Author: Ken McElroy
Source: YouTube: Six Real Estate Opportunities You’re Probably Missing…
Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO of the largest American bank, took another hit at bitcoin bulls this week, saying that the crypto might not be limited in quantity after all.
“I will just challenge you all to one more thing: how do you know Bitcoin stops at 21 million? Have you all read these algorithms? You people believe it? I don’t know, I have always been skeptical of stuff like that,” said the bank CEO while speaking at the Institute for International Finance event on October 11.
The price of bitcoin was staying near $57,000 recently.
Dimon was questioning the fundamentals of bitcoin: a 21 million limitation that gives the crypto the appeal of have a controlled supply.
But the bitcoin code certainly notes that the maximum amount of coins is around 21 million. In theory, the open source code of bitcoin would allow for alterations to the cap, but it would need a large share of Bitcoin “nodes” to agree to the change.
The 21 million coin limit serves as a big pillar of the crypto’s value proposition, making it not likely that the community would ever agree to such a change.
‘I won’t stop our people from banking it’
Dimon said that he still believes bitcoin is “worthless,” but also said his ideas on cryptos don’t decide his company’s approach to giving crypto products. The bank CEO said that his bank can give clients “legitimate” access to the sector if they want (although the bank is not offering custody services).
The CEO’s comments echo his statements from May, when he said the booming asset was like the business of banking weed.
“My own advice is to stay away from it. This does not mean our clients do not want it,” Dimon said in May. “This goes to how you must run a company. I don’t use marijuana but if you legalize it, I won’t stop our customers from banking it.”
Even though JPMorgan Chase is not giving crypto custody right now, the bank is messing around with blockchain using its “Onyx” business. The bank is creating a network that it started to trade smart contracts with other top banks.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
You may say that dividends which are paid and increased is the best type of dividend. There is no better feeling for an investor than to understand your stocks are giving you money while you sleep, and even giving you a raise every year!
How do we find these reliable companies that let us sleep well at night while holding them? Let’s break down the anatomy of a dividend stock and highlight three of the best there are.
To find the best dividend stocks, you want one with a dependable business model, a strong brand, and one with great numbers on their balance sheet.
The stocks bellow all check the boxes on this list, and I believe they have the ability to pay you every year for the rest of your natural life.
1. Procter & Gamble: giving a 2.5% dividend yield
If you check your laundry room or bathroom, you will likely see one of Procter & Gamble’s many products from its 65 different brands. The company is a huge conglomerate that sells its goods all over the world.
Its brands include Tampax, Pampers, Bounty, Puffs, Crest, Gillette, Suave, NyQuil, Olay, Head & Shoulders, Tide, Old Spice, and more. These are products you likely get at the store each month, often without even thinking about it.
During any hardship, you will probably keep brushing your teeth and washing your clothes; it will likely be other items in your budget that you cut first. Because of this, Procter & Gamble has been very stable, and has boosted its dividend each year for the previous 65 years! It has created over $15 billion in free cash flow over the previous 12 months and spends only half of it for its dividend, so investors should expect these payments to keep going for years.
2. Johnson & Johnson: giving a 2.6% dividend yield
Healthcare is among the largest and most crucial industries in the world. Our health comes first in our budget, and conglomerate Johnson & Johnson gets a lot of that.
It is one of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies, with 13 drugs that bring in $1 billion or more in annual sales. It is a medical device firm with products for things like surgery, wound care, vision and a lot more. If you go to any drugstore, you will find the company’s products, including Motrin, Tylenol, Band-Aids, Benadryl, and Listerine. Johnson & Johnson is pretty much everywhere in the healthcare industry.
Having such a large presence within the sector has enabled it to keep putting money into the pockets of investors, increasing its dividend for the previous 59 years and going. The company has given more than $22 billion in free cash flow during the previous 12 months and spends less than half on its dividend, giving investors value for years with more dividends.
Author: Scott Dowdy
China, the second largest economy in the world, is likely to dominate many of the new technologies, especially artificial intelligence, genetics, and synthetic biology within one decade or so, according to new Western intelligence reports.
Nicolas Chaillan, the Nation’s first chief software officer who recently resigned to protest against the slow rate of technological change in the United States military, said the failure of leaders to respond was putting the country at risk.
“We have no possible fighting chance against the Chinese in 15 or 20 years. As of now, it is already over in my books,” he said to the newspaper. “Whether it comes in the form of a war or not is sort of anecdotal.”
China was in line to dominate the future of the planet, controlling everything from news narratives to geopolitics, he stated.
