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VinkaloZendo

VinkaloZendo

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2021-11-18

Ok

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2021-11-18

Ok

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2021-11-05

Buy!

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2021-09-19

$TENCENT(00700)$ great!

2021-09-19

Great read!

7 ways men live without working in America

2021-09-16

Agreed

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2021-09-15

More infor needed before making decision

Is iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) a Strong ETF Right Now?

2021-09-15

Good infor

Novavax (NVAX) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know

2021-09-08

Oh

Is It Too Late to Buy Apple Stock?

2021-09-02

Agreed

Facebook: Simply Unstoppable

2021-09-02

Looking forward to future growth

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2021-07-13

Fear is powerful in share trading

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href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/00700\">$TENCENT(00700)$</a>&nbsp;great!&nbsp;","listText":"<a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/00700\">$TENCENT(00700)$</a>&nbsp;great!&nbsp;","text":"$TENCENT(00700)$ great!","images":[{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/75934610bd78ad682b4bfea4d47b2efd","width":"1080","height":"2399"}],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/887289804","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":187,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":1,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":887289932,"gmtCreate":1632044741226,"gmtModify":1632803149678,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Great read!&nbsp;","listText":"Great read!&nbsp;","text":"Great read!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/887289932","repostId":"1198486138","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1198486138","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1632023224,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1198486138?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-19 11:47","market":"us","language":"en","title":"7 ways men live without working in America","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1198486138","media":"Yahoo Finance","summary":"How do they live? What are they doing for money? ","content":"<p>Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million people!</p>\n<p>How do they live? What are they doing for money? To me, this is one of the great mysteries of our time.</p>\n<p>I’m certainly not the first person to make note of this shocking statistic. You’ve heard people bemoaning this \"labor participation rate,\" which is simply the number of working-age men (usually counted as ages 16 to 64) not working or not looking for work, as a percentage of the overall labor force.</p>\n<p>It’s true that the pandemic, which of course produced a number of factors that made working more difficult never mind dangerous, pushed the labor participation rate to a record low. But the fact that millions of American males have not been working precedes COVID-19 by decades. In fact, the participation rate for men peaked at 87.4% in October 1949 and has been dropping steadily ever since. It now stands at 67.7%.</p>\n<p>As a business journalist for a good portion of those 70-plus years, I’ve looked at thousands of charts and graphs in my life, and I have to say this one is as jaw dropping as it is vexing:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/056158b8fa7157238c3d1521dd05c02e\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"259\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Chart of the U.S. labor force participation rate for men over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve</p>\n<p>Economists, sociologists, politicians, and cable news pundits each have their pet factors to explain the groundswell of non-work. But after digging down here, I’ve concluded there are many different forces at play. That’s what I want to explore today, which is: how men can live in America without working.</p>\n<p>I’m not talking about why men have lost their jobs — factories closing, layoffs, automation, outsourcing jobs overseas, even perhaps women entering the workforce, (in fact, the participation rate by women over the same time period is way up). What I want to get at is how they’re living without holding a \"real\" job, and by that I mean doing work where one reports income to the IRS, pays taxes and Social Security, etc.</p>\n<p>It’s important to note that every man in this group has his own story. They range from mentally ill homeless men who desperately need our help, to the I’m-doing-just-fine-thank-you-very-much, retired early, and former Silicon Valley coder. And there are infinite scenarios in between those two extremes, including, for instance, the many men who have chosen to bestay-at-home dadswhile their spouses work.</p>\n<p>It’s also the case that some men in this group may be unemployed and not seeking work because they’ve given up looking just for now — perhaps waiting for COVID to abate — and will start the search again soon. Here too, society needs to help.</p>\n<p>Still, none of this explains decade after decade of falling male employment.</p>\n<p>To that end, here to my mind are seven ways men are living without working in America:</p>\n<p><b>-Unemployment insurance</b></p>\n<p>Let’s start with this one because it’s a hot button issue. Conservatives and some liberals too have made the claim that state unemployment aid, coupled with $600 a week from the CARES Act, which was rolled out in March 2020, have reduced men’s need to work. (There are actually a variety of social programs at play,spelled out nicely hereby think tank The Century Foundation, which estimates that overall these programs have pumped $800 billion in the economy.) We’ll be getting a good read on whether all this relief did suppress employment now that CARES aid ended for some 7.5 million Americans earlier this month. But as Yahoo Finance’s Denitsa Tsekova reportedhereandhere, states that ended federal aid programs early didn’t see big increases in employment. That may mean these payments really weren’t enough to live off, or not enough to live off by themselves, which speaks to men looking to a combination of sources, like under the table income or family support and possibly some savings (see below).</p>\n<p><b>-Early retirement, pensions, disability and lawsuits</b></p>\n<p>Admittedly, this is a bit of a hodgepodge. And as is the case with many of these categories, hard data is tough to come by, but it is the case that millions of men under 64 are at least partly living off of pensions and 401(k)s. This would include everything from C-suite executives to union members. And don’t forget municipal workers, who make up almost 14% of the U.S. workforce. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are some 6,000 public sector retirement systems in the U.S.Collectively these plans have $4.5 trillion in assets,with 14.7 million working members and 11.2 million retirees. The plans distribute $323 billion in benefits annually, and again, some to men who are younger than 64. In fact in almost two-thirds of these plans,if you started working at 25, you max out at 57, a real inducement to stop working — at least at that job of course.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/53e26b293f8a939a54b78315c3375a18\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"467\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Volunteers load cars with turkeys and other food assistance for laid off Walt Disney World cast members and others at a food distribution event on December 12, 2020 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)More</p>\n<p>There’s also disability insurance from the Social Security Administration that is beingpaid to some 9 million Americanswhomay receive payments many years before retirement age. That's why I am including disability here, but not plain vanilla Social Security, which you can’t receive until age 62. The maximum disability benefit amount you can receive each month is currently $3,148. (However, the average beneficiary receives about $1,277 per month, according to the law group Social Security Disability Advocates.) Overall, it looks like theSSA pays out some $130 billion in disability annually.That’s not nothing. Then there’s money paid out in medical malpractice each year, smaller true, but stillestimated to be in excess of $3 billion.And don't forgetpayments from legal settlements and class action lawsuits.</p>\n<p>You argue all day about the right or wrong when it comes to these payouts, but the fact is many of them didn’t exist, or not at this magnitude, decades ago.</p>\n<p><b>-Savings, trading stocks, and bitcoin</b></p>\n<p>Consider now men are living off savings, or from money made in the market or maybe even selling NFTs. How many is it exactly? Who knows, but quite a few for sure. First off, Americans on average do have some money in the bank. Savings as a percentage of disposable income,according to the Federal Reserve of Kansas City,hit a record high of 33% in the spring of 2020 and is still at 14%, or nearly twice as high as it was prior to the pandemic.</p>\n<p>And according to arecent survey by Northwestern Mutual,average personal savings are up over 10% compared to last year, from $65,900 last year to $73,100. Average retirement savings increased 13%, from $87,500 last year to $98,800 today. So there’s that.</p>\n<p>Next let’s look at investing — first stocks. It is not irrelevant to this narrative that the S&amp;P 500 has climbed from 2,480 on March 12, 2020 — the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic— to 4,441 today, or almost 80%. That’s a huge gain. Much of the action of course has been retail investors and the meme stock boom, as millions of American males stuck at home with nothing to do all day for the past 18 months passed the time trading stocks. Credit Suisse estimates that since the beginning of 2020, “retail trading as a share of overall market activityhas nearly doubledfrom between 15% and 18% to over 30%,” as CNBC reported. How many men were doing this and supporting themselves? Unclear, but upstart trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) — the broker dealer of choice for many of these new investors — reported that it had22.5 million funded user accountslast month, up from 7.2 million in March of 2020. Let’s just say 15 million new accounts is quite a number.</p>\n<p>Now crypto. You can laugh all you want, but the simple fact is that theprice of bitcoinis up from $4,861 on March 12, 2000 to $47,763 today, or basically up 10X, (and remember it even hit $64,888.99 this spring). Back to Robinhood, which according to The New York Times, also reported last month that “revenue from cryptocurrency trading fees totaled $233 million, a nearly 50-fold jump from $5 million a year earlier.” (And those are just fees off the trades, mind you.) Bottom line: Folks have made money here. (Of course these guys should be paying taxes on all those stock and crypto gains.)</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/809084435ffdcbc0695311d158bb7a98\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"470\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Robinhood Markets, Inc. CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt pose with Robinhood signage on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly<b>-Working for cash, aka the under-the-table economy</b></p>\n<p>This one is very tough to measure, too.A study by the Federal Reserve of St. Louisestimates that the average size of the “informal economy” in developed countries is 13% of GDP. Honestly, that could be off by many percentage points, but just to give you a ballpark, GDP in the U.S. this year is about $22 trillion. So 13% of that is $2.86 trillion. As it turns out, $2 trillion-plus, is a number that has been thrown around quite a bit (hereandherefor instance) when it comes to estimating the size of the cash economy in the U.S. Even if half that money is paid out to women, that still leaves, say, $1 trillion dollars being made by men in this country off the books. That’s a big chunk of change. Are more people than ever working for cash these days? Again, another question that’s impossible to answer. I would bet it’s not fewer. For example, my electrician Luis just told me he can’t get anyone to work for him anymore — they all want to get paid in cash.</p>\n<p><b>-Living off family members</b></p>\n<p>Just to take one facet,the Pew Research Center reportedlast year that the pandemic “has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading [in early 2020], surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era. In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February.” How many of these individuals are males living rent free (and sharing food too), which maybe means they don’t have to work? Who knows, but some. Ditto for males who have moved in with in-laws or siblings. And again, many men are choosing to stay home and take care of kids while their spouses work.</p>\n<p><b>-Illegal work</b></p>\n<p>Front and center here is selling illegal drugs. Sadly, business looks to be booming, that is if overdoses are any sort of measure.According to the Washington Post, overdose deaths hit 93,000 last year, up a stunning 30% from 2019. Most of the overdoses were attributed to opioids; heroin, synthetic opioids like OxyContin and in particular Fentanyl. (This despite drug dealers facingsupply chain issuesduring COVID.) How many Americans are in this business and who are they? A number is almost impossible to come by here, but as for who they are,a government report on drug trafficking arrestsfrom five years ago notes that ”the majority of drug trafficking offenders were male (84.9%), the average age of these offenders at sentencing was 36 years, 70% were United States citizens (although this rate varied substantially depending on the type of drug involved), and that almost half (49.4%) of drug traffickers had little or no prior criminal history.” How big a business is selling drugs in America? Could beas much as $100 billion.I think it’s fair to say that a market that size requires many thousands of employees.</p>\n<p>What about other types of crime and criminals, everything from robbers and thieves to prostitutes and pimps? To that point there aresome 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S.right now. (We have the highest absolute number and the highest per capita on the planet, and holdsome 25% of the world's total prisoners, according to the ACLU.) Being in prison is another way of living in America without working, I guess. But not counting those locked up, how many bad guys are out there on the street? Conservatively, it has to be thousands and thousands, and speaking to this story, they're all doing their thing and not participating in the labor force.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3f8f4b3e6a5aa97a10f5c7bb22dec1d7\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"470\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">ORLEANS, MASSACHUSETTS - JULY 10: A man holds onto a clamming rake while clamming at low tide July 10, 2021 in Town Cove, Orleans, Massachusetts. He filled a bushel basket of cherry stone clams. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)More<b>-Living off the land</b></p>\n<p>This would include gardening, fishing, hunting, clamming, berrying, and just general foraging. The numbers here seem to be climbing. Here for instancefrom The Guardian:</p>\n<p>“Fishing and huntinglicense sales increased 10%in California during the pandemic, reversing years of decline. Clamming has grown in popularity for several reasons: people are looking for safe activities to do outdoors, but also some are clamming for subsistence and trying to get money from selling the shellfish (which is illegal without a commercial license).”