Hi all,
I recently joined Reddit on the advice of a best friend of mine while also (finally) opening my own trading account. I have found a lot of helpful, as well as unhelpful, content on here and I wanted to do my best to be helpful to people as well. As such, when I have time I plan on doing a daily overview of current events as well as how I see them playing out in the markets. I'm interested in working for a hedge fund or doing equity research, so naturally writing something like this would not only help on that front but also allow others to engage with me and challenge my ideas. Please note that the opinions stated here are the thoughts of just another retail investor and I am not expressly stating what you should or should not do with your portfolio. With that said, here goes nothing...
What's Happening
- Elections are today (so get out and vote, otherwise don't complain about the outcome)! Many see the Democrats taking control of the House and winning more gubernatorial seats with the Republicans maintaining the Senate. This result could help with Trump's infrastructure plan, which could offer a boost to companies like US Steel (NYSE:X) or Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT). I still remember when Trump won the election and US Steel saw a jump to $39.44 at one point. Regardless of who wins, markets tend to do well through Q2 of the next year, so it should be interesting to see the winners and losers. I could see construction and clean energy stocks doing well with tech giants seeing further declines, assuming regulation is pursued against them. I think financials could go either way depending on regulatory proposals put forth by the Democrats.
- According to JPM, share buybacks by companies are on the rise. A notable example includes one by Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) of $1bn in August. They recently invested in fintech firm Paytm, an Indian company that offers a mobile payment platform. Buffet is sitting on ~$111bn in cash which to me is indicative of his not seeing any opportunities at the present. I could very well see him waiting for the next downturn (ie recession) to swoop in and make some purchases at discounted prices, as he is not one to overpay, and thus leading BRK.B to higher levels than we currently see.
- Optimus Ride just partnered with Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) for its autonomous vehicle fleet to upgrade to Level 4 (meaning little human interaction is needed in the operation of a vehicle) vehicles. Nvidia has its DRIVE platform that allows for synthetic testing, meaning that billions of miles in test drives and AI can be simulated without having to ever hit the road. I'm curious to see how the race toward autonomous vehicles turns out with Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) being in competition with Nvidia. From my research, however, it appears that Intel is more involved with hardware (chips) whereas Nvidia is more involved with software (AI and synthetic testing). Intel also recently acquired MobilEye which further pushes them ahead. Given each company has partnerships with many large automobile manufacturers, I believe that each can excel in their respective space and reap large profits from this new business in the years to come, bolstering their stock prices in the years to come once we finally see these new fleets completely rolled out.
If you actually read through all this... thank you! Please leave feedback for me, your thoughts on what I presented, or anything else you care to share.
Submitted November 06, 2018 at 09:07AM by hbratt69 https://ift.tt/2QjvzUA
