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Is Big Tech In Another Bubble?

Published

9 years ago

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Is Big Tech In Another Bubble?

Is Big Tech In Another Bubble?

“It’s different this time.”

Right now all the talk is about big tech IPOs – particularly with Alibaba completing the biggest IPO ever and companies like Uber moving towards $40 billion valuations.

Warren Buffett says that in business, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield. To this point, we would have to agree: even though it may feel like this time it is different, there may be something unexpected hidden that clouds our collective judgement. We may have another tech bubble on our hands.

Detractors will say that companies in the Dotcom bust spent too much money too fast, and that everything was speculative. That, in today’s market, companies are making real ground on revenue and earnings growth, and companies are more scalable than ever.

However, we would point out that it is many of the things that make startups scalable that also could lead to the demise of big tech. Technology moves so fast that all it takes is an idea to disrupt their business model. Yahoo! purchased Geocities in January 1999 for $3.57 billion and now Geocities does not exist. Why? Because the business model got outdated very fast – platforms such as WordPress allowed people to build sites without the embedded advertising and hosting got way cheaper. This all happened over the course of a few years, and it was a game changer.

Do we expect that companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Uber, Lyft, Amazon, and Alibaba to be around in the same capacity in 10 years? What will their maturity look like, especially as technology continues to change? How will this affect valuations for more speculative IPOs?

Original graphic from: WhoIsHostingThis.com

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Markets

Charted: What are Retail Investors Interested in Buying in 2023?

What key themes and strategies are retail investors looking at for the rest of 2023? Preview: AI is a popular choice.

Published

2 hours ago

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September 25, 2023

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A cropped bar chart showing the various options retail investors picked as part of their strategy for the second half of 2023.

Charted: Retail Investors’ Top Picks for 2023

U.S. retail investors, enticed by a brief pause in the interest rate cycle, came roaring back in the early summer. But what are their investment priorities for the second half of 2023?

We visualized the data from Public’s 2023 Retail Investor Report, which surveyed 1,005 retail investors on their platform, asking “which investment strategy or themes are you interested in as part of your overall investment strategy?”

Survey respondents ticked all the options that applied to them, thus their response percentages do not sum to 100%.

Where Are Retail Investors Putting Their Money?

By far the most popular strategy for retail investors is dividend investing with 50% of the respondents selecting it as something they’re interested in.

Dividends can help supplement incomes and come with tax benefits (especially for lower income investors or if the dividend is paid out into a tax-deferred account), and can be a popular choice during more inflationary times.

Investment StrategyPercent of Respondents
Dividend Investing50%
Artificial Intelligence36%
Total Stock Market Index36%
Renewable Energy33%
Big Tech31%
Treasuries (T-Bills)31%
Electric Vehicles 27%
Large Cap26%
Small Cap24%
Emerging Markets23%
Real Estate23%
Gold & Precious Metals23%
Mid Cap19%
Inflation Protection13%
Commodities12%

Meanwhile, the hype around AI hasn’t faded, with 36% of the respondents saying they’d be interested in investing in the theme—including juggernaut chipmaker Nvidia. This is tied for second place with Total Stock Market Index investing.

Treasury Bills (30%) represent the safety anchoring of the portfolio but the ongoing climate crisis is also on investors’ minds with Renewable Energy (33%) and EVs (27%) scoring fairly high on the interest list.

Commodities and Inflation-Protection stocks on the other hand have fallen out of favor.

Come on Barbie, Let’s Go Party…

Another interesting takeaway pulled from the survey is how conversations about prevailing companies—or the buzz around them—are influencing trades. The platform found that public investors in Mattel increased 6.6 times after the success of the ‘Barbie’ movie.

Bud Light also saw a 1.5x increase in retail investors, despite receiving negative attention from their fans after the company did a beer promotion campaign with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Given the origin story of a large chunk of American retail investors revolves around GameStop and AMC, these insights aren’t new, but they do reveal a persisting trend.

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