</p>\n<p>Ditto for Washington state, according to The Spokesman-Review:</p>\n<p>“From the start of the 2020 licensing year in May through Dec. 31, WDFW [Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife] sold nearly 45,000 more fishing licenses and 12,000 more hunting licenses than 2019. The number of new license holders — defined as someone who hadn’t purchased one for the previous five years — went up 16% for fishing licenses and almost 40% for hunters.”</p>\n<p>As for growing vegetables in home gardens, yes, it is up, way up too. Even before the pandemic, there were estimates thata third of American families grew vegetables.Now this,NPRreported last year:</p>\n<p>“‘We're being flooded with vegetable orders,’ says George Ball, executive chairman of the Burpee Seed Company, based in Warminster, Penn.</p>\n<p>Ball says he has noticed spikes in seed sales during bad times: the stock market crash of 1987, the dot com bubble burst of 2000, and he remembers the two oil crises of the 1970s from his childhood. But he says he has not seen a spike this large and widespread.</p>\n<p>So there you have it. It’s a whole range of ways and means, behaviors and experiences. I’m sure I missed some, too. Again, some non-working men are in dire straits and need our help. Others are living non-working lives without burdening society or others, such as a fireman on early retirement (though some argue municipal employee pensions are too high), or an investor who made a ton of money in the market and called it quits, or maybe a wilderness guy living off the land in Alaska.</p>\n<p>And some non-working men are not playing fair. Like getting paid under the table, fudging insurance claims or social programs. Some freeload off relatives. And some engage in overtly illegal behavior like boosting branded goods from chain stores to sell online or dealing heroin.</p>\n<p>I would imagine that more than a few of these men create a portfolio of sources, though I’m not sure they really think of it that way. Take for example a hypothetical guy in a rural area who lives with his grandmother rent free, (he does help her with the garden some). This guy also does some cash carpentry work, hunts for game, gets some food off his ex-wife’s WIC and helps his brother sell some weed. Can you get by this way? Some men probably are. Is this the new American way? For some men it probably is.</p>\n<p>That example perhaps, and to be sure of all of the above, I think go a long way toward explaining that chart from the beginning of the story, the one that shows the labor participation rate falling off a cliff over the past seven decades. And speaking of charts, another striking one came to mind when I was writing this, which I put here below. It shows U.S. GDP over the same time period as the labor participation rate.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0f197be5c6c11483ec906a1757293e4d\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"259\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Chart of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve</p>\n<p>Of course, the line on this GDP chart is inversely correlated with the line on the labor participation graph. And I think there is a relationship between the two. Which is to say, the wealthier our nation has become over the decades, the less men are working. Fact is there is just a ton of money sloshing around in our country. And men seem to be able to get their hands on it, whether obtained legally, borrowed, leached off of or stolen.</p>\n<p>It seems like working legally to provide for yourself in America is really just one option these days.</p>\n<p><b><i>This article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on September 18, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET.Subscribe</i></b></p>\n<p><i>Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter:@serwer</i></p>","source":"yahoofinance_sg","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>7 ways men live without working in America</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n7 ways men live without working in America\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-19 11:47 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html><strong>Yahoo Finance</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/020219c8820f9fc9f11979454ce1b1c6","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1198486138","content_text":"Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million people!\nHow do they live? What are they doing for money? To me, this is one of the great mysteries of our time.\nI’m certainly not the first person to make note of this shocking statistic. You’ve heard people bemoaning this \"labor participation rate,\" which is simply the number of working-age men (usually counted as ages 16 to 64) not working or not looking for work, as a percentage of the overall labor force.\nIt’s true that the pandemic, which of course produced a number of factors that made working more difficult never mind dangerous, pushed the labor participation rate to a record low. But the fact that millions of American males have not been working precedes COVID-19 by decades. In fact, the participation rate for men peaked at 87.4% in October 1949 and has been dropping steadily ever since. It now stands at 67.7%.\nAs a business journalist for a good portion of those 70-plus years, I’ve looked at thousands of charts and graphs in my life, and I have to say this one is as jaw dropping as it is vexing:\nChart of the U.S. labor force participation rate for men over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve\nEconomists, sociologists, politicians, and cable news pundits each have their pet factors to explain the groundswell of non-work. But after digging down here, I’ve concluded there are many different forces at play. That’s what I want to explore today, which is: how men can live in America without working.\nI’m not talking about why men have lost their jobs — factories closing, layoffs, automation, outsourcing jobs overseas, even perhaps women entering the workforce, (in fact, the participation rate by women over the same time period is way up). What I want to get at is how they’re living without holding a \"real\" job, and by that I mean doing work where one reports income to the IRS, pays taxes and Social Security, etc.\nIt’s important to note that every man in this group has his own story. They range from mentally ill homeless men who desperately need our help, to the I’m-doing-just-fine-thank-you-very-much, retired early, and former Silicon Valley coder. And there are infinite scenarios in between those two extremes, including, for instance, the many men who have chosen to bestay-at-home dadswhile their spouses work.\nIt’s also the case that some men in this group may be unemployed and not seeking work because they’ve given up looking just for now — perhaps waiting for COVID to abate — and will start the search again soon. Here too, society needs to help.\nStill, none of this explains decade after decade of falling male employment.\nTo that end, here to my mind are seven ways men are living without working in America:\n-Unemployment insurance\nLet’s start with this one because it’s a hot button issue. Conservatives and some liberals too have made the claim that state unemployment aid, coupled with $600 a week from the CARES Act, which was rolled out in March 2020, have reduced men’s need to work. (There are actually a variety of social programs at play,spelled out nicely hereby think tank The Century Foundation, which estimates that overall these programs have pumped $800 billion in the economy.) We’ll be getting a good read on whether all this relief did suppress employment now that CARES aid ended for some 7.5 million Americans earlier this month. But as Yahoo Finance’s Denitsa Tsekova reportedhereandhere, states that ended federal aid programs early didn’t see big increases in employment. That may mean these payments really weren’t enough to live off, or not enough to live off by themselves, which speaks to men looking to a combination of sources, like under the table income or family support and possibly some savings (see below).\n-Early retirement, pensions, disability and lawsuits\nAdmittedly, this is a bit of a hodgepodge. And as is the case with many of these categories, hard data is tough to come by, but it is the case that millions of men under 64 are at least partly living off of pensions and 401(k)s. This would include everything from C-suite executives to union members. And don’t forget municipal workers, who make up almost 14% of the U.S. workforce. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are some 6,000 public sector retirement systems in the U.S.Collectively these plans have $4.5 trillion in assets,with 14.7 million working members and 11.2 million retirees. The plans distribute $323 billion in benefits annually, and again, some to men who are younger than 64. In fact in almost two-thirds of these plans,if you started working at 25, you max out at 57, a real inducement to stop working — at least at that job of course.\nVolunteers load cars with turkeys and other food assistance for laid off Walt Disney World cast members and others at a food distribution event on December 12, 2020 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)More\nThere’s also disability insurance from the Social Security Administration that is beingpaid to some 9 million Americanswhomay receive payments many years before retirement age. That's why I am including disability here, but not plain vanilla Social Security, which you can’t receive until age 62. The maximum disability benefit amount you can receive each month is currently $3,148. (However, the average beneficiary receives about $1,277 per month, according to the law group Social Security Disability Advocates.) Overall, it looks like theSSA pays out some $130 billion in disability annually.That’s not nothing. Then there’s money paid out in medical malpractice each year, smaller true, but stillestimated to be in excess of $3 billion.And don't forgetpayments from legal settlements and class action lawsuits.\nYou argue all day about the right or wrong when it comes to these payouts, but the fact is many of them didn’t exist, or not at this magnitude, decades ago.\n-Savings, trading stocks, and bitcoin\nConsider now men are living off savings, or from money made in the market or maybe even selling NFTs. How many is it exactly? Who knows, but quite a few for sure. First off, Americans on average do have some money in the bank. Savings as a percentage of disposable income,according to the Federal Reserve of Kansas City,hit a record high of 33% in the spring of 2020 and is still at 14%, or nearly twice as high as it was prior to the pandemic.\nAnd according to arecent survey by Northwestern Mutual,average personal savings are up over 10% compared to last year, from $65,900 last year to $73,100. Average retirement savings increased 13%, from $87,500 last year to $98,800 today. So there’s that.\nNext let’s look at investing — first stocks. It is not irrelevant to this narrative that the S&P 500 has climbed from 2,480 on March 12, 2020 — the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic— to 4,441 today, or almost 80%. That’s a huge gain. Much of the action of course has been retail investors and the meme stock boom, as millions of American males stuck at home with nothing to do all day for the past 18 months passed the time trading stocks. Credit Suisse estimates that since the beginning of 2020, “retail trading as a share of overall market activityhas nearly doubledfrom between 15% and 18% to over 30%,” as CNBC reported. How many men were doing this and supporting themselves? Unclear, but upstart trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) — the broker dealer of choice for many of these new investors — reported that it had22.5 million funded user accountslast month, up from 7.2 million in March of 2020. Let’s just say 15 million new accounts is quite a number.\nNow crypto. You can laugh all you want, but the simple fact is that theprice of bitcoinis up from $4,861 on March 12, 2000 to $47,763 today, or basically up 10X, (and remember it even hit $64,888.99 this spring). Back to Robinhood, which according to The New York Times, also reported last month that “revenue from cryptocurrency trading fees totaled $233 million, a nearly 50-fold jump from $5 million a year earlier.” (And those are just fees off the trades, mind you.) Bottom line: Folks have made money here. (Of course these guys should be paying taxes on all those stock and crypto gains.)\nRobinhood Markets, Inc. CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt pose with Robinhood signage on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly-Working for cash, aka the under-the-table economy\nThis one is very tough to measure, too.A study by the Federal Reserve of St. Louisestimates that the average size of the “informal economy” in developed countries is 13% of GDP. Honestly, that could be off by many percentage points, but just to give you a ballpark, GDP in the U.S. this year is about $22 trillion. So 13% of that is $2.86 trillion. As it turns out, $2 trillion-plus, is a number that has been thrown around quite a bit (hereandherefor instance) when it comes to estimating the size of the cash economy in the U.S. Even if half that money is paid out to women, that still leaves, say, $1 trillion dollars being made by men in this country off the books. That’s a big chunk of change. Are more people than ever working for cash these days? Again, another question that’s impossible to answer. I would bet it’s not fewer. For example, my electrician Luis just told me he can’t get anyone to work for him anymore — they all want to get paid in cash.\n-Living off family members\nJust to take one facet,the Pew Research Center reportedlast year that the pandemic “has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading [in early 2020], surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era. In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February.” How many of these individuals are males living rent free (and sharing food too), which maybe means they don’t have to work? Who knows, but some. Ditto for males who have moved in with in-laws or siblings. And again, many men are choosing to stay home and take care of kids while their spouses work.\n-Illegal work\nFront and center here is selling illegal drugs. Sadly, business looks to be booming, that is if overdoses are any sort of measure.According to the Washington Post, overdose deaths hit 93,000 last year, up a stunning 30% from 2019. Most of the overdoses were attributed to opioids; heroin, synthetic opioids like OxyContin and in particular Fentanyl. (This despite drug dealers facingsupply chain issuesduring COVID.) How many Americans are in this business and who are they? A number is almost impossible to come by here, but as for who they are,a government report on drug trafficking arrestsfrom five years ago notes that ”the majority of drug trafficking offenders were male (84.9%), the average age of these offenders at sentencing was 36 years, 70% were United States citizens (although this rate varied substantially depending on the type of drug involved), and that almost half (49.4%) of drug traffickers had little or no prior criminal history.” How big a business is selling drugs in America? Could beas much as $100 billion.I think it’s fair to say that a market that size requires many thousands of employees.\nWhat about other types of crime and criminals, everything from robbers and thieves to prostitutes and pimps? To that point there aresome 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S.right now. (We have the highest absolute number and the highest per capita on the planet, and holdsome 25% of the world's total prisoners, according to the ACLU.) Being in prison is another way of living in America without working, I guess. But not counting those locked up, how many bad guys are out there on the street? Conservatively, it has to be thousands and thousands, and speaking to this story, they're all doing their thing and not participating in the labor force.\nORLEANS, MASSACHUSETTS - JULY 10: A man holds onto a clamming rake while clamming at low tide July 10, 2021 in Town Cove, Orleans, Massachusetts. He filled a bushel basket of cherry stone clams. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)More-Living off the land\nThis would include gardening, fishing, hunting, clamming, berrying, and just general foraging. The numbers here seem to be climbing. Here for instancefrom The Guardian:\n“Fishing and huntinglicense sales increased 10%in California during the pandemic, reversing years of decline. Clamming has grown in popularity for several reasons: people are looking for safe activities to do outdoors, but also some are clamming for subsistence and trying to get money from selling the shellfish (which is illegal without a commercial license).”\nDitto for Washington state, according to The Spokesman-Review:\n“From the start of the 2020 licensing year in May through Dec. 31, WDFW [Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife] sold nearly 45,000 more fishing licenses and 12,000 more hunting licenses than 2019. The number of new license holders — defined as someone who hadn’t purchased one for the previous five years — went up 16% for fishing licenses and almost 40% for hunters.”\nAs for growing vegetables in home gardens, yes, it is up, way up too. Even before the pandemic, there were estimates thata third of American families grew vegetables.Now this,NPRreported last year:\n“‘We're being flooded with vegetable orders,’ says George Ball, executive chairman of the Burpee Seed Company, based in Warminster, Penn.\nBall says he has noticed spikes in seed sales during bad times: the stock market crash of 1987, the dot com bubble burst of 2000, and he remembers the two oil crises of the 1970s from his childhood. But he says he has not seen a spike this large and widespread.\nSo there you have it. It’s a whole range of ways and means, behaviors and experiences. I’m sure I missed some, too. Again, some non-working men are in dire straits and need our help. Others are living non-working lives without burdening society or others, such as a fireman on early retirement (though some argue municipal employee pensions are too high), or an investor who made a ton of money in the market and called it quits, or maybe a wilderness guy living off the land in Alaska.\nAnd some non-working men are not playing fair. Like getting paid under the table, fudging insurance claims or social programs. Some freeload off relatives. And some engage in overtly illegal behavior like boosting branded goods from chain stores to sell online or dealing heroin.\nI would imagine that more than a few of these men create a portfolio of sources, though I’m not sure they really think of it that way. Take for example a hypothetical guy in a rural area who lives with his grandmother rent free, (he does help her with the garden some). This guy also does some cash carpentry work, hunts for game, gets some food off his ex-wife’s WIC and helps his brother sell some weed. Can you get by this way? Some men probably are. Is this the new American way? For some men it probably is.\nThat example perhaps, and to be sure of all of the above, I think go a long way toward explaining that chart from the beginning of the story, the one that shows the labor participation rate falling off a cliff over the past seven decades. And speaking of charts, another striking one came to mind when I was writing this, which I put here below. It shows U.S. GDP over the same time period as the labor participation rate.\nChart of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve\nOf course, the line on this GDP chart is inversely correlated with the line on the labor participation graph. And I think there is a relationship between the two. Which is to say, the wealthier our nation has become over the decades, the less men are working. Fact is there is just a ton of money sloshing around in our country. And men seem to be able to get their hands on it, whether obtained legally, borrowed, leached off of or stolen.\nIt seems like working legally to provide for yourself in America is really just one option these days.\nThis article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on September 18, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET.Subscribe\nAndy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter:@serwer","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":661,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":885522152,"gmtCreate":1631804508176,"gmtModify":1631890660013,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Agreed&nbsp;","listText":"Agreed&nbsp;","text":"Agreed","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/885522152","repostId":"2167351025","repostType":2,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":343,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":882897562,"gmtCreate":1631672029956,"gmtModify":1631890660015,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"More infor needed before making decision&nbsp;","listText":"More infor needed before making decision&nbsp;","text":"More infor needed before making decision","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/882897562","repostId":"2167555562","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"2167555562","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1631614810,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/2167555562?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-14 18:20","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Is iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) a Strong ETF Right Now?","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2167555562","media":"Zacks","summary":"Launched on 05/05/2010, the iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) is a smart beta exchange trad","content":"<html><body><p>Launched on 05/05/2010, the <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/IHPXF\">iShares MSCI</a> USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) is a smart beta exchange traded fund offering broad exposure to the Style Box - All Cap Blend category of the market.</p>\n<p><b>What Are Smart Beta ETFs?</b></p>\n<p>The ETF industry has long been dominated by products based on market cap weighted indexes, a strategy created to reflect the market or a particular market segment.</p>\n<p>Investors who believe in market efficiency should consider market cap indexes, as they replicate market returns in a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way.</p>\n<p>On the other hand, some investors who believe that it is possible to beat the market by superior stock selection opt to invest in another class of funds that track non-cap weighted strategies--popularly known as smart beta.</p>\n<p>This kind of index follows this same mindset, as it attempts to pick stocks that have better chances of risk-return performance; non-cap weighted strategies base selection on certain fundamental characteristics, or a mix of such characteristics.</p>\n<p>Even though this space provides many choices to investors--think <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AONE.U\">one</a> of the simplest methodologies like equal-weighting and more complicated ones like fundamental and volatility/momentum based weighting--not all have been able to deliver first-rate results.</p>\n<p><b>Fund Sponsor &amp; Index</b></p>\n<p>The fund is managed by Blackrock, and has been able to amass over $467.26 million, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Style Box - All Cap Blend. Before fees and expenses, this particular fund seeks to match the performance of the MSCI USA Equal Weighted Index.</p>\n<p>The MSCI USA Equal Weighted Index represents the MSCI USA Index, measures the performance of equity securities in the top 85% by market capitalization of equity securities listed on stock exchanges in the United States.</p>\n<p><b>Cost &amp; Other Expenses</b></p>\n<p>Cost is an important factor in selecting the right ETF, and cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins if all other fundamentals are the same.</p>\n<p>With one of the least expensive products in the space, this ETF has annual operating expenses of 0.09%.</p>\n<p>It's 12-month trailing dividend yield comes in at 1.08%.</p>\n<p><b>Sector Exposure and Top Holdings</b></p>\n<p>Even though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.</p>\n<p>Representing 20% of the portfolio, the fund has heaviest allocation to the Information Technology sector; Healthcare and Industrials round out the top three.</p>\n<p>Looking at individual holdings, Novavax Inc (NVAX) accounts for about 0.24% of total assets, followed by <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/ENPH\">Enphase Energy</a> Inc (ENPH) and Moderna Inc (MRNA).</p>\n<p>The top 10 holdings account for about 2.27% of total assets under management.</p>\n<p><b>Performance and Risk</b></p>\n<p>So far this year, EUSA return is roughly 22.50%, and was up about 43.31% in the last one year (as of 09/14/2021). During this past 52-week period, the fund has traded between $59.14 and $88.24.</p>\n<p>The fund has a beta of 1.13 and standard deviation of 23.87% for the trailing three-year period, which makes EUSA a medium risk choice in this particular space. With about 632 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.</p>\n<p><b>Alternatives</b></p>\n<p>IShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF is a reasonable option for investors seeking to outperform the Style Box - All Cap Blend segment of the market. However, there are other ETFs in the space which investors could consider.</p>\n<p>IShares Core S&amp;P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT) tracks S&amp;P Total Market Index and the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) tracks CRSP US Total Market Index. IShares Core S&amp;P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF has $42.71 billion in assets, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF has $264.76 billion. ITOT has an expense ratio of 0.03% and VTI charges 0.03%.</p>\n<p>Investors looking for cheaper and lower-risk options should consider traditional market cap weighted ETFs that aim to match the returns of the Style Box - All Cap Blend.</p>\n<p><b>Bottom Line</b></p>\n<p>To learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.</p>\n<br/>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. \nClick to get this free report\n<br/> \n<br/>\n<a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/ISQMF\">iShares MSCI</a> USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA): ETF Research Reports\n<br/> \n<br/>\n<a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MRNA\">Moderna, Inc.</a> (MRNA) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n<br/> \n<br/>\nNovavax, Inc. (NVAX) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n<br/> \n<br/>\nEnphase Energy, Inc. (ENPH) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n<br/> \n<br/>\nVanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI): ETF Research Reports\n<br/> \n<br/>\n<a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/EEME\">iShares</a> Core S&amp;P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT): ETF Research Reports\n<br/> \n<br/>\nTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.</body></html>","source":"yahoofinance","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Is iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) a Strong ETF Right Now?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nIs iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) a Strong ETF Right Now?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-14 18:20 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ishares-msci-usa-equal-weighted-102010987.html><strong>Zacks</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Launched on 05/05/2010, the iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) is a smart beta exchange traded fund offering broad exposure to the Style Box - All Cap Blend category of the market.\nWhat Are ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ishares-msci-usa-equal-weighted-102010987.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/clODVF3EcX410F.EsuMH4Q--~B/aD00NzY7dz05MDA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/CorpxfcSD3xaruoFanouDg--~B/aD00NzY7dz05MDA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/zacks.com/ace7df31c7fcb10255abe7c990ea373a","relate_stocks":{"EUSA":"iShares MSCI USA Index Fund","NVAX":"诺瓦瓦克斯医药"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ishares-msci-usa-equal-weighted-102010987.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5f26f4a48f9cb3e29be4d71d3ba8c038","article_id":"2167555562","content_text":"Launched on 05/05/2010, the iShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA) is a smart beta exchange traded fund offering broad exposure to the Style Box - All Cap Blend category of the market.\nWhat Are Smart Beta ETFs?\nThe ETF industry has long been dominated by products based on market cap weighted indexes, a strategy created to reflect the market or a particular market segment.\nInvestors who believe in market efficiency should consider market cap indexes, as they replicate market returns in a low-cost, convenient, and transparent way.\nOn the other hand, some investors who believe that it is possible to beat the market by superior stock selection opt to invest in another class of funds that track non-cap weighted strategies--popularly known as smart beta.\nThis kind of index follows this same mindset, as it attempts to pick stocks that have better chances of risk-return performance; non-cap weighted strategies base selection on certain fundamental characteristics, or a mix of such characteristics.\nEven though this space provides many choices to investors--think one of the simplest methodologies like equal-weighting and more complicated ones like fundamental and volatility/momentum based weighting--not all have been able to deliver first-rate results.\nFund Sponsor & Index\nThe fund is managed by Blackrock, and has been able to amass over $467.26 million, which makes it one of the average sized ETFs in the Style Box - All Cap Blend. Before fees and expenses, this particular fund seeks to match the performance of the MSCI USA Equal Weighted Index.\nThe MSCI USA Equal Weighted Index represents the MSCI USA Index, measures the performance of equity securities in the top 85% by market capitalization of equity securities listed on stock exchanges in the United States.\nCost & Other Expenses\nCost is an important factor in selecting the right ETF, and cheaper funds can significantly outperform their more expensive cousins if all other fundamentals are the same.\nWith one of the least expensive products in the space, this ETF has annual operating expenses of 0.09%.\nIt's 12-month trailing dividend yield comes in at 1.08%.\nSector Exposure and Top Holdings\nEven though ETFs offer diversified exposure that minimizes single stock risk, investors should also look at the actual holdings inside the fund. Luckily, most ETFs are very transparent products that disclose their holdings on a daily basis.\nRepresenting 20% of the portfolio, the fund has heaviest allocation to the Information Technology sector; Healthcare and Industrials round out the top three.\nLooking at individual holdings, Novavax Inc (NVAX) accounts for about 0.24% of total assets, followed by Enphase Energy Inc (ENPH) and Moderna Inc (MRNA).\nThe top 10 holdings account for about 2.27% of total assets under management.\nPerformance and Risk\nSo far this year, EUSA return is roughly 22.50%, and was up about 43.31% in the last one year (as of 09/14/2021). During this past 52-week period, the fund has traded between $59.14 and $88.24.\nThe fund has a beta of 1.13 and standard deviation of 23.87% for the trailing three-year period, which makes EUSA a medium risk choice in this particular space. With about 632 holdings, it effectively diversifies company-specific risk.\nAlternatives\nIShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF is a reasonable option for investors seeking to outperform the Style Box - All Cap Blend segment of the market. However, there are other ETFs in the space which investors could consider.\nIShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT) tracks S&P Total Market Index and the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) tracks CRSP US Total Market Index. IShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF has $42.71 billion in assets, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF has $264.76 billion. ITOT has an expense ratio of 0.03% and VTI charges 0.03%.\nInvestors looking for cheaper and lower-risk options should consider traditional market cap weighted ETFs that aim to match the returns of the Style Box - All Cap Blend.\nBottom Line\nTo learn more about this product and other ETFs, screen for products that match your investment objectives and read articles on latest developments in the ETF investing universe, please visit Zacks ETF Center.\nWant the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. \nClick to get this free report\n \n\niShares MSCI USA Equal Weighted ETF (EUSA): ETF Research Reports\n \n\nModerna, Inc. (MRNA) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n \n\nNovavax, Inc. (NVAX) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n \n\nEnphase Energy, Inc. (ENPH) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n \n\nVanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI): ETF Research Reports\n \n\niShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT): ETF Research Reports\n \n\nTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":430,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":882897995,"gmtCreate":1631671991517,"gmtModify":1631890660017,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Good infor","listText":"Good infor","text":"Good infor","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/882897995","repostId":"2167563598","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"2167563598","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1631655909,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/2167563598?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-15 05:45","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Novavax (NVAX) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2167563598","media":"Zacks","summary":"In the latest trading session, Novavax (NVAX) closed at $234.29, marking a +0.2% move from the previ","content":"<html><body><p>In the latest trading session, Novavax (NVAX) closed at $234.29, marking a +0.2% move from the previous day. This change outpaced the S&amp;P 500's 0.58% loss on the day.</p>\n<p>Prior to today's trading, shares of the vaccine maker had gained 1.97% over the past month. This has outpaced the Medical sector's loss of 0.62% and the S&amp;P 500's gain of 0.16% in that time.</p>\n<p>Investors will be hoping for strength from NVAX as it approaches its next earnings release. In that report, analysts expect NVAX to post earnings of -$4.04 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 25.86%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $306.8 million, up 95.39% from the year-ago period.</p>\n<p>Looking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of -$8.37 per share and revenue of $1.77 billion. These totals would mark changes of -15.13% and +273.17%, respectively, from last year.</p>\n<p>Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for NVAX. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.</p>\n<p>Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.</p>\n<p>The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 3.86% lower within the past month. NVAX is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).</p>\n<p>The Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry is part of the Medical sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 196, which puts it in the bottom 23% of all 250+ industries.</p>\n<p>The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.</p>\n<p>Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.</p>\n<br/>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. \nClick to get this free report\n<br/> \n<br/>\nNovavax, Inc. (NVAX) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n<br/> \n<br/>\nTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.</body></html>","source":"yahoofinance","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Novavax (NVAX) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nNovavax (NVAX) Gains As Market Dips: What You Should Know\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-15 05:45 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novavax-nvax-gains-market-dips-214509891.html><strong>Zacks</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>In the latest trading session, Novavax (NVAX) closed at $234.29, marking a +0.2% move from the previous day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.58% loss on the day.\nPrior to today's trading, shares ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novavax-nvax-gains-market-dips-214509891.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/r3XbmSiK8NsZqGuIQaOcPA--~B/aD02MDA7dz05MDA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/e0VWXB5.wUFiKGuJPPpLzg--~B/aD02MDA7dz05MDA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/zacks.com/a7cdcede0bb5a646be035f4a7e678781","relate_stocks":{"NVAX":"诺瓦瓦克斯医药"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novavax-nvax-gains-market-dips-214509891.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5f26f4a48f9cb3e29be4d71d3ba8c038","article_id":"2167563598","content_text":"In the latest trading session, Novavax (NVAX) closed at $234.29, marking a +0.2% move from the previous day. This change outpaced the S&P 500's 0.58% loss on the day.\nPrior to today's trading, shares of the vaccine maker had gained 1.97% over the past month. This has outpaced the Medical sector's loss of 0.62% and the S&P 500's gain of 0.16% in that time.\nInvestors will be hoping for strength from NVAX as it approaches its next earnings release. In that report, analysts expect NVAX to post earnings of -$4.04 per share. This would mark a year-over-year decline of 25.86%. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $306.8 million, up 95.39% from the year-ago period.\nLooking at the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates suggest analysts are expecting earnings of -$8.37 per share and revenue of $1.77 billion. These totals would mark changes of -15.13% and +273.17%, respectively, from last year.\nInvestors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for NVAX. These recent revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.\nBased on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.\nThe Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 3.86% lower within the past month. NVAX is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).\nThe Medical - Biomedical and Genetics industry is part of the Medical sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 196, which puts it in the bottom 23% of all 250+ industries.\nThe Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.\nBe sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.\nWant the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. \nClick to get this free report\n \n\nNovavax, Inc. (NVAX) : Free Stock Analysis Report\n \n\nTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":341,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":889933352,"gmtCreate":1631100972376,"gmtModify":1631890660021,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Oh","listText":"Oh","text":"Oh","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/889933352","repostId":"2165360472","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2165360472","kind":"highlight","pubTimestamp":1631100780,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/2165360472?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-08 19:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Is It Too Late to Buy Apple Stock?","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2165360472","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"The tech giant has generated explosive gains over the past two decades.","content":"<p><b>Apple</b>'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rallied roughly 48,660% over the past 20 years and recently hit a new all-time high. Once dismissed as an also-ran of the tech sector, Apple's introductions of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad under Steve Jobs turned it into <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AONE.U\">one</a> of the world's most valuable tech companies.</p>\n<p>After Jobs passed away in 2011, Apple continued to evolve under Tim Cook with new iPhones, fresh hardware devices like the Apple Watch, and the expansion of its software and services ecosystem. Apple also reinstated its dividend, initiated aggressive buybacks, and invested in next-gen technologies like augmented reality and connected vehicles.</p>\n<p>Apple became a trillion-dollar company in 2018 and a $2 trillion company last year. But after those massive long-term gains, investors who don't already own Apple might be wondering if it's too late to buy the stock. Let's examine the bearish and bullish cases for Apple to decide.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/cc0db7aae99872ee508b75351882fff1\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p>\n<p>Image source: Apple.</p>\n<p><b>Why it might be too late to buy Apple</b></p>\n<p>The bears often cite Apple's dependence on the iPhone, which generated 54% of its revenue in the first nine months of fiscal 2021, as its main weakness. Apple's iPhone sales rose this year as more users bought its first lineup of 5G iPhones, but that growth will likely decelerate next year as fewer consumers consider the iPhone 13 to be a crucial upgrade. Intense competition and the commoditization of the smartphone market also remain major long-term threats to Apple's biggest business.</p>\n<p>It's unclear if Apple will ever deliver another revolutionary product like the iPhone, and the lack of clarity regarding its future plans is worrisome.</p>\n<p>Another soft spot is Apple's dependence on China, which accounted for 19% of its revenue in the first nine months of the year. China is Apple's fastest-growing market, but it's also a minefield of unpredictable regulations, tariffs, and nationalism-driven boycotts. If the ongoing trade and tech tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, Apple could be an easy target for retaliatory regulations, taxes, or bans.</p>\n<p>The bears will also point out that Apple has grown too dependent on buybacks in recent years. It spent $82.4 billion on buybacks over the past 12 months, and even funded some of those purchases with fresh debt. Apple could arguably have spent more of that cash on investments and acquisitions to diversify its business away from the iPhone.</p>\n<p>Lastly, Apple's expansion of its services ecosystem faces significant long-term challenges. Its App Store faces pressure to lower its fees, while many of its new subscription services (Apple TV+, Apple Music, and Apple Arcade) are likely operating at losses to lock in more users.</p>\n<p><b>Why it might not be too late to buy Apple</b></p>\n<p>The bulls believe Apple's iPhones will continue to lock in consumers with their prisoner-taking software ecosystems, and that the device's sales -- while cyclical -- will remain stable over the long term.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2f0193c46e290e13c95a5514f952d998\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"451\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p>\n<p>Image source: Apple.</p>\n<p>Apple also isn't sitting still as it milks the iPhone dry. It's reportedly developing augmented reality devices, an electric vehicle, and other new services to expand beyond single hardware platforms.</p>\n<p>As for China, the bulls believe Apple will make concessions (likely in terms of censorship and data protection) to remain in the government's good graces, and that its symbiotic relationship with China through<b> Foxconn</b> (OTC:FXCNF) -- the country's largest private employer&nbsp;-- will shield it from retaliatory regulations.</p>\n<p>The bulls will point out that while Apple spends a lot of cash on buybacks, it was still sitting on $193.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities last quarter -- which gives it plenty of room for future acquisitions. Furthermore, it only issued new debt because interest rates were so low.</p>\n<p>As for the expansion of its ecosystem, Apple can offset the losses at its newer subscription services, which now serve more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, with its higher-margin App Store revenue -- even if certain developers and regulators pressure it to lower its 15%-30% cut. Locking in more subscribers also tethers them more tightly to the iPhone and its other hardware devices.</p>\n<p>Lastly, Apple's stock is still reasonably valued. Analysts expect its revenue and earnings to rise 33% and 70%, respectively, this year, followed by more modest growth next year as it laps the launch of the iPhone 12. The stock trades at 27 times forward earnings and seven times next year's sales.</p>\n<p><b>It's still a great long-term investment</b></p>\n<p>I traded in and out of Apple for years before buying a long-term position in early 2018. If I had simply bought and held Apple instead of trading it before then, I'd be sitting on much bigger gains.</p>\n<p>Therefore, I believe Apple is still a great long-term investment, and it still isn't too late to buy the stock. It probably won't replicate its gains from the past two decades over the next 20 years, but its core businesses remain strong, its brand inspires fierce loyalty, and it has plenty of cash to fund its future expansion plans beyond the iPhone.</p>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Is It Too Late to Buy Apple Stock?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nIs It Too Late to Buy Apple Stock?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-08 19:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/08/is-it-too-late-to-buy-apple-stock/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rallied roughly 48,660% over the past 20 years and recently hit a new all-time high. Once dismissed as an also-ran of the tech sector, Apple's introductions of the iPod, ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/08/is-it-too-late-to-buy-apple-stock/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/08/is-it-too-late-to-buy-apple-stock/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2165360472","content_text":"Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rallied roughly 48,660% over the past 20 years and recently hit a new all-time high. Once dismissed as an also-ran of the tech sector, Apple's introductions of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad under Steve Jobs turned it into one of the world's most valuable tech companies.\nAfter Jobs passed away in 2011, Apple continued to evolve under Tim Cook with new iPhones, fresh hardware devices like the Apple Watch, and the expansion of its software and services ecosystem. Apple also reinstated its dividend, initiated aggressive buybacks, and invested in next-gen technologies like augmented reality and connected vehicles.\nApple became a trillion-dollar company in 2018 and a $2 trillion company last year. But after those massive long-term gains, investors who don't already own Apple might be wondering if it's too late to buy the stock. Let's examine the bearish and bullish cases for Apple to decide.\n\nImage source: Apple.\nWhy it might be too late to buy Apple\nThe bears often cite Apple's dependence on the iPhone, which generated 54% of its revenue in the first nine months of fiscal 2021, as its main weakness. Apple's iPhone sales rose this year as more users bought its first lineup of 5G iPhones, but that growth will likely decelerate next year as fewer consumers consider the iPhone 13 to be a crucial upgrade. Intense competition and the commoditization of the smartphone market also remain major long-term threats to Apple's biggest business.\nIt's unclear if Apple will ever deliver another revolutionary product like the iPhone, and the lack of clarity regarding its future plans is worrisome.\nAnother soft spot is Apple's dependence on China, which accounted for 19% of its revenue in the first nine months of the year. China is Apple's fastest-growing market, but it's also a minefield of unpredictable regulations, tariffs, and nationalism-driven boycotts. If the ongoing trade and tech tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, Apple could be an easy target for retaliatory regulations, taxes, or bans.