If we put the foot down on China, which is sure seems like that is the direction we are heading, are people prepared to pay the crazy prices that are going to go with that? + inflation?

Tom Lee says “July chop” is over. Expects strong rally in “Epicenter stocks” over the second half of the year based on the relative performance to the SP500 past 45 days. How can they be back to Dec 2020 levels?

AND the fact that the Delta variant cases are rolling over decisively in the UK after 45 days. The US is 33 days into the surge and should peak over the next two weeks

For those playing along at home please note the difference in “the market” and “sectors of the market” he expects to rally. This is one analyst. What does your team have to say ? Lol

395092D2-4A8B-4C48-A51C-BD3411327FEE (resized).jpeg

Thanks! I had bought more DIDI! With that said, I'm not betting the farm on it and am down about $400.

The CCIV--> LCID Ticker change happened and the stocks up about 8% right now. I am still slowly diversifying the stock portion of my portfolio with VIGAX top stocks.

Stock portfolio now includes:
Microsoft
Apple
Amazon
Facebook
Google Class A
Google Class C
Tesla
NVIDIA
VISA
Home Depot
McDonalds
Boeing

LCID
DIDI

All this tells me is you would be better in a index fund.

Thanks Ice, so if I look at this, I cant tell what sectors he thinks will improve, as everything is still going down, or is he saying, if its in the chart, these are the sectors to watch?

XLI, XLB, XLE......

Picked up some DAL Delta, and NCLH today. Two nice Epicenter plays. Delta CEO pounding the table with excitement.

Last week I bought a bit of BITF, a bitcoin farming company, it shot up 30% today! Crypto in general has had a great couple days.

Big Tech earnings on the agenda today. Going higher or sell the news? Hmm... maybe the latter. Casinos are on sale here, easy 15% or more higher before the end of the year. Also put Uber on your radar, Delta variant may make it a cheap bet.

I'm always buying gambling stocks on sale. BALY, MCRI, SGMS, MGM and RRR. I even bought TSLA early yesterday just to jinx it. Even though they had spectacular earnings and revenue it tanked this morning. Of course the usual suspects raised their guidance on the stock.

What’s your thesis for buying PCG?

I'm still waiting patiently on the sidelines for all this chop to pass or turn into a steep correction.

Yeah it looks like it is going to keep going down. I missed the last one, hoping to catch this one.

My goodness those AAPL earnings.

EPS: $1.30 vs. $1.01 estimated
Revenue: $81.41 billion vs. $73.30 billion estimated, up 36% year-over-year
iPhone revenue: $39.57 billion vs. $34.01 billion estimated, up 49.78% year-over-year
Services revenue: $17.48 billion vs. $16.33 billion estimated, up 33% year-over-year
Other Products revenue: $8.76 billion vs. $7.80 billion estimated, up 40% year-over-year
Mac revenue:$8.24 billion vs. $8.07 billion estimated, up 16% year-over-year
iPad revenue: $7.37 billion vs. $7.15 billion estimated, up 12% year-over-year
Gross margin: 43.3% vs. 41.9% estimated

The stock is down after hours, as is MS and SB....all crazy good numbers but they're called peak earnings.

Just keep on buying Apple for the long term! Buy and hold, never sell, eat Ramen dime packages so your kids can eat Kobe steaks when they inherit your shares.

Yeah, right....

I sold my apple for a little over $148/share in the last week. Figured it would pull back again and I can buy at another discount. We will see.

APPL is definitely a stock that you can trade. It is very much a buy the rumor/sell the news stocks. If you track it long enough you can spot the patterns and trade around them.

I think I am going to be backing up the truck for my mom's account on this one if it dips tomorrow. I personally have limits on how much of it I can own because of work conflicts of interest. It seems so stupidly routine to see these types of earnings and then the stock drops for days or weeks only to go up substantially over 6 months or a year.

I did the exact thing with Rockwell International, the real Rockwell, (ROK) pre internet days when employees were not restricted on personal share trading. Those were the days.....

No. They are not called “peak” earnings. Sometimes you just totally pull shit out of your ass Kvan. Lol

Now, I will sell the other half of my October calls and buy calls going out at least a year

Apple is making higher highs and higher lows.

See you at $200+. When? 12-18 months?

