up like 10 dollars when Elon Musk said he was going to build a restaurant at a charging station in LA. The guy is brilliant in his own way. Can’t do it.
A. Haha, no, I didn’t buy a flamethrower as I didn’t know about it either. Probably wouldn’t want to have one here in the mountains of NM with our forest fires threats. I long ago threw in the towel and issued a mea culpa to Trading With Cody subscribers for not having ever bought TSLA.
Q. Cody, You were dead on about the marijuana stocks I mentioned a month ago in jest that my family purchased. They were actually going up until Trump put a stop to it by giving federal prosecutors more power in states where it is legal. All marijuana stocks that I know of have been down sharply since. How can marijuana be legal on state levels, and illegal at the federal level? Only in America….
A. Most marijuana stocks, especially micro caps and penny stocks, are scams for insiders to sell their endless supply of insider shares to unfortunate retail suckers. As for your question about legal vs federal, good point. That said, the sometimes anarchic, sometimes socialist/sometimes capitalist/ always corporatist rule of law that we have in this country is still probably a better system than most other countries on this planet.
Q. Cody, Did the quarterly earnings report and guidance change your view on SNAP? Might this be a better long term play now on social media than Twitter? SNAP is still a long way away from its IPO price. I remember when this was the case with Facebook.
A. I don’t think your memory of Facebook vs Snap’s price action at and after their IPO is correct. In fact, here’s an article I wrote that’s literally titled “Snap 2017 vs Facebook 2012: Big differences.” In it, I write, “So let’s step back in time to summer 2012 when I repeatedly laid out the long-term bullish case for Facebook and why I called it ‘cheap’ back then and compare that analysis to our Snap analysis today…”
Earlier this week I did my first 30 minute 1-on-1 chat with a Trading With Cody Lifetime Subscriber. The 100 slots are going fast but there are a still a few available. Click here to learn more Trading With Cody 4 Life.
