Apple’s $1 trillion value doesn’t mean it’s the ‘biggest’ company
by ilene - August 15th, 2018 7:48 pm
Apple's $1 trillion value doesn't mean it's the 'biggest' company
Courtesy of Jerry Davis, University of Michigan
On Aug. 2, Apple became the first U.S. public corporation to achieve a US$1 trillion valuation, making it the largest company in the world – by one measure at least.
A New York Times article proclaimed that this milestone “reflects the rise of powerful megacompanies” that control a large and growing share of all corporate profits. It also warned that this phenomenon might be contributing to stagnant wages, a shrinking middle class and rising income inequality, suggesting regulators may need to rein them in or break them up.
But what exactly defines a “megacompany”? And what would make it so powerful that it needs dismantling, like “Ma Bell” back in the 1980s?
As a scholar of corporations, I believe that if we want to understand – and regulate – big companies, it’s important to be clear on the very different meanings of “big.”
When General Motors was the most valuable U.S. company, it was big in many ways, including having the second-most employees. AP Photo
Yesterday’s ‘big’
When Fortune magazine first wanted to create a roster of America’s 500 biggest corporations in 1955, revenue was the obvious way to think about size.
A “major corporation” was one that sold a lot of products. With almost $10 billion in annual sales, thanks to its 54 percent share of the U.S. auto market, General Motors topped Fortune’s list that year.
But GM was also big in most every other way, including its stock market valuation or “market cap” (where it was No. 1), assets (No. 2, after AT&T) and employment (also just behind AT&T at 624,000). Indeed, for much of the post-war era the biggest corporations were big in every way, and market cap was very highly correlated with revenues, employment and assets.
Not anymore. The post-industrial corporation of today is often heavy on market cap but, like Apple, light on employment and hard assets.
Let’s look
…
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AMZN ... thanks Phil; boy did they run a squeeze on everyone there ... made me sweat ... scaling helped! I think AMZN has an 85 handle tomorrow ... maybe lower.
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thanks for the DNDN recommendation last week phil. that was moneeeee….
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Phil/ Thanks to your obsessive bearish anxiety over the last few weeks, I made money on the long side this month, phased gradually to bearish, came in net short today and managed to make money both long and short all week, ending today [and each day this week] in the green. I don't know how you do it, but thank you.
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Your board has been fantastic helping the less experienced (includes me) navigate through all the turmoil. The contributions from your members has been well rounded, objective, and extremely helpful. Sans the politics you have built a fantastic community and that is a tribute to you. I thank you and all fellow members for there contributions over the past few days. Fantastic group!
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Phil, I meant to post over the weekend, but I was busy having fun . Last week was a very nice week for me, and I wanted to thank you for all that you do. I am pretty much back to cash and really feel like I am learning. I have out performed the $5kp by a very large margin. Thanks again for the service you provide.
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Thanks super helpful re: UGN example…..other inflation/market-correction-defensive-related play you threw out that has jammed UP in less than a month is TITN 6/14 $15 puts, up 40%. Excuse my enthusiasm but haven't had those types of gains in multiple plays in years let alone days doing it on my own…….maybe I should host the PSW infomercial!!!!
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Tesla et. al. – I've spent many months getting hammered shorting overvalued Momos, until, finally, I internalized Phil's message. Play small; give yourself plenty of room to double/move up the [lack of value] chain in terms of price. Play short; take [Musk's, eg.] latest bleep and sell the spike for a short time frame, because his tweets always come to naught. I've been coining money doing it, I just watch that premium melt away with scarcely veiled amusement. Swinging for the fences is for suckers [me, for a long time]. Those little gains really add up — $2k per week of evaporated premium and you could actually buy a Tesla by the end of the year!!
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Don't expect to get rich quick here, but you can get easy 30 - 50 % per year, just by buying good stocks at discount (as we often discuss), selling monthly premiums of calls and puts.
