Renegade Investors

Do you wonder why Nvidia's stock price keeps going up even though its price-to-earnings ratio is approaching 100 times, its price-to-sales ratio has surpassed 30 times, and its revenue growth has slowed down from 90% in Q2 2024 to 19% in Q4? It all started when the company unexpectedly doubled its revenue in one quarter due to demand for data centers that can handle artificial intelligence applications and the excitement around its hottest customer, OpenAI ChatGPT. There is no doubt that Nvidia is a great company. But it is certainly worth less than Amazon, with 10% of Amazon's revenue and half of its Free Cash Flow. What's going on? In today's mini-episode, I walk you through three structural changes in the stock market that fuel Nvidia's rally, irrespective of valuation and sanity.

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If investment risk is defined as the probability of permanent loss of your money, how likely is it for you to lose it if you invest in Bitcoin, specifically in the newly approved Bitcoin ETFs? We all heard Warren Buffett rejecting Bitcoin as a good fundamental investment because it has no intrinsic value. Still, some of the largest asset managers in the world launched a Bitcoin ETF only a few days ago. Are they stupid? Don't they know the same things Warren Buffett knows? The good news is that they must disclose all the risks they see in Bitcoin in the prospectus document accompanying each ETF. And let me tell you, the risks list is long and unbelievable. In today's episode, I review BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF (Ticker: IBIT) document and discuss the unbelievable risks this world-class asset management firm sees in Bitcoin. By the end, you can decide how risky investing in Bitcoin ETF is, and I'll tell you my plans.

Only a few years ago, Uber was losing a couple of billion dollars each year, had billions of dollars in debt, and needed an actual path to profitability. I thought Uber was going bankrupt. But things have changed! DRASTICALLY! Uber is profitable and generated almost one billion dollars in free cash flow in a quarter. The company is also expected to join the S&P 500 index on December 18th, 2023, and things are looking GOOD on the financial statements. In today's episode, I dig into what has changed inside Uber's financial statements and discuss whether Uber is a buy now.   Resources:

Have you looked at Affirm's stock price chart in the last few days? Thirty days ago, it was $20 per share. Now, it is $42, 102% higher. Despite the stock price doubling after its earnings report, the average analysts' price target is 50% lower than its current price. Who is right?  Is Affirm 100% better fundamentally than where it was 30 days ago, or are the financial analysts right about Affirm and the stock being overvalued?  In today's episode, I discuss Affirm's fundamental strengths and risks and whether the stock is a buy now for me. Let's talk about it!   Resources:

This week, we said goodbye to Charlie Munger, co-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and the long-time partner of Warren Buffett.  In today's episode, I want to discuss his approach to picking stocks to celebrate his life and the thought-provoking one-liner commentaries he shared with us over the years.  The second part of the episode is for those of us who want to get practical and put his approach into practice. I'll use Charlie's investment approach to screen for stocks that meet his criteria.  Resources:

Congress passed, and the President signed a bill to avert a government shutdown for now. Phew! But hang on! Why does the world's largest economic power and the symbol of democracy often go through this seemingly humiliating shutdown process? And what are the implications for people, our economy, and stock market investors like you and me? In today's episode, I unravel the mystery behind the U.S.'s recurring shutdowns and investigate the impact on the companies we invest in. ➕ There is a special segment to introduce an interesting small-cap stock. Let's talk about that! Resources:

Sam Bankman Fried, SBF, founder of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the former golden boy of the crypto industry, was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. Why am I talking about him? As investors, companies' leadership quality is one of the most critical qualitative factors we must research. For a few years, SBF painted a picture of a visionary, convincing more than a $1B investment in his company. He did it because he knew how to get people and investors to trust him.  He is not alone in this.  Many companies we research have leaders applying SBF's framework. They are not all guilty of fraud, but as investors, we must be aware of such tactics and not fall for those stories.  In today's episode, I reveal SBF's playbook, so we learn to invest based on facts and less on stories. Resources:

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✍️ Enroll In One-On-One Coaching Session: https://blog.stockcard.io/coaching.html ------------------ Back in 2020, when the stock market didn't go anywhere but up, Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, decided to become a stock market investor. If you haven't watched his stock-picking shows, I can summarize them for you. He used Scrabble to pick stocks. Really! Not joking! He then declared himself as the Captain of Wall Street – replacing Warren Buffett. To most of us, it's pretty clear who is the BETTER investor here. But what's the difference between the two men? Both are businessmen who have made successful companies in their own respective industries. What's the REAL difference between these two? Today, I reveal the most important difference between a Good and a Bad investor. And share three steps you can follow to become a better investor like Buffett and less like Portnoy.

