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Bitcoin (BTC) wobbled near $40,000 as investors awaited the U.S. Fed to release its new economic projections this Wednesday.

The market’s focus moved to two vital questions: Will U.S. fed show their plans to increase interest rates in 2023? And by how much do they believe inflation will grow this year and next year?

The Fed did defend the inflationary spike by stating that they are “transitory.” The central bank has said it will wait until it witnesses inflation holding near higher levels before proceeding with rate cuts.

This rate increase projection gives the cryptocurrency at least two years to keep its anti-inflation growth.

The top cryptocurrency seems to be the top asset after the March 2020 crash, caused by fears about quantitative easing and trillions of stimulus lowering the desire for the U.S. dollar.

Nick Spanos, the founder of the Bitcoin Center in New York City, noted that increasing inflation combined with the Fed’s drive to hold interest rates close to the 0.25% level gives Bitcoin lots of room to keep its bull run going.

Spanos said:

“After the Fed Dot Plot today, I can see a reaction in the crypto world with an increase in the value of Bitcoin. Based on this retesting of the $45,000 marker seems more likely, in the near future.”

Death cross looms

However, some technical hints on Bitcoin’s charts don’t go along with this bullish outlook.

For example, the BTC/USD exchange rate recently showed greater selling pressure within the $40,000–$42,000 area. Because of this, traders nervously treat that area as their cue to cash in on their profits, thereby risking lowers toward the next support point between $35,000 and $30,000.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s 50-day moving average is showing it could close under its 200-day simple moving average. This crossover is labeled a “death cross,” an indicator that predicts price declines within markets.

“Whenever a Death Cross happens, Bitcoin sees a deeper downside., said Rekt Capital, a market analyst. “In 2014, the Death Cross happened before a -71% fall. In 2017, a -65% fall. And in 2019, a -55% fall.”

Author: Blake Ambrose

With the news about a new treatment for Alzheimer’s, the huge increases by smaller biotechs companies making treatments can get lost. We have seen 130 failed attempts to create an AD treatment since 1998.

Now that the FDA has approved Biogen’s Aduhelm even with its mixed results, it theoretically has made it easier for other newer treatments to get approved.

That anticipation is why shares of Annovis Bio and Cassava Sciences are now higher by over 1,000% so far in 2021. They each give a new path for treating Alzheimer’s that has given promising results.

Annovis Bio

Unlike most AD medicines, Annovis Bio’s ANVS401 is not created to remove amyloid from the brain. Rather it solves the symptoms of end-stage Alzheimer’s, the company is focusing on the starting steps of the toxic cascade. Its scientists have honed in on lowering a neurotoxin protein that causes nerve cell destruction. These proteins are useful when the brain is only slightly harmed. However, they stay around when damage is great, disrupting the cells needed to transport substances.

Despite its phase 2 study just being created to detect biomarkers, preliminary information is revealing gains in primary function. It also is working for Parkinson’s disease. The study has 14 patients with AD and 14 patients with PD. In AD, ANVS401 caused a 30% cognition improvement in only 25 days. With PD, there were statistically great gains in coordination, motor function, and speed.

Cassava Sciences

Like Annovis Bio’s work, Cassava’s simufilam product is not created to remove amyloid from a person’s brain. Instead, it restores a scaffolding protein. That protein (FLNA), helps build the cells’ structure. It is the stuff that physically holds the brain up. When it folds incorrectly, it leads to inflammation like what is seen in Alzheimer’s.

In February, Cassava announced it had concluded its phase 2 study and had gotten approval from the FDA to go onto phase 3. That news brought the stock up almost 400% higher over the next days. That is even after it grew over 250% in September of last year, the month its initial results were made public. Data showed Alzheimer’s patients who got the drug for six months showed both greater cognition and behavior. Cognition increased 10% and dementia behaviors decreased by 29%.

Author: Steven Sinclaire

Artificial intelligence will possibly reshape the world within the next couple of decades. Autonomous machines will start to see, hear, learn, and make decisions. This will increase productivity and innovation across many industries, from robotics to mobility and marketing.