TTD? Yep

Lol....I see you man. Don't tell me you held on thorough earnings? Ah dude, this thing is heading lower! Lol...don't give up. Buy some UPS and FedEx..Also Google is the tiger to own from here on. Youtube ads up 84%..crazy.

Ps: IIRC you called me crazy when I said it may go down after earnings about a month ago.

Boeing! Mr. Calhoun got a stay of his execution. This could be the start of an uptrend right here. This stock should've been 300 bucks 2 months ago.

Back in the green on DIDI! Holding 450 shares averaged in at $8.77 (bought down to $7.65). Not a long term hold for me but we'll see where this goes.

Honestly even if there are no further lockdowns, mask mandates and other restrictions will keep the world at a bit of a standstill, it feels like normalcy is a long long ways away.

Is it common thought now to sell before the earnings announcement, even if you know it will be good news, because stocks now tend to trend down regardless? It always makes sense to me if it's going to be a bad or expected earnings statement, but I still can't quite wrap my head around it being a good strategy regardless of the outcome. I held my Apple, and I have Pfizer and Paypal releasing earnings today, both should also have great news.

LOL. This "thing" is heading to $200+. And i've made so much money on Apple it's ridiculous! . More to come

BTW, IIRC, Apple went down to $123 on June 3rd. When we loaded the boat again. $$$$$$. That's a 17.8% gain on the stock in about 50 days player. Not to mention the options above.

Sold the rest of my Oct. Calls and moved into March 2022 Apple calls. (Made 250% roughly)

Picked up 150 up some Nov 19 280 Facebook calls and 2700 shares of FB into earnings.

GL Big ballers . Dropping the mic now.

It's neither common nor uncommon, it's just risky...normally you buy something in anticipation of a good quarter or news and then you cash out and move to other opportunities but some stocks such as apple are portfolio anchors so you can trade it but ultimately you should keep it as a core holding. This quarter they gave us heads up they will have chip shortages that's enough for a lot of traders to move out and put the money to work elsewhere. So I don't have a crystal ball but it's logical it will move down in the near future

Good luck ice bro...I'm buying some FB too

What kind of premiums did you have to pay? Do you normally prefer in the money calls (to keep the time value down some)? Thanks very much.

I paid $22.85 for those calls

We will see how it works out.

Bought the stock too that I plan on selling calls against after earnings.

Some moves for those playing along at home:

Skimmed some APPL today that I had below 110
Skimmed some MSFT that I had at 202
Skimmed some AMD I had at 80
Sold all my LULU that I had at 317
Sold all my MGM that I had at 26

Rationale: All of these moves are in tax advantaged accounts. APPL is a cornerstone for me but wanted to lighten up just a little. Semi shortage is real. MSFT is at the highs, so just locking in a little. Same with AMD. LULU does not handle well at the the 390 level and dives down every time it hits it (3 times in the last year). MGM, with mask mandates probably coming back, might get hit a little. Great gain, so take it off the table for now. August and September are notoriously not great months so having some cash is not a bad thing.

You know that cyber play I talked about for the past 2 weeks? Yep, here is another log for that fire. The play is for cyber technology companies, not cyber system integrators (although they might be able to draft some off of this).

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3720760-white-house-establishes-cybersecurity-initiative-for-infrastructure-companies

My wife is at a work conference in Reno this week. This morning she said that NV is going to require masks indoors, but didn’t have much info as she just heard about it.

This is what I found: https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2021/07/27/nevada-issues-emergency-order-requiring-masks-all/5395205001/

The counties that Reno and Vegas are in are listed. I have friends in the service industry that live/work in Vegas. They do a weekly podcast and talked about how crazy it was after lockdowns ended and then how things were with and later without th mask mandates.

I guess it depends what states follow suit, but if your home state/municipality doesn’t have a mask mandate and Vegas does, it would be very appealing to travel to Vegas, at least to me.

Heard about the Vegas masks. I was supposed to be going to a conference there in a few weeks that requires proof of vaccination but with a few things going on, attendees are pulling out. I don't think people are going to flock to Vegas or any other place because they have masks. I think the big thing that is going to impact municipalities is if they start scaling back capacity. That is the metric that I see moving the needle because it impacts throughput.

Government is going to require employees to get vaccinated or require weekly testing, Google is delaying reopening. These are the first dominoes. We are not going back to how it was, but this is definitely a speed bump in my opinion. I wore a mask for the first time today in a few months at the DMV by choice. That's the way it goes.