PayPal's stock price was once soaring at over $300 a share and has now plummeted by a jaw-dropping 80%.  Is this the end of the road for PayPal, or could it be a golden investment opportunity in disguise?  There is actually a debate going on Wall Street: Some say PayPal is a financial technology dinosaur, losing its market leadership.  Others believe it's a sleeping giant waiting to rise from the ashes.  The million-dollar question: Who's got it right?  Today, I compare PayPal of 2023 to Apple of 2019 and answer that million-dollar question.   Resources:

There is a rule in investing and portfolio management that every investor should learn on day 1: Rule 72.   If you make an average 10% return annually in the stock market, doubling your money takes about 7 years. You get the 7 years by dividing 72 by 10%. The 10% return is the average annual return of the S&P 500 index ETF in the last 30 years.  Are there practical ways not to gamble with our money and still accelerate the pace of doubling our portfolios?  In today's episode, I share three strategies we can adopt to double our portfolios FASTER than the average.  Resources:

Had you invested in world-renowned Stradivarius violins in 2010, the average annual price appreciation between 2010 and 2022 was 9.7%. Other violin brands, such as Joannes Pressenda and Lorenzo Storioni violins, have had 10.7% and 13.4% annualized returns in the same time period, respectively.  Compare that to the inflation-adjusted yearly return of 9.76% by the S&P 500 index, including all dividends reinvested in the same period, and sit down with the terrible realization that investing in a music instrument could have been your answer to beating the market.  Putting that initial reaction aside, if the ultimate goal of investing is to grow our wealth, even if we don't want to invest in violins, we should discuss three critical investment lessons we can learn from Stradivarius violins.   Resources: 

Instacart is one of the hottest tech IPOs in 2023, going public next week with an expected ~$9B market cap. If it goes through, Instacart's IPO success is the story of building the right product in a massive market at the right time. Its success sits at the intersection of eCommerce and Gig Economy, and it can be a good investment when it goes public.  If you are curious about Instacart, ticker CART, today's episode is for you. I dug into Instacart's story, market potential, and fundamentals.  Let's talk about that!  

I've read a fascinating study about cloning super investors like Warren Buffett this week. If you copied Warren Buffett's top 10 holdings and rebalanced them every quarter, you could have outperformed the S&P 500 by three percentage points yearly between 2000 and 2019. That's strong evidence that sometimes copying the right investor can be a good strategy. But not every investor is worth that much respect. A better strategy is to find the top investors, aka super investors, and use their top holdings as a source of new stock ideas. That's precisely what we are going to discuss in today's episode. There are three stocks that 20 super investors hold the most in their top 10 portfolio holdings. I'll research them fundamentally first and then share whether adding them to our portfolios makes sense, too. Resources:

The world potentially has a huge economic crisis on the horizon. Its cause is China's real estate sector. You must have heard that Evergrande, one of China's largest real estate companies, with $340B in debt, has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the U.S. Another prominent property developer, Country Garden, has just warned investors of bankruptcy, with 43% of its debt coming due in the next 12 months. These challenges are more expansive than just the real estate sector in China. If you dig deep, you'll see an intertwined web of problems and interdependencies across China and the world. This can be a considerable risk to individual investors even without direct investment in Chinese companies. In this episode, I'll explain what's happening in China's real estate sector and how it can threaten our portfolios. I'll wrap up with ideas to protect ourselves against such risks. Resources:

On several occasions, investors have asked what Warren Buffett would do if he had a small amount of money and wanted to make lots of money in the stock market. In today's episode, I'll show you how Warren Buffett recommends you pick stocks. After we understand how he does it, I'd share a more practical and useful template you can use to find and screen stocks according to his methodology but in a modern way. You'll also learn how to use Stock Card's screener tool to find stocks like Buffett.   Resources:

Michael Burry, the man who foresaw the 2008 housing market crash, has recently shorted the entire stock market once again! He is not alone in his market crash prediction. Other investors and analysts such as Bill Ackman and Cathie Wood agree with Burry and have found different ways to protect their portfolios. At the same time, economic indicators such as the VIX Index, the Yield Curve, or the Unemployment Rate tell contradictory stories about the market's direction. In today's episode, I dig into Burry's market forecast track record, discuss who agrees with him, and explore the economic indicators to help us understand the market direction. I'll wrap up with ways to protect our portfolios against any possible crash.   Resources: 