Chaillan blamed America’s sluggish innovation on the reluctance of United States companies like Google to partner with the government on AI and ethical concerns about technology.
Google did not immediately comment on the issue.
Chinese companies, Chaillan stated, were forced to work with their government and were going forward with “huge investment” in AI without any regard to possible ethics.
He said United States cyber defences in some federal departments were at the “kindergarten level” in the sector.
Chaillan resigned back at the start of September, saying that United States military officials were repeatedly given commanding roles over cyber initiatives for which they did not have experience.
A spokesperson for the Dept. of the Air Force said Frank Kendall, sec. of the U.S. Air Force, had spoken to Chaillan about his ideas for the dept’s future software development after his resignation and thanked him for all his work, the FT said.
This comes at a time when the Biden White House is seen as weak against China on many different fronts. With the Democratic president allowing China to make hostile moves in the east-asian region and his years-long attempts to redirect investigations about the source of covid-19 and seemingly protect China from Republicans who have demanded the nation be punished for its role in the pandemic.
Author: Scott Dowdy
More and more Americans are investing into cryptocurrencies. Should retirees follow?
Cryptocurrency has become a booming investment over the previous year as more people start dabbling in this sector. The reality is there is a lot of money to be had in cryptos. But there is also risk involved — usually more so than with stocks. And that leads to the question — should retirees invest in crypto? Or are they better off being safer with their funds?
Limiting Your Risk
As a good rule, retirees are usually advised to be more conservative in their portfolios than people who are still many years away from retirement. The reason for this? Retirees usually cash out their investments and use this money to pay for their living costs. Many seniors cannot live on Social Security alone, so they invest their savings into bonds and stocks and take withdrawals as required.
Taking these withdrawals can sometimes mean cashing out their investments when those investments are down. And since stock values usually fluctuate more so than bonds, seniors are usually advised to get away from stocks and buy up more on bonds because they are a more dependable investment.
Since crypto is more volatile than even stocks, at first glance, it might not seem like a good investment for any retiree. But that does not mean retirees, must stay away entirely.
Some retirees have access to many sources of income. For example, someone could have the money coming from their pension, Social Security, an investment property, a retirement plan, and a separate broker account. So it would not be a bad idea for a financially-healthy senior to put a small amount of money into crypto.
Those who are more cash stripped, however, might want to steer clear of crypto. Because cryptocurrency is somewhat new, it is hard to know whether it will be a solid long-term investment. Much of it will depend on whether it turns into a widely accepted payment form and if demand stays good. So retirees who do not have a lot of financial breathing room might be better off playing it safer and not going into digital coins.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
Tech stocks have taken somewhat of a beating recently as the Nasdaq has gone down faster than the overall market. This tech-filled index is only down just single digits from its high, but it might go lower. Savvy investors often use a “ready-to-buy” list if the market crashes. We asked two contributors which stock they would buy during any market pull back in October. They said The Trade Desk and StoneCo.
The Trade Desk
Advertising is in the middle of a once-in-a-generation change. Viewers no longer use schedules for viewing. The one-size-fits-all advertising strategy is going away. Target markets are now scattered as they are hard to reach. That is where The Trade Desk comes in.
The company’s tech platform is not bound by traditional constraints and can assess 12 million ad impressions every second. This not only gives marketers more for their money but also helps them better target a fragmented market.
Rather than competing against the world’s largest ad agencies, it partners with them to use data it gathers to boost its algorithms. The company uses very advanced technology to make very fast decisions with great precision.
Also, The Trade Desk is not concerned about the death of cookies (announced recently by Google) for several reasons. First, the company has created its Unified ID 2.0, the best accepted alternative to cookies in the industry. The platform has been used by a growing list of top tier names in the world of advertising, giving The Trade Desk a big edge.
The company’s recent results paint a great picture. Revenue in Q2 grew 101% y/y/, though that was partially because of easy comps. At the same time, EPS also doubled, and customer retention stayed higher 95%, which it has done each quarter going back seven years.
Finally, when looking for a stock to purchase during a crash, historical perspectives matter. In Feb. of 2020 — as panic about ad spending set in — The Trade Desk stock was among the ones hardest hit, falling around 54%. However, after hitting the bottom in March, The Trade Desk then went much higher, climbing over sixfold from its lows and over triple its past all-time high, which it hit just before the start of the covid pandemic.
StoneCo
This Brazilian fintech stock is a company Warren Buffett’s team bought before its 2018 IPO.
