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Please Watch My New YouTube Video: Is This the End of Momentum?

Please Watch My New YouTube Video: Is This the End of Momentum?

Today’s topic is Is This the End of Momentum? One Last Momentum Blowout. This has been a great market for very specific stocks. We’re seeing a very narrow momentum market. A few stocks are overperforming the index and propping it up. An example is Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), formerly known as Facebook. Meta is up 102% this year and it’s up about 14% in the last month. The S&P is up 9.5% year to date and just 1.5% in the last month. We’re seeing a large divergence between the index and a narrow group of a few rallying stocks, like Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, and Nvidia. These stocks are outperforming the index, but they’re up based on very recent history. Meta’s recent earnings jolted the stock upwards, but it’s still a company that is bleeding money to develop its virtual reality products, with billions of dollars ($13.7B in 2022) lost by its Reality Labs program. The company had staked its future on the Metaverse but has yet to create a viable product from the project. As the momentum of these few stocks starts to slow, Meta could take a big hit because of these fundamental factors. In my opinion, we’re near the top of this momentum market and it’s time to start taking profits from companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia.

Bookkeeping: I added NVDA, MSFT, and Adobe to my Volatility Portfolio on March 24

Bookkeeping: I added NVDA, MSFT, and Adobe to my Volatility Portfolio on March 24

In Step #3 of my Special Report: 5 Moves for the Next 5 Months, on March 24 I added three Big Tech stocks–Microsoft (MSFT), Adobe (ADBE), and Nvidia (NVDA) to my Volatility Portfolio ahead of earnings season. My theory, explained in that post was that we were facing a tough earnings season for most stocks and that reliable earnings growth from Big Tech would make those stocks look like a safe haven in a period when the Standard & Poor’s 500 as a whole was projected to show a drop in earnings. (I also owned up to my mistake in selling Nvidia back on February 16. That was just wrong. More on why I was wrong and why I’ve changed my mind on that in a post tomorrow or so.)

With banks still in crisis, are tech sector stocks a beneficiary?

With banks still in crisis, are tech sector stocks a beneficiary?

Ok, so Dan Ives is talking his book (or sector at least) but he still raises an interesting point. (Dan Ives is a Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst covering the Technology sector at Wedbush Securities since 2018.) With bank stocks in particular and the financial sector in general in turmoil, will investors looking for steady earnings turn to tech stocks? (Well maybe not all tech stocks but how about Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT)?

Special Report: 7 AI Stocks to Own Now–with a couple of speculative picks to come on Thursday

Special Report: 7 AI Stocks to Own Now–with a couple of speculative picks to come on Thursday

You can understand the gold rush: One AI stock is up 105% (and 78% in the last month) in 2023 as of the February 17 close.

But are shares of that company, the software artificial company C3A (AI), the stock you want to own, or is this stock simply a beneficiary of hot money jumping on anything that sounds like artificial intelligence? As one market observer put it on Seeking Alpha recently, “The ticker is more valuable than the company.” This doesn’t mean that the current revolution in artificial intelligence isn’t real. And here I give you my 7 picks for investing in the latest AI revolution

Please Watch My New YouTube Video: Quick Pick Microsoft

Please Watch My New YouTube Video: Quick Pick Microsoft

Today I posted my two-hundred-and-twenty-ninth YouTube video: Quick Pick Microsoft . This week’s Quick Pick: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Microsoft came out with earnings on Tuesday (shortly after filming this video). The earnings were expected to be disappointing as their revenue from their cloud service, Azure has slowed and the growth rate has been declining since September 2021. Microsoft’s earnings report initially surprised investors and the stock rose more than 4% in after-hours trading. But the next day, investors focused on the declining growth in Azure revenue and negative guidance for the future. The stock fell 0.59% at the end of the day. I’m suggesting buying Microsoft on the dip. Microsoft has invested $10B in OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT. OpenAI’s software can, among other things, create entire, fully-sourced essays, and research answers to questions using a simple search. This AI software is a new technology that has been looking for a way to be monetized, and Microsoft has an easy answer. Bringing ChatGPT to their already established suite of word processing tools, spreadsheets, and (let’s not forget) Microsfot’s search engine Bing. Microsoft opens up an immediate use for AI that will enhance the company’s legacy revenue stream. I’m buying on this dip with an eye to a future that features OpenAI.

Microsoft launches AI-enhanced version of its search engine Bing; Google responds with Bard

Wall Street has second thoughts on yesterday’s Microsoft earnings

Yesterday, shares of Microsoft (MSFT) rose by more than 4.6% on an earnings report for the December quarter that showed the company slightly beating analyst estimates on earnings and training only slightly on revenue. Today, investors and traders had second thoughts. The stock was down as much as 4.6% in morning trading (That’s down from the close yesterday and not from the after-hours price.) The stock ended the day down just 059% but that was enough to erase all the after-hours gains from the previous day. So what caused the second thoughts?

Microsoft launches AI-enhanced version of its search engine Bing; Google responds with Bard

Microsoft beats on earnings but Azure growth slows more than expected

After the market close today, Microsoft (MSFT) announced earnings of $2.32 a share, just beating Wall Street forecasts of $2.30 a share. That was a 6.5% drop from the December 2021 quarter, however. Revenue missed expectations at $52.7 billion versus a forecasted $52.9 billion. But the big news was that revenues for Azure, the company’s key cloud computing software unit, rose just 31% year over year in the quarter. That badly trailed Wall Street forecasts that called for 36.8% year-over-year growth in the December quarter.

Another day, more tech job cuts: Google to cut 12,000 jobs

Another day, more tech job cuts: Google to cut 12,000 jobs

Google’s parent Alphabet (GOOG) will cut 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, the company said today, Friday, January 20. This comes after Microsoft (MSFT), announced earlier this week that it would cut 10,000 jobs or 5% of its workforce. The two companies are gearing up to go head to head in a battle to see if artificial intelligence chatbots can disrupt Google’s stranglehold on Internet search.

Please Watch My New YouTube video: Get Ready for the Tech Earnings Flood

Please Watch My New YouTube video: Get Ready for the Tech Earnings Flood

Today I posted my two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth YouTube video: Get Ready for the Tech Earnings Flood. This week is a bit of a breather. Last week ended with bank earnings and next week begins the flood of tech stock earnings. This week we’ve got Alcoa, which used to be a market indicator but that is no longer the case (thankfully, since Wall Street estimates have them at a loss of $.75 for this quarter.) Netflix is up next on Thursday, January 19. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) will show +$.44 this quarter versus +$1.33 last year at this time. I think this will likely be the trend with tech stocks. Lower earnings and slower revenue growth year-over-year. 2022 has been tough for technology companies and earnings will likely be lower for the fourth quarter than in 2021. Look closely at future estimates and guidance. Where are they going from here? (the bad news for the fourth quarter is widely expected.) Microsoft will report earnings on January 24, shortly after announcing it will be laying off 10,000 employees. After that, we’ll get Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), on January 26, and then the floodgates open with more and more technology companies announcing earnings and setting the tone for the stock market at the start of 2023.