From an investor’s view point, these technologies will create overflowing wealth. In fact, data from Ark Invest shows that AI will add $30 trillion to equity pools by 2037. If you are looking to get your share of this money, consider buying Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ:AXON) and Pinterest (NYSE:PINS). Here’s why.

Axon Enterprise

Axon is the top global supplier of conducted energy devices (Tasers). But the company also ventured into sensors like body cameras and they are creating AI tools to beef up their product offerings.

For example, Axon Records was created to simplify police reporting. This AI-founded platform uses video and audio (captured by Axo’s cameras) to accelerate and automate the creation of incident reports. This increases productivity for law enforcement, while giving much needed transparency for citizens.

Likewise, coming up this year, the company will launch Fleet 3, an AI-fueled car camera. Fleet 3 goes beyond traditional dash camera tech, allowing police to scan eight times as many plates (across three lanes of traffic) at the same price as previous systems.

Yasser Ibrahi, the Axon executive behind these efforts, has previously worked on machine learning projects at Microsoft and Amazon, and his experience should be an asset to the company.

Axon is already a leader in body cameras, and police software — last year, their revenue increased 28% to $681 million. But management puts the market at $27 billion, and Axon’s AI-founded growth should help it increase its momentum even more in the years to come.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a popular social platform. It has a unique blend of visual content and search, using AI to customize the user experience and give predictive content.

For example, when someone clicks on an image, the software also gives visually similar results. And if the user zooms to that image, the software will discover those sunglasses on online stores and give buy links to the product.

This produces an AI-infused network effect: The more a person visits the Pinterest platform, the more personalized their visits become; and the more people use Pinterest, the more patterns the software can understand, which improves its capabilities.

Pinterest recently had strong Q1 results. Monthly users went to 478 million, up 30% compared to the previous year. And revenue increased 78% to $485 million. Driving this was strong usage by marketers. People coming to Pinterest want inspiration, which makes it the perfect place for companies to reach potential customers.

With Pinterest stock lower by 25% from its 52-week high, and with this long-term AI potential, now seems like the perfect time to pick up some shares.

Author: Scott Dowdy

Fund managers are not buying the idea that bitcoin (BTC-USD) is a good buy after the world’s top cryptocurrency’s recent pullback.

Eighty-one percent of fund leaders and managers asked in a new Bank of America poll report that bitcoin is still considered to be in a bubble even with the deep price decline. Investors see bitcoin as the second most overcrowded traded, behind being long on commodities.

A total of 224 investing managers who had around $667 billion in overall assets under their management took part in the survey.

For sure, bitcoin prices have went through a rough patch lately as investors seemingly focus on every bearish or bullish tweet from crypto influencers like Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk.

Bitcoin prices went down around 37% in May, and are lower 38% from their April high of $64,829.

Prices have gotten a boost this week from bullish statements made by famous money manager Paul Tudor Jones, who said bitcoin was a good way to diversify a portfolio. At $40,000 however, bitcoin prices seem not too far away from the early June number of near $33,000.

Meanwhile, other investors on Wall Street are warning that the risky downside to bitcoin is still high.

J.P. Morgan expert strategist and bitcoin analyst, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, said recently that medium-term fair price for bitcoin is between $24,000 and $36,000.

The analyst believes the May crash in the cryptocurrency has badly harmed institutional demand, which will possibly keep prices pressured for the short-term.

“There is a certainty that the low and high dynamics of the previous weeks give a setback to the institutional use of crypto markets and especially of Ethereum and Bitcoin. We note that the simple rise in volatility, especially when compared to gold, is a harmful thing to more institutional usage as it lowers the attractiveness of digital gold compared to traditional gold in large institutional portfolios., Panigirtzoglou said.

Author: Blake Ambrose

One of the largest trends to come out of the previous decade has been the increasing use of cloud computing. Since Amazon introduced their Amazon Web Services (AWS) back in 2006, a whole industry has come from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

It is important to remember that there is a lot more to cloud than just storage.These possibilities give investors many ways to profit from the increasing drive to the cloud.

Let’s discuss two of these cloud companies that are not commonly known by investors, but could deliver huge profits in 2021:

1. HubSpot

While it started as an inbound marketing company, HubSpot quickly expanded to become a full customer relationship management solution.