Mask mandates are coming, and you are going to see more people riled up based on political spectrum and states forgoing them versus states enforcing them based only on that metric. I also believe mandatory vaccination may be coming, and if it does, we are going to see a shitstorm between federal and state levels which is going to impact markets.

On the podcast I mentioned my friends had some pretty amusing takes on capacity limits. They were at 15% and 80% over the course of things and had some pretty amusing comments about how people can’t generally do math beyond 25/50/75% of the states fire marshal capacity limit.

I agree though that capacity limits would likely have a more impactful affect than mask mandates.

Crap...FB is taking it on the chin. They're warning about, wait for it.....peak earnings! They're saying growth will be slowing in the future.

PS: Alibaba and Didi looked like buys to me but I found this :

The swift crackdown follows the meteoric growth of China’s biggest tech companies and leaders who don’t always tow the party line, like Alibaba’s Jack Ma. Moreover, big tech in China has also been blamed for the rising wealth inequality there.

The move to rein in Chinese tech giants also comes after the U.S. passed a law that bars foreign companies from trading on U.S. exchanges unless they surrender to audits. That law, the “Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act,” could stoke the Chinese government’s fears that data on its citizens could end up in the hands of its biggest political rival.

So they're worried in part about data being mined by the US. I don't think they will destroy their own private companies but they might make them voluntarily delist themselves. I have no idea what the impact to the shares will be..but there are plenty of companies that are not listed here and still do well. LG batteries for example.

LG is Korean...

Ha, yeah..you actually thought I didn't know that , it's not listed here but its one the largest EV battery maker
LG Chem Ltd

Never know with you brother With all the China talk thought it made sense to clarify. Good company with a big future.

I love LG phones, and..sadly they are getting out of that.

Lol. Def not “peak earnings” on FB. The flywheel is just getting bigger to plug more recurring revenue streams into much like Apple did. More $$$ from that installed user base coming

2.9 billion mau’s, don’t/can’t grow by the billions anymore.

Thus slower growth on mau’s

EBIDA CAGR +20% each year over the next several years. NOT “peak earnings”.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4441736-facebooks-super-app-flywheel-effect-underappreciated

I’ll prob take my hit and roll out of those FB calls for tax purposes depending on where it opens and keep the stock itself because they are another cash flow machine

Regulatory issues? Not concerned, maybe Google though

PINS up next guys!!!

Took a minor hit on FB results but really has zero relevance because of the mau maturity stages. And rallying back

The PINS CEO is a f ing wildcard. No telling what he’s going to say or not about guidance this time which tanked it last time!

As for the Masking again in certain areas it revolves around politics. Looks like it’s a teacher union token handout again. How about the border crossers now spreading Covid all over the country?

It’s asinine to ask vaccinated people to put masks on! Adults have a choice now that the vaccine is out. Option A or B. You pick.

Thank God I don’t have young children

I chose to get one. I’m here today and gone to Maui on Saturday!!!

The Delta variant cases are rolling over big time in the UK and Israel where they are about two weeks ahead of the USA.

The stock market reaction is next to nothing. IF it overreacts I’m ready to pounce again.

Delta will be receding here in August. Govt attempting fear and scare tactic to get people vaccinated. Hey, i would do it but maybe businesses and govt employees will be mandated. Great, don’t care

Why don’t the sports leagues step up and mandate ALL players get vaccinated? Because they don’t dare.

Ride the FEAR and PANIC train in the market however small or short lived it is.

screw it. Let it burn.

Slow and steady wins the race. Asset allocation is key in uncertain times

I'll put up my annual return against yours whenever you want.

Still waiting for PINS to turn the corner, it’s been like a year and I’m still red. PSTH is still my biggest mistake, it’s basically at cash out price now.

Thank god for AAPL and AMZN.

No kidding. The winners always pull the rest of the pack forward. Identifying them early? Well... that's the tricky part ain't it?

Amazon crashed from nearly $100 in 1999 to about $7 in 2001. Got sliced in half again from 2007-2009... all while other stocks had been rocketing ahead. Who would have stuck it out and kept buying through those drawdowns? Not many. But the long-term diversified buyers always kept some in the basket and are reaping the rewards today.

Right now the new S&P highs are floating upon a narrowing field of relative winners (only 30%). Not necessarily doom and gloom, but it might explain the prevalence of so many sideways trades/movements lately... and perhaps to come for a while.

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