Tech Wars, Supreme Court Politics and VRX

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Tech Wars

Very forward-thinking but skeptical analysis on the future of Virtual Reality, bandwidth and how these companies are creating our future in this article called On the War Path: Facebook, Google, and Amazon: “It may be too early to start calling Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon the Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan of the modern day. But it looks like they’re on a vertical integration path that appears very similar for their industries. And that consolidation will only amp up if the economy crashes.”

Meanwhile, Sony $SNE is up again today on the news of that $399 Playstation VR Headset. The most important part of the VR wars is getting developers on board. Playstation already has a critical mass of developers and that gives Sony a leg up on FB’s Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive headsets. Now with the much cheaper price point for the Playstation VR Headset, Sony is definitely positioned as a leader very early in the VR Wars.

The stocks in the #3DPrinting world have definitely bounced and seemed to have turned a corner. The question is, have the fundamentals turned the corner? Not sure, but I do think $SSYS is the only name I’d want to invest in in the space still.

I think the potential for $QCOM losing iPhone share to $INTC isn’t as big a threat as it’s being made out to be. Meanwhile, I think $QCOM‘s winning some serious business from all the major Android smartphone and wearable device makers. I’m holding my $QCOM steady.

They put the “Sigh” in “Politicized.”

I didn’t think that the Republican Democrat Regime could make the Supreme Court any more politicized, but then I read about this dude and am almost depressed about how political his background in an article about how the insanely political the entire nomination process truly has become: What you need to know about Merrick Garland, the Supreme Court nominee. Not sure it impacts our stock markets in any measurable or meaningful way, but as always, it’s important to remain objective in our political analysis and not be bogged down by left/right or partisan concepts.

Valeant Crash Update

$VRX down 85% in the last year. It’s down 70% since I shorted it five months ago. Trading at 3-4x next year’s earnings estimates…because nobody believes the company can earn $10 next year. Hard to believe Ackman and others were long this thing when it had a $100BB market cap vs the $12BB market cap it has today. Here’s a good write up on the death spiral the company faces now.

I’m still short a small position in $VRX and most everything in my analysis from the original Trade Alert: Shorting $VRX report (https://www.scutify.com/premiu…) I issued is continuing to play out. From political pressure to pricing problems to questionable accounting, we’ve seen everything I outlined in that report play out. The company’s got tens of billions in debt and the pressure is on from lenders/bondholders/banks. Vicious cycle, but then again, there’s a lot that’s already priced in, at least short-term. I’d also written about $MNK in the Trade Alert I sent out six months ago when we shorted$VRX. I shoulda, woulda, coulda shorted it too as I was explaining why it was in trouble, as that stock has also crashed in the months since.