\nThe bears will also point out that Apple has grown too dependent on buybacks in recent years. It spent $82.4 billion on buybacks over the past 12 months, and even funded some of those purchases with fresh debt. Apple could arguably have spent more of that cash on investments and acquisitions to diversify its business away from the iPhone.\nLastly, Apple's expansion of its services ecosystem faces significant long-term challenges. Its App Store faces pressure to lower its fees, while many of its new subscription services (Apple TV+, Apple Music, and Apple Arcade) are likely operating at losses to lock in more users.\nWhy it might not be too late to buy Apple\nThe bulls believe Apple's iPhones will continue to lock in consumers with their prisoner-taking software ecosystems, and that the device's sales -- while cyclical -- will remain stable over the long term.\n\nImage source: Apple.\nApple also isn't sitting still as it milks the iPhone dry. It's reportedly developing augmented reality devices, an electric vehicle, and other new services to expand beyond single hardware platforms.\nAs for China, the bulls believe Apple will make concessions (likely in terms of censorship and data protection) to remain in the government's good graces, and that its symbiotic relationship with China through Foxconn (OTC:FXCNF) -- the country's largest private employer -- will shield it from retaliatory regulations.\nThe bulls will point out that while Apple spends a lot of cash on buybacks, it was still sitting on $193.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities last quarter -- which gives it plenty of room for future acquisitions. Furthermore, it only issued new debt because interest rates were so low.\nAs for the expansion of its ecosystem, Apple can offset the losses at its newer subscription services, which now serve more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, with its higher-margin App Store revenue -- even if certain developers and regulators pressure it to lower its 15%-30% cut. Locking in more subscribers also tethers them more tightly to the iPhone and its other hardware devices.\nLastly, Apple's stock is still reasonably valued. Analysts expect its revenue and earnings to rise 33% and 70%, respectively, this year, followed by more modest growth next year as it laps the launch of the iPhone 12. The stock trades at 27 times forward earnings and seven times next year's sales.\nIt's still a great long-term investment\nI traded in and out of Apple for years before buying a long-term position in early 2018. If I had simply bought and held Apple instead of trading it before then, I'd be sitting on much bigger gains.\nTherefore, I believe Apple is still a great long-term investment, and it still isn't too late to buy the stock. It probably won't replicate its gains from the past two decades over the next 20 years, but its core businesses remain strong, its brand inspires fierce loyalty, and it has plenty of cash to fund its future expansion plans beyond the iPhone.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":163,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":812648880,"gmtCreate":1630586864540,"gmtModify":1631890660024,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Agreed","listText":"Agreed","text":"Agreed","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/812648880","repostId":"1100563900","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1100563900","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624956396,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1100563900?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-06-29 16:46","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Facebook: Simply Unstoppable","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1100563900","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets , cumulatively make for a compel","content":"<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.</li>\n <li>Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.</li>\n <li>The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets (DIEM), cumulatively make for a compelling growth story.</li>\n <li>Although the company is highly controversial and rightfully so, this article focuses more on the quantitative analysis and less on the morals and ethics behind this investment. That, we shall leave to you.</li>\n</ul>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3b3414073b72a391e760025594ec111f\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"528\"><span>nemke/E+ via Getty Images</span></p>\n<p><b>Investment Thesis</b></p>\n<p>Facebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!</p>\n<p><b>What is Facebook</b></p>\n<p>Known to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e3d08f4df186c4705a5300f40d6b8a5e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"429\"><span>(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>The world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.</p>\n<p>The firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the&nbsp;Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7cb9d05bb00f3038cec301c72ef56827\" tg-width=\"608\" tg-height=\"378\"><span>(Source:Pew Research Center)</span></p>\n<p>To Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.</p>\n<p>When we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than&nbsp;1000 companies publicly committed&nbsp;to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.</p>\n<p>Despite this, Facebook&nbsp;beat on Q2 earnings&nbsp;and saw an increase of&nbsp;10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.</p>\n<p>The results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.</p>\n<p><b>Risks</b></p>\n<p>Other risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f694ca79d59162e95f05335ebefbca3d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Though representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.</p>\n<p>The current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.</p>\n<p>According to aCNBC article:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n</blockquote>\n<p>When the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.</p>\n<p>However, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.</p>\n<p>Though Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.</p>\n<p><b>Moat</b></p>\n<p>As mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2057a83640201edd89430e754f3f8525\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"431\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>Despite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US &amp; Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US &amp; Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce3456321584d2eea288f7e410215571\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"388\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US &amp; Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/84eaec3de9bafd595bf4ecf9ffdae16a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"430\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US &amp; Canada and 10.2% in Europe.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d72be6c3ca7eb809567503ffc1d4ed9\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"395\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>If Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.</p>\n<p><b>Growth Tactics</b></p>\n<p>When we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4d1d27ff399e3e6fdfbc44a3ff1fb6e6\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"557\"><span>(Source:Facebook Newsroom)</span></p>\n<p>The firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/38d87012cd9e376a0bed27a095b01828\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"418\"><span>(Source:Facebook Newsroom)</span></p>\n<p>What’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.</p>\n<p>Their continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.</p>\n<p><b>Financials</b></p>\n<p>Of the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1367468f26c73bde43f494b2b7fb49d6\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"467\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>FB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&amp;D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&amp;D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4b923685aa0489833ae8f50fcddf3601\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>A large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash &amp; Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/13b40cadc31458233d0ea83ce4917c33\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Given the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3f5b82506a0385a1265c494b21462678\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"43\"><span>(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)</span></p>\n<p>In their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.</p>\n<p><b>Valuations</b></p>\n<p>Being a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0878b205b837634b7d2528f57ebe84fc\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"321\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>Looking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1707f8cfee45ce9ebb0e3ac961e78f48\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"338\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Since 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/444e1473e814530e2332cea02637af53\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Moreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8494d3084eed106a9cb0bff0f27cfe7a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>At an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/55014da5e82d1a67caaeb34766b35940\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"294\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.</p>\n<p>Now shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5d67f3c257657bc10ee6be38c16d2a1f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"207\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>Turning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffe26a8eabec7045dc5a904497737623\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"501\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>Despite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/247661f12f62820f6266763f49531355\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>However, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce908799f1bf9091b49b94e03db7e476\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"284\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>However, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.</p>\n<p>With all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.</p>\n<p><b>Investor Takeaways</b></p>\n<p>To conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.</p>\n<p>With so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.</p>\n<p>That being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.</p>\n<p>End day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next time!</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Facebook: Simply Unstoppable</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nFacebook: Simply Unstoppable\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-29 16:46 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nThe #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.\nDespite an ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1100563900","content_text":"Summary\n\nThe #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.\nDespite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.\nThe strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets (DIEM), cumulatively make for a compelling growth story.\nAlthough the company is highly controversial and rightfully so, this article focuses more on the quantitative analysis and less on the morals and ethics behind this investment. That, we shall leave to you.\n\nnemke/E+ via Getty Images\nInvestment Thesis\nFacebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!\nWhat is Facebook\nKnown to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.\n(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nThe world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.\nThe firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)\n(Source:Pew Research Center)\nTo Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.\nWhen we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than 1000 companies publicly committed to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.\nDespite this, Facebook beat on Q2 earnings and saw an increase of 10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.\nThe results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.\nRisks\nOther risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nThough representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.\nThe current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.\nAccording to aCNBC article:\n\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n\nWhen the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.\nHowever, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.\nThough Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.\nMoat\nAs mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nDespite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US & Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US & Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US & Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US & Canada and 10.2% in Europe.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nIf Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.\nGrowth Tactics\nWhen we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nThe firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:\n\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nWhat’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.\nTheir continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.\nFinancials\nOf the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.\nData by YCharts\nFB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nA large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash & Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nGiven the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.\n(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)\nIn their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.\nValuations\nBeing a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nLooking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nSince 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nMoreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nAt an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nWhen we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.\nNow shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nTurning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.\nData by YCharts\nDespite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nHowever, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.\nWith all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.\nInvestor Takeaways\nTo conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.\nWith so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.\nThat being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.