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China Makes Market-Shaking Bitcoin Announcement

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China’s central bank is now saying that bitcoin is an “investment alternative” — marking a huge change in Beijing’s tone after their recent crackdown on cryptocurrency issuance almost four years ago.

Insiders said the comments were “progressive” and are watching for any changes made by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

“We see Bitcoin as a crypto asset … It is an investment alternative., Li Bo, deputy governor of the PBOC, stated on a CNBC panel.

“It is not currency per se. And so the main role for crypto assets we see going forward is as an investment alternative.”

China was once among the world’s biggest buyers of bitcoin. However, in 2017, China blocked so-called initial coin offerings. Officials then shut down crypto-exchanges. The moves were a response to concerns about financial stability.

As investment alternatives, “many nations are still investigating what type of regulatory requirements are needed. Maybe minimal, but we must have some kind of requirement to prevent … the speculation of assets to produce financial stability problems., Li said. He then added that the bank will maintain its current crypto regulations.

Flex Yang, CEO of Babel Finance, called his comments “progressive” during an interview with CNBC on Monday.

“I believe it is very significant and is different from their past statements on cryptocurrencies., Vijay Ayyar, of cryptocurrency exchange Luno, said to CNBC via email.

Bitcoin seems to now be more mainstream and has gained the trust of institutional investors. Major corporations like Tesla and Square have bought large sums of bitcoin. The value of bitcoin has risen by 95% this year and just last week, the cryptocurrency reached a new record high over $64,000.

“Governments are seeing that it is a growing but established asset and that regulation is needed. China regulating crypto would be a boost to cryptos in China and around the world., Ayyar said.

China is also currently working on its own digital currency which will be managed by the PBOC. The goal is to replace cash in circulation.

Author: Steven Sinclaire
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1 Trending Stock To Avoid Like a “Peaceful BLM Protest”

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It’s difficult to grasp, but AMC Entertainment (AMC) is actually up since the beginning of this year, despite shut down theaters around the globe and an obvious shift into streaming media.

There are a many reasons for this rise, from optimism about a reopening and recovery to the completely speculative trading trend, but the fundamentals are the only thing that long-term investors should think about. And that is why you should stay far away from this stock.

The movies have changed

The past twenty years has seen a huge decline in box office sales that does not seem to be reversing course. The tickets sold in Canada and the States are down after their peak in 2002. This loss in movie goers has been offset by more expensive tickets, but there is a limit to how much theaters can charge.

To make things worse, home theaters are now better and cheaper and studios are creating relationships with streaming services for direct delivery of their content. The theater experience seems less needed than ever before for both movie creators and consumers, and that is bad news for AMC.

The company’s balance sheet is in terrible shape

Even if AMC finds a way back to pre-pandemic numbers, the company is still not a good buy for investors. In 2019, the firm had a $149.1 million loss, and that was before COVID-19.

The company has also added over $1 billion in debt over the previous year and now has a total of $5.7 billion owed.

So operations are doing worse over the long-term, and the balance sheet is now more leveraged than ever before. These are not trends you want to see in a long-term investment.

Stay far away from this stock

AMC stock is red hot right now as Reddit traders have brought the shares up. Or it could be a bet on an economic recovery. But even after a recovery, AMC is not in a position to be worth investing in, and it absolutely is not a growth stock. That means you should avoid this stock at all costs.

 

Author: Scott Dowdy
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Bitcoin Out-Shined By This Weird Alternative

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Dogecoin (DOGE), often labeled a meme coin, saw a shocking rise last week, reaching a high of 43.77 cents on Friday before pulling back some over the weekend.

Its rising stature in the world of cryptocurrency, is thanks in part due to the support of Elon Musk and his efforts to seemingly push the cryptocurrency into the mainstream.

At its all-time record on Friday, the crypto had gained over 9,200% for the ytd time period. Doge closed 2020 at 0.47 cents and briefly went over 1 cent in early 2021.

After going back below 1-cent level for most of January, Doge then hit a high of 8.49 cents in February, as Musk pushed it to the moon with his tweets. After this, Doge started consolidating and was largely held inside the 5-7 cent range.

With the listing of Coinbase on the NYSE last week, a new drive in crypto started and Doge quickly used the momentum and optimism to see a meteoric rise.

There are also companies that have started accepting Doge as payment. Among them, easyDN, a web hosting company and BOTS, a robotics company.

“Like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Litecoin, Dogecoin is a very popular cryptocurrency people use to trade and buy., a BOTS spokesperson said.

Author: Steven Sinclaire
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5 ‘Retirement Killers’ to Avoid at All Costs

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According to a recent survey, just 30% of people say they were “very confident” they would have the funds for a comfortable retirement. And 61% admitted that preparing for retirement stresses them out.