StoneCo has earned business by getting rid of the “bureaucracy.” It goes to the client, finding places of demand, and then quickly opens offices close to its customers. This personal touch has led to its fast stock and revenue growth in previous years.
But covid hit Brazil especially hard, dramatically slowing the firm’s growth. Also, challenges with a new credit registry system forced StoneCo to freeze new loans temporarily, and CEO Thiago Piau said “was a negative influence” on reported revenues.
Consequently, in the first part of 2021, revenue of less than 1.5 billion Brazilian reais ($270 million) increased only 7% compared with the first part of 2020. This is a big decline from the 63% revenue growth seen for the 12-month period in 2019 right before the covid pandemic started. Also, the firm would have had a loss in the first two quarters of this year if not for an R$841 million ($153 million) unrealized gain on their investment in Banco Inter.
Also, the company continues to reveal signs of good expansion. In the first part of 2021, the overall payment volume (TPV) of R$111 billion ($20 billion) went up by 47% compared the first six months of 2020. Furthermore, active clients of almost 767,000 went up by 45% over this same period. Such numbers show that once StoneCo can get beyond the pandemic and the credit system problems, massive growth in the stock and the company should resume.
Author: Blake Ambrose
The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) is one of the largest nonpartisan senior citizens support groups, and the group currently has more than a million signatures for their petition to get support and focus for an emergency $1,400 check to deal with unprecedented inflation.
The petition says: “I (and my spouse) want Social Security receivers to get a $1,400.00 emergency check to deal with these unprecedented inflationary times.” Social Security benefits are among the few types of retirement income being adjusted for inflation.
Among the arguments being made by the petition is that the COLA boosts are not enough for seniors who are living on a fixed income along with 5% inflation being experienced over the previous 13 months. The petition says, “In 2021 Social Security benefits went up by only 1.3% increasing the average benefit by just around $20 per month. But around 86% of Social Security recipients polled say their expenses went up by a lot more than this amount.”
One of the areas that has had the greatest rise in prices is the meat sector. Although total inflation has come in about 5%, prices for chicken have gone up by 7.2%, pork prices are up around 9% and prices for ground beef are almost up a large 13% from just this last year.
A $1,400 check might help seniors to afford groceries easier give they are on a tight income. Around 25% of low-income seniors admitted to food insecurity, according to SNAP research.
Social Security recipients are expected to get a 6% COLA increase in 2022 — one of the largest on record — but rising Medicare costs and inflation are eating away at most of this. A fourth stimulus check can help seniors who are struggling to recover from a year of exploding prices and supply chain problems that are still hurting the possibility of recovery for simple grocery items.
Joe Biden has been silent about any such stimulus payment, choosing instead to give American tax payer money to illegals flooding into America, including most recently thousands of Haitian refugees whom his White House has allowed into the country.
Author: Blake Ambrose
Robert Kiyosaki, the famed investor and author of the popular “Rich Dad” personal finance books, is another finance expert now speaking out in support of cryptocurrency, along with silver and gold.
In several tweets over the previous few weeks, Kiyosaki promoted his preference for these three investments, even saying to his fans to, “Get silver, gold Bitcoin, and ethereum before the biggest crash in world history.”
US Gov out of money. Shutdown looming. Dems blame Republicans for the problem. Evergrande Chinas biggest property developer with 800 projects in 200 cities out of money. Get the message? Get gold, silver, Bitcoin, ethereum before the biggest crash in history. Take care.
— therealkiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) September 23, 2021
He later said via Twitter that he did not plan to sell his bitcoin, silver, or gold investments, as he has “lots of cash.” However, he even revealed an exact date for this prediction, making timing important.
Giant stock market crash coming October. Why? Treasury and Fed short of T-bills. Gold,silver, Bitcoin may crash too. Cash best for picking up bargains after crash. Not selling gold silver Bitcoin, yet have lots of cash for life after stock market crash. Stocks dangerous. Careful
— therealkiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) September 26, 2021
While his views might seem fringe — or even somewhat alarmist — his thoughts about crypto might be worth considering. In spite of 32 hacks this year so far, leading to investors losing $2.99 billion, and two of the largest hacks in cryptocurrency history happening within the previous three months, coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum have gone up steadily in value. Bitcoin hit $50,000 USD just today.
Likewise, some well-known investors are diversifying their portfolios using gold. Palantir Technologies, led by Peter Thiel, recently bought $50 million in gold as a hedge against inflation. Yahoo Finance stressed that in the first part of 2020, with uncertainty on Wall Street because of the Covid pandemic, gold went up in value from $1,509 to $1,772 per ounce. Likewise, the value of silver has gone up 30% in the previous two years.