The company has copied from the successful strategy used by salesforce.com, increasing its abilities with a set of successful acquisitions.

Due to this expansion, HubSpot now gives marketing and service support, in addition to content management. Each new product has resulted in a growing opportunity, with some predictions putting HubSpot’s whole addressable market at around $20 billion. The company has around 114,000 customers, which is nothing in comparison to the whole market size of over 3 million small- and medium-sized companies with a web presence.

During Q1, HubSpot gave a revenue increase of 41% y/y. Subscription revenue also jumped 41%, while service revenue climbed 43%. Also, the company’s total customer tally increased by 45% and spending per customer was close to the prior-year quarter.

Since late 2014, the company’s revenue has increased at a compound annual rate of 41%, while its international revenue also grew by 58%. Given this successful growth, HubSpot should be near the top of any tech investor’s buy-now list.

2. DocuSign

DocuSign gives companies and people tools to legally sign documents. The company is the leader in the market, with a total 70% marketshare that keeps growing. What investors might not get is that e-signatures are only the starting point of a large growing opportunity for the company, a fact that the company’s CEO, Dan Springer, highlights:

“Usually, e-signature is the initial step taken on a larger transition to digital management., he said on a recent earnings call. “So from a financial outlook, we think this increase in e-signatures is a good sign for future Agreement Cloud use.”

The Agreement Cloud is the company’s offering to help manage the whole cycle of agreements and legal contracts. For example, when a contract is completed, the system can create a bill automatically. If an agreement is up for renewal? A reminder is created. There are hundreds of such use cases for this product.

For DocuSign’s fiscal 2022 Q1, revenue increased 58% y/y, growing from 39% in the prior-year quarter. Perhaps more crucially, subscription revenue increased at an even faster rate, up 61%. At this same time, billings went up by 54%. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) also more than tripled.

DocuSign brought in a total revenue of $1.5 billion in 2020, but the opportunity before it is much more vast. With their new Agreement Cloud, DocuSign executives say the total addressable market is now over $50 billion.

Author: Scott Dowdy

Vertical Aerospace, an electric manufacturer of aircraft, announced recently that it plans to go public through a $2.2 billion SPAC agreement with Broadstone Acquisition.

SPAC mergers, which were once the hottest way for private companies to go public, are seeing a slump in their utilization. Both post-merger and pre-merger SPACs have gone down in size within the past few months. Yet Vertical Aerospace sees the process as an opportunity since the frenzy around the blank-check mergers has declined.

“I believe there was a large gap between normal IPOs and a SPAC, but … now it seems like these two are combining., Stephen Fitzpatrick, Vertical Aerospace CEO and founder, told reporters.

The deal likely will not be complete until the last part of 2021, though the company publicly revealed it this month. Aircraft companies Virgin Atlantic, Avolon, and American Airlines among others have already invested in Vertical Aerospace, amounting to $4 billion.

“I believe SPAC investors and the market overall are much more discerning now., Fitzpatrick stated. “We have been telling stories to partners and investors. We have hired some of the top aerospace engineers in the world.”

The future of flight?

Aircraft makers have been coming under growing pressure from governments to lower greenhouse emissions, especially within Europe. And with the Biden Administration continuing to push for green energy policies, electric aircraft firms like Vertical Aerospace have emerged as a cleaner approach, though not commercially yet.

Fitzpatrick stressed the possible efficiency of electric aircrafts for short travel. A trip from downtown LA to LAX or from JFK to Manhattan would just last a little over 10 minutes and would be around $40, he said.

“We see there is huge demand for this all over the world., he continued. “I have no doubt that in five years, you will be seeing these flying all over the world’s top cities.”

Author: Blake Ambrose

For stocks that grow your investments, there are not many guarantees. Greater rewards can only come with greater risks. But one way to counteract this is to pay a lower price, which gives you a larger margin of safety. In other words, if you pay for a stock well below its intrinsic value, it will give much easier safety and rewards. This is even better in high-growth sectors.

Among such sectors is the software industry. An industry that offers many stocks to buy if you are seeking guaranteed winners. Below, let’s discuss three of these stocks.

CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike Holdings gave an impressive yearly recurring revenue for its first quarter. Net new ARR reached $144 million as net new customers increased by 1,524. CRWD stock gained 4.85% since their June 3 report.

CEO George Kurtz said, “We think the robust demand driven by secular trends, like security transformation, cloud use and a greater threat environment.” He told investors that the company’s competitive solution works across numerous clouds. The company is creating more capabilities, like drift detection, which increases threat detection.

CrowdStrike is embracing the cloud opportunity. And their product has virtual instances that gives customers real-time protection. Utilizing machine learning, they identify threats and prevent them from spreading inside a user’s environment.

CRWD stock will continue increasing since customers save money by using CrowdStrike’s product compared to handing over ransom after a hacker attack.

Elastic

In Q4, Elastic reported revenue growth of 44% to $177.6 million, SAAS revenue went up 77% to $51.3 million, and full-year 2021 revenue increased 42% to $608.5 million. ESTC stock boosted 15.4% since the June earnings report.

The company, started in 2012, now has more than 15,000 subscribers. It has a flexible model, either on-premise, hybrid cloud or hybrid. That will improve its reach as people get back to a post-pandemic life.

Elastic has an edge over their competition, taking market share from Splunk, for example. Conversely, Elastic does not have a problem with data. It sees data as a capability. As CEO Shay Banon said, Elastic provides better search. Plus their solution gives better connection in critical supply chains. Customers cannot afford to not have Elastic solution.

MongoDB (MDB)

MongoDB is a NoSQL database with around 25,000 paying customers and more than 1.5 million free users. MongoDB gives both licenses as well as subscriptions for its database.

On June 3, it gave its exceptional Q1 results and investors have increased the MDB stock 16.2% in the days after.

MongoDB reported revenue growing by 39% year over year to $181.6 million. CEO Dev Ittycheria stressed the ongoing results of Atlas, its top paid product. The company created Atlas five years ago to give customers a completely managed MongoDB database. In Q1, gross profit reached $127.1 million. Although their gross margin was 70%, it gave a loss from operations of $61.4 million. It lost $1.04 per share during this time.

MDB concluded the quarter with $935.6 million in cash. In the second quarter, the company anticipates revenue between $180 million – $183 million. It also predicted a loss per share of 40 cents to 43 cents. MongoDB’s Atlas performance is a key number. Customer demand for the cloud-native product is increasing from 60% last year to over 70% in 2021.

Author: Scott Dowdy

It is difficult to not see the news without seeing something about cryptocurrency. Many investors are rushing their funds into cryptocurrency in a drive to join the ranks of people who have gotten wealthy by owning digital gold. And soon, you could also have the ability to invest in cryptocurrency for your retirement.

401(k)s and cryptocurrency?

Today’s 401(k) programs do not include the ability to invest in crypto. But this could be about to change.

ForUsAll Inc., a 401(k) company, announced this month that it is working on a deal with Coinbase that will allow their customers to invest up to 5% of their 401(k) into cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC).

Now just because a single 401(k) provider will give cryptocurrency does not mean every provider will do so. But with the popularity of Bitcoin, there is a good chance more will start to consider adding cryptocurrency into their offerings.

Should you use your retirement account for cryptocurrency?

Whether it pays to invest cryptocurrency using your 401(k), that is a different matter. Though many people have gotten wealthy from cryptocurrency, it is also very unstable, and a speculative investment.

The long-term value of these digital currencies will depend on how much they are accepted as payment going forward. Right now, you can not spend Bitcoin in your average supermarket.

It is hard to predict what could happen soon for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it is a risky investment for your 401(k) — mainly the chance it could be worth nothing in 20 years.

In fact, many people who purchase cryptocurrency do so on a near-term basis because they understand its future is unstable. But your 401(k) should be focused on long-term wealth-creation, especially if you are relatively young and you are not retiring for many years.

The ForUsAll plan will only allow participants to put up to 5% of their money into cryptocurrency. And that is related to its speculative nature.

Author: Steven Sinclaire

From Dogecoin to Reddit meme stocks, it might be easy to forget about the real story — an economic recovery is occurring.