The earnings season is in full swing, and the usual revenue and profit misses and beats come with it. But companies make all sorts of announcements during the earnings reports, and not all are revenue and profit related. Three companies made surprise announcements that are worth paying attention to, especially if you plan to invest in them or are an investor already: Palantir, PayPal, and PubMatic. In today's episode, I'll dig into the three companies' earnings reports and discuss the surprises investors in these stocks should be aware of.   Resources:

The world is changing! Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S.'s creditworthiness from triple-A to double-A+. The United States of America was once the absolute economic power in the world, and the U.S. dollar was the most desired currency globally. But, credit agencies like Fitch have started to paint a new picture by downgrading the country's creditworthiness. Is there a real threat? In this episode, I'll discuss whether this downgraded is really that bad, explore its implications for individual investors, and share how to hedge against the downgrade's threat. Resources:

Jerome Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve have a North Star – a 2% target for the U.S. inflation rate. It's more than a North Star. It's their religion, their obsession, their reason for living. They do everything possible to reach the 2% target inflation rate. What's so magical about a 2% inflation rate? Who says a 2% target is right, and what happens when we finally reach the 2% target? What do we, the individual investors, should know about the inflation target? In today's episode, I'll explore the accidental origin story of the 2% inflation rate and discuss what we, the individual investors, should learn from the story. Resources:

Today's episode is one of the most requested videos of the Stock Card community – How to do fundamental analysis and how Stock Card can help. The good news is that fundamental investing is arguably one of the easiest ways to invest. Investing is stressful and hard when you worry about stock prices. In fundamental investing, you don't stress about price fluctuations or what the news says. In fundamental investing, you are not picking stocks. You are investing in the company behind the stock, which differs from its stock price. Buffett says it the best: "Charlie and I are not stock-pickers. We are business-pickers." In today's episode, I'll give you a 6-part fundamental analysis framework anyone can use to pick companies, not stocks.   Resources:

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is a lonely AI stock, down double-digits last month. How can a company that makes chips and semiconductors that power artificial intelligence and other digital applications be down double-digits while competitors like NVDA are up more than 50% in the last three months? Investors price NVDA at more than 40 times its current sales, while AMD has a price-to-sales ratio of 8 times. Is AMD falling behind in the AI race, or is this a temporary bleep in an otherwise rally to the so-called moon? Let's talk about that! Other Resources:

Nio (NIO) is an Electric Vehicle manufacturer with a unique twist. Instead of plugging your car to charge, you can pull up to a Power Swap station and change your battery for a fully-charged one in less than 5 minutes. Cool, unique technologies combined with high-end, beautifully designed cars make for good growth stories, making NIO's stock one of the market's most researched stocks. Some investors go to the extent of calling Nio the next Tesla (TSLA).   Other resources:

There are two types of SoFi (SOFI) investors: Some investors believe it's a meme stock, a stock riding the market's hype cycle, beloved by retail investor communities like Reddit. For example, Roundhill's Meme stocks ETF has more than 4% of its fund allocated to SoFi. On the other extreme side sit investors who believe the company is shaping the future of financial technology. For example, Ark Invest's Future of Fintech ETF just picked up nearly 300,000 shares of SoFi. In today's episode, I'll discuss which side is right and whether SoFi is a fundamentally solid company to buy now.   Resources:

Novavax, Pfizer, and Moderna were at the top of the world during the Covid 19 pandemic. The global demand for a new vaccine to save humanity and the economy from a disaster and collapse was the most important topic, and the companies that researched and developed the vaccines were the kings of wall street. Where are those stocks now, and should we invest in them now that the hype has subsided? There are reasons to believe the companies can still benefit from their COVID vaccine and investments that other investors don't see yet. Let's talk about that!   Resources:

Apple: Almost $3 Trillion market cap 120,000% all-time price return $400B in annual revenue $120B in annual free cash flow $100B in cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet And a brand that inspires! A tech company that doesn't stop innovating. And a stock that pays consistent dividends. Apple is a perfect company. But a perfect company doesn't mean a perfect stock. Apple is priced at more than 30X its earnings and more than seven times its sales. Can Apple grow into its current seemingly ambitious valuation? Today, I review Apple's latest product and feature announcements at its worldwide developers' conference, WWDC, and discuss its fundamental analysis and valuation to decide whether it can get even bigger than its current $3T market cap and whether it is still a good stock to buy now. Let's talk about that!   Resources:

Artificial Intelligence is the talk of the town. Nvidia's stock recently jumped 25%+ in a day after announcing a surprising revenue forecast thanks to heightened demand for data centers that can handle generative AI applications. Nvidia's stock is great but too expensive. If we are not investing in NVDA, what do we invest in that benefits from the same trends and has solid operations while not priced as the next best thing after sliced bread? UiPath (PATH) could fit that description. In today's episode, I'll research UiPath's fundamentals and its latest earnings report to explore whether it's time to buy the stock.   Resources: 

On May 24th, 2023, $750M Nvidia jumped 26% after its earnings release while reporting a 13% year-over-year revenue growth decline. How can a mega-cap stock jump nearly 30% in one day, and how is that possible when revenue growth decelerates? The answer is the AI boom. Aside from the recent price rally, Nvidia's stock price is no stranger to big jumps in price thanks to similar technological boom cycles. In five years, the stock went from a low of $35 per share in 2018 to a high of $400, generating more than a 1000% return on the day of recording this episode. The question is, after a 5-year 1000% gain, is it too late to buy Nvidia? Let's talk about that!   Other Resources:

Micahel Burry is as close as it gets to a stock market celebrity. Investors like to follow his every move. The always-pessimistic investor has earned the right to his celebrity status by enduring the emotional toll it takes on one's mind to go against the mainstream and make big bets. Now he is betting on China's consumer spending recovery by picking up Alibaba #BABA and JD.com #JD shares.   Is he right about those Chinese stocks? Let's talk about that!   Resources:

Unity (U) software is a platform that lets other companies tell beautiful stories in video games and beyond. Believing in Unity's story and expecting its stock to generate a massive return on your investment is so easy to accept, especially in a world where digital experiences become more immersive, beautiful, and unbelievably real. But, as investors, we can't fly with the stories. We must look behind the proverbial curtain and see what's happening behind the scenes. Let's talk about that!   Other resources:

Ah! The beauty of traveling anywhere in the world and living a dream, even for a few days, is Airbnb's promise to travelers. It also allows anyone to earn passive income from the extra room in their house or the entire house by renting it to others through Airbnb's platform. But those dreams haven't yet made the company's investors any money. The company's stock, ticker ABNB, has lost nearly 30% since its IPO, 11% of which happened after its Q1 2023 earnings report release. Would the dream ever translate to investment return for investors, and is the double-digit drop in the stock price a buying opportunity?    Resources:

The so-called Amazon-killer company, Shopify (Ticker: SHOP), is up more than 20% in the last few days, like it's 2021 all over again. What did the company share in its latest earnings report that has investors piling up shares, and is it too late to get in on the action? Let's talk about that!   Correction: In this episode, I mention ARKK has an 11% SHOP allocation. That's incorrect. ARKK's SHOP allocation is ~5%.   Resources:

Snap is a $13B technology company that almost every teenager uses its app to connect with friends. It has successfully engaged and satisfied its users but not so much its investors. Its stock is down more than 50% since its IPO in 2017. Many attribute Snap's fall to TikTok's fierce competition in recent years. Is that reason justified, or is the 50% drop in the stock price a buying opportunity?   Resources:

The year was 2018-19, and Cannabis stocks were hot! One of the market leaders, Canopy Growth was trading at $50 per share, and another, Tilrary, was priced at more than $140 per share. Fast forward to 2023, and cannabis stocks have lost almost all their value. Both those market leader stocks are now down 98% from their all-time highs of 2018-19.  Cannabis stocks are either destined for bankruptcy, and 100% value loss or they are deeply-discounted opportunities we should pay attention to now. Let's talk about that!

Roughly ten years ago, I skipped investing in Axon Enterprise (AXON) and missed an opportunity to hold a stock that has since grown by more than 10X. But good investors don't repeat the same mistakes twice! Axon is a great company, but even greater is the Police & Public Safety Technology industry. It is growing by ~30% per year, and it is just getting started. Today I'm glad to officially the Stock Card community to the world's 1st ever Police and Public Safety Index, created by Economist Michael Hardiman. Listen to the episode and visit the index's page on the Idea Center!  Other research resources:

The loser panics. The victor makes a decision. If stock market losers panic and sell, what do smart investors do when the market goes through difficult times? They act the opposite and invest. The Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) meltdown is one of those situations that has created broad market panic, making investors wonder how to act like a winner and which stocks or ETFs to consider. In today's episode, I discuss three ways to invest in response to SVB's failure. Check it out! Supporting links and resources: