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Mercadolibre $MELI deep dive with KraneShares
Recorded: April 6, 2026 Duration: 2:35:52Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. What is up? What is up, everybody everybody how are you all doing we are back here on another day of
stocks on spaces it's monday we got a full week in front of us it's monday 3 p.m eastern that means we got a full week of
stocks on spaces in front of us for anyone who does not know we are live every single monday
through thursday 3 to 5 p.m eastern at least we appreciate you all for joining us here uh our goal
is just to have good, informative conversations.
So I appreciate everyone for hanging out with us.
Not the most crazy amount of news today.
A lot of headlines around the conflicts in Iran, around the Strait of Hormuz.
Talks of possible escalation.
The stock market did move from green to red intraday at one point there
but it was able to kind of get it back up and uh the market has recovered so even as talks of
escalation haven't really put a damper into the market that much is how we could say it there
um there was a couple other news headlines today but not an aggressive amount. We should be having Mr. Scott Redler joining us here
any second, so I'm excited for that.
But I appreciate everyone for joining us.
Make sure you are following the speakers.
One or two of the other news headlines,
there were stories around OpenAI on track for Q4 IPO.
There were some stuff around Intel over the weekend
being in ongoing discussions with at least two large customers including Amazon and Google the Artemis 2 mission
flew around the Artemis 2 mission flew around the moon I was seeing some
headlines that was the furthest oh no no it has not far in the moon it's
approaching them approaching them right now live on Netflix you can watch it if
you want actually you can watch it on YouTube TV and faster than you can watch it if you want actually you can watch it on YouTube TV and faster than you can watch it on Netflix YouTube sorry here's my question
I saw a headline saying that they've flown further than any other human has
so they have I was just so that we will humans have only gone like halfway around
the moon remember they had a call back the that did you get,
what happened?
All right.
I think we did.
We were talking about the Artemis 2 mission.
I think that might be moving names like.
The aliens got him.
Don't let them know,
dude.
It's a fair point.
I saw a photograph taken on an iPhone. Looks pretty
cool. We got some good Apple images there. I imagine ASTS, some of that strength is surrounded
around this one. So there is a catalyst to or to watching this Artemis 2 mission for
sure. So I mean, it is a little interesting. I mean, it's interesting in general, but from
a market perspective, there did become a player too that came about from it.
Yeah.
But Mr. Scott Redler, how are you doing, sir?
I always appreciate the Mondays.
I'm doing all right, doing all right.
I think there's a market story and there's a human story, definitely. First, you saw their video from Orbit, right?
When they were talking about Easter.
And he didn't really take so much religion into it but just talked about like life and
looking at the earth from from space it's got to be pretty damn surreal and awesome shows the
technology of them actually speaking to us from there which shows how far we've all come and then
i will say my like i was in the car with my son and um he was like i don't understand i'm like
well what do you mean like it's gaining
interest he's like how are they in space i'm like well it's called astronomy and you know he's like
are there more planets out there is there life out there i'm like well when we look up and you
see a thousand specks of light like you really do we really think we're the only living organisms
you know within the universe the the megaverse whatever the hell you want to call it.
I'm like, so it is, you know, gaining interest and who knows where we're going to be with this
whole arena in 20 years, 50 years, 200 years. It's a lot bigger than all of us. So some of
these names that are kind of new and feels like they're trading at crazy valuations, you know,
the same thing happened, you know, 20 years ago or 30 years ago
with some of the internet stocks and some of the, you know, Dell.
Dell had to go private before coming back.
SanDisk, look at SanDisk, reinvented.
But anyway, it just was kind of cool.
And to just have a conversation where it was something different than sports
and different than social media, he was like, well, you know, it's gaining interest and some of the names out there are
acting pretty well. You know, the whole group of like Planet Labs is down a little bit today,
not such a big deal. Lunar is down a little bit, but just made a new high. And like you said,
I think ASTS, which is now considered, I guess, more of the reliable blue chip version of the space names.
It seems as if it's rebuilding and perhaps looks better than it did a week or two ago.
And maybe it gets some traction moving forward.
So at least it gave you a good entry.
On Thursday, you think about some of those names.
Those names went green first.
And you could have stayed with them.
And then they opened up a little bit today.
Like ASDS, I re-entered on Thursday after getting stopped out earlier in the week and
now it looks better.
So the question is, do we think these things look better and can there be traction or are
we a headline away from, you know, potentially, um, the ABC set up that a lot of people are
talking about technically with the indices.
Yeah.
Do you want to know what that ABC setup is?
What's the ABC setup?
Well, first of all, people are saying that we had the five wave complete for the rally, and that was that.
And I'm not a big Elliott wave guy.
That was wave five.
We went to the highs, and then you get an ABC move where you get your first move lower,
which was the A move in the spies that wound up going down to a low of 629. So that was the pillow
down about 10%. You always get some kind of reflex rally. There are three things that can happen. A,
we could stall right here at 650, 850, and we're no longer oversold. Or they bring us to,
if you want to write this down, $6.70 to $6.74 in the Spies, which would be another congestion area,
which would probably be the real, real rubber match area if all of a sudden maybe the news
comes out that there's a ceasefire, that they open the strait and we get one more, you know,
one more real big squeeze. that would be a spot.
And then from there, that would be like your B point. And then the ABC would be the C would be
a new low. And that could be in the weeks ahead. So at this point, we're kind of trying to figure
out was, was this the oversold bounce? And is there enough feedback from the market telling
us it can go further? And A, if you're like, I'm going
to short this tape now, the president's off the rails, everyone's lying, but you're short here,
then you might have to deal with 670 or 672, which is 14 points higher. But if you're going to be
buying here, some of these things, they're moving. Not everything is going to be moving higher.
You see all different stocks created differently.
Look at Light today.
Why is Light down 6% after making a new all-time high on Thursday when nothing else did?
That's not easy.
Especially we have AAIO up a little bit.
Then if you look at MegaCap Tech land, you you have google which is acting better ever since hitting
the 200 day and then you have amazon doing nothing you have tesla just made a new new move lows and
you had apple was up six in the first 25 minutes and been sitting here since you had finally
netflix was upgraded by goldman sachs you know and then had to sell the upgrade obviously it had a
big move from 90 to 102 but did they really have to sell it?
The action is still hard from a trading standpoint.
But, you know, if you go week by week, there is a chance that if you short early,
you could be caught for another 10, 12 points in the spies before, you know,
before the real, real resistance happens.
the real, real resistance happens.
That all started with my son saying he wanted to know more about space.
I find the space sector to be in a very interesting place.
Obviously, we have SpaceX going public, possibly at a $2 trillion valuation right now.
You have that, I'm sure, buoying the entire sector.
You have this Artemis mission.
I think the big question here for space
is why is this time different?
I feel like Brian Lund likes to bring up
the pot investments, the weed stocks,
and maybe the opportunity clearly isn't as big there,
but I picture weed stock investors
and space stock investors to have a lot of overlap there.
We've been,
they've been sitting and waiting for a while and I don't know.
I think that's,
that would be my question to these,
these space people is are we actually going to be seeing moon missions and
Mars missions and all that stuff here within the next couple of years?
And that could definitely lead to a lot of excitement and stuff.
But by the way,
I wouldn't,
I wouldn't not put that in the same category
like you have l-u-n-r just made a new move high you know and then so did so did uh pl and then
you have the satellite names that have been on the move like a rocket labs and an asts since
two years ago you know the cannabis names have been in a bear market for literally six years and
they've had like three little spurts but no names acted really well in the last five, six years.
But I hear you with the boy who cried wolf type of concept there.
Well, they're going to grow pot on the moon, so that's what's going to change everything.
And Artemis is going to transport it back and forth?
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
No, you know what I think?
I think the thing about the space area is, you know, new technologies and new markets, they move really slow until they don't, right?
You know, like AI, to me, just kind of came out of nowhere.
I mean, I know the technology had been there for a long time, but it seemed like AI, AI, and then boom. And I think we're maybe on the precipice of that same sort of boom in space.
I mean, they're talking about having actual colonies in like five to 10 years. Now, I get it.
The people that are saying that have a vested interest, But if we start figuring out how we can commercially mine or
do anything that's viable out in space like that, that we can't do here, I think you could find
very quickly. And I think the other thing is like satellites, like the fact that I can,
I do a lot of hiking out here in the California mountains. And like, just the other day, it's like,
oh, I can just connect my iPhone to satellites now. Like, oh, that's kind of cool.
I mean, there just seems like we're just right on the edge of a lot of stuff that could happen
very fast. So, you know, I tend to be a skeptic on new things and being a skeptic is usually not
paid off very well for most of my career. So at this age, I try to just be more open-minded
and don't say it will or won't happen.
I just kind of wait and see if the price action
is showing that it's happening.
But I feel like we're somewhere close
to being on the precipice of a renaissance
in space exploration and commerce.
I agree because it's functional,
like you just said, there's functional purposes like these
satellites that are out there like you could be on a mountain and get wi-fi or have satellite
connection whatever whatever that that concept is called you know when russia invaded the ukraine
and everything was turned off elon musk was able to turn on starlink so they could see where you
know russia was coming at him like there's real stuff here. You know, and then I think the last, the next thing that was exciting was,
I feel like the data center talk,
talk around what could happen on like the moon
or on space to harness the sun's energy.
Like that probably could be a product at some point.
You know, I think the composure of the other data center
started to get worse when Elon was like,
yeah, we could, you know, put a data center on, on, on, on the moon that'll harness the sun's temper, you know, and then you,
you know, just, it kind of feels a little bit more realistic than it did five years ago. And
between all the compute that AI needs, like, wait, we can't do all that compute here. Maybe,
maybe there is a way to harness the sun's energy to, to use it as a data center to harness the,
to harness the sun's energy, to use it as a data center,
to harness the compute.
So that leaves the imagination open for ideas
that could potentially do it.
Yeah, and I think another,
since we're kind of doing a little freeform brainstorming here,
they say that space is the final frontier,
or at least Star Trek says that.
But I think there's actually another frontier
that is massively untapped. the final frontier or at least star trek says that but i think there's actually another frontier
that is massively untapped and uh it's right here on our planet and it covers three that's right
three three quarters of our planet and i think this is another area where we could very quickly
see stuff happening i don't think it's just the mining though. It's also like there's going to be with autonomy. Think about it this way, right? One of the limitations for both military and
commerce in the ocean is that you can't get people down at a certain atmosphere because it's the
pressure, the danger. Well, what have we seen in the last five, 10 years? We've seen autonomous
cars come out of nowhere with sensors and can do everything on their own.
They're starting to do the same thing undersea.
And that means we're opening up a whole new world to not only just exploration and commerce, but also, you know, unfortunately, war and defense and whatever.
I've got a name that I've had for a while now Kraken which is not the crypto exchange
but it's a supplier to Andrel
and it's
a play on that
exact sort of thing right a lot of underwater
exploration and military
so I think there's a lot of
it is
KRKNF
it's a Canadian company
it's Canadian listed.
She talks about it here.
It's got a, it's got quite a, uh, retail audience on X as well.
Um, unfortunately that's usually a bad sign.
Yeah.
It's not, it's more niche.
To be honest, I haven't really heard that.
I, I have, I don't know what rock I'm under, but I haven't really heard much about ocean
exploration and like cities underneath the ocean and stuff like that.
Like that's kind of cool to think about.
So it's not necessarily cities under the ocean, but there's been some – so one of the biggest impediments to this has been not only technology, but a lot of countries have signed agreements
kind of in the green vein of, oh, we're not going to touch the ocean and it's going to stay
pristine, whatever. Well, there have been some more aggressive treaties and agreements that have
happened recently, and they seem to be leaning even more that way under the Trump administration
that might actually open up areas that have been verboten until recently to exploration.
So I still think we're early there.
I think it's more a military – like Kraken is a military play for sure.
They do like the drone submarines and things that have to do with diffusing mines and all sorts of stuff like that.
But I do think there is a potential there just in the same way that people were kind of sleeping on uranium a few years ago, and nobody really thought anything about that.
And a lot of the uranium that we have here in the United States was on protected land.
And then whatever happened, it opened some of it up.
I think that's possible for undersea exploration.
I like it.
I'll keep my eyes open. That's something, you know, something that
makes sense a little bit as we, you run out of land, you know, and run out of resources and 75%
of the earth is covered in that and you don't have to travel to the moon for it or Mars. But yeah,
that's, that's, you know, again, like I remember I was on the uranium trade. I remember when I was
like all over that and I'm like, it burns so much better than coal.
Coal, you burn coal, it gets black soot in your lungs
and it's dirty as hell.
Like uranium is so much more powerful and everyone's like,
well, nobody wants a nuclear plant in their backyard.
And I remember I was just like, I kind of got worn out from it
and I got away from it and then obviously just took off.
It's another thought
right there. Don't get tired and lose your endurance if something's not ready. It just
could be a big base and the bigger the base, the higher the space, right, at some point. So never
get away from something you think should have happened already that just needs more time.
Well, to be fair, Scott, you and I are of a certain age where most of our lives, people have framed nuclear power as bad, right?
And Three Mile Island and obviously Chernobyl later.
But out here in California, my whole adult life, all they've been doing is talking about shutting down nuclear power plants.
So they've been shutting them down, shutting them down, shutting them down.
And finally, we got one left here that's called Diablo Canyon. And all of a sudden, I don't know why, but the state legislature figured out,
oh my God, if we shut down that nuclear power plant, we are not going to have enough power.
So they've literally done a 180 in the last five years and said, no, no, no, please stay open for
another 20 years. And then of course you have these new type of nuclear power plants that are supposedly
very safe. So we've seen this 180 where ever since, I don't know if no one's going to remember
this, but there was a movie called The China Syndrome a long, long time ago with Michael
Douglas and Jane Fonda. And it was this big disaster movie related to a nuclear power plant
melting down. And ever since then, people said, oh,
no, nuclear power is bad. Nuclear power is bad. Well, apparently it's good now because everyone
wants their iPhone. Everyone wants their Tesla charged. Everybody wants their 100-inch TV. So
now they want as much energy as they can get. But what I will say is obviously AI has been a big
catalyst for energy generation. And the grid is a part that NF Stock Talk talks about a lot.
And I'm sure people would have individual stocks here.
We'll see if this actually happens.
But my guess is a conflict affecting oil, energy, gas, all that stuff.
Having a push towards not even clean energy, but domestic energy independence wouldn't
be a crazy worldwide theme going on.
And nuclear clean energy resources are probably going to be a part of that.
It could just be as simple as solar. I have no idea.
But I feel like having an increased push in that direction,
that was an outcome of that kind of flaw being shown aggressively
by this current conflict wouldn't be a crazy outcome
makes sense yeah it's not going to be done by wind power tell you that
yeah yeah um let's talk i guess a little bit more about micro in the now now um so tomorrow what
trump has this thing uh the ultimatum is for six o'clock tomorrow. If we don't get into a ceasefire, then Iran will be blown off the map. Is that the next event that we have in front of us that the market doesn't seem to be caring about with USO up $1.75 and the indices up, which is the second session in a row where markets have been able to go up with oil kind of strong so is that that's the
next big headline yeah i mean doesn't it tell us something that the market's getting more
comfortable with the potential of a bigger you know something in in around i think that's what
it's saying maybe or or you know it could be a little false sense of security but yeah i think
just oil also shocker like stick shock i mean like shock, like we kind of know it's over 100 between like 110 and 120. I guess the next big move will be
harder. Obviously, like if oil goes to 140, then it's hard to ignore. Like when you get into new
thresholds, the market cares and then it doesn't care and it moves on. So right now the market
isn't fully correlated to every tick in oil like it was
three weeks ago, but it could be again if it gets to, you know, another shocking level,
kind of like with rates. Like you make a new move in rates and the market cares and you hear about
it a thousand times on CNBC, then it pulls off a little bit, then the market doesn't care again
until you get a new level in the rates where it gets attention on and then the computers get recorrelated um but you know i would think that if um if we do get you know those those big drone
attacks on the grids in in iran like it's going to be kind of hard to ignore and then oil instead
of the us so being over dollar 80 it might be up 10 or 12 and that would be that's the risk of of
the next two days i guess and then there's the
risk of your short and all of a sudden oh we have the big beautiful deal then all of a sudden spies
are at 670 don't you love trading these kind of markets yeah you know i i i mean look the market's
going to do what the market's going to do that what a brilliant statement right but i uh i just
wonder how much of this like if we didn't have the iranian war and all that But I just wonder how much of this, like if we didn't have the Iranian war
and all that stuff, I just wonder, would we still have a pullback in the market? I mean,
we really ripped last year from the tariff lows, you know, and if I put like a fib extension on
that from the lows to where we hit the highs, you know, we've only gone back, we haven't even got
to the 38 level. I mean, I'm not a big fib guy but it's
just a good good way to get some ideas like so we're we're just we got to like the 20 yeah i mean
i i don't think they're magic but i think they're good for some structure but the point is we've had
a fairly shallow pullback if you go for go to um to monday's low like we didn't pull back that much
from that move it would be a reasonable move
especially if that was the low that we put in and i just i just wonder how much of this
is just curve fitting like we would have pulled back anyway we would have taken some sort of rest
coming out of the end of a really hot year i don't know it actually helped probably it helped
the speed of it because everyone was all mad that stocks were getting a little beat up since October and the indices were only down 3%.
So it made it hard to do stuff.
So by at least pulling down to almost 10%, you feel like you could put a little bit of money to work in your midterm accounts, you know, without being irresponsible.
But just like you said, you know, you can't, you have to have powder dry considering the average pullback during a mid-election year,
whatever you want to call it, is 16%. So if we just had three years with double-digit gains,
we only pulled back 10% and the average pullback during those midterms are 16%. Like, why wouldn't
you have more leftover powder just in case we wind up getting this? That's why I went over the
ABC move where you had your A move down. The question is, where's that B peak? And then the C usually goes lower than that, that A move.
And that could be like you said, that, that retracement 0.382%, which is why I kind of
isolated that 6.10 to 6.14 area, which would have been about 12 and a half percent off the
high, which is my second tier of the blood in the street account, but we never got there,
but I'm going to be patient and disciplined because we may not get there, but I would think you can't rule it out.
Yeah. I mean, and it's, it's always interesting in an election. I mean, not, not the big four-year
election cycle, but the two-year election cycle. And I just wonder, you know, like I, I think the,
the midterms are going to be interesting too, but I think we're still far enough away that they're not going to factor in.
But I do think if the Democrats really win well – big in the midterms, it could put a cooling effect on the market a little bit.
I mean I'm not a big guy who thinks that the market does better under either group.
But there is somewhat of a little populist uh attitude
kind of happening across the country you see it in new york you see it in washington see california
i mean i just wonder if that would cool the market a little bit if there was a really definitive uh
blue wave in the midterms but we'll see yeah it could you know i'm not a historian on that either
like we we had an unbelievable market during clinton Clinton. That's why he was able to get action in the White House from you know the uncertainty of it and then the sometimes they
say paralysis is good nothing will happen because you have the president and then you have a blue
wave and then you know sometimes the market likes when washington has no power to do anything for a
little bit but overall i just think mechanically um from what we've seen already you know it's hard
to put a high probability that that low that we saw is is
the low of the next two to three months but it's a trade there's a difference between a low and a
trade so far it's been a trade and now the question is you know what's the next week and a half going
to bring us and i guess we have to get through uh tomorrow you know the next two days a little bit
you know to get rid of at least what that headline could be just Just to deal with it. Can I ask you, a couple other random stocks here.
One of the stocks we launched, and I saw him come up here a little bit.
We'll see if he joins back up.
But Micron stock.
Is Micron stock one that you look at at all?
It's been quite the crazy mover.
Yeah, I would say you have the group, right?
You have Sandisk, you have Seagate, you have Western Digital,
and you have Micron. Those four names have, you have the group, right? You have SanDisk, you have Seagate, you have Western Digital, and you have Micron.
Those four names have been moving as a group, and it seems like one is stronger than the next, depending on where you are within the timeframe.
It feels like ever since Micron came out with numbers at the wrong time and it was super, super strong and they sold it down,
it kind of had some sloppy selling and got a little weaker and went lower than your SanD, than your SanDisk, your Western Digital and your Seagate.
I think, I think Micron's fine. It's been in this channel now.
It's just repairing a little bit differently.
It seems like SanDisk, Seagate and Western Digital,
if I were to say which one of the, you know, which one will not make a new,
you know, which will be the, the, the, if there,
if it was a race to all time highs, I think, you know, Seagate,
Western Digital, and SanDisk are way ahead of Micron for now, just because of the mechanics.
You know, can you buy Seagate today on day four higher, where it looks like it might even be a
little bit of a topping tail today? Probably not. But Micron is in that group of four,
it's just based on where it is in the range and how it's going and so far
the those four stocks are still considered best in breeding the market in my opinion until you
know until a later date it's hard to it's hard to argue with that technically um but like if all of
a sudden this is the high and the spy is like the 659 and change we're not going another two three
percent higher chances are you know micron showed Ron showed the least amount of relative strength
out of those four during this week and change move.
So you have to be a little bit more careful with Mike Ron
than the other three for now actively.
Options Mike, do you agree? Do you disagree?
I don't see options Mike up here.
I think Spacey has given some people some troubles today we had chris come up kicked him hamid came up
kicked him uh options mike he just gave up at some point uh he got kicked like 20 times that was a
lot all right well i just think it all depends like you know i i go i'd like to go week by week
based on the feel like a week ago I wouldn't touch Google Google
looked like was on its way to the measured move of the head and shoulders pattern and then all of a
sudden it bottomed at the 200 day and it was the first thing that I bought on Thursday you know
so the trade keeps changing whereas Micron was stronger you know and then um you know now it's
a little bit weaker but it all depends like so we could pull back maybe and then all of a sudden
you know Western Digital Seagate and Santa's pull it all depends. So we could pull back maybe, and then all of a sudden, you know,
Western Digital, Seagate, and Santas pull back hard,
and Micron doesn't pull back much.
And then I would be like, wow, that just rebuilt better.
It'll move up my go-to list.
So I guess the moral of the story is have a go-to list of like 40 names
and move it up and down based on the actual setup for cash flow
on the framework of the trade.
Someone said to me today like red dog you don't
talk about tesla anymore that much i'm like because there's not a lot of opportunity it's
been caught in a downtrend you know you have to buy it when it looks its worst and and then sell
it after a three-day move to nowhere to a lower high and then if you try and short it every time
it breaks below a level it stays below a level then trap shorts and then you get a little bit
of a bounce and it's a tease and we go lower
So Tesla's been horrendous. It's been at the bottom of the list. It hasn't been a lot of great setups
You know, I love Tesla when it's above the 821 day there's momentum
That's when Elon's a genius. But when we're below the 821
15 200 day, you know, I just got to stay away
And even on Thursday when the market bounced and everything came off lows and acted. Okay, it was you know
There was no signs of life there.
So it's actually kind of cute now that it's trying to work its way back to that 352 there.
You know, but that could be a setup here.
If all of a sudden Tesla reclaims 352 and closes at like 355 today, you know,
it might even be a better overnight because some shorts are trapped than Google,
even though Google is stronger today and has a better technical look so it's all it's all based on on how you look at it and you know from
a technical standpoint tesla is just ugly and i just wonder if there's something related to
spacex it's like an overhang there i don't know i mean even on days when the market's been doing
well tesla's not been doing good at all yeah that's why i haven't even you know i haven't
been there at all i haven't i think i've traded it three times the last six weeks really um where
i used to you know used to try i used to be able to make thousands of dollars a day on that thing
and i just it's that's why i think some like some of these go-to names that you can make thousands
of dollars a day you know unless you're really good short and short every rally which some people
are congratulations to you i'm just not that. It's no longer special, right, Scott?
No, it hasn't been special for a long time. Ever since it tried to break out and failed
while the market was weaker, near wherever that was at 485, 500, it's been a sell on
every rally since. Remember that? Before then, it was actually pretty good but anyway
I know
we got Hamid up here
who is an individual stock picker
I do wonder what stocks
you've been watching recently Hamid
I brought up the Micron I know that's one that's on your radar
a little bit
any of the other ones that we know you for
you've been
doing well interesting interesting opportunities.
I'm curious if you've been adding to.
Appreciate you, sir.
Yeah, so for sure, I'll talk a little bit about my perspective on things.
But Micron is one that I've been adding quite a bit in the recent downturn, largely because I think it's one of the most ridiculously undervalued stocks on the market right now.
And in fact, I would challenge anybody
to try to find a better valued company,
valued company, especially one that is actually still growing.
And, you know, that growth appears to be at least quite strong for the rest of 2026 and quite
possibly into 2027 and maybe even longer because the negative anticipation on the Micron,
this sort of like bear story, if you will, on Micron is that it's a cyclical stock.
this sort of like bear story, if you will, on Micron is that it's a cyclical stock.
You know, memory companies historically have always overbuilt capacity.
And then when there is a oversupply of memory chips, then the prices plummet.
And so does their revenues and profits as a result.
And so does their revenues and profits as a result.
But that speculation kind of doesn't work here because of the AI super cycle.
When we're talking about bringing on tens of gigawatts of new data centers per year and accelerating that rate.
And we can kind of see none of the mega caps have slowed down any of their sort of AI spending.
And there's all this
talk about compute constraint. AI is compute constraint, and we want to continue to build
more of it. Micron just seems like one of the best stories out there and currently is trading at a
ridiculous price earnings ratio, a forward price earnings ratio that's under five, which you cannot find another
tech company that is trading in those kind of valuations. So from my perspective, MyCon
is one of the obvious investment opportunities out there. It has quickly become the largest single investment I have ever made in my life.
So that's why I'm in Micron.
Can I ask you a question? How long ago did you start that?
I started in late December.
So I bought initially just shy of $300 a share.
I have bought it as expensively as $440 a share. And then the other stock that I've
accumulated in recent weeks, more of, I already had some, but I've added to my position is Meta.
As the Meta story just continues to get stronger, but they had a legal case that came against them
and the price just sort of crashed for no real reason.
Other than, you know, there's sort of like negative sentiment around this stock, but
the performance of the company and even their estimated legal potential hit to them is minuscule.
So the growth of this company is pretty incredible. They are investing heavily in AI and they haven't released their AI products.
So all of that is sort of like being discounted to zero in the valuation of the company.
This is a company that is generating huge amounts of profits, is on a very fast trajectory,
faster than Apple, Amazon, Google, basically all of its other mega caps, and yet it's trading at an
earnings rate that's below all of them at under 20 PE ratio. So Meta is another one that looks
very attractive, and I've been accumulating that as well. Okay. Yeah, both of them definitely have the position to do very well,
and they're both under accumulation.
You know, MU is just going to take some time.
Obviously, you have a big channel that started really
in the beginning of the year in January,
and, you know, you could have played the Rangers a bunch of times,
and it's right smack in the middle of the range
if you put 300 at the bottom and you put 471 at the top. chances are this is not something you want to be right on in april but
you could probably in the fourth quarter i don't see why this thing can't be in new highs either
or sooner so yeah i like it meta also definitely became a sentiment beat up where they just beat
the hell out of it just like all the mega cap techs it just you know they started calling it lag seven is that um i'd say actively there's a nice little wedge here
you know in in meta where it put its reflex low in a 525 it's going sideways you know as far as
a trade if it can hang here another day or so um the recent what the recent high is 592 and it looks
like it can pop back up into the 600s um yeah but i think i think meadow probably
might take more time than mu but both definitely you know over time with the cost average
accumulation if you can handle it where you don't need to be paid monthly or quarterly
you know i you know i would someone said to me you have to pick 10 companies those
would be two of the 10 i wouldn't know if they're the top companies. Those would be two of the 10. I wouldn't know if they're the top two, but they'd be two of the 10. I like the explanation. Yeah, my investment strategy is
very long-term oriented. It's unusual for me to look for opportunities where I can make money in the matter of days, weeks, or months.
So going in, I'm always thinking that if I have to hold this thing for years, that's okay.
Yeah, you have to love the business.
If you're going to hold something for years, you're using Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett's method,
which usually over time wins, so I get it.
That's precisely it.
And the market tends to be bipolar
in nature, and I can never predict its
bipolar behavior in the short term. But
great companies tend to eventually
be reflected appropriately
in their valuations by the market
for at least brief periods of time.
That's true.
And then oftentimes it overshoots in the opposite direction,
meaning like Micron is trading at a forward PE of 4 right now.
And who knows, in six months,
it might be trading at a forward PE of 30.
And that would be a time when I would think
that it's way overvalued if that was the case.
And, you know, I might exit
and look for better opportunities.
But the bipolar nature of the market
sort of tends me, it makes me, you know,
always sort of go in knowing that things can always get worse because you never know on that bipolar up or down where you're catching it.
Therefore, I go in with that patience and long-term mindset in mind from the get-go.
I mean, let me ask you a quick question since you have a totally different view of the markets than I do, which I appreciate so much.
I mean, look, I have long-term retirement accounts, whatever, but, you know, on TV I play a trader.
So what do you think about the beatdown that the software names have gotten?
Do you buy into the thing that software is done?
It's going to be killed by AI.
Do you think that's overdone?
No, I definitely think it's overdone.
I am more on Jensen's side on this in that, you know, it doesn't, the way in which software
is getting hit, it doesn't make sense.
But again, I personally don't currently own any of the major software companies either,
largely because I don't think any of them are great companies that are at a good price.
So the combination of great company and good price is a requirement for me to get in.
combination of great company and good price is a requirement for me to get in.
In some cases, if the price is ridiculous, I might go in.
But none of them have a ridiculously low price either.
Micron has a ridiculously low price and it's a great company and it's growing super fast.
And if the AI cycle does not seem to be slowing down in any way, shape, or form.
So, you know, would I rather own Micron or at a forward PE of four?
Or would I want to own, that's, by the way, growing at 130% year over year?
Or would I want to own Salesforce that's growing at like 6% year over year
and, you know, trading at a PE in the teens.
So to me, that's a crystal clear bet as to which one I'm going to bet on or even meta for that
matter. So yeah, they're probably getting hit unfairly, the software companies, but
none of them seem super attractive to me they didn't seem super
attractive to me before either so got it thank you well did you guys see that article um in the
new york times about the company that was built with you know like two employees and ai and it's
like you know that's that's the fear right for software is that and for a lot of companies or
industries where all of a sudden you know how to harness the AI and, you know, takes the job away from 60 people that used to do the same work or 100 people.
As soon as I saw the article, I went down and yelled at my 16-year-old son, what the hell have you been doing?
That's what I said.
Right, you better frigging pick a college and a major very, very well.
Otherwise, you know, you're going to be on welfare or wait for me to pass away
so you can get my whole life insurance policy.
I'm going to play a lot of basketball.
But, yeah, it makes you think that much that you have to be a lot more specific
on where you want to go and where you want to work,
especially for the younger generation.
I'm sure that we're going to need doctors and lawyers and CEOs,
but there's going to be a lot of, I guess, middle-level jobs
that those individuals will be able to do on steroids, I guess.
But anyway.
My daughter was asking me about the space flight this weekend,
and she asked me if I was alive when we landed on the moon.
And I told her technically I was, because I was born in 67 and we landed 69. But I told her story
of my great grandmother, who at the time was alive when we landed on the moon, but was also alive when
the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. And I said, you know, she lived this life that spanned no
flight whatsoever to space flight.
I feel like we're in the same thing now.
Like when I was growing up,
the idea that you could have a billion dollar company with two people, two employees,
it was like a fantasy novel, right?
And technology and things have moved so fast
that I don't even know what's going to happen
in the next five years, right?
That's just, it's just the velocity of change in this world technologically, culturally, emotionally, whatever.
It's just – it's – like I tend to be an optimist.
So like I know some of it's scary, but I think there's also so much opportunity out there.
But you certainly have to be prepared for it, right? I think if you're
going forward in life using the same playbook that has worked in the last five years, 10 years,
20 years, I think you're in for a very rude awakening at some point.
Well, on that subject, you know what? I got abused yesterday because I posted a picture of
seven Marines with the Marine that got rescued where they were like smiling on a helicopter.
And people were like so pissed that I posted that picture that was kind of, I guess, half AI.
I'm like, what are you so pissed about?
They freaking just went in and saved the Marine.
They're all smiling.
I just wrote smiles.
They're like, you're a war propagandist.
I'm like, I'm not a war nothing.
I'm just, this was, you know, maybe I should have looked at it a few more times and realized
it wasn't the exact picture.
But this is freaking pretty damn cool that someone got shot down and we went in and saved him and he's coming home.
You know, but like I knew right there when I do something like that, I actually blocked like 18 different people yesterday because I'm like, you're just a jerk.
Like what's so, you know, the names they were calling me for posting that picture.
I'm like, okay, I don't need you in my community.
Sometimes I could do posts just to weed out people I don't want to deal with
out of my 200 and whatever, 40,000 people,
which who even knows how many of them are bots these days now.
On Thursday afternoon, I got in the car with my family.
We drove out to Vegas.
First time I've driven to Vegas in 25 years.
We went the long route.
We went through Mojave Desert,
which is the old Route 66. Spent three days out there at my sister's place. We went hike
Mount Charleston. We did a bunch of stuff. We saw some shows. Came back yesterday and I realized I
hadn't been online for like four days. And all my friends are trying to tell me the stories that
happened, all this stuff. And i just i i forgot how nice
it is to unplug and i think you you illustrate that perfectly there scott is like you know like
you can say the most innocuous thing and professional malcontents out there are going
to be offended because that's what they do for a living and i i find myself going more and more
into communities like this community here spaces spaces like the Lund Loop community.
And I think that is where if I had to tell people what the value is going forward, it's those curated communities, quality communities where there's a little bit of friction to get in there so that you're kind of washing out all the trolls.
in there so that you're kind of washing out all the trolls those communities i think are going to
be way more valuable those trusted communities than than the broad general you know facebook's
tiktoks whatever going forward maybe this is just an old guy talking i don't know but that's what
it feels like it's going to be more valuable yeah i can't disagree and and i have no problem taking
out and go like it listen i'm i consider myself in the middle of common sense.
And sometimes if I think something is just kind of normal and people go off the deep end,
A, first I'll look and make sure that I'm not doing something irresponsible or did something really that stupid.
But if it's not really that irresponsible, that stupid, and people come off a different way, I'm like, you know what?
Goodbye.
I don't need you.
I don't need you.
And then every now and then someone will go to my customer resources
and be like, I got blocked.
I can't watch the 630 Club.
Tell Scott I didn't mean it.
I'm like, well, why'd you act like a jerk then?
It could be interesting sometimes.
Yeah.
No, I know.
We are coming up here on the time when you normally are closest
to the time as we drop off.
I just want to ask, like, before we get to that kind of final question, what are you looking for this next week? You know,
hopefully, you know, we join us back here Monday again, and type of things will you be looking at
this week? What type of action do you think you'll be going? Are there any of these specific macro
events? I believe we have a CPI and a couple other things that will be happening. Just curious what
the next week looks like for you, you think, as we head into it.
You know what?
I have a few more longs than I had before we hit the lows last week.
And I feel like if you had those going into Thursday, you were able to buy more and trade around with the hedge.
So what I'm kind of doing is like I am still like I'm along a little Google.
I'm along a little ASTS.
I have a few things on.
What I'm doing is I'm selling premium higher like I sold the
664 is for tomorrow before they were like 90 cents I'm like you know what I'm
like if we go up seven points I'm gonna make a lot of money in these things that
I have room to be you know short the the spies there and trade around it I'm I'm
kind of looking for opportunities that are making it really hard to stay with
and and i'm taking
trades to be honest you know we we just came off the lows so we're not oversold it's hard to see
if we're going to get to that next level higher in the spies in the queues you know the queues
um the level above you have two of them you have like ones right here the 591 is a level
and then really it's going to be really hard for the queues
i would think to get above like 604 so to play from here to 604 that's what i'm thinking is
realistic um i don't know how fast it happens and i we do know we have a binary event tomorrow
so some people like hey i don't need to do anything we gap up huge i could short it we
gap down big i could buy it and i don't need the risk or the or the you know the stress which is
cool too and then again on the the macro end i only put one and I don't need the risk or the stress, which is cool too.
And then again, on the macro end, I only put one tier one to work in the blood on the street account.
My 401k is in 100% the market because I know I'm 53 and whatever happens doesn't matter. I'm going to put monthly flows in for hopefully another 10 something plus years.
But actively, I actually built,, you know, I'm in
a little bit of a hole from the, from the quarter one and I'd like to net some money, book some
trades and chip away at it. And, and, you know, it's not a big hole. I've been in like, I'd say
I've been in a hole four different times since I've been doing this since 1998. This isn't,
I don't consider a hole. I just consider it, it you know i just um the market was tough and i
i'm not a great short and i did a lot of things to make sure that i don't get in trouble you know i
have based on my buying power i could have been down 10 times when i'm down for the first quarter
so all we do is we get a good sequence that's conducive to my style i'll be able to make it
back and then some so but at this point i don't want it to go deeper like all of a sudden i don't
want to start buying things that look okay and putting on a lot of risk. And then all of a
sudden, you know, we send ground troops in and oil goes to 140 and we're back at the lows. And
then I just added more to my little hole that I'm trying to make back. So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to
stay tactical and just map out levels where, you know, where the frame is, um, is there a lot of
risk here? Is there a lot of resistance here? You know, is there a lot of risk here is there a lot of
resistance here you know is there a lot of risk reversal level here how's it acting and is this
trade kind of worth it or or not so i don't think it's that worth being so um long into what could
be tomorrow um but also short and just but there's some things that are giving you some clues that hey
you could stay with it like Like Google is stronger today.
I'm actually looking at Amazon.
I think Amazon, to me, looks decent here where, you know, if the market wants to hang around, it probably can get above 214 and see 218, 220 if we're going to hang in here.
Microsoft, I don't think it's worth it.
It just acts horrible.
Tesla, I don't think it's worth it.
Apple, eh, from where it just came from, it's not acts horrible tesla i don't think is worth it um apple yeah from where it just came from it's not worth it um you know asts and some of those you know like i'm staring at these space
names i know today they took you know they um they took the day off but you look at the three-day
move into today's resistance it's not a big deal so i'm trying to ask myself is this trade worth it
do i need to stay with it for a head start or could i you know figure out ways to
make money or not and and just you know stay with multiple time frames and this this spot is still
not nothing's jumping at me that i need to pull myself in such harm's way right here
in gold and bitcoin and in megacap tech and even in some of these memory names after the move that we saw from last week.
So I'm just trying to be able...
I'm moving my feet.
Scott, is the binary event you're talking about tomorrow,
you mean the deadline for the ultimatum for Iran?
Is that what you're referencing?
Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about.
If he pulls it back or if all of a sudden
there was a negotiation going on in Pakistan and they say, okay, we're good, they're opening the straight, you know, spies could be up seven to eight points.
So being short here, thinking that that was the oversold balance is probably not great.
If we opened up eight, nine points on that news, hey, maybe I could work there.
You know, same way, I don't need to buy here just in case, you know, they didn't come to terms.
I've been great i gave them a
beautiful situation to get out of uh this war and then they're pushing me you know goodbye bridge
goodbye this goodbye grid and then we could be down the same way we were down on thursday
thursday was buyable but you know not a few too much on so anyway so i'm going to be kind of light
and and see which way uh we go from here and not
be in a rush
what did coach John Wooden say
hurry but don't be in a rush
what's his famous line
I think you're on your own
I'm sorry sir
nobody knows coach Wooden
I know coach Wooden
UCLA coach
coached Lou Alol Simder to be Kareem Al-Jubar,
but I don't remember his saying.
He had a saying about shoelaces.
Somebody help me with AI real quick.
I'm sure it'll come up.
Say, Coach Wooden, three famous quotes.
One of them is like, hurry but don't rush, or rush but don't hurry.
Going once, going twice, all right. right you guys find it on your own he said failing to repair is
preparing to fail how about that no that's that's that's that's like he's
one of his cornerstones yep so that's definitely day your masterpiece be more
concerned with your character than your reputation, and then things turn
out best for people who make the best
of the way things turn out.
Those are, I said, three quotes
Coach Mooden, and that's what came up.
Mooden, W-O-D-N?
Oh, I did,
yeah, yeah.
Well, that's not what I wrote, but yeah, yeah, I got there.
He also has the Pyramid of Success.
How about that Lou Alcindor reference there?
That's pretty good, huh?
Yes.
All right, guys.
Listen, I got to jump.
I got to go back to the Alpha team.
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Preparing to fail.
We already did that.
Let Scott go, man.
All right, let me go.
See you, Scott. See you, Scott.
Appreciate you, Scott.
There you go.
Let's just tweet it out.
There you go.
We tweeted it out from the Wolf account for everybody.
We'll see how it does.
Shout out to Mr. Scott Redler.
We always enjoy this first hour of these Mondays on Sox on Spaces
where he comes in and hangs out with us.
Mr. Amid, how are you doing?
We still have you, right?
I'm good. I'm good. How are you doing?
I'm doing well. I am doing well.
It's been a crazy time. A lot of stuff going on. I'm curious.
I kind of prompted you there on one or two of the stocks. I'm curious what else is on your mind.
I wonder, I want to talk Rivian, electrification, grid, all that stuff at some point here, but
what's on your mind? What's been going on? What's been standing out to you in this market?
Has it been something that you've been watching more closely? Or has it been something maybe
you're stepping away from waiting?
Well, I can tell you that normally, first of all, my portfolio is public. So anybody
who wants to see it, there's a link in my bio and it's free. But normally I operate with, I don't know, at least 20% of my portfolio has been in cash for more than a year.
And I can tell you right now, it's approximately 2% in cash.
And that tells you my confidence level in the things that I've been investing in being very undervalued
to where it has drawn me to take more risk with my portfolio than I
normally would um and and those risks have included uh micron and meta that I just touched on
uh just it just I just can't pass them up I feel like um the year is set pretty well for for me to
uh like if you know barring things going wrong obviously there's the war wrench
there's all kinds of like things that could go wrong but if things don't go wrong and at a macro
level which is kind of hard to predict and we have a sort of a normal year I think my portfolio is
very well positioned to do exceptional this year and probably largely driven by Micron and then probably secondary by Meta, Robinhood, maybe a little bit of Rocket Lab pool because of SpaceX.
And then Bumble later in the year is expected to have an AI-based dating app product that might make Bumble kind of interesting, which is also extremely undervalued.
So I feel pretty good about those positions.
And then speaking of EVs, Rivian's R2, which seems to be getting rave reviews, has started to be delivered to employees as of
this week.
So that appears to be pretty exciting.
And if the R2 can scale in decent numbers and Rivian's numbers have a pretty good shot
of crushing it this year in terms of deliveries and revenue growth not in
terms of profitability Rivian could also turn out to be a great story so I feel like my portfolio
is very well set up that in a uh you know barring unforeseen macro issues and you know war tends to throw a wrench into things. But barring unforeseen issues, it has a pretty good –
I feel pretty solid and good about it.
What are your thoughts on Rivian here?
Do you think that –
obviously, it's been a little over the place.
People got excited about the autonomy day that they had in December.
That was a big catalyst for last year.
It kind of came and went.
Maybe this stock's been doing a little bit better.
I think there's a possible chance here, electrification, the EV thing, all that stuff is not really
done yet.
EVs have kind of reached a 10% penetration here.
We were looking at this the other day.
What is the future of that?
Is this something that will stay at 10%, 15% and maybe hybrids take over?
Or do we get to kind of an electrification?
I wonder if high gas prices, the longer this goes on, the more it impacts it.
I think it might be a little bit of stretch on the theme, but I don't know.
Rivian, I know is a name that's in your portfolio.
You got any more updated thoughts on it? But I don't know. Rivian, I know, is a name that's in your portfolio.
Any more updated thoughts on it?
What would we see for you to add to it?
Yeah, let me sort of like at a macro level talk about the car industry,
which is, in my opinion, there's no turning back. The car industry is moving towards electrification.
That is, in my mind, that's a foregone conclusion. Like if we were to fast forward 50 years from now,
just to make it a little bit more extreme, it's hard to imagine a world in which gas-powered cars are the dominant player. So then the question becomes, if 50 years from now, then gas-powered cars are the dominant uh dominant player so uh then the question becomes
if 50 years from now you know then gas-powered cars are the minority uh you know two three four
percent of vehicles being sold probably for novelty purposes um if if that many at all uh then then
who's going to win uh this transition and how quickly is it going to happen?
I think that the transition to EVs will happen within the next roughly 15 years to where let's say 10 years will pass the 50% mark of new cars being sold.
And then maybe 15 to 20 years will pass the 90% mark.
Because once we pass the 50%,
then it'll actually start accelerating.
Because, you know, gas stations are going to start closing down
and it'll be harder to, like, actually have a gas-powered vehicle
as opposed to an EV
because there'll be more EV chargers.
EV chargers and like since you charge at home, it's not an issue.
And, like, since you charge at home, it's not an issue.
So so you know that that is my high level view on electrification and EVs in general.
Now as far as who is going to benefit, obviously the number one player Tesla is going to continue
to do really well. But then when you look at Rivian, they are by far the best second player after Tesla.
Meaning if you want an EV and you ask an EV enthusiast, what should I buy?
Not knowing anything about EVs, the EV enthusiast will tell you buy a Tesla.
And if they don't tell you to buy a Tesla, they'll tell you buy a Rivian.
Or if you don't want to buy a Tesla, then buy a Rivian.
So those are your like two options.
Nobody tells you buy the BMW XIX or the Mercedes EQS or whatever.
Despite the fact that there's tons of EV choices out there, there's only two compelling manufacturers that make EVs and sell them in the US.
two compelling manufacturers that make EVs and sell them in the US.
So Rivian, from my perspective, is a fantastic story from that standpoint alone.
But then when you look at this company as a technology company that is building
the full stack of not just EVs, but also self-driving and robotics and AI chips and, you know, the opportunities that
robo taxis might also provide in the future, then it just becomes more and more exciting,
right? And that's the perspective I have on Rivian. Like if this company manages to survive
long enough to get to profitability, 10 years from now, it's going to be,
you know, one of the major car companies in the world. And that prospect looks super interesting
to me, especially for a company that you can currently buy for roughly $20 billion, right? So $20 billion market cap relative to Tesla's one point, you know,
whatever trillion dollar market cap, which is easily 50, 60 times more expensive than Rivian.
I see Monitiv down below. You should come join us up here. I'll have to have your thoughts into
the conversation. But Rivian is an interesting one,
for sure. I know a lot of the other, the weaker players, like Elucid and whatever the world
have struggled. We'll see if the R2, the R2 is really the big thing here, more than probably
autonomy. But I think the Rivian play is an interesting one. For me, it's one of those ones that it feels like
you're shooting for larger upside gain.
Hopefully it's 5 to 10x,
and whatever the downside risk that you kind of think is associated with that,
you guys can go and do it.
And I think that the numbers play itself out positively,
isn't it, that I am interested in, honestly.
I think that there are some, maybe if I'm putting my stock talk hat on, I do wonder
if there's more
in order for EVs
to kind of get more across
the economy, we need gas stations to
become EV chargers and
what's in the EV chargers and
what's the stuff there that no matter
who wins is going to be needed.
But if I'm placing a bet, it's on
the newer tech companies
than the old established players of the world, I think.
We'll see.
Yeah.
And one of the things that Tesla has shown
is that EV charging stations don't need to be where gas stations are
or have the, you know, like be in the corner
so I can pull in and pull out.
Because it takes like, you know,
20 minutes to charge up your car,
EV charging stations can be actually
in convenient parking lots, right?
Like the parking lot of Target or, you know,
an In-N-Out or, you know,
shopping centers that have a bunch of different shops that might be attractive
so that you can get two things done at the same time, right?
Like you can charge your car, grab a burger, and then be out of there and get a full charge.
And this is on a road trip too because you don't really need charging stations at all
when you're in your hometown because the range is plenty and you charge overnight at your
apartment or your home or whatever. So we don't need as many charging stations as we have gas
stations because nobody has a gas station at home. And with EVs, 99% of your charging is done at home.
So we only need gas stations for the 1% of the time
or EV charging stations for the 1% of the time
that you are doing a road trip, essentially.
So very different needs there.
And then because of the Tesla Supercharging Stations
and now Rivian Adventure Network charging stations, we actually have plenty
of charging stations to where you can do a road trip no problem in your Rivian or in
your Tesla and the car will route you through the charging stations that you need to go
through and you're never going more than a mile extra on even a super long trip to to go to a charging station and charge up so
you get your driving brakes and you you get something to eat and then you're charged up
and ready to go so it's it's really a non-issue already but of course if we had 10 times more evs
we just need more stalls if you will just because, you know, all the charging stations would be full if
we had 10 times more EVs.
So, you know, that's the transition has already sort of like happened and facilitated and
road trips are possible.
And, you know, all the things are all the infrastructure is there.
Now it's just a matter of like this 10% of new cars being sold being EVs is going to
slowly creep up and grow super rapidly.
And by the way, when 10% becomes like 15%, for the EV world, that's a 50% growth rate.
But even though it's just 5% for the overall car market,
so the people who have or the companies that have the strongest EV position,
they're going to benefit the most.
And this is why I think that Rivian's R2
is going to be sold out for the next two years, right?
Because just they don't have enough manufacturing facilities
to make enough of them
for the amount of demand that's out there
just to sort of sustain the normal growth.
So for the next couple of years,
Rivian is in a good place to grow revenues
at least 50% this year, probably 75%, 80%, maybe even 100% next year. So we'll see how that
unfolds, but they're in a really good position.
What's that, Monitiv? Rivian, a name you got any thoughts on? You got any EV thoughts?
in the name you got any uh thoughts on you got any evie thoughts no it's not a factor that that
i followed in any at any level it's still i mean i i i like the idea of evs i would buy an ev but
i don't invest in any of them uh that said you know this there's a few out here. There's a big tech center for Rivian in the neighborhood.
And I see the artists here.
So it looks interesting.
I always thought that the current Rivian was really a massive vehicle for most people.
So I think a smaller vehicle makes a lot more sense
in my mind at least so uh but but that's that's the extent of my interest it's more curiosity than
anything else that is fair that r2 is is the right vehicle for the vast majority of people
and the launch edition for less than 60,000
getting you a car that's faster than a Porsche
and super roomy, five-seat, good-looking
and can go off-road.
It's pretty attractive.
Yeah, I mean, in relative terms,
it would be a lot more attractive
than the full-size vehicle they have today.
Yeah, I agree.
Amit, I want to switch up the topic a little bit.
We got a lot of interest in the space sector-ish going on, that whole arena.
It's been Artemis mission, SpaceX saying $2 trillion.
There were some conversations earlier about does this SpaceX IPO,
is that kind of responsible for a little bit of this
Tesla weakness here. I'm curious your thoughts on those kind of both general topics. Do you have any
thoughts? Yeah, lots of thoughts there. So I don't think that the SpaceX IPO has any impact on Tesla. I think Tesla, the way I view it is that its price was sort of like not
very justifiable historically. It was surprising that it was in the high 400s at one point. And
the valuations were such that there was a lot of optimism in robo taxis, a lot of optimism on Optimus. And then people didn't expect the
car revenue to start to shrink so fast. And all of these things have sort of gone sideways or
negative. So the car, the Tesla's existing vehicle sales has gone down. Their Optimus keeps getting
delayed. And robo taxi rollout, which started in June of last year,
if you would have asked any Tesla enthusiast or even a Tesla realist,
I consider myself a Tesla realist, unlike many Tesla fanboys
or Tesla naysayers who think Tesla has done nothing right.
I'm a Tesla enthusiast that drives a Tesla as a company but it realistically
speaking as an investment it just seemed overvalued and since none of these things
have materialized when RoboTaxi launched in June of last year none none of us
thought that a year almost a year later Tesla would not be the dominant RoboTaxi
player beating Waymo instead they have I have, I think, fewer than 10 cars
that don't have a backup driver in them.
So the robotaxi delays have been extremely disappointing.
And it's just kind of like,
because of the mismatch of Elon's statements to realities,
you just keep wondering, okay, like what else is he wrong about?
And how long is he going to be wrong about them?
And therefore, it's just very difficult
to be enthusiastic about Tesla.
In my opinion, the current Tesla stock price
is just reflecting on all of those things.
And of course, their last quarter's delivery numbers
came out and they were also disappointing.
So I think that's the reason Tesla is down, not because of SpaceX.
Separately on SpaceX, here's a company that is extremely exciting. Lots of space enthusiasts
and SpaceX fans. Starship is one of the greatest projects in human history to create a reusable rocket that could potentially be reused within 24 hours.
All of these accomplishments that SpaceX is going for are just phenomenal.
And then it has the Starlink, which has been growing astronomically, no pun intended, in its revenue growth.
Starlink is also another phenomenal technology.
So SpaceX has incredible things going for it.
But then this merger with XAI
and then all of a sudden shift of focus
to being this sort of data center in space as their sort of primary goal suddenly,
I think is going to hold back SpaceX to some degree
because SpaceX goes from a company that was delivering and executing exceptional
to a company that is similar to Tesla in that it's now getting built on promises of the
future and mass drivers on the moon and like just generating an amazing excitement on these
imaginary things that will likely take decades to come to fruition. In the meantime, what happens
to SpaceX revenues and profits? Well, the profits just went away because
of the XAI merger and the huge expenses that XAI has. You know, revenue growth might be
stunned as stunted as Elon all of a sudden focuses on data centers in space. So, you know,
I think there's now all of a sudden less enthusiasm even for SpaceX from people who were just three months ago extremely excited about SpaceX and its potential IPO.
And then now we're talking about a $2 trillion valuation where a lot of the upside is already built into the stock price.
So I'm not excited about it anymore.
I'm not going to be a buyer
of the IPO of SpaceX despite being a huge SpaceX fan. So that's my perspective on it.
Monitiv, you buying the $2 trillion SpaceX IPO?
No, I already own a lot of it through Google, right? So I'm not touching it, man. It's,
it's, to me, I hope so, because it's going to be a scary proposition. Let's say it goes from
2 trillion to, you know, 1.7 trillion valuation, you know, in inside a quarter or at the close
of next quarter, that that's a, you know, 25 billion loss just for Google on the books,
right. That they have to write up because it's a public company and the price discovery is clear.
Right. So, so this kind of stuff is going to wildly gyrate, you know, earnings.
Not that those earnings cannot be adjusted out, but the point is it's a painful process
to constantly look for adjusted numbers and, you know, and to mark that off. So my guess is typically public companies do not hold large stakes
long after their investments have gone public.
They do try to start selling off.
So in Google's case, it's a large number and it can sway the quarterly earnings massively one way or the other.
So not a huge fan.
I mean, it could be the other side too, right?
If it lists at 1.5 trillion and goes to 2 trillion and ends the quarter there, that's a $30 billion one-time profit.
the quarter there, you know, that's a, you know, $30 billion one-time profit, you know,
yeah, it's a book profit, but, but they have to, you know, recognize it by, um, you know,
accounting standards. So, so it's not, I, I, it would be nice if they take some of it off the
table and start selling on a regular basis and, and use that to, you know, beef up their cash.
and use that to beef up their cash.
But I don't know how they'll do it.
I think it's a travesty that
NASDAQ is going to try and bring
SpaceX into the index quickly
because it's going to create one hell of a mess.
Okay, well, let's start here.
What do you think of the $2 trillion valuation?
Do you think, I mean, I'm curious if anyone down below in the audience, if SpaceX goes
public at $2 trillion valuation, if you guys had the chance to invest in at that $2 trillion
valuation, would you guys take it?
I don't know.
I'm curious.
I don't want to lead any things here, but I, yeah, I want to see what the answers are.
But, um, what is the revenue? things here, but I want to see what the answers are.
What is the revenue?
$25 billion? $50 billion?
I don't know. What's the revenue for SpaceX?
I believe it was for 2025 $15 billion is what it was.
I believe it was either $10 or $5 billion.
130 times
revenue?
By the time it goes public, you can of uh expect it to be probably in the 25
or so billion dollar run rate uh maybe maybe close to 30 billion because it also is going to get
x and xai's revenue as well which is roughly 4 billion plus starlink growth plus uh
starlink growth plus uh spacex's launch growth business growth so you know the combination of
those things is probably 25 ish billion um but yeah it's still going to be a huge multiple of
sales there's no question but still yeah 80 times sales right so i i i don't know i mean it's it's
not something that that would even uh you know cross my mind
to you know to take a stake at that at that kind of valuation but you know i i have indexes so i'm
stuck with it if if uh if nasdaq updates their index immediately right which is what they're
planning to do or at least so so the rumors go why are you stuck with it? If they do that, we're all stuck with it.
Why are you stuck with it?
Because it's in the index, right?
I have index funds.
Yeah, but you don't have to.
You're not stuck with it.
That's a weird choice of wording.
Ooh, UNH is up 5.2% in after hours?
What's happening there?
Is it just a fake candle?
Sometimes it happens.
Oh, look, but yeah, it's fair. Well, here's, listen, it would take a lot
for me to sell in
QQQ. It would also
taxes
and stuff like that. So it definitely is a
tough decision to go and make.
Yeah, this looks like a real move on UNH, up 6%.
What is this?
Let's see if I can find what is happening.
NH, no.
SEC, no, that's going to be a little bit old.
Hmm. SEC at no, that's going to be a little bit old. Just everyone celebrating about the move.
I don't see anything about...
No, I thought it was on mute.
Yeah, it's up 6.7%. 6.8%, I don't see anything on that move. I don't see anything about what... Ooh, no, I thought I was on mute. Wait for a second. Yeah, it's up 6.7%.
6.8%. I don't see
anything on that move.
I will try and chime back in.
CMS finalized
its 2027 Medicare Advantage
and Part D payments policy.
You need to keep...
I don't know what's happening
with this stuff. But UNH
back over 300 for you guys,
for people who are trading it.
Up 6.6% in after hours.
I apologize for interrupting the conversation there.
I just got that headline.
Or at least I got the stock move.
2 trillion is a lot.
No one in the crowd said that they were super interested in it.
I don't think...
I don't interested in it. I don't think...
I don't know about it. Get betting into QQQ
right away. That probably isn't
exactly what I want to say, but
it's what it is.
$2 trillion
feels tough. I just don't see it going public
at that valuation.
My guess would be somewhere closer
to $1.5. Even that still feels like a lot, but
I'm probably looking to buy it under a trillion.
But SpaceX is one that a lot of people do want exposure to. Hamid, do you picture yourself one
day having some SpaceX shares? Yeah, for sure. It's definitely a great company. I would be very interested in SpaceX at a good
price. $2 trillion is not it. $1 trillion makes it a better price. I wouldn't say, like if it was
going public at a trillion dollars, I still would stay out of it for at least a few months or weeks at least to
see what would happen. Like a lot of times something that comes out with a lot of fanfare
and hype goes down shortly after, right? And in fact, that tends to be the case for
most extremely popular companies. It happened for Google. it happened with Meta, Facebook's IPO,
it happened with Twitter's IPO, it happened with Robinhood's IPO, it happened with Figma.
Figma came out on its IPO day, it went all the way to $125 a share today, you can buy it for
around $20. So it's not uncommon for IPOs to come out really high and flying.
And then for a lot of the insiders to finally have an opportunity to sell.
And as their lock-up periods, which usually go away after six months,
the stock starts to sort of like retract for a bit.
And then prices can get very attractive, right?
And in Meta's case, for example,
it IPO'd around $40 a share,
went all the way down to $17,
where you could buy it like six months later,
despite the company doing way better for $17 a share.
So it became way more attractive I started
buying it as it was going down at 30 and just kept buying and adding more all the way down to 17.
and then when it sort of recovered is when I started to sell sell a lot of those shares back
then this is back in I don't know 2012 or 13 or whatever it was that it went public. But a similar story happened with Twitter as well.
It IPO'd around 60 bucks a share,
went all the way down to like the teens
and then started to come back up.
So it's not uncommon.
Robinhood happened.
It IPO'd at 40, went all the way to 87,
went all the way down to seven before it came back up.
So yeah, I would probably take my time.
Interesting.
I wonder if we're set up here for a $500 billion SpaceX at some point.
But I don't know if some of this space stuff starts to increase in revenue and growth rates are there.
We shall see.
It definitely does feel like a place of endless opportunity.
And they feel like a key to get there.
How much is that worth today?
I don't know.
But we were talking about this earlier.
I think the question around space as the Artemis mission is going on and we're seeing humans go further than they ever have before is, why is right now different? Why is this time different than the last couple decades here for the space economy and industry? It does feel a little different, but we'll see.
Shout out to Ryan joining us here.
I want to ask,
space is always giving people trouble when they get up here.
Do we have MercadoLibre or Nubank or any of these LATM or e-commerce around the world?
Is there any interest either for you guys?
I'm going to go to you first, Hamid.
But is MercadoLibre a stock that you ever look into?
I've looked at it, but not from the standpoint of wanting to purchase.
I usually stick with American-based companies.
MercadoLibre is, I believe, like the Amazon of Brazil, if I'm not mistaken.
And I would have no sense, like, pulse on that company versus, like, Amazon.
like Pulse on that company versus like Amazon.
If there's like a good alternative to own that's American-based,
why would I choose a foreign-based one where I wouldn't have the Pulse on it?
So that's my perspective on it.
Grab and like DoorDash are similar sort of story
where numbers don't look extra attractive for Grab versus DoorDash.
And DoorDash.
And DoorDash operates in the US and Grab is mostly an Asian-based company.
So in those kinds of scenarios,
I just, you know, like,
especially when there's an alternative that's US-based,
I just stick with the US-based one.
But I don't even own DoorDash either.
But, you know, that's the way in which I look at it.
Yeah, that's fair.
Monitiv, I'm curious if MercadoLibre is one that ever gets onto your radar.
I occasionally trade it for earnings.
It's a big earnings mover, so even a small trade gives outsized returns.
I have not held it for a swing trade in a very long time,
and I certainly don't have any long positions.
But yeah, I do look at it as a strength of the South American economy and the consumer.
It's a good indicator.
I have personally traded Sea Limited a lot more than I have Mercado Libre.
So that's something I'm more comfortable with.
I lived in the area, so I know their business much better.
So that's something I trade a lot more.
Again, I don't have a long position in that either right now.
But that's something I trade very similar business, but more ASEAN area and slowly expanding
into South America, but mostly ASEAN.
That's a company that I like and trade regularly. And it's a little bit cheaper on fundamentals.
Fair enough. Fair enough. What is up, Ryan? How are you doing?
I'm awake. I guess it's a good way to put it. The way this afternoon went. Low volume
Monday. A lot of people still on holiday.
It was a tough way.
Tough Monday to get started.
I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to hit it hard.
I'm just going to get started.
Go all in.
And we'll figure it out.
And I'm actually not feeling so bad at this point.
I don't know if anybody is logical or anybody was on here talking about the volume today.
But it's the lowest volume.
It was 52-week low on volume for SPY.
Lowest since February of 2025.
Oh, interesting.
Lower than Christmas Eve, which was a half day,
and lower than Black Friday as well.
So you throw in those low-volume half days,
and today still had a lower volume than all of those days,
which makes sense when you have basically a deadline tomorrow.
But yeah, just no volume at all in the market.
I think the total volume was like 35 million.
Tell me that stat again.
I need to make a little tweet here.
Just tell me this.
Today, the total volume, let me just double check.
The lowest volume since February of last year.
I'm just double checking just to make sure there's no fake news here
because it updates sometimes right after the close.
Looks like 36 million shares traded.
Yeah, so Friday the 9th of May last year was 37.6.
That would be your second lowest.
So it's still lower than that. 30. So let's see.
Looks like February 19th of 2025. Interesting. What photo do you think goes along with that?
Do you want to? I'm just going to put a picture of them in the night.
No one cares about the photo.
No, they do.
Interesting.
All right.
I'll figure this out on my own.
But that is a nice little stat.
Shout out to Mr. Ryan.
Wolf Ryan for joining the space and giving us a little stat.
Stat that.
Stat that.
UNHG is up 20 at an after hours now
was there news on unh there was something but i'm not i don't know the sector enough to be
able to tell you what's happening i messaged below chris patel is putting up some stuff i'd
put a comment below uh his thing if he has time to come and explain it he is saying um capital
it was a final rate, wasn't it?
A final rate notice came out today for all of those?
Capitalization rates or whatever rates adjusted to the 2.48% final rate
instead of the original 0.9%.
I don't know, something.
But yes, UNH is up on a reason.
Okay.
That's actually pretty significant, okay? do you know what it means and still right
we're coming off of you know very low expectations being set with the new ceo like two quarters ago
so we're coming off of very low expectations uh could be interesting for you and age and and the sector expectations are terrible they're down the toilet
actually is the lowest among the 11 sectors so what i'm seeing here is the uh advanced notice
number for the cms rate hike was like 0.09 and it came in to 2.48. Once again, I don't know the sector.
I'm like Evan,
but that's the headlines being reported here.
So a 2.5% average rate increase,
which is worth more than $13 billion
in added MA payments.
Yeah, no idea what any of it means, but it up 10 and a half through hours so i guess that's
good we'll see if we can hold on to it tomorrow so the other thing also is given the size of
ask for defense trump will have to give in on health care so otherwise he's not getting it
it's not getting through so so it's likely that these, you know,
there'll be bits and pieces of positive news
for healthcare sector coming up here soon.
I just don't know anything in the sector.
Yeah. So it will be interesting this stock is flying in after hours i'm seeing you and hg up 23 now today there you go i wonder what you even uh how was the trading this morning
i mean uh you know i wouldn't short a dull market as a headline that I've heard here a little bit.
But.
Well, Monday morning market open, you usually get a little bit of volatility, especially after being closed on Friday.
The NFP data came out, obviously, on Friday, right?
You know, futures were open through that, closed about, what, 30 minutes, an hour after.
And then, you know, last night when the open, they just started pushing up higher. So there
was a little volatility at the open. We came down, we filled the gap to Thursday's close.
If you look at your NDX and your SPX, SPX basically did at the open, but NASDAQ came down
and filled the gap and that's all. I mean, we didn't go anywhere on the market.
Oil essentially continued higher most of the day,
basically an uptrend on the CL contracts.
And then you just said Trump talking.
You just didn't have a lot of participants.
There are several countries that observe today as a federal holiday,
so that's part of the equation as well.
But I think even bigger than that is tomorrow being the deadline day, him giving comments today, basically just reiterating
that. I felt like, I don't know if you guys listened to Trump much today, but I felt like
we got a little bit more details on some stuff. It was a little bit more detail than how it's been,
but outside of that, it's still the same confusion that we've been in for a while.
And I just think from the bigger picture of the markets, most people, I think, have priced
in their risk and positioned themselves accordingly and are waiting for the next update.
I don't think people are putting in much more risk on the table here.
And I think enough people are hedged
or comfortably, you know, positioned
where they feel comfortable until the news passes
that we're kind of just at a stalling point
until the next catalyst hits,
which was either, you know, possible escalation
or maybe some type of peace still ceasefire
that gets that straight open and flowing again.
So until we get that, I feel like we may just kind of chop here for a little bit.
You got any thoughts on MercadoLibre?
I know you're someone living in different parts of the world
and maybe everyone up here and you see them a little bit more.
Yeah, it's funny.
Thursday, I had to go to Starbucks for that stream,
and there was a Mercado Libre van passing by,
and I turned my camera around to show everyone as it came by.
Mercado Libre, I think, is a fantastic company.
Their growth is off the charts.
If Hamid was here, he could tell you that just from the fundamental side of things.
But my experience with them is fantastic.
They do everything.
They sell everything.
I think about them as being kind of like an Amazon, but also like a Facebook marketplace
slash eBay.
They have it all incorporated.
So you can get on MercadoLibre and find anything.
The local car dealerships list their cars for sale on MercadoLibre as well. So your used cars
are on there. You have your neighbor down the street selling some furniture or whatever it is.
He's putting that on there. And then obviously your full online marketplace like you think of
with Amazon. So it's got a little bit of everything.
And they're everywhere. I mean, it's all over Latin America. Their biggest challenges,
obviously, are some of the currency conversion stuff, the dollar moving around. So they do have the FX challenges that they run into a little bit. But just from a company, from a growth
perspective, they're incredible. I'm a huge fan of them. I use their products all the time. They also do like point of sell. So a lot of your like small businesses,
your, your, you know, local stores and mom and pop shops, stuff like that. They use, um,
Mercado Pago, which is like, um, like your point of sell system, uh, as well. So they have kind of
an online banking, essentially all built into it, both for the business side and for the consumer side. So they just check so many boxes
as a company. And then as far as like, if you look at the recent performance,
like have they pulled back a little bit? Yes, they have, but they also are, they're doubling
down. They're basically reinvesting for the future with all their cash stuff.
So to me, that seems like a good problem to have now.
Does that mean immediate growth?
No, not always, but it's typically a decent sign to see when you double down and you're
growing the way you're growing and you're still doubling down.
I don't have any concerns there, but I really like the company.
I know there's some other people that maybe have some better insights into some of the fundamental side of things there,
but a big fan of Melly, one of my top positions.
What about NewBank?
Is NewBank one that you watch or get to actually get any first-hand use of?
Yeah, so NewBank, pretty similar.
I mean, it's online banking only, essentially, is the digital bank.
I guess you could say it's akin to like a SoFi maybe for Latin America. They're rapidly expanding
everywhere. For those that don't know, maybe in the audience, I do live in Mexico and New Bank
is growing here like crazy. My thesis around these digital banks in Latin America is, is even bigger than just digital banks themselves.
I have a pretty strong thesis there, but first just new bank. Um, I mean,
there's, I pass a billboard every day for new bank. There's a,
I think I saw it was at Miami stadium, uh, the new soccer stadium,
I think is new bank stadium or new stadium or something like that. Um,
so they're growing and trying to get their name out there more.
But digital banking, they do very well.
The thing that I noticed, some metrics that came out on them not too long ago,
they actually had, as far as like customer complaints and resolutions and stuff,
they blow every legacy bank in Latin America out of the water.
So, I mean, everything from Santander, Scotiabank,
BBVA, all of those, they absolutely blow them out of the water on customer satisfaction,
all that stuff as well. And you have this generational shift. So what I think back to
just from the cultural generational side of things, you know, in the 2000s to 2010, maybe,
side of things, you know, in the 2000s to 2010, maybe credit cards just, I mean, they were a thing,
but they weren't just like an every everyday thing, like across the country in the US.
And people started getting more comfortable with them. They started expanding and became a bigger
and bigger thing. In Latin America, you have a lot of like, I would say probably the generation that's like 45 to 65 and up like
that generation, they had a lot of distrust of banks and their parents had a big distrust
of banks because of different things that had happened in a lot of Latin American countries.
The newer generation, so I would say probably, you know, young professionals, probably 35
and younger, they don't have that same like disdain
for the banks because they didn't grow up with like that same thing. Maybe they heard it from
their parents a little bit, but they don't have that same like distrust of banks where they're
keeping money, you know, under the mattress or in the closet or in a safe or whatever they're doing.
You know, they trust banks a lot more than the previous generation, and they're a lot more digital-minded.
So you're seeing, you know, like direct deposit and things like that, that caught on in the U.S.
maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago. You're seeing that, like, completely shift into this new
generation of acceptance in Latin American culture. So I'm very bullish on just the digital banking space in
general. And because of the legacy bank, like whatever you want to call it, kind of the disdain
for some of those banks, I think that the new bank, even what Mercado Libre is doing, and any
other digital bank type of service in Latin America is a huge opportunity for this generational shift to digital banking, which is about a generation behind the US, which is pretty common for a lot of emerging markets.
I do wonder, why doesn't the US just come in and more of these US companies take over?
Are there a lot of US fintechs and US companies?
Is PayPal available?
I don't know, necessarily.
But I can also see these being closed off markets.
Yeah, so you see PayPal, obviously, is global.
There's some services like that.
But just as far as like cross-border
banking is not…
Stablecoins, Ethereum…
That's the other… I mean, there's a huge… well, let's not go too far there. There's
a big push and a big, I guess, there's a lot of excitement over stablecoin and just crypto in general.
Because of the amount of travel between different countries in Latin America,
for example, across the entire world,
but especially as we're talking about Latin America here,
just being able to move money from one place to the other without the banks,
because it is a hassle because the cross-border banking is a tough thing.
And I don't really know why the U.S., maybe they just
don't see the same profit margins. Because, I mean, the same thing I was saying about like,
you know, the younger bank not, or the younger people not trusting, or I'm sorry, the younger
people trusting banks more than the older generation. Also, just debt in general, debt in
Latin America was a very like kind of, you know, it wasn't like a norm like it is in the U.S.
And it's still not like the U.S. as far as the just the way that they issue debt and are able to collect on debt.
And just the system that's set up in the U.S. is very foreign in a lot of other countries that they just don't have.
Like people just don't go into crazy debt to buy a car, to buy a boat, to buy their home, to, you know, for everything, essentially.
It's just it's a very different system.
People pay cash.
People don't borrow a lot of money and other banks.
But that is part of that cultural shift is starting to move a little bit more towards the American system.
Not crazily so because the American system is very far into the debt side compared to basically
anywhere else in the world. But maybe it's because of that, maybe because they didn't
see the same opportunities as far as the credit side of things where they can try to mitigate
risk and then obviously making money off the interest and stuff there as well. But
with these new digital banks, that's kind of the outlook that a lot of them are looking into is they're saying, hey, more and more
and more people are doing credit cards, more and more people are doing loans, and technology is
getting better to where they can, you know, basically track down, you know, track down people
and collect on these debts a little bit easier. The legal system is caught up as well. So like,
you know, in the past, it was tough to get a car loan in a lot of places in Latin America because they felt like they didn't have a good chance of repossessing that car if they needed to.
And obviously, new technologies have definitely helped shift that as well.
So I think that's another piece.
I am surprised that like, you know, you haven't seen, you know, SoFi or somebody try to expand.
Maybe it's a banking license or regulation thing or just they don't see enough opportunity.
But me personally, I see the opportunity and I think you're seeing these companies like
NewBank and MercadoLibre both really tapping into it as they try to expand all across,
you know, from Mexico all the way down to Argentina and Chile.
Chile. Chile.
It's Chile.
Chile.
Monitive.
Monitive, shout out to Ryan for the in-depth explanation there.
And honestly, we're going to be talking about a lot about MercadoLibre and that whole part of everything in the next couple of minutes or so.
But, Monty, I wonder if there were any other interesting stories for you today.
There was something around Intel.
We haven't talked about the Treasury Department announcing the designated Bank of New York Mellon as a financial agent to manage initial Trump accounts.
So BNY going to manage initial Trump accounts. So BNY going to
manage the Trump accounts, but what was interesting was BNY is partnering with Robinhood for the
design, the UI, and everything like that stuff. So it helped build your Robinhood at parts of the
day today. I know I was looking at seasonality as well. I was looking at April as one of the
better performing months for the stock market we shall see crowd strike
increase their share buyback program this morning was another thing i saw jp morgan jamie diamond
ceo came out with a full note this morning was there anything on your mind uh montif any other
stories that we haven't talked about that were interesting for you today that you kind of stood
not so much i'm still collating data know, there's a significant difference between facts and data and and LSEC basically definitive on expectations for the quarter, especially in technology. at a subsector level where those differences are they do roll up to about the same as far as
at an index level uh for snp but within sectors there's some significant difference especially
in information technology so that's that's where i've been spending all my time trying to
you know understand where the divergence is it's it normally there, but not this wide.
So that's what I've been looking at.
I did see the story about the Trump accounts.
BNY, I've traded BNY regularly.
I've invested in BNY regularly, but nothing to do with this.
It is just for information.
BNY was the first ticker listed on New York Stock Exchange.
So it's the oldest ticker.
And it's primarily a depository trust company.
it's a it's a you know primarily a depository trust company and uh it's it's uh it's less beta
than then then uh you know jpm or goldman sachs stuff so but um but it's been a reliable uh
investment for me i don't have a position i sold out a while ago unfortunately that was a mistake
position i sold out a while ago unfortunately that was a mistake uh but but i don't um i mean
i guess uh hood has fallen you know enough that this could be a nice bump i didn't see any bump
today from for hood from this news but maybe you know maybe there's something that uh that could be positive spin on this during earnings.
Other than that, let's see.
I mean, look, we are still my biggest worry this quarter is semis.
The expectations are still very high.
You know, at a sub sector level for semis, the expectation is for year over year you know um earnings for uh q1 to double
right 104 earnings growth uh this is lsec numbers so i'm sure the uh uh factset numbers are quite a
bit lower but that's a large growth and that that has to assume perfect execution.
And we have so many reports about data center projects getting delayed.
So while the news cycle might still be okay,
guidance might still be okay, I'm just worried short term whether the numbers land in one quarter versus another meaning you know do they get
pushed out and say you know what yeah we're we're late but we're gonna make it up next quarter two
quarters from now so that that is a risk that i'm trying to price in um that to me that's a
pretty significant risk that i don't see priced into semis yet. And that worries me. That keeps me awake.
Outside of that,
I think on the flip side of it,
the expectations for software
are low teens earnings growth
and high single digit revenue growth.
I think that's an easily beatable number, at least for the larger ones. So that's
another piece of the puzzle that I'm trying to fit in. Outside of that, I still think energy is
going to beat pretty low expectations as it stands. 5% earnings growth, I think is going to be handily beaten by energy and the guidance is going to be
uh you know massively um higher uh at least you know but but again you know when when price of
oil is already over a hundred dollars you know it's uh yeah we're we're gonna hear more and more
talk about you know demand destruction if it stays here too long or rounds up a lot
more than where it is.
Oh, one other thing, communication services, it's a huge divergence between FactSet and
Refinitiv numbers.
And again, that's something I need to reconcile because Refinitiv actually shows a negative earnings growth.
So that's going to be interesting if it is, because that's got to be a miss from one of
these two for because they're such a large part of communication services that either
meta or Google have to miss for that number to be negative.
So those are the kind of things that keep me awake
and keep me digging more data to see if there's any more information
that confirms or tosses that number out, right?
These are consensus numbers.
They will continue to change.
But as a marker, it's an important place to start.
And that's why I keep talking about this all the time
when I'm here during the running season.
That is fair.
Earnings season is interesting. We're two, three ish weeks away from it it's getting
pretty close i'm excited i'm excited to hear uh a week and a half a week and a half there you go
yeah we're we're gonna start with earnings already tomorrow and day after so you know
snp uh earnings are are starting to come out.
Banks start, you know.
Strangely enough, I think, you know,
it's one of those rare quarters
where Goldman Sachs is before, you know,
JPM and Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
So it's going to be interesting.
I am curious, Mr. Ryan
how important is news for you
in your trading style
trading in general
how important is
earnings
I'm curious on where you rate it
yeah I mean from a day to day perspective
like for day trading
to me I'm in the camp that the news will just take a chart kind of where it's trying to go either way.
Obviously, there's, you know, headline type of stuff.
In the current market we're in, it's very headline risk.
And we are getting close to like what I call like news fatigue or news exhaustion where each headline kind of just has a little bit
less reaction, a little bit less reaction. And then the earnings piece of it, though,
when I think about like swing trading or position trading, I guess, if you're like an active
investor, obviously, I do think the earnings are very important for those kind of things.
Like I'm not as like if I'm just taking a trade on a stock, I'm not going to look at it. And the only thing I'm going to look at is the,
okay, earnings are coming up. I need to make sure and, you know, either be trimmed out of a position
or adjust for volatility and, you know, the extra IV that's baked in to the options and stuff. But
that's about all I look at it for in just a straight up trade.
But if in more of like a portfolio, like longer swing trades or, you know, positions, yes, I
definitely because I think you have to keep up with the story of the stock a little bit. Now,
I mean, if you're running, you know, 30, 40, 50 different stocks, I don't know how you really
do it. And I mean, I guess AI is helping that a little bit, but you know, there, there's certain things that like, if, if growth's going on, yeah,
I want to know that if there's problems, like I, I go to that earnings hub, you know, a lot of
times and I'll, I'll look at just the positive and negatives from the last few conference calls.
Okay. What are they, what's going well and what are they fighting for? And what am I looking for
in this next report? And then I just talked to smart people on here on Stocks on Spaces and, you know, get updates that way as well. So yeah, it does matter
in some cases, but I don't think it necessarily, unless it's, so I think Stock Talk says this a
lot, unless it's like thesis changing, I don't think it matters that much. And that's why I even
asked him like a few weeks back,
I said, hey, how fast do you react to news? If it breaks the thesis, are you going to, you know,
do you give it a day, 48 hours, 72 hours, like, you know, before you say, hey, it's time to cut the,
you know, cut the position or take profits and walk away from it. So that's kind of where I'm at,
I guess, in the news side of things.
That is fair. That is fair. Shaz, Stock Market News, wonderful news source, great account.
There was a decent amount, like it felt like a quiet day. I guess it was maybe on the geopolitical front in a way. But there was like some decent, just random headlines around some different things. I don't know
how much you went over, but I knew you were asking Monitiv there a little bit. Like Amazon
reaching a deal with USPS I thought was kind of interesting because that had been kind
of floating over their heads a little bit as they were kind of, you know, talked about developing some more of their own network
versus continuing to use USPS.
So that headline.
The other one, ticker U,
which is the clear, you know, that does, yeah,
that does the, you know, the airport security stuff.
Yeah, you could have meant ticker actual letter U or Y-O-U.
Y-O-U.
Where's that stock at?
Let's see.
It was like in the 50s today, I think.
Interesting.
That's where I haven't pictured in my mind.
Yeah, yeah.
So it had a good day on Thursday.
Popped into a little bit of a gap today.
Kind of cleared some previous highs from back in February.
So not to all-time high, but
still very constructive chart here, pushing off the EMAs. The reason I bring it up is because
the headline that came out, Trump administration was proposing cutting more than 9,400 TSA workers
and really leaning more into the clear technology was what I was reading in that headline. So
and really leaning more into the clear technology was what I was reading in that headline.
So interesting piece there and a stock that a lot of people, I think, have been talking about,
at least since the government shutdown.
And is it maybe getting ahead of itself? Possibly.
Possibly. But it is currently being looked at in a different manner.
I mean, this thing was trading at $20 back, you know, a year ago last summer
and has doubled since then.
It's really, it was trading in the 30s back in February
before the shutdown stuff hit everything.
So, but there's definitely some interest there,
ticker YOU, that's clear, secure,
that does all the TSA stuff.
That one was interesting to me.
What else did I say?
I saw ASTS and Meta.
There's some speculation around a LinkedIn post
that they may have an expanding partnership coming.
And then what was the OpenAI one on track to IPO?
There was some ORBS, I believe,
was getting some volume today on that.
You know what I learned?
Dan Ives is no longer with Orbs.
Oh, really?
Did not know that, yeah.
Oh, I interviewed him the other day, and actually, if you guys want to go see it,
Wolf's financial YouTube page video is going on there.
Actually, a 2 out of 10 right now, which is good on YouTube.
But yeah, I asked him about it.
I was like, yep, I'm not with it.
I went on looks.
There's a headline from like two weeks ago.
No one really talked about it, but he's not.
The other non-geopolitical headline that stuck out to me was the U.S. courts were siding with Kalski today
and opening the door for some more federal regulation around these prediction markets
as it pertains to sports betting, which that's been kind of a big question.
And obviously we saw, I think there was a poly market that went up around the pilot that was recovered
that they apologized for and took down and all that stuff.
And these prediction markets are still the Wild west, but they're the new technology. And I think federal regulation is needed and taking steps in that direction,
I think is actually going to be a net positive for, for Calci and Polymarket, obviously Robin
Hood and some of these others that do this, do that. And then it could be a net negative for
some of your traditional sports books, like, like your DraftKings and, you know, Penn Entertainment
or whatever they're called now.
So that one kind of stuck out to me a little bit because the courts took Kalshi's side and basically,
you know, they're opening the door to try to get the federal, you know, some federal regulation around this new technology.
I imagine we're getting prediction markets IPOs this year.
No one's talking about it.
Let's check the polymarket odds, the calci odds,
if they're going to go public this year.
For prediction markets?
Yeah, when they're going to IPO.
I'd put money on them going public this year.
Maybe it's a next year thing, and I'm just overshooting it a little bit.
But these companies are increasing valuation pretty quickly.
I think they're in the 20s of billions maybe now.
I know for sure it was 10 to 12.
I think I've seen rumors of like 25.
I think you wait for federal regulation before you IPO personally.
That just seems to make the most sense to me.
Let's get some actual guidelines around what these things are going to be.
If I'm an investor, like a big fund manager institution, I probably want
something similar before I really start focusing on that. Obviously, you can look at like Robinhood
that has just a fraction of their business there and say, okay, well, as long as they're getting
revenue from there, we can kind of calculate that in. But until you have some true regulation,
I feel like maybe hold off on the IPO.
Plus the IPO talk of the year, whether those happen or not,
it's going to be the two that we mentioned earlier.
SpaceX, which there was a headline around them with somebody else today too.
The T-Mobile deal, they said that was a small,
it was only $100 million or something like that.
A lot smarter, a lot smaller than previously thought, I think, on the T-Mobile.
SpaceX still, but SpaceX this summer and OpenAI, the other one for Q4.
I think those are going to be your clock of the town for IPOs this entire year.
We're going to be talking, Melly.
We're going to be talking, what questions do you think I should make sure I ask as we roll into this next hour
here, Ryan?
I know you might have stock fix.
Yeah, I do have to jump to stock fix here in just a second.
Definitely, I mean, the growth, I think, is what just jumps off the chart at me the most.
Like, asking about that.
Opportunities in emerging markets.
And then, obviously, the headwinds of currency. It's always
been the thing with Latin American companies is they can do what they can to try to hedge
against things. But obviously, if you're hedging, it means you're basically buying insurance some
way or another. But they're essentially having to hedge against the dollar and what it's doing. So the currency side of things would be interesting. And then obviously
the growth, the market opportunity is what most interests me about those companies. So definitely
getting, you know, Korean shares. I actually got to ask, I'm not sure if it's Henry or who's coming
on with you this afternoon, but I had some really good conversation with him the other day around a lot of this as well.
So excited for you to have that on here for the audience.
I am looking forward to it.
I'm changing the title right now, Mercado Libre Deep Dive.
And I am excited for this conversation here.
As always, make sure you are following the speakers.
Shout out Ryan, shout out the Wolf account, Stockpark News account.
Monitive is fantastic, awesome, and amazing as always.
Not that the other people aren't, but yeah.
And if you enjoy live free conversations, make sure you are following the host of the spaces.
We are going to shift here in a second into a little bit of a deep dive into Mercado Libre. Talk a little bit of
LATAM, talk about a little bit of international stocks. We have the Crane Shares team joining us
up here. I do want to read something quickly out before because I think we might talk about some
more ticker specific stuff. And, you know, like I said,
we are live every single Monday through Thursday,
3 to 5 p.m. Eastern, at least for free
for three years right now.
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But show goes on.
Awesome panel.
We appreciate everyone for joining us.
But our goal is to create as much free content as possible.
And we work with really, really smart companies
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And who better to talk about these international markets than them doing some deep research in the space.
But as we do talk about these tickers, investors should carefully consider a fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses before investing.
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documents should be right carefully before investing. We are excited to be working with
the crane shares team. A lot of you guys will know them for payweb, which
is the China internet ETF that they have. There is also, you know, a bunch of other
ones. One of the ones that we're going to focus into in on today, in the series that
we're going to focus in on today is the tweet pinned up in the nest above around some of
the two X names. And there's a lot of China names, the two X PD PDD, Alibaba, JD, Baidu.
But the fifth one in this one, or maybe the first one, as you could say it,
doesn't really fit that same theme, and it's MercadoLibre.
So, yeah, I am excited to dig in more into this conversation here,
bring on an expert in the space, and just ask some of the questions.
But who do we have behind the CraneShares account today?
Hey, it's Henry Green, senior investment strategist.
How are you guys doing?
Fantastic, Henry.
I appreciate you for joining us.
We can jump right into it.
I want to talk some Mercado Libre today.
I want to talk a little bit of Latin America.
And it's a very interesting stock. It's a it's a name that Finn Twit is
very interested in. And I am excited to kind of pick your brains and pick your thoughts
on it. As I was saying, crane shares, you guys got the two X ETF, KMLI is the ticker.
But I'm just curious more on on, you know, I think of you guys as a company that focuses
on China. Why is Latin America a place of interest for you guys to kind of break out of that?
Why is Mercado Libre specifically kind of the one we started in this area?
What is interesting about both of those, Latin America as a whole and then Mercado Libre?
We appreciate you for joining in.
Yeah, sure.
So, you know, a lot of people know us for our flagship fund, K-Web, which is China Internet. And really what we saw happening in China was the growth of e-commerce, how more spending was happening online, how people, as they entered the middle class, moved to urban areas and their incomes were rising. Standards of living were
rising. And as this was happening, they were kind of leapfrogging over legacy ways of spending money.
So, you know, instead of going from a local market to a big box store, like what happened
in the United States, they completely skipped over that big box store, like what happened in the United States. They completely skipped over
that big box store phase and went straight into e-commerce, right? So we said, okay,
the way to capture this consumption growth in China really is through e-commerce, because more
of the spending is going to be happening online. People are foregoing things like credit cards,
things like big box stores to go straight to that e-commerce, to that digital wallet, right? And so we had some success with this theme in China.
We looked into the rest of the world and said, well, this could be happening elsewhere, right?
And just MercadoLibre completely came on our radar when we were building a different ETF
called KEMQ, which takes that K-Web thesis and expands
it to broader emerging markets beyond China, right?
And then, so MercadoLibre is the top holding in that ETF.
And then obviously, we launched relatively recently the 2X MercadoLibre, K-N-L-I ETF.
And so I think it was more an interest in the e-commerce space in emerging markets
rather than specifically in Latin America.
So we were more specifically focused on Mercado Libre.
Nonetheless, Latin America is certainly a very interesting region of the world,
very important within emerging markets. What are the growth opportunities you see here for
MercadoLibre? So is it as simple as just e-commerce growth? I know we were talking earlier about
someone who actually lives in Mexico and they were talking about the kind of how it works its way into the payments processing part of this. I know I believe Mercado Libre,
or maybe I'm thinking of Walmart, there's also like corner stores, there's physical things. I'm
just, I'm curious of like, where are the actual growth engines here for Mercado Libre and
both in the revenue side of it, but also the profit side?
in the revenue side of it, but also the profit side.
Yeah, sure.
So a couple of things I think going on, right?
MercadoLibre is doing a lot with,
they have this MercadoPago FinTech service.
And that they are projecting that
to provide significant growth.
I was actually recently on a conference
call with one of their investor relations leads and spent a lot of time analysts were asking a
lot about this. And it's interesting because it hasn't really been, I think, talked a lot about
in the scope of their business, but they've actually been underwriting debt in some fashion
for the past 10 years using their own internal credit reporting. So this is something we see
happening a lot with e-commerce companies, especially in emerging markets, because people
are unbanked sometimes. In many cases, the use of such a platform is the first time someone is entering into the non-cash financial system.
And so that's huge.
And like a lot of these companies, Alibaba is being a great example, figured out that they could they now had they were developing this data on people who didn't have a credit score for example
right like we all have uh in the united states uh or elsewhere in the developed world right
and so a lot of this was seen as an opportunity in a lot of e-commerce for a lot of e-commerce
players in a lot of emerging markets um some of them executed successfully alibaba is one um
successfully Alibaba is one although of course they didn't end up listing and
financial you know another I think and then there was also Jumia in in in
Africa their execution I haven't looked at them recently but I remember their
execution on this wasn't that great and then Mercado Libre was kind of a
sleeper in this but yeah they've been underwriting credit for 10 years and that's really interesting to me and they see this as a
significant growth engine for them going forward looking at there's actually very low penetration
of things of products like credit cards lines of credit in even in Mexico, this guy was saying, right? And so that's a big growth story
for them too. And then just overall, I think they're really spending a lot and not just on
this banking the unbanked fintech platform, but just generally, I think in a lot of technology investments,
logistics investments, they increased a lot of investment in Argentina, which is some would
consider their home market. Obviously, there's been a volatile market and economy recently,
and they just announced they're investing $11 billion in Brazil in, again,
in logistics, financial services, technology, all of the above, right? So really the market is,
is, it seems to be focusing on, I mean, because it sucks down 18%, I think, from January high.
The market's been just focusing on, wow, they're spending a lot, wow, they're,
you know, it's eating into their profitability, you know, and not focusing on what they could
be building, which is a, you know, state of the art cross border, well, international, financial services and e-commerce, powerhouse with relatively little competition, right?
They get some competition from Walmart.
There are a couple other players, but no one with their, I don't think there's anyone quite in the region with their scale.
And I've read that. Why do you think we don't see there's anyone quite in the region with their scale.
And I've read that.
Why do you think we don't see that type of site?
But I'm sitting here thinking, why doesn't Amazon come in and go around the world and take all these companies out?
What is the... I'm sure, what are some of the differences?
I mean, they try to. I think Walmart and Amazon both, I believe, have some e-commerce businesses in Latin America. I think that Mercado Libre just has this knowledge of the domestic market. They've been doing this for a long time. They have a network effect.
They have, I mean, for a lot of these things, you need licenses, certainly for the banking side, right, from local authorities.
They've invested so much time in getting through all of that and building this infrastructure, not just physical infrastructure, but like even just relationships and licenses and, you know, human capital networks, right? And so I think, yeah,
they will see some, it's an interesting question, right? You would think, yeah, these guys could
get, could come in because after all, it's not that big, right? Amazon's still a lot larger and
Walmart's still a lot larger, but I think lot larger but I think it's I think it's
their local expertise and the fact that they've been in in these economies in these communities
for a long time now I think that I think that goes a long way I really do and then again Latin
America is not a single market I mean I alluded to this already but there's not a single market
so you need all kinds
of different licenses from all kinds of different from different countries um which can be a
challenge um for you know companies um based in the u.s big single market u.s and canada
european union you know that doesn't really exist in latin america so, we'll see. We'll see. They could see a lot of competition, but for now, they've been pretty solid.
This is an interesting one. We were talking earlier about this as well, and Monitve actually
brought up that sometimes MercadoLibre could be a pretty big post-earnings mover in the past.
You can have some of those big swings, which I know for people trading it could be a fun time.
Maybe sometimes stress sometimes is pure enjoyment for the people holding it.
But I know for the people trading it, it can be an interesting one.
Obviously, with the 2x ETF, these are meant to be traded a little bit more.
So we'll see.
See if it has those times.
Those tweets are pinned up with an S above.
What was the ETF you were talking about earlier that you guys were doing the Mercado Libre research for?
Yeah, KEMQ is the ticker there. emerging markets technology takes the K-Web thesis and applies it to the rest of emerging markets,
i.e. spending growth for the global middle class is on the rise everywhere within emerging markets
specifically. So you want to be allocated to the e-commerce companies, the technology companies that are going to be the transmission engines, so to speak, for this spending growth.
And now we've been able to tweak the portfolio a little bit just to capture more of this kind of AI theme that's really important.
that's really important. And so now we include some of the chip makers like Taiwan Semiconductor
in there in the portfolio as well. So yeah, it's an interesting fund again, ticker KEMQ.
If you guys want to check it out. Yeah, it's a great one. Mercado Libre is the top holding in there.
14th largest. I'm looking at it right now. This is why you guys should go to the website.
Super easy to dig around and have some fun to look at.
You know, this could be a good ETF for you. This could be the theme you're looking for at a minimum.
It's a product that people who are doing deep research in this space put in together.
They also have weightings on here so they
tell you how interested they are relative to other ones um and i think there's a lot of good
information about digging into these so again crane shares.com uh and then you can dig your
way around kemq is the etf we're talking about here largest holding jd then mayuton, Mayushin. I don't know really that one.
Yeah, what is the second one? Mayuton. Maytuan is China, Chinese e-commerce.
Traditionally focused on food delivery, kind of like Grubhub.
I hear the Chinese delivery apps are pretty crazy. You get them super quick and it's all just in Alipay or something.
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah. I hear that is a wild experience.
I like it.
I'm looking at the holdings here.
I like this.
I'm going to buy a little bit tomorrow.
I like it.
It's got all the ones we talked about earlier.
It's got all the ones we talked about earlier, you know, C-Limited, Coupang, MercadoLibre, and then you have a whole bunch of Chinese companies.
This is brilliant.
I'm going to take a shot at it tomorrow.
D-Local.
There's a lot of companies I have small positions in, and this is worth adding.
There's a lot of companies I have small positions in, and this is worth adding.
How did you come up with the percentage allocation into individual names?
So we have an index that's calculated by Selective. It's a combination of theme scores
as well as some market cap and liquidity weightings.
There's caps too.
So like there's constituents can only be 3%.
Approximately.
I mean, it rebalances
so it can go over.
And then country-wise.
Single countries are kept at 40.
I'm a huge fan of selective indexes.
That's actually a great place
to start your research on thematics.
But I've always had this question.
So, you know, if you're looking at a thematic,
over the life of the thematic, you know,
different parts of the industry and sector, you know,
change focus and outperform,
does the index take that into account and actively change those?
Like, for example, we started with just semis in AI, and then we moved on, added power and electrical, a whole bunch of other things, and then memory.
but they started much later than when the semi started.
But they started much later than when the semis started.
So, you know, a static index is only about as valuable as a certain time in the thematic.
So is this going to be actively managed?
Yeah, that's a great question. So this, to start off, this is a dynamic index in the sense that it will, if there's a company that reaches the minimum market cap, is classified in, I think it's internet retail, software services, purchase, payment processing,
Yeah, that's a great question.
software, internet. One of these, there are a bunch of kind of keywords. And if it's classified,
if it can be classified in one of those and it reaches a certain markup, then it will go into
the index, right? So it's not static in the sense that it only has the same group of companies,
but there is a limited definition, limited window through which
companies can be added. What we did recently and what we do periodically for all our funds,
even though they are passive, we work with the index providers to get the exposures that we want and that our clients want. So we are able to
periodically, this is why they have index reviews and index rebalances, we are able to periodically
change the rules in an index a little bit. And so we do actively go in and do that when we see necessary. We did this, I think, a year ago to include some of the chip makers that were very
important for this theme, for example. So we'll do little things like this. But nonetheless,
it's not active. It is a passively managed fund. we do that to keep the costs low for our clients, as well as, you know, stay
true to our theme.
You know, this is, we still believe this is a, you know, a long-term secular growth theme,
right?
We don't think we need to be doing such active stock picking to capture that.
But no, it is a passive fund.
It will remain.
No, I appreciate that question there.
That is a fair response as well.
And we were talking about adding some of the semiconductor stocks.
I see SK Hynek's here, which has been in the memory space, has been a really interesting one.
There's obviously also conversations about a possible IPO, a U.S. listing.
How are you guys getting exposure to these foreign names?
So a variety of ways.
In many cases, we'll buy the ADR.
So like SEA, we have the ADR.
That's the U.S. listing.
In some cases, we'll buy the local listing.
For example, for Taiwan Semiconductor, that's a local listing.
And yeah, one or the other.
uh yeah one or the other so we don't really have a preference um generally speaking we prefer
So we don't really have a preference.
local listings um where they're accessible to the usadrs um just because it gives our clients um
you know it's easier for us to access those local listings um through the fund um you know oftentimes
you have clients saying we're unable to access listing themselves um or and also um that is
generally the index that's so msci and index provider that is generally their standard is to
prefer uh the local listings but many companies just don't have a local listing and it wouldn't make sense, right? So like Mercado Libre, like we were talking about, they're in ADR only. They have a U.S.
listing only. And that makes sense for them because they're, I mean, they do business in
many different markets. It's unclear where, apart from New York, you know, it would make sense for
them to be listed. So yeah, preference for local listing, but ends up being a lot of US ADRs as well.
Yeah, it is very interesting.
We were talking about, again, PEMQ there.
Maybe you want to look into it.
It's an interesting one.
Yeah, but MercadoLibre, I want to come back to this one a little bit.
Is there any part of the story that we kind of missed here that we haven't touched on yet?
E-commerce is the underlying kind of strength there.
I wonder if there's anything around that feels like one of the first real main businesses,
e-commerce and payments processing and that whole part of it feels like the kind of theme across the world here.
I'm curious of what else MercadoLibre is specifically in
that maybe is different than some of these other ones
or maybe more similar if there's other underlying businesses
and stuff that is really happening here.
Do we have AWS, Alibaba Cloud?
We have MercadoLibre Cloud.
Is that a thing?
I could see it.
I could definitely see it.
I don't think so at the moment.
I think that's one of the things that has hurt their stock price is that they're really laser focused on e-commerce and payments.
And that's great, and I think that's fine.
But everybody's looking for this AI story now. And you get it with the Alibabas of the world,
you know what I mean? Whereas MercadoLibre, they don't have this broader... I don't believe that they they may have something I don't want to say they have nothing
but they're really not in AI play
You know, I guess you know, I mean
It's a it's tough question like what is and isn't an AI play these days is like you could say oh
these days is like you could say oh maybe they're using AI for some kind of you know their
Maybe they're using AI for some kind of you know, they're
I don't know credit assessments or what have you but but you know they don't they don't have a huge
a huge class like Alibaba has a massive cloud services division they have one of the state-of-the-art
world-class large language models like there's no Mercado Libre is not gonna have anything like that
and so I think it's I think it's gotten ignored a little bit you know and and and I think that's unfortunate and
I think and I think but I think that's also an opportunity right for for the
company for the stock because it's just it's it's it's it's been like it's been
left out of this AI trade you know and rightly so it's and that's not really
their wheelhouse but you know people are gonna want to trade, you know, and rightly so. It's not really their wheelhouse. But, you know, people are going to want to remember that, you know,
the emerging markets, the middle class and emerging markets still growing,
you know, that's still a theme, right?
And I think especially when you see, if we see growth come back in China too,
that's going to bump up some of those headline numbers for like Alibaba,
JD, the Chinese ones. And I think that'll
help people get more interested again in this, you know, rising consumer theme, which would then,
you know, potentially help the stock, right? But yeah, they're really laser focused on these
things. And I think it's, and it makes sense because in Latin, look, I mean,
in Latin America, you have e-commerce penetration is still very low. And unbanked penetration is
very low, is very high. The percent unbanked, I don't know exactly what it is, but it's relatively
high. It's certainly higher than it is in east asia uh and obviously
not quite as low as it is in africa but um you know there's still i think there's still a huge
opportunity there um bridging some of that um i just think um it's great and i think it's
undervalued again they're spending a lot and that's what the market is focusing on.
Right. And where are they spending? They're not spending on sexy themes like AI.
They're spending on, you know, growing logistics infrastructure in Colombia, you know, like so I think it gets left out for that reason.
I think it gets left out for that reason.
Interesting.
I'm curious also, as we're talking about these international markets here,
currency is one that becomes a conversation in general.
I'm curious on how you guys look at that
and just in general take into consideration everything you're doing.
take into consideration everything you're doing yes so we generally don't
currency hedge our products that's something you see we don't do that
generally and for a couple reasons I mean number one a lot some a lot of our
you know tickers are priced.
The tickers are in dollars, so that helps a little bit.
Obviously, the underlying revenues are almost completely in local currencies,
so there is a currency impact there.
But we are of the opinion that that's part of providing that exposure. So when people want to expose, you know, people want China exposure, you want to be exposed
to the currency, right?
You know, it's just, you know, you could you could try to go into China and then hedge
the currency exposure.
And some people do that.
But again, if you're a long term structural investor
in China, and China's not the only example, but you would probably assume you would be
at least have a stable or long outlook on the currency. So that's our view. And I think recently, certainly last year, last year the US dollar
declined versus a basket of major trading partners, i.e., which is the Bloomberg dollar
index. And that was really the first time in a long time that we saw significant dollar declines.
And I think that's the start of a trend where the dollar is going to be a little bit weaker.
Obviously, okay, right now the dollar got stronger because there's a conflict in the Middle East, a serious one.
But other than that, I think that the dollar dynamics have been in favor of local currencies of larger economies, stronger economies like China.
And I think you've seen this happening. Right.
So. Yeah, again, we don't hedge currency.
um uh yeah again we don't hedge currency i think it it it becomes more complicated i think certainly
in latin america um there so for mercado libre and i think that's also another risk
to mercado libre is just their underlying revenues are denominated in many different currencies, including very volatile ones,
historically volatile ones, such as the Argentine peso. Even the Brazilian real can be volatile,
but it's been relatively stable. So that is a special risk, I think, with a company like
Mercado Libre. But you and, but you're always taking
that. That's, that's, you know, part of the game in emerging markets and it can, but it can, but
again, it can swing both ways. People who were very exposed to local currencies last year, you
know, um, did very well. Um, right. So it can really swing both ways. I don't have an outlook for China.
I don't have an outlook for Argentina and Brazil.
Unfortunately, we don't.
But, you know, it's part of the risk, part of the game.
Certainly, but Mercado Lib libre is interesting with the currency risk because uh it's just it gets revenue in so many different um countries
so it's very hard to say but on with china chinese names no i think i think um we're
looking at a pretty stable if not appreciating randomly versus us dollar Can I ask you, is there anything that we didn't talk about on this conversation that you think
if we're talking about MercadoLibre, if we're talking about e-commerce, that you think needs
to be a part of that conversation?
I mean, I think we covered a lot. You know, I'm still, I'm always watching this stock.
I think it's, you know, again, I just think they're spending a lot.
The stock is down.
I think it's, I think this is a broader trend where,
even with Alibaba,
with all of the excitement around our cloud division and AI services,
I think that there's a very,
there's so much intense competition in specifically e-commerce, right?
That you need to spend a lot, certainly in China.
And I think where Mercado Libre is operating too
and I think that people are paying for growth in in very specific areas right now they're paying
for it like for you know hardware chips, semiconductors for AI.
Right.
I would say in some cases overpaying for growth in those areas.
Right.
And people are not paying for growth for investment in things like e-commerce that need a lot
of investment and are very competitive right now, especially in China.
And I presume in Latin America as well.
And so I think that is a slight distortion
that I've seen in the market recently.
And that could change.
Could definitely change.
So I would just keep a look out for that kind of,
I think, dichotomy there.
But yeah.
I appreciate you for joining us, Mr. Henry.
Again, the CraneShares team, you guys know them for a lot of stuff like KWeb.
We're talking about international markets, emerging markets, e-commerce, the internet,
all of those stuff here.
In this conversation, we were talking a lot about MercadoLibre.
Some tweets pinned up in the nest above, which has a couple of the ETFs.
KMLI is a 2X MercadoLibre ETF.
If any of you traders out there who enjoy owning 2X ETFs or swing trading them,
we'll see when you get the right market.
Obviously, it needs to be the right market for these 2X ETFs.
But if you didn't know, that does exist. And then we also spent a little bit of time here talking
about KEMQ. KEMQ is the Crane Shares Emerging Markets Consumer Technology ETF. Henry was saying
this is one kind of born out of the K-Web ideology, but more around the world and global,
which is a very interesting one. And I hope we can actually dig in a little bit deeper
on this one in the future.
But that also got a good amount of the conversation on this one here.
So KEMQ, KMLI, or the ETFs we probably talked about the most on this one.
Craneshares.com is a great place to go in and do your research.
Henry, anything you want to leave the people with as they are digging into some of the
stuff that we've talked about today?
Any kind of final words as we close up spaces after this?
I think we covered a lot.
I think that's great.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks.
Awesome.
Have a great one, everyone.
Follow that CraneShares account.
Post a lot of really great stuff.
Fantastic conversation.
And let us know if you guys have any questions and we can ask
it in the future on these spaces.
I'm sure the CraneShares team, is there
like an email or something or is there like a
chat box on the website?
There's always a compliance thing here, but are there any
compliance-friendly places for
people to reach out and questions? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can email
us at
info at crane shares.com.
And we'll see it.
A member of our team will be able to quarterback that for you.
And we'll try our best to get back to you.
In fact, we encourage it.
So feel free.
Info at crane shares.com.
Yes.
There you go. Go check it out. If you guys have any questions here,
but honestly you guys are in a position where if you just send them to us, I'll ask them on here
and you'll get them answered. Anyway, have a great one everyone. I hope you guys enjoy your day. I
appreciate you all for hanging out with us. There's another space going on in that Wolf
financial account right now, which if you guys want more more content you can go in and hang out
over there I might go in and chill out there for another little bit and then
yeah obviously again we'll run it all back again tomorrow have a great one
everyone
Shots of Cran shares appreciate you guys Thank you.