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Phil- I want to let you know that you really helped me make some money this morning when I probably would have lost on my own. I was stuck in doctors waiting rooms most of the morning starting at 8AM. By following the game plan you laid out and using my smartphone, I went short on oil whenever we got to 61.50 and long at 61 waiting for the spikes ahead of inventory. When 10:30 rolled around I was out after selling longs at 61.60 a few minutes earlier. I went short at 61.75-61.80 and voila, rode it down to 60.60 or so. Thank you.
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Thanks Phil, for banging the table on getting short and getting to cash. Usually when this happens in the market I am freaking out but I actually made money this week thanks to you. That HOV trade was a great way to re-deploy some of my cash.
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I really would like to meet all of the posters here who seem like an intriguing bunch of intelligent, opinionated (without being obnoxious or condescending most of the time), and well spoken people. Not so easy to find in this age of instant gratification and me first attitudes. Usually this results in groups where misinformation is used to gain an advantage, or whatever it takes to beat the other guys. I love the one for all, all for one vibe here, sharing your best ideas and helping each other work together for a common goal, to be successful investors!
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We are lucky to be in America and it is great to be part of the PSW tribe. Keeps me thinkin' and gatherin' the profits. ~ 42 % gain in my trading account year to date, which keeps me happy. Half to a third of the trading account is reserved in margin capacity that Is not committed. So, again thanks Phil and all of you other members.
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Phil – Not that you dont usually, but you have DEFINITELY earned your money this week. THe recommendations have been PERFECT. Selling into the initial excitement (MULTIPLE TIMES), hedges, everything. Im reading this when I get home from work and want to cry b/c I cant trade at work! I might have to start getting up at 3 AM though to catch those trades bc youre killing it then too! May you and yours have a blessed weekend!
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Great calls this week!
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I am not a user of phil's site now, but was for a couple years. His advice and information is excellent. Perhaps even better, you get access to real-time trades of additional traders on his site (OptTrader, etc) and the other members who post what they are buying and selling. Overall, its a very valuable information tool. Expensive, but paid for itself many times over. I did not renew my membership because I switched jobs and did not have time to trade nearly as much.
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It is hard to learn the process that Phil teaches, but it is worth the effort. I think it is finally sinking in & so I say Thanks teacher for your patience & expertise! I've had a very good week so far & I know it is because of persisting in this learning process that you teach.
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Whipsaw Wednesday – Futures Collapse as Turkey Strikes Back With Tariffs – What Will Happen When China Does?
by phil - August 15th, 2018 8:21 am
Does our economy have a glass jaw?
We like to punch others but it doesn't look like we can take one as the Futures where KO'd with one punch as Turkey announced they would raise tariffs on US goods and boycott other goods like, gasp, iPhones which are, I think, 90% of the US economy. “For the sake of a pastor, they have come to the point of breaking relations with Turkey,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters in Ankara on Wednesday. It's not so much Turkey as the realization that ALL the other countries we are in a Trade War with (ie. ALL the other countries) may stop rolling over and start going on the attack against Trump and his bullying tactics.
Turkey is already benefiting from standing up to Trump with a 7% pop in the Lira this morning but it's still down over 30% against the Dollar this year, so nothing for them to celebrate over at the moment. The decree signed by Erdogan doubled Turkish tariffs on passenger cars to 120%, on alcoholic drinks to 140% and on tobacco to 60%. Tariffs were also doubled on goods such as cosmetics, rice and coal.
The United States was the fourth largest source of imports to Turkey last year, accounting for $12Bn of imports and, as noted yesterday, Turkey's GDP is $850Bn – so they really don't have that much to lose cutting off relations with the US while we desperately need their strategic location for NATO defense. In other words, it's another victory Trump has handed to Putin and Russia as we push Turkey out of NATO's arms and back to Russia – something that was competely unthinkable before Trump got "elected".
Hey, but at least there are no tapes (remaining) of Trump saying the "N" word over and over again on his Apprentice set because THAT would be bad, right? Not that it would matter, Trump would just spin it the way he's spinning the Russia investigation – relentlessly until people aren't sure what to believe anymore. Trump comes down on Omarosa for "changing her tune" about him after he's no longer paying her to say nice things, saying she has…
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We are guinea pigs in a worldwide experiment on microplastics
by ilene - August 14th, 2018 7:31 pm
We are guinea pigs in a worldwide experiment on microplastics
Microplastics in the Mediterranean Sea. By Dirk Wahn/shutterstock.com
Courtesy of John Meeker, University of Michigan
One of the main problems with plastics is that although we may only need them fleetingly – seconds in the case of microbeads in personal care products, or minutes as in plastic grocery bags – they stick around for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, much of this plastic ends up as environmental pollution. We’ve all seen the gruesome images of a sea turtle killed by a plastic bag, or the array of bottle caps, toothbrush fragments, and other plastic items found in the stomach of an albatross carcass. But what about the tiny microplastics that aren’t as readily visible?
A black footed albatross chick with plastics in its stomach lies dead on Midway Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Midway sits amid a collection of man-made debris called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Along the paths of Midway, there are piles of feathers with rings of plastic in the middle – remnants of birds that died with the plastic in their guts. Dan Clark/USFWS via AP
Much of the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste in our oceans is made up of microplastics. These are defined as plastic beads, fibers or fragments with a diameter of less than five thousand micrometers (μm), equal to one-half centimeter. Nanoplastics are thousands of times tinier, with a diameter of less than 0.1 μm, and are also likely to be widely present. By comparison, a human hair ranges from about 15 to 180 μm across. Some of these microplastics are deliberately engineered like microbeads in a facial scrub. Others result from the break down of larger plastic items.
Stop ocean plastic pollution. Ban the microplastic beads in personal hygiene products like toothpaste and cosmetics. By Supriya07/shutterstock.com
I’m an environmental epidemiologist with a research group that studies exposure to chemicals commonly found in consumer products, including plastics, and…
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Turnaround Tuesday – US Markets Run Up in the Futures Just Because
by phil - August 14th, 2018 8:21 am
Yet another meaningless Monday erased from history.
After all of yesterday's excitement, the Futures have taken us right back to where we finished on Friday, 2,832 on the S&P 500 and 25,300 on the Dow – as if yesterday never happened. I'm not sure it will last as Europe is flat, not up and China was down yet again this morning so there's nothing really to get too excited about and 25,300 is a good shorting line on the Dow Futures (/YM) with tight stops above – if you feel like playing.
We felt like playing yesterday as Gasoline (/RB) dipped down to the $2 line and Oil (/CL) fell to $66 and I said to our Members at 1:48 in our Live Chat Room:
Wow, Oil etc went down hard and fast, good chance to get back in for the bounce off $66 on /CL and $1.99 on /RB (tight stops below).
I know, so complicated, right? How will you ever learn the jargon? Well, I would think our results would motivated you as those Gasoline contracts made a quick $1,000 each at $2.02 (and back to $2.05 this morning for another $1,260 per contract since) while Oil Futures (/CL) blasted back over $68 for a $2,000 per contract gain ($67.50 in yesterday's close was $1,500 per contract – also very nice!
Futures trading is the only kind of day trading I like to do as it's a nice quick way to take advantage of market stupidity without incurring a lot of trading fees and, more importantly, without consuming your attention. As Fundamental Investors, we KNEW $2 was too low for /RB (that did not stop it from hitting $1.98, of course) and we KNEW $66 was too low for oil with 2 weeks until a holiday weekend so it made good sense to take a chance at those levels and notice we waited until AFTER it bottomed – you don't get rich trying to call exact bottoms or tops in the Futures!
As I was saying in last week's webinar,…
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Interview with Cheri Jacobus
by ilene - August 13th, 2018 9:08 pm
Cheri Jacobus talks about the GOP, Russia, the media and taking back Congress.
Interview with Ilene at Phil's Stock World
Cheri Jacobus is a widely known political consultant, pundit, writer and outspoken former Republican. She has been a guest on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, CBS.com, CNBC and C-Span. After many years working with the GOP, she has a unique view of the party and politics. Cheri shares her insights on today’s political environment with us.
Ilene: What are the main factors that have transformed the Republican Party into what it is today?
Cheri: Right-wing media and evangelicals softened the GOP, making it quick to sell out to Trump. I witnessed the change in FOX as it morphed from being a fresh, scrappy effort with what was then a needed voice in a sea of liberal media, to a completely dishonest, manipulative, corrupt enterprise both on and off the air. And right-wing evangelicals (not to be confused with legitimate Christians) drowning in Trump-backing hypocrisy stems from ignoring the line between church and state, spouting propaganda from the pulpit.
Ilene: What do you mean by “softened”?
Cheri: Methodically dumbing down, requiring little fact-checking or thoughtful debate, so that the Machiavellian establishment was quick to sell out – no questions asked. It was made easy for them.
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Ilene: It seems to me that Trump supporters and Trump critics live in different worlds. How did this happen?
Cheri. While Trump supporters know about some of Trump’s tweets, they learn about them through the filter of right-wing Trumpian media, and never hear the fact-checking or push-back. Trump supporters live in an information vacuum but don’t know it. They are not on Twitter, by and large (although we know there are millions of fake Trumpkins on Twitter as trolls and bots). The “fix” is having real media be consistent, clear, repetitive and never let up reporting the truth about Trump.
Ilene: What are the Democrats’ odds of winning the House and/or Senate in 2018?
Cheri: Very good, but not the slam dunk many believe, unless Mueller comes down heavy before that. And, given the media blackout of all negative news on Trump in some corners, many voters will not get the full picture. A daily diet of FOX, Trump right-wing radio and disinformation from the pro-Putin Breitbart, Daily Caller and the mysteriously-funded…
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Monday Market Movement – Bouncing Back to Highs?
by phil - August 13th, 2018 8:29 am
Trade War – so what?
Despite Friday's sell-off, which was more a result of Turkey's currency issues than the escalating Trade Wars, the markets are still generally shrugging off any and all bad news as they continue to march into uncharted territories. Nothing has changed today – the Turkish Lira is still collapsing only now it's taking other currencies with it and the Trade War talk is heating up between the US and China, the US and Japan, the US and Russia, the US and Europe, the US and Canada and the US and Mexico and I THINK that's all the countries we're fighting with at the momen- all I know is I'm on a cruise with people from all over the World and they all ask me "What the f*ck is wrong with your President?"
So far, we're only scratching the surface of Trump's actions compared to Trump's threats. About $700Bn worth of tariffs have been threatened which would tax the American consumers $175Bn at 25% but, so far, "only" $63Bn worth of tariffs have been enacted so 1/10th of the way there and look at all the chaos it's already causing. Want to stay for rounds 2-10?
Yet traders seem perfectly happy to ignore the multiple elephants in the room as we party like it's 1999 and now we'll see if last week's dip was the start of a correction or yet another pullback we bounce right back from. Bounce lines to watch are:
- Dow (/YM) 25,650 to 25,175 is a 475 drop so we'll call it 100-point bounces to 25,275 (weak) and 25,375 (strong)
- S&P (/ES) 2,860 to 2,820 is a 40-point drop so call them 10-point bounces to 2,830 (weak) and 2,840 (strong)
- Nasdaq (/NQ) 7,500 to 7,375 is 125 so we get 25-point bounces to 7,400 (weak) and 7,425 (strong)
- Russell (/RTY) 1,700 to 1,675 is 25 points so 5-point bounces to 1,680 (weak) and 1,685 (strong)
We're certainly going to get our weak bounces and probably strong bounces into the open but what matters is what holds for the day…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site