I understand that thinking about retirement can be hard, even if you did start early, or you have help and make a good living.

But those numbers reminds me of all the ways people go wrong in retirement planning. At the very least, they throw their retirement off track and, in certain cases, potentially cause irreversible problems.

I call these “retirement killers.” And here they are:

1. No written income plan

Retirees’ biggest fear is running out of money. Many are moving through retirement without a plan about how much they will need, or where to get the money they need to replace their paycheck.

The solution: A written income plan is as crucial as a compass is in the wilderness: Without it, you will quickly get lost. You might have to make adjustments in your movement, as new costs arise. But if you stick to your plan, it should help you stay on a good path.

2. Using the wrong ROI assumptions

If you are depending on a 9% ROI to make your plan succeed, and the market does not deliver, your retirement will be in big trouble!

The solution: Be conservative when predicting market performance. Your income plan should use a withdrawal rate of 4% or less for income to ensure you avoid market swings. Also maintain at least 18 months to two years of cash so you are not forced to sell your investments to have income when you are in a bear market.

3. Too much risk

Some folks get too caught up in building money they forget to protect it near retirement. Others mistakenly believe they have a conservative portfolio when they really have one that is aggressive.

The solution: Have a financial adviser do a review of your investments and look at how vulnerable your portfolio could be to future corrections.

4. Giving too much away

I have seen this in many forms: Parents helping grown kids with everyday expenses or some who are paying off student loans for their kids. Some people loan their kids money, or co-sign for a mortgage. This happens too often. It does not help the kids, and it certainly does not help the parents.

The solution: Always be sure you are OK first – even if you’re already “done” saving for retirement. And if that makes you “stingy,” see it this way: You are giving your kids a different type of gift – the gift of independence, for them and you.

5. Believing advisers without investigation when they say, ‘You will be OK’

Without a plan, or without understanding your plan, you are not OK, no matter what any adviser says.

The solution: If you are paying for help, you should be getting it. If your financial professional cannot make time to create a plan for you or does not have the ability to do this, you should be worried and should probably look for a new adviser.

Don’t allow these mistakes to cause you to have a bad retirement. A good plan will help you overcome bad decisions – and the sooner you get back on the right path, the better you will feel about your future.

Author: Blake Ambrose
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Bitcoin’s Competition Just Got a Bigtime Upgrade

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Dogecoin (DOGE), the meme cryptocurrency that was started on December 6, 2013, has increased to new heights this week.

2021 has been a wild year for DOGE holders, as the crypto reached an all-time high at $0.143 per token on April 14th.

The token has increase over 104% against the dollar in the past seven days and last week grew by 82% against Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency featuring the mascot of a Shiba Inu dog has seen a whopping +1,181% gain in just the past three months.

Elon Musk has touted dogecoin and other celebs have been public DOGE fans as well. This week, the American food reality TV star Guy Fieri brought dogecoin to “Flavortown, USA” when he tweeted about the token.

“Rollin’ out to the MOON., he said in a tweet with a emoji rocket and a dogecoin hashtag. Overnight trading then saw DOGE increase by 20% during the day on April 14.

Meanwhile, in a similar move to Tesla accepting Bitcoin as payment, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, announced that his team had been getting a lot of dogecoin sales, and that the team won’t be exchanging the tokens for Dollars anytime soon.

If his team are planning to keep dogecoin on their balance sheet, then the NBA team could be the first company to do so.

This is while the worldwide search trend for the term “DOGE” is growing rapidly.

At the time of this writing, DOGE is trading for $0.123 to $0.132 per token.

Author: Steven Sinclaire
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New ETF Allows You To Profit From Bitcoin’s Collapse

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Canada is again beating America in a Bitcoin first, as a new inverse Bitcoin fund debuted this week on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

While regulators in the U.S. are waiting on approving any ETFs that might track cryptocurrency, Horizons ETF has created a fund (using the ticker BITI) that will let investors put out short positions on Bitcoin futures, according to their announcement.

“This new ETF will give investors a way to profit if they believe Bitcoin’s price is not justified and that the cryptocurrency is overdue for a downturn., said Todd Rosenbluth, from CFRA Research.

The new fund comes as desire for a Bitcoin ETF increase in the States, with at least eight companies tossing their hat in the arena, including Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd and Fidelity Investments. The firm that gets the first approval is likely to experience a huge demand, giving issuers the desire to press ahead with proposals regardless of ongoing regulator pushback.

Since 2013, the SEC has declined every Bitcoin ETF application, citing worries about manipulation. Meanwhile, Canadian officials have been more lenient than their U.S. counterparts by giving their approvals for Bitcoin ETFs.