\nEnd day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next time!","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":268,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":812641461,"gmtCreate":1630586817553,"gmtModify":1631890660025,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Looking forward to future growth&nbsp;","listText":"Looking forward to future growth&nbsp;","text":"Looking forward to future growth","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/812641461","repostId":"1159580926","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":90,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":145079770,"gmtCreate":1626184678790,"gmtModify":1631890660030,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3584268106923844","authorIdStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Fear is powerful in share trading&nbsp;","listText":"Fear is powerful in share trading&nbsp;","text":"Fear is powerful in share trading","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/145079770","repostId":"1168255542","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":374,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":145079770,"gmtCreate":1626184678790,"gmtModify":1631890660030,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Fear is powerful in share trading&nbsp;","listText":"Fear is powerful in share trading&nbsp;","text":"Fear is powerful in share trading","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/145079770","repostId":"1168255542","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":374,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":878715653,"gmtCreate":1637232628288,"gmtModify":1637232628391,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/878715653","repostId":"1143297999","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1143297999","kind":"news","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Reuters.com brings you the latest news from around the world, covering breaking news in markets, business, politics, entertainment and technology","home_visible":1,"media_name":"Reuters","id":"1036604489","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/443ce19704621c837795676028cec868"},"pubTimestamp":1637232370,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1143297999?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-11-18 18:46","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Crypto mining platform Bitdeer to go public through $4 bln SPAC merger","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1143297999","media":"Reuters","summary":"Nov 18 (Reuters) - Bitdeer Technologies said on Thursday it plans to go public by merging with blank","content":"<p>Nov 18 (Reuters) - Bitdeer Technologies said on Thursday it plans to go public by merging with blank-check firm Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp&nbsp;in a deal valuing the cryptocurrency mining platform at $4 billion.</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Crypto mining platform Bitdeer to go public through $4 bln SPAC merger</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nCrypto mining platform Bitdeer to go public through $4 bln SPAC merger\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1036604489\">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/443ce19704621c837795676028cec868);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Reuters </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2021-11-18 18:46</p>\n</div>\n\n</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<p>Nov 18 (Reuters) - Bitdeer Technologies said on Thursday it plans to go public by merging with blank-check firm Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp&nbsp;in a deal valuing the cryptocurrency mining platform at $4 billion.</p>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{},"is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1143297999","content_text":"Nov 18 (Reuters) - Bitdeer Technologies said on Thursday it plans to go public by merging with blank-check firm Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp in a deal valuing the cryptocurrency mining platform at $4 billion.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":383,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"CN","totalScore":0},{"id":887289932,"gmtCreate":1632044741226,"gmtModify":1632803149678,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Great read!&nbsp;","listText":"Great read!&nbsp;","text":"Great read!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/887289932","repostId":"1198486138","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1198486138","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1632023224,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1198486138?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-19 11:47","market":"us","language":"en","title":"7 ways men live without working in America","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1198486138","media":"Yahoo Finance","summary":"How do they live? What are they doing for money? ","content":"<p>Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million people!</p>\n<p>How do they live? What are they doing for money? To me, this is one of the great mysteries of our time.</p>\n<p>I’m certainly not the first person to make note of this shocking statistic. You’ve heard people bemoaning this \"labor participation rate,\" which is simply the number of working-age men (usually counted as ages 16 to 64) not working or not looking for work, as a percentage of the overall labor force.</p>\n<p>It’s true that the pandemic, which of course produced a number of factors that made working more difficult never mind dangerous, pushed the labor participation rate to a record low. But the fact that millions of American males have not been working precedes COVID-19 by decades. In fact, the participation rate for men peaked at 87.4% in October 1949 and has been dropping steadily ever since. It now stands at 67.7%.</p>\n<p>As a business journalist for a good portion of those 70-plus years, I’ve looked at thousands of charts and graphs in my life, and I have to say this one is as jaw dropping as it is vexing:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/056158b8fa7157238c3d1521dd05c02e\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"259\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Chart of the U.S. labor force participation rate for men over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve</p>\n<p>Economists, sociologists, politicians, and cable news pundits each have their pet factors to explain the groundswell of non-work. But after digging down here, I’ve concluded there are many different forces at play. That’s what I want to explore today, which is: how men can live in America without working.</p>\n<p>I’m not talking about why men have lost their jobs — factories closing, layoffs, automation, outsourcing jobs overseas, even perhaps women entering the workforce, (in fact, the participation rate by women over the same time period is way up). What I want to get at is how they’re living without holding a \"real\" job, and by that I mean doing work where one reports income to the IRS, pays taxes and Social Security, etc.</p>\n<p>It’s important to note that every man in this group has his own story. They range from mentally ill homeless men who desperately need our help, to the I’m-doing-just-fine-thank-you-very-much, retired early, and former Silicon Valley coder. And there are infinite scenarios in between those two extremes, including, for instance, the many men who have chosen to bestay-at-home dadswhile their spouses work.</p>\n<p>It’s also the case that some men in this group may be unemployed and not seeking work because they’ve given up looking just for now — perhaps waiting for COVID to abate — and will start the search again soon. Here too, society needs to help.</p>\n<p>Still, none of this explains decade after decade of falling male employment.</p>\n<p>To that end, here to my mind are seven ways men are living without working in America:</p>\n<p><b>-Unemployment insurance</b></p>\n<p>Let’s start with this one because it’s a hot button issue. Conservatives and some liberals too have made the claim that state unemployment aid, coupled with $600 a week from the CARES Act, which was rolled out in March 2020, have reduced men’s need to work. (There are actually a variety of social programs at play,spelled out nicely hereby think tank The Century Foundation, which estimates that overall these programs have pumped $800 billion in the economy.) We’ll be getting a good read on whether all this relief did suppress employment now that CARES aid ended for some 7.5 million Americans earlier this month. But as Yahoo Finance’s Denitsa Tsekova reportedhereandhere, states that ended federal aid programs early didn’t see big increases in employment. That may mean these payments really weren’t enough to live off, or not enough to live off by themselves, which speaks to men looking to a combination of sources, like under the table income or family support and possibly some savings (see below).</p>\n<p><b>-Early retirement, pensions, disability and lawsuits</b></p>\n<p>Admittedly, this is a bit of a hodgepodge. And as is the case with many of these categories, hard data is tough to come by, but it is the case that millions of men under 64 are at least partly living off of pensions and 401(k)s. This would include everything from C-suite executives to union members. And don’t forget municipal workers, who make up almost 14% of the U.S. workforce. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are some 6,000 public sector retirement systems in the U.S.Collectively these plans have $4.5 trillion in assets,with 14.7 million working members and 11.2 million retirees. The plans distribute $323 billion in benefits annually, and again, some to men who are younger than 64. In fact in almost two-thirds of these plans,if you started working at 25, you max out at 57, a real inducement to stop working — at least at that job of course.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/53e26b293f8a939a54b78315c3375a18\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"467\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Volunteers load cars with turkeys and other food assistance for laid off Walt Disney World cast members and others at a food distribution event on December 12, 2020 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)More</p>\n<p>There’s also disability insurance from the Social Security Administration that is beingpaid to some 9 million Americanswhomay receive payments many years before retirement age. That's why I am including disability here, but not plain vanilla Social Security, which you can’t receive until age 62. The maximum disability benefit amount you can receive each month is currently $3,148. (However, the average beneficiary receives about $1,277 per month, according to the law group Social Security Disability Advocates.) Overall, it looks like theSSA pays out some $130 billion in disability annually.That’s not nothing. Then there’s money paid out in medical malpractice each year, smaller true, but stillestimated to be in excess of $3 billion.And don't forgetpayments from legal settlements and class action lawsuits.</p>\n<p>You argue all day about the right or wrong when it comes to these payouts, but the fact is many of them didn’t exist, or not at this magnitude, decades ago.</p>\n<p><b>-Savings, trading stocks, and bitcoin</b></p>\n<p>Consider now men are living off savings, or from money made in the market or maybe even selling NFTs. How many is it exactly? Who knows, but quite a few for sure. First off, Americans on average do have some money in the bank. Savings as a percentage of disposable income,according to the Federal Reserve of Kansas City,hit a record high of 33% in the spring of 2020 and is still at 14%, or nearly twice as high as it was prior to the pandemic.</p>\n<p>And according to arecent survey by Northwestern Mutual,average personal savings are up over 10% compared to last year, from $65,900 last year to $73,100. Average retirement savings increased 13%, from $87,500 last year to $98,800 today. So there’s that.</p>\n<p>Next let’s look at investing — first stocks. It is not irrelevant to this narrative that the S&amp;P 500 has climbed from 2,480 on March 12, 2020 — the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic— to 4,441 today, or almost 80%. That’s a huge gain. Much of the action of course has been retail investors and the meme stock boom, as millions of American males stuck at home with nothing to do all day for the past 18 months passed the time trading stocks. Credit Suisse estimates that since the beginning of 2020, “retail trading as a share of overall market activityhas nearly doubledfrom between 15% and 18% to over 30%,” as CNBC reported. How many men were doing this and supporting themselves? Unclear, but upstart trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) — the broker dealer of choice for many of these new investors — reported that it had22.5 million funded user accountslast month, up from 7.2 million in March of 2020. Let’s just say 15 million new accounts is quite a number.</p>\n<p>Now crypto. You can laugh all you want, but the simple fact is that theprice of bitcoinis up from $4,861 on March 12, 2000 to $47,763 today, or basically up 10X, (and remember it even hit $64,888.99 this spring). Back to Robinhood, which according to The New York Times, also reported last month that “revenue from cryptocurrency trading fees totaled $233 million, a nearly 50-fold jump from $5 million a year earlier.” (And those are just fees off the trades, mind you.) Bottom line: Folks have made money here. (Of course these guys should be paying taxes on all those stock and crypto gains.)</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/809084435ffdcbc0695311d158bb7a98\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"470\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Robinhood Markets, Inc. CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt pose with Robinhood signage on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly<b>-Working for cash, aka the under-the-table economy</b></p>\n<p>This one is very tough to measure, too.A study by the Federal Reserve of St. Louisestimates that the average size of the “informal economy” in developed countries is 13% of GDP. Honestly, that could be off by many percentage points, but just to give you a ballpark, GDP in the U.S. this year is about $22 trillion. So 13% of that is $2.86 trillion. As it turns out, $2 trillion-plus, is a number that has been thrown around quite a bit (hereandherefor instance) when it comes to estimating the size of the cash economy in the U.S. Even if half that money is paid out to women, that still leaves, say, $1 trillion dollars being made by men in this country off the books. That’s a big chunk of change. Are more people than ever working for cash these days? Again, another question that’s impossible to answer. I would bet it’s not fewer. For example, my electrician Luis just told me he can’t get anyone to work for him anymore — they all want to get paid in cash.</p>\n<p><b>-Living off family members</b></p>\n<p>Just to take one facet,the Pew Research Center reportedlast year that the pandemic “has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading [in early 2020], surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era. In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February.” How many of these individuals are males living rent free (and sharing food too), which maybe means they don’t have to work? Who knows, but some. Ditto for males who have moved in with in-laws or siblings. And again, many men are choosing to stay home and take care of kids while their spouses work.</p>\n<p><b>-Illegal work</b></p>\n<p>Front and center here is selling illegal drugs. Sadly, business looks to be booming, that is if overdoses are any sort of measure.According to the Washington Post, overdose deaths hit 93,000 last year, up a stunning 30% from 2019. Most of the overdoses were attributed to opioids; heroin, synthetic opioids like OxyContin and in particular Fentanyl. (This despite drug dealers facingsupply chain issuesduring COVID.) How many Americans are in this business and who are they? A number is almost impossible to come by here, but as for who they are,a government report on drug trafficking arrestsfrom five years ago notes that ”the majority of drug trafficking offenders were male (84.9%), the average age of these offenders at sentencing was 36 years, 70% were United States citizens (although this rate varied substantially depending on the type of drug involved), and that almost half (49.4%) of drug traffickers had little or no prior criminal history.” How big a business is selling drugs in America? Could beas much as $100 billion.I think it’s fair to say that a market that size requires many thousands of employees.</p>\n<p>What about other types of crime and criminals, everything from robbers and thieves to prostitutes and pimps? To that point there aresome 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S.right now. (We have the highest absolute number and the highest per capita on the planet, and holdsome 25% of the world's total prisoners, according to the ACLU.) Being in prison is another way of living in America without working, I guess. But not counting those locked up, how many bad guys are out there on the street? Conservatively, it has to be thousands and thousands, and speaking to this story, they're all doing their thing and not participating in the labor force.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3f8f4b3e6a5aa97a10f5c7bb22dec1d7\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"470\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">ORLEANS, MASSACHUSETTS - JULY 10: A man holds onto a clamming rake while clamming at low tide July 10, 2021 in Town Cove, Orleans, Massachusetts. He filled a bushel basket of cherry stone clams. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)More<b>-Living off the land</b></p>\n<p>This would include gardening, fishing, hunting, clamming, berrying, and just general foraging. The numbers here seem to be climbing. Here for instancefrom The Guardian:</p>\n<p>“Fishing and huntinglicense sales increased 10%in California during the pandemic, reversing years of decline. Clamming has grown in popularity for several reasons: people are looking for safe activities to do outdoors, but also some are clamming for subsistence and trying to get money from selling the shellfish (which is illegal without a commercial license).”</p>\n<p>Ditto for Washington state, according to The Spokesman-Review:</p>\n<p>“From the start of the 2020 licensing year in May through Dec. 31, WDFW [Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife] sold nearly 45,000 more fishing licenses and 12,000 more hunting licenses than 2019. The number of new license holders — defined as someone who hadn’t purchased one for the previous five years — went up 16% for fishing licenses and almost 40% for hunters.”</p>\n<p>As for growing vegetables in home gardens, yes, it is up, way up too. Even before the pandemic, there were estimates thata third of American families grew vegetables.Now this,NPRreported last year:</p>\n<p>“‘We're being flooded with vegetable orders,’ says George Ball, executive chairman of the Burpee Seed Company, based in Warminster, Penn.</p>\n<p>Ball says he has noticed spikes in seed sales during bad times: the stock market crash of 1987, the dot com bubble burst of 2000, and he remembers the two oil crises of the 1970s from his childhood. But he says he has not seen a spike this large and widespread.</p>\n<p>So there you have it. It’s a whole range of ways and means, behaviors and experiences. I’m sure I missed some, too. Again, some non-working men are in dire straits and need our help. Others are living non-working lives without burdening society or others, such as a fireman on early retirement (though some argue municipal employee pensions are too high), or an investor who made a ton of money in the market and called it quits, or maybe a wilderness guy living off the land in Alaska.</p>\n<p>And some non-working men are not playing fair. Like getting paid under the table, fudging insurance claims or social programs. Some freeload off relatives. And some engage in overtly illegal behavior like boosting branded goods from chain stores to sell online or dealing heroin.</p>\n<p>I would imagine that more than a few of these men create a portfolio of sources, though I’m not sure they really think of it that way. Take for example a hypothetical guy in a rural area who lives with his grandmother rent free, (he does help her with the garden some). This guy also does some cash carpentry work, hunts for game, gets some food off his ex-wife’s WIC and helps his brother sell some weed. Can you get by this way? Some men probably are. Is this the new American way? For some men it probably is.</p>\n<p>That example perhaps, and to be sure of all of the above, I think go a long way toward explaining that chart from the beginning of the story, the one that shows the labor participation rate falling off a cliff over the past seven decades. And speaking of charts, another striking one came to mind when I was writing this, which I put here below. It shows U.S. GDP over the same time period as the labor participation rate.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0f197be5c6c11483ec906a1757293e4d\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"259\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Chart of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve</p>\n<p>Of course, the line on this GDP chart is inversely correlated with the line on the labor participation graph. And I think there is a relationship between the two. Which is to say, the wealthier our nation has become over the decades, the less men are working. Fact is there is just a ton of money sloshing around in our country. And men seem to be able to get their hands on it, whether obtained legally, borrowed, leached off of or stolen.</p>\n<p>It seems like working legally to provide for yourself in America is really just one option these days.</p>\n<p><b><i>This article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on September 18, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET.Subscribe</i></b></p>\n<p><i>Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter:@serwer</i></p>","source":"yahoofinance_sg","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>7 ways men live without working in America</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n7 ways men live without working in America\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-19 11:47 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html><strong>Yahoo Finance</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/020219c8820f9fc9f11979454ce1b1c6","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1198486138","content_text":"Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million people!\nHow do they live? What are they doing for money? To me, this is one of the great mysteries of our time.\nI’m certainly not the first person to make note of this shocking statistic. You’ve heard people bemoaning this \"labor participation rate,\" which is simply the number of working-age men (usually counted as ages 16 to 64) not working or not looking for work, as a percentage of the overall labor force.\nIt’s true that the pandemic, which of course produced a number of factors that made working more difficult never mind dangerous, pushed the labor participation rate to a record low. But the fact that millions of American males have not been working precedes COVID-19 by decades. In fact, the participation rate for men peaked at 87.4% in October 1949 and has been dropping steadily ever since. It now stands at 67.7%.\nAs a business journalist for a good portion of those 70-plus years, I’ve looked at thousands of charts and graphs in my life, and I have to say this one is as jaw dropping as it is vexing:\nChart of the U.S. labor force participation rate for men over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve\nEconomists, sociologists, politicians, and cable news pundits each have their pet factors to explain the groundswell of non-work. But after digging down here, I’ve concluded there are many different forces at play. That’s what I want to explore today, which is: how men can live in America without working.\nI’m not talking about why men have lost their jobs — factories closing, layoffs, automation, outsourcing jobs overseas, even perhaps women entering the workforce, (in fact, the participation rate by women over the same time period is way up). What I want to get at is how they’re living without holding a \"real\" job, and by that I mean doing work where one reports income to the IRS, pays taxes and Social Security, etc.\nIt’s important to note that every man in this group has his own story. They range from mentally ill homeless men who desperately need our help, to the I’m-doing-just-fine-thank-you-very-much, retired early, and former Silicon Valley coder. And there are infinite scenarios in between those two extremes, including, for instance, the many men who have chosen to bestay-at-home dadswhile their spouses work.\nIt’s also the case that some men in this group may be unemployed and not seeking work because they’ve given up looking just for now — perhaps waiting for COVID to abate — and will start the search again soon. Here too, society needs to help.\nStill, none of this explains decade after decade of falling male employment.\nTo that end, here to my mind are seven ways men are living without working in America:\n-Unemployment insurance\nLet’s start with this one because it’s a hot button issue. Conservatives and some liberals too have made the claim that state unemployment aid, coupled with $600 a week from the CARES Act, which was rolled out in March 2020, have reduced men’s need to work. (There are actually a variety of social programs at play,spelled out nicely hereby think tank The Century Foundation, which estimates that overall these programs have pumped $800 billion in the economy.) We’ll be getting a good read on whether all this relief did suppress employment now that CARES aid ended for some 7.5 million Americans earlier this month. But as Yahoo Finance’s Denitsa Tsekova reportedhereandhere, states that ended federal aid programs early didn’t see big increases in employment. That may mean these payments really weren’t enough to live off, or not enough to live off by themselves, which speaks to men looking to a combination of sources, like under the table income or family support and possibly some savings (see below).\n-Early retirement, pensions, disability and lawsuits\nAdmittedly, this is a bit of a hodgepodge. And as is the case with many of these categories, hard data is tough to come by, but it is the case that millions of men under 64 are at least partly living off of pensions and 401(k)s. This would include everything from C-suite executives to union members. And don’t forget municipal workers, who make up almost 14% of the U.S. workforce. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are some 6,000 public sector retirement systems in the U.S.Collectively these plans have $4.5 trillion in assets,with 14.7 million working members and 11.2 million retirees. The plans distribute $323 billion in benefits annually, and again, some to men who are younger than 64. In fact in almost two-thirds of these plans,if you started working at 25, you max out at 57, a real inducement to stop working — at least at that job of course.\nVolunteers load cars with turkeys and other food assistance for laid off Walt Disney World cast members and others at a food distribution event on December 12, 2020 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)More\nThere’s also disability insurance from the Social Security Administration that is beingpaid to some 9 million Americanswhomay receive payments many years before retirement age. That's why I am including disability here, but not plain vanilla Social Security, which you can’t receive until age 62. The maximum disability benefit amount you can receive each month is currently $3,148. (However, the average beneficiary receives about $1,277 per month, according to the law group Social Security Disability Advocates.) Overall, it looks like theSSA pays out some $130 billion in disability annually.That’s not nothing. Then there’s money paid out in medical malpractice each year, smaller true, but stillestimated to be in excess of $3 billion.And don't forgetpayments from legal settlements and class action lawsuits.\nYou argue all day about the right or wrong when it comes to these payouts, but the fact is many of them didn’t exist, or not at this magnitude, decades ago.\n-Savings, trading stocks, and bitcoin\nConsider now men are living off savings, or from money made in the market or maybe even selling NFTs. How many is it exactly? Who knows, but quite a few for sure. First off, Americans on average do have some money in the bank. Savings as a percentage of disposable income,according to the Federal Reserve of Kansas City,hit a record high of 33% in the spring of 2020 and is still at 14%, or nearly twice as high as it was prior to the pandemic.\nAnd according to arecent survey by Northwestern Mutual,average personal savings are up over 10% compared to last year, from $65,900 last year to $73,100. Average retirement savings increased 13%, from $87,500 last year to $98,800 today. So there’s that.\nNext let’s look at investing — first stocks. It is not irrelevant to this narrative that the S&P 500 has climbed from 2,480 on March 12, 2020 — the day after the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic— to 4,441 today, or almost 80%. That’s a huge gain. Much of the action of course has been retail investors and the meme stock boom, as millions of American males stuck at home with nothing to do all day for the past 18 months passed the time trading stocks. Credit Suisse estimates that since the beginning of 2020, “retail trading as a share of overall market activityhas nearly doubledfrom between 15% and 18% to over 30%,” as CNBC reported. How many men were doing this and supporting themselves? Unclear, but upstart trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) — the broker dealer of choice for many of these new investors — reported that it had22.5 million funded user accountslast month, up from 7.2 million in March of 2020. Let’s just say 15 million new accounts is quite a number.\nNow crypto. You can laugh all you want, but the simple fact is that theprice of bitcoinis up from $4,861 on March 12, 2000 to $47,763 today, or basically up 10X, (and remember it even hit $64,888.99 this spring). Back to Robinhood, which according to The New York Times, also reported last month that “revenue from cryptocurrency trading fees totaled $233 million, a nearly 50-fold jump from $5 million a year earlier.” (And those are just fees off the trades, mind you.) Bottom line: Folks have made money here. (Of course these guys should be paying taxes on all those stock and crypto gains.)\nRobinhood Markets, Inc. CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt pose with Robinhood signage on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly-Working for cash, aka the under-the-table economy\nThis one is very tough to measure, too.A study by the Federal Reserve of St. Louisestimates that the average size of the “informal economy” in developed countries is 13% of GDP. Honestly, that could be off by many percentage points, but just to give you a ballpark, GDP in the U.S. this year is about $22 trillion. So 13% of that is $2.86 trillion. As it turns out, $2 trillion-plus, is a number that has been thrown around quite a bit (hereandherefor instance) when it comes to estimating the size of the cash economy in the U.S. Even if half that money is paid out to women, that still leaves, say, $1 trillion dollars being made by men in this country off the books. That’s a big chunk of change. Are more people than ever working for cash these days? Again, another question that’s impossible to answer. I would bet it’s not fewer. For example, my electrician Luis just told me he can’t get anyone to work for him anymore — they all want to get paid in cash.\n-Living off family members\nJust to take one facet,the Pew Research Center reportedlast year that the pandemic “has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading [in early 2020], surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era. In July, 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents, up from 47% in February.” How many of these individuals are males living rent free (and sharing food too), which maybe means they don’t have to work? Who knows, but some. Ditto for males who have moved in with in-laws or siblings. And again, many men are choosing to stay home and take care of kids while their spouses work.