While many sectors are beginning to show signs of returning with strength, there is a lot of uncertainty as to what exactly the new economy will bring.

One thing is for sure, Dividend Titans, an elite group of S&P 500 stocks that have increased their dividends for 25 consecutive years or more, can give you a safer alternative for your money during a recovery more so than other assets.

Some of our favorites among these stocks include Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE:SWK) and A. O. Smith (NYSE:AOS). Here’s why.

Stanley Black & Decker

This company has given a dividend for the past 144 years and increased it for 50 years in a row, Stanley Black & Decker is a top loved stock by dividend investors. Their history is proof of the company’s strength, and the best news is it is only getting stronger.

The company is reaping the rewards from the surge of household projects created by the lockdowns during the pandemic. The boom in power tools was at the perfect time. It helped them build sales of brands bought in past years, including Irwin, Craftsman, and Lenox electrical and plumbing tools.

Stanley is also expanding sales into lawn products in a major way. The company already has a 20% stake in lawnmower maker MTD, and executives want to take that up with an option to buy the other 80% this year.

All of this adds up to an amazing growth opportunity, and even if Stanley’s dividend yield is just 1.3% currently, it is a safe bet that the firm will raise it every year.

A. O. Smith

A. O. Smith is a leading global maker of water boilers and heaters. The company has raised its dividend for 27 consecutive years. Of course, the 1.5% forward dividend yield might not have every investor going nuts, but their dedication to giving shareholders their portion of profits means we need to recognize the company. And what’s more, the stock and dividend has given investors a market-beating return over the past ten years.

The company leaders have a conservative strategy to their dividend, suggesting that investors should not fear that they will get burned by an overambitious dividend approach. Over the last 10 years, A. O. Smith’s ratio has averaged around 30%. Investors can be assured that the company has a good financial foundation, which means they are well positioned to keep their dividend policy.

Ending Q1 of this year, the company reported a net cash position of $559 million. While water heater sales declined in 2021 for this country, management predicts growth in foreign markets like China and India. So the company is predicting revenue growth of around 14% in 2021. But this is not the only number that is anticipated to rise. A. O. Smith also predicts EPS going up around 23% year over year to about $2.60 this year.

If you are looking to add some dividend income to your portfolio with A. O. Smith, now is a good opportunity. The company is selling at 28.7 times earnings, which might appear pricey given its five-year average P/E ratio of 26.1. But going deeper you will see that is not as expensive as it looks. The stock is selling at 18.3 times cash flow, a discount from the five-year average multiple of 21.2.

Author: Blake Ambrose

Hong Kong’s monetary regulator has given its new strategy to increase fintech development within China’s special region. With this strategy, the HKMA wants to create a comprehensive set of new technologies within the next four years.The central bank also aims to “help increase fair financial services for the benefit of the economy and for Hong Kong citizens.”

Speaking at an event, HKMA’s leader, Eddie Yue, announced five agendas for “Fintech 2025.” The regulator wants to encourage fintech and future-proof the city for future central bank digital currencies, create next-gen infrastructure, expand the workforce, and grow the ecosystem with policies and funding.

One of their key goals is the complete digitalization of banking operations.

Expanding on the successes of its Smart Banking Era agenda unveiled back in 2017, the HKMA will keep “promoting the use of fintech.” The regulator will also identify fintech areas in need of help.

Their new blueprint aims to enhance and expand the city’s infrastructure. With the Hong Kong Monetary Authority planning to create a credit data sharing system based on blockchain.

The will work to grow fintech skills and talent with new training and cooperation between academia and industry. One such program is the Industry Project Masters Group, a network giving internships for postgraduate students to help fintech projects at banks. The program starts in September.

The HKMA also said it will partner with industry leaders in the creation of a new Fintech Cross-Agency Group that will then formulate policies to help the fintech ecosystem.

The monetary authority will provide funds for qualified fintech programs in partnership with the region’s Technology and Innovation Commission.

The financial regulator also plans to aid in preparing Hong Kong to issue central bank digital currencies. Referring not just to wholesale CBDCs but also to the development of other retail digital currencies.

Author: Scott Dowdy

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