The first ETF that tracks Bitcoin launched in North America under two months ago in Toronto and has already brought in $1 billion in assets.

The BetaPro Inverse Bitcoin fund will deliver up to 100% the inverse performance of an index that, “duplicates the returns made through exposure to long notional Bitcoin futures.” The fund will have a 1.45% fee.

“Buying this fund is as simple as purchasing stock, and does not force investors to open a separate cryptocurrency account., said Steve Hawkins, CEO of Horizons ETFs. “Also, BITI will allow investors to get ‘short’ exposure to Bitcoin without shorting futures or using a margin account.”

Bitcoin break the $64,000 high for the first time this week, on the day of Coinbase’s IPO.

Author: Scott Dowdy
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Got $5,000? Buying These 3 Stocks Could Set You Up for Life

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The market has had a crazy ride, caused by the increasing yield curve and turn of investors from growth to value companies. Correctly playing your timing amid such high volatility is almost impossible. But these times also give us a great opportunity to focus on buying strong stocks at large discounts. If you have $5,000, the following three stocks are a perfect example of such companies.

1. Square

Fintech leader Square has come forward as a force to contend with in the financial industry. The company gives point-of-sale solutions, analytics, capital and other services to merchants. The company also services customers through its payment system, Cash App.

 

The seller ecosystem is a larger part of the company’s business. Despite covid harming physical retailers, the company processed payment volume totaling $103.7 billion in 2020, down y/y by 13.6%.

Square is not dependent only on smaller businesses — making the company more resistant to economic challenges. In Q4, larger sellers with volume over $0.5 million made up nearly 60% of their total seller volume.

Cash App is a smaller but faster-growing segment of Square’s operations. The peer-to-peer platform’s active users increased y/y by 50% to 36 million in late 2020.

Individuals can use the Cash App for many financial tasks including investing in Bitcoin and stocks. Square’s revenues from such Bitcoin transactions increased by a whopping 785% in fiscal 2020.

Square is selling at right over 110x forward earnings. These valuations are expensive. But Square estimates its whole market to be over $160 billion. The company has its market penetration pegged to be under 3%. Considering the company’s 2020 revenues, the market share comes to 6%. The company also had profit of $213 million in 2020. With such a huge market size, this profitable company has much more room to grow.

2. Datadog

Cloud company Datadog offers solutions to monitor IT networks, infrastructure, applications and much more — on a unified dashboard. The company has benefited from the pandemic-driven digital transformation. While it has cooled off after their lower-than-expected fiscal 2021 numbers, the company is still very much in demand.

 

In 2020, the amount of Datadog customers spending over $1 million per year increased year over year by 94%, while those spending over $100,000 also grew by 46%. The company’s dollar-based net retention rate has been 130% for fourteen quarters in a row, which also includes Q4. At the end of last quarter, 72% of its customers were using at least two of the company’s products, while 22% utilized four or more. The company’s strategy has created a sticky customer list.

Last year, their revenues popped by 66% to $603.5 million, non-GAAP income was $71.6 million, and cash flow numbered at $83 million. For fiscal 2021, the company has estimated revenues to grow by 37% to 38% and net income per share to decrease y/y by 36% to 54%. However, the decline in earnings is not that large a challenge, considering that the company is prioritizing revenue growth over short-term profits.

Trading at almost 310 times forward earnings, it is pricey. But considering the company puts its possible market around $35 billion and is already a huge player in the observability space, there is great potential for it to reach even higher.

3. Fulgent Genetics

Fulgent Genetics is a genetic technology company that has now transformed into a leading covid testing player and has great potential to increase even after covid is gone.

The company had a perfect run in 2020. Revenues went up by 1,200% to $421.7 million, while net income saw an explosion y/y from a negative $411,000 to a profit of $214.3 million.

Despite these incredible results, investors are anxious about covid testing revenues going away soon, which in turn will have a huge effect on the company’s growth. This concern is reasonable since most of the fiscal 2020 growth came from the virus testing business.

However, the future of the company’s non-COVID business — where they are using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to find 5,700 different genetic conditions based on certain mutations in over 18,000 genes at a cheap price– is now secure.

Fulgent’s price has already increased over 619% in the past year and over 82% in 2021. The company is now predicting a 90% y/y increase in 2021 revenues to $800 million, which is an amazing forecast after an already strong year. Given this, the company could soar again this year.

 

Author: Steven Sinclaire
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Here’s What Tesla Will Look Like a Year From Now (Surprising)

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Shares of Tesla increased this week, rising almost 4% at the start of the week. The gain came after a top analyst gave the company a large price increase. Jed Dorsheimer, from Canaccord Genuity now believes the car maker could increase to $1,071 within the next year.