\n-Illegal work\nFront and center here is selling illegal drugs. Sadly, business looks to be booming, that is if overdoses are any sort of measure.According to the Washington Post, overdose deaths hit 93,000 last year, up a stunning 30% from 2019. Most of the overdoses were attributed to opioids; heroin, synthetic opioids like OxyContin and in particular Fentanyl. (This despite drug dealers facingsupply chain issuesduring COVID.) How many Americans are in this business and who are they? A number is almost impossible to come by here, but as for who they are,a government report on drug trafficking arrestsfrom five years ago notes that ”the majority of drug trafficking offenders were male (84.9%), the average age of these offenders at sentencing was 36 years, 70% were United States citizens (although this rate varied substantially depending on the type of drug involved), and that almost half (49.4%) of drug traffickers had little or no prior criminal history.” How big a business is selling drugs in America? Could beas much as $100 billion.I think it’s fair to say that a market that size requires many thousands of employees.\nWhat about other types of crime and criminals, everything from robbers and thieves to prostitutes and pimps? To that point there aresome 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S.right now. (We have the highest absolute number and the highest per capita on the planet, and holdsome 25% of the world's total prisoners, according to the ACLU.) Being in prison is another way of living in America without working, I guess. But not counting those locked up, how many bad guys are out there on the street? Conservatively, it has to be thousands and thousands, and speaking to this story, they're all doing their thing and not participating in the labor force.\nORLEANS, MASSACHUSETTS - JULY 10: A man holds onto a clamming rake while clamming at low tide July 10, 2021 in Town Cove, Orleans, Massachusetts. He filled a bushel basket of cherry stone clams. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)More-Living off the land\nThis would include gardening, fishing, hunting, clamming, berrying, and just general foraging. The numbers here seem to be climbing. Here for instancefrom The Guardian:\n“Fishing and huntinglicense sales increased 10%in California during the pandemic, reversing years of decline. Clamming has grown in popularity for several reasons: people are looking for safe activities to do outdoors, but also some are clamming for subsistence and trying to get money from selling the shellfish (which is illegal without a commercial license).”\nDitto for Washington state, according to The Spokesman-Review:\n“From the start of the 2020 licensing year in May through Dec. 31, WDFW [Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife] sold nearly 45,000 more fishing licenses and 12,000 more hunting licenses than 2019. The number of new license holders — defined as someone who hadn’t purchased one for the previous five years — went up 16% for fishing licenses and almost 40% for hunters.”\nAs for growing vegetables in home gardens, yes, it is up, way up too. Even before the pandemic, there were estimates thata third of American families grew vegetables.Now this,NPRreported last year:\n“‘We're being flooded with vegetable orders,’ says George Ball, executive chairman of the Burpee Seed Company, based in Warminster, Penn.\nBall says he has noticed spikes in seed sales during bad times: the stock market crash of 1987, the dot com bubble burst of 2000, and he remembers the two oil crises of the 1970s from his childhood. But he says he has not seen a spike this large and widespread.\nSo there you have it. It’s a whole range of ways and means, behaviors and experiences. I’m sure I missed some, too. Again, some non-working men are in dire straits and need our help. Others are living non-working lives without burdening society or others, such as a fireman on early retirement (though some argue municipal employee pensions are too high), or an investor who made a ton of money in the market and called it quits, or maybe a wilderness guy living off the land in Alaska.\nAnd some non-working men are not playing fair. Like getting paid under the table, fudging insurance claims or social programs. Some freeload off relatives. And some engage in overtly illegal behavior like boosting branded goods from chain stores to sell online or dealing heroin.\nI would imagine that more than a few of these men create a portfolio of sources, though I’m not sure they really think of it that way. Take for example a hypothetical guy in a rural area who lives with his grandmother rent free, (he does help her with the garden some). This guy also does some cash carpentry work, hunts for game, gets some food off his ex-wife’s WIC and helps his brother sell some weed. Can you get by this way? Some men probably are. Is this the new American way? For some men it probably is.\nThat example perhaps, and to be sure of all of the above, I think go a long way toward explaining that chart from the beginning of the story, the one that shows the labor participation rate falling off a cliff over the past seven decades. And speaking of charts, another striking one came to mind when I was writing this, which I put here below. It shows U.S. GDP over the same time period as the labor participation rate.\nChart of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product over time, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve\nOf course, the line on this GDP chart is inversely correlated with the line on the labor participation graph. And I think there is a relationship between the two. Which is to say, the wealthier our nation has become over the decades, the less men are working. Fact is there is just a ton of money sloshing around in our country. And men seem to be able to get their hands on it, whether obtained legally, borrowed, leached off of or stolen.\nIt seems like working legally to provide for yourself in America is really just one option these days.\nThis article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on September 18, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET.Subscribe\nAndy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter:@serwer","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":661,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":878715343,"gmtCreate":1637232593992,"gmtModify":1637232594048,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/878715343","repostId":"2184486862","repostType":2,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":385,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"CN","totalScore":0},{"id":812641461,"gmtCreate":1630586817553,"gmtModify":1631890660025,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Looking forward to future growth&nbsp;","listText":"Looking forward to future growth&nbsp;","text":"Looking forward to future growth","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/812641461","repostId":"1159580926","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":90,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":842032169,"gmtCreate":1636120029306,"gmtModify":1636120593133,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Buy!&nbsp;","listText":"Buy!&nbsp;","text":"Buy!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/842032169","repostId":"2181743347","repostType":2,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":630,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"CN","totalScore":0},{"id":887289804,"gmtCreate":1632044792708,"gmtModify":1632803149316,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"<a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/00700\">$TENCENT(00700)$</a>&nbsp;great!&nbsp;","listText":"<a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/00700\">$TENCENT(00700)$</a>&nbsp;great!&nbsp;","text":"$TENCENT(00700)$ great!","images":[{"img":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/75934610bd78ad682b4bfea4d47b2efd","width":"1080","height":"2399"}],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/887289804","isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":187,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":1,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":885522152,"gmtCreate":1631804508176,"gmtModify":1631890660013,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Agreed&nbsp;","listText":"Agreed&nbsp;","text":"Agreed","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/885522152","repostId":"2167351025","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"2167351025","kind":"highlight","pubTimestamp":1631793049,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/2167351025?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-16 19:50","market":"us","language":"en","title":"3 Long-Term Investments You'll Thank Yourself for Later","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2167351025","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"Sometimes the best thing you can do for your portfolio is just leave some of its holdings alone... for years at a time.","content":"<p>Got patience? Plenty of people like to think they're committed to their holdings for the long haul. When things get dicey, though, a sizable swath of this crowd bails out of these investments.</p>\n<p>That can be a big mistake, of course. Most people struggle to see the market's true short-term highs and lows, meaning they get out (or in) at less than ideal times. Often, the best decision you can make is deciding to do nothing at all, taking your lumps on faith those beaten-down stocks will eventually recover.</p>\n<p>With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three long-term investments you can actually commit to for the long term. Each <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AONE.U\">one</a> is built not only to last, but to thrive no matter what the future has in store.</p>\n<h2>1. Alphabet</h2>\n<p>Sure, it's technically a consumer tech name, and technology is generally prone to being made obsolete by, well, newer technologies. If there were ever a tech name shielded from the never-ending cycle of improved tech, though, it's likely Google parent<b> Alphabet</b> (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL).</p>\n<p>Think about it. While there was a time when consumers clearly functioned without either one, the internet and smartphones have become de facto centerpieces of our lives. Chances are, we're not going to give them up now. And Alphabet is the powerhouse on both fronts, with Google fielding 92% of the world's web searches (according to numbers from GlobalStats' statcounter) and its Android mobile operating system installed on nearly 73% of the world's mobile devices. In fact, when broadening this look to all consumer tech devices like notebooks and tablets, there are more Android-powered devices than there are machines running <b>Microsoft</b> Windows.</p>\n<p>This reach of course positions Google as a gatekeeper to the world wide web, giving Alphabet a variety of ways to monetize all of its platforms.</p>\n<p>And it's done so quite well. The company's year-over-year revenue comparison has fallen in only two quarters since 2006, and one of those quarters was the second quarter of last year when the COVID-19 pandemic was rapidly spreading. In fact, we've also only seen the company's quarterly top line fall twice on a sequential basis -- from the previous calendar quarter -- for the same time frame, and again, one of those two instances was linked to COVID-19. It's all due to consumers' habitual reliance on Google and/or their Android devices.</p>\n<h2>2. Walt Disney</h2>\n<p>Entertainment giant <b>Walt Disney</b> (NYSE:DIS) is nowhere near as consistent as Alphabet when it comes to driving revenue; the pandemic was downright devastating to the company. Nevertheless, Disney is a long-term winner -- not because it does one thing incredibly well, but because it can do a variety of things incredibly well when one piece of its business is struggling.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2Feditorial%2Fimages%2F643205%2Folder-investors.jpg&amp;w=700&amp;op=resize\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><span>Image source: Getty Images.</span></p>\n<p>You likely know all about Disney's theme parks and movies. You've also heard plenty of late about their streaming platform, Disney+. What you may not realize, however, is how minor those ventures are compared to the company's other lower-profile operations.</p>\n<p>Before COVID-19 rattled the world beginning in early 2020, television -- Disney, ESPN, and ABC -- collectively accounted for roughly one-third of Walt Disney's revenue, parks and resorts along with licensed product sales made up another third of its top line, films were 16% of its business mix, and its direct-to-consumer and international arm (think Hulu and ESPN+) contributed 13% of its top line. With the pandemic still crimping some segments of the entertainment industry and after the launch of Disney+, direct-to-consumer alone now makes up nearly one-third of the company's top line, while other divisions now contribute relatively less revenue.</p>\n<p>But that's the point. Walt Disney's always got something to sell to someone; oftentimes it's got several products and services to offer to the same consumers. It may not be completely recession-proof, but it's certainly recession-resistant, and it's also able to capture more than its fair share of growth stemming from a strong economy.</p>\n<h2>3. SPDR S&amp;P 500 ETF Trust</h2>\n<p>Finally, add the <b>SPDR S&amp;P 500 ETF Trust</b> (NYSEMKT:SPY) to your list of long-term investments you'll be glad you tucked away.</p>\n<p>Unlike Walt Disney and Alphabet, owning an index-based fund isn't an attempt to outperform the market. It's just an attempt to match the market's overall performance; in some ways it's also an admission that, given enough time, you probably can't beat the market.</p>\n<p>Statistically speaking though, that's not a bad bet.</p>\n<p>Data from Standard &amp; Poor's tells the story, pointing out that measuring results from the end of the year 2000 and the end of 2020, around 94% of actively managed mutual funds available to U.S. investors didn't perform as well as the <b>S&amp;P 500 Index</b> (SNPINDEX:^GSPC). The results are similarly bad when you look at shorter time frames.</p>\n<p>Why can't many of these professional fund managers do what they're presumably trained and paid to do even when they're giving it a full-time effort? Because timing trade entries and exits is hard to do well. That doesn't prevent these folks from attempting it in their hunt for market-beating results, however.</p>\n<p>It's possible you could have better luck. In fact, the whole purpose of highlighting Alphabet and Walt Disney is that these two names have the potential to outpace the broad market's gains.</p>\n<p>Both of those individual stock picks still require long-term holding periods to make the most of their potential, though. So the best thing to do is likely to just leave them alone as long as you can, and round them out with an index-based ETF you can also truly commit to for the long haul.</p>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>3 Long-Term Investments You'll Thank Yourself for Later</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n3 Long-Term Investments You'll Thank Yourself for Later\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-16 19:50 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/16/3-long-term-investments-youll-thank-yourself-for-l/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Got patience? Plenty of people like to think they're committed to their holdings for the long haul. When things get dicey, though, a sizable swath of this crowd bails out of these investments.\nThat ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/16/3-long-term-investments-youll-thank-yourself-for-l/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"GOOG":"谷歌","SPY":"标普500ETF","DIS":"迪士尼","GOOGL":"谷歌A"},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/16/3-long-term-investments-youll-thank-yourself-for-l/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2167351025","content_text":"Got patience? Plenty of people like to think they're committed to their holdings for the long haul. When things get dicey, though, a sizable swath of this crowd bails