If investing in crypto, silver, or gold bullion seems too risky or hard, experts say investing in stocks connected to these assets might be a good idea. For instance, Tesla’s Bitcoin investment has the EV maker’s stock connected to crypto’s value. PayPal has a feature that its users can use to buy, sell and keep crypto on its platform. And GPU manufacturer Nvidia’s products are being used in the world of crypto.
Also there are ETFs and investments into gold mining companies that will allow you to take good advantage of increasing gold prices without the inconvenience of storing the yellow metal itself.
Author: Scott Dowdy
Nio shares have gone down since July, but Goldman analysts think the worst times are now behind the Chinese electric car manufacturer that wants to challenge Tesla in the upcoming years.
Nio shares traded much higher on Thursday after the Chinese Tesla competitor was upgraded to a ‘buy’ at the financial giant Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs analyst Fei Fang increased his rating on the carmaker to from a ‘neutral’ to a ‘buy’ while leaving his target for the company unchanged at $56, stressing that the China group had shed $28 billion from their market cap since hitting a peak in July.
“We think Nio’s promotion of the ET7 is strategic. The design, like the wheelbase, is in line with other full-size premium sedan vehicles including the BMW 7 series and the Mercedes S-class,” Fang said.
Nio’s United States listed shares were measured 7% higher in morning trading to exchange hands at $36.02 each.
Although a much-smaller competitor to Tesla, Nio is growing its sales at a quicker rate: its Sept. quarter number of 24,439 cars delivered was dwarfed by Tesla’s number of 241,300, but its growth of 100.2% was 30 percentage points beyond Tesla’s.
Goldman’s review shows that electric vehicle penetration is going forward, market shares are consolidating towards the largest manufacturers and the anticipated demand could be catalyzed by new models.
Nio introduced their ET7 as its fourth passenger-focused model and sedan back in January. And now Goldman thinks the price point, which is in line with the BMW 5 series and Mercedes E-class, as being a good selling point for the Chinese company.
Nio is also moving globally, by announcing its “Norway Strategy” back in May. The company recently started Nio House in Oslo and debuted its ES8 car in that nation. The company wants to launch the ET7 in the country next year.
The company also plans to add 120 Nio Space and 20 Nio House retail establishments this year, bringing its overall store count to 366 by December.
While the EV sector is growing, it is still a volatile one with stiff competition.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
The bullish movement in bitcoin has taken the crypto to $55,000. The positive bullishness around bitcoin was increased by the news that the investment firm created by billionaire George Soros owns bitcoin.
The fund owns “some coins…but not a bunch,” Dawn Fitzpatrick, CEO of Soros Fund Management, said to Bloomberg.
“Bitcoin is no longer an alternative investment,” Fitzpatrick said. “I am not sure bitcoin is seen only as an inflation hedge. It has crossed the chasm to go mainstream,” he said.
Earlier, the firm also reported it liquidated a $5 billion 2020 investment to use the money in cryptocurrency, with a special interest in the DeFi sector.
This Thursday, bitcoin reach a high of $55,735.52. At the time of this writing, it was selling for almost $54,000. Ytd, bitcoin is higher by over 85%.
The latest price increase has moved bitcoin’s cap to $1 trillion, which is over the total value of Facebook.
Institutional involvement into bitcoin was also one of the main drivers that led to bitcoin’s move to all-time highs of almost $65,000 this spring.
U.S. Bancorp also announced this week that it was giving new cryptocurrency services for large institutional investors.
“Investor interest in crypto and demand from our clients have gone up strongly over the past few years,” said Gunjan Kedia, vice-chair of United States Bank Wealth Management and Investment Services, in a news release. “Our institutional and fund custody clients have hastened their plans to give cryptocurrency.”
On top of this, comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell and United States SEC Commission Chair Gary Gensler that there were no plans to restrict or block bitcoin trading is also helping sentiments.
Powell said to the House Financial Services Committee last week that the Fed had “no intention to ban” cryptos.
Meanwhile, Gensler told the same committee this week that the SEC is not planning to ban crypto either.
Any bans “would be up to Congress,” he stated. “Our approach is quite different. It is a matter of how do we get this field inside the investor consumer protection that we have and work with regulators to guarantee that the Treasury dept. can deal with money-laundering and tax compliance? And then the financial stability problems that stable coins might cause as well,” Gensler said.
In a report published this week, Bank of America, a top bank in the United States said that bitcoin and the crypto has “become too large to ignore.”
Author: Blake Ambrose