 

After the stock reached an all-time high of right over $900, it went sharply down in February and the start of March. Has this pullback given us a buying opportunity?

The next marker

Dorsheimer increased his Tesla price marker from $419 to $1,071. The analyst also changed his rating from hold to buy.

While Tesla makes use its revenue from cars, the analyst’s stock upgrade has to do with his prediction for the company’s energy storage sector.

He sees Tesla’s energy business bringing in $8 billion annually by 2025 thanks to an “Apple-like energy product ecosystem” and “harmonized electrification.”

 

Dorsheimer believes that as the company solves its battery cell shortage, they will be well positioned to expand the business through its energy product sales. He also sees Tesla being several years ahead of its competition in energy storage technology, giving it an edge.

 

The momentum

Though Tesla’s car sales get more press, energy storage actually expanded faster in 2020 than car sales. Total energy deployments expanded by 83% in 2020.

“This increase was founded mainly by the Megapack product, our utility scale product., Tesla told investors during its Q4 update. “Powerwall demand is increasing as residential businesses continue to expand.”

Impressively, this came as production was limited. “Our energy business is supply constrained and our backlog is strong., Tesla said. But its push to increase production will help the firm boost supply “in the next three months.” Because of this, the car maker expects its energy business to increase at around the same growth rate in 2021 as it experienced in 2020.

While investors should do their own home work on Tesla, Dorsheimer’s upgrade does put focus on a very underappreciated part of its business.

 

Author: Steven Sinclaire
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Bitcoin Put To “Vote” Among Elites, And The Results Are Surprising

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Over the last ten years, every critique possible has been thrown at cryptocurrency. But none is more common than the criticism that it is “a bubble.”

But this is what Bank of America’s recent survey of global fund managers found most of the respondents believe about bitcoin.

Among the poll’s 200 participants with more than $500 billion in managed assets, around 74% said the cryptocurrency is a bubble. With only 16% saying bitcoin is not a bubble and just 10% avoided the question.

On Wednesday, bitcoin traded at a record high over $64,000. Since the beginning of 2021, its value has more than doubled.

Later that same day, Coinbase (COIN) debuted its IPO in a direct listing. This was a huge event for the crypto world that should ease any doubts about crypto being here to stay or not.

Like any asset, investors can and will debate the “correct” value. And a particular reading of BofA’s survey would seem to suggest that: 74% of respondents believe the price of bitcoin is currently too high.

Banks such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to financial giants like PayPal, Visa, and Square, have all deepened their push into cryptocurrencies. Coinbase joining the space of publicly-traded companies only further augments the industry’s crypto connection.

And while investing into crypto is a choice for them alone, this asset class keeps growing in importance. Regardless of how many top investors believe the price is a bubble.

Author: Scott Dowdy
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‘Robot’ Picks The Next Big Stocks — And It Hasn’t Been Wrong Before

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An exchange-traded fund using artificial intelligence has correctly predicted Tesla stock moves, and recently made more portfolio selections.

The fund called the Qraft AI-Enhanced U.S. Large Cap Momentum ETF, going under the symbol AMOM,
on the NYSE.

The fund has given returns of 9% in 2021 and 79% in 2020. AMOM is a managed portfolio steered by AI which tracks 50 stocks and re-calibrates its holdings every month. It is based on a strategy of momentum, with the AI picking stocks to capitalize on market trends. The AI scans the market and uses its power to analyze patterns that reveal market momentum.

One of the fund’s achievements has been getting the price of Tesla’s stock right. The fund sold its shares right before the stock declined by 14% until it went even further down by 10% later on.

The AI behind AMOM has now made more recommendations to redirect the fund’s money at the end of March, including changing its holdings and adding new stocks.

Target
TGT,
+0.38%
was its largest addition. The retail company was up 3% this month, with the stock +15% so far this year. The AI might have picked up this due to its rotation into value stocks, in line with its inclusion of Walmart as its second-largest holding in March. Shares in Walmart have increased by over 7% since the AI selected it.

ServiceNow
NOW was another add, coming in after Target. Shares in the cloud software company have already increased near 10% this month, in a rebound that puts the stock higher by 4% this year.

Right behind Service Now in terms of portfolio size is Autodesk forming 2.16% of the fund’s portfolio. Shares in the software company are 6% higher since the start of the month.

Monster Beverage was another selection for April, included in the AMOM portfolio with a weight of right below 2%. The drink company’s is higher 5% in April and almost 6% this year.

The final stock that the AI liked for April was another stalwart: O’Reilly Auto Parts with a 1.8% allocation. Shares in the auto retailer are selling for only 1% higher since the start of the month, up 13% since 2021 started — so there could be higher gains on the way if the AI is right.

Author: Steven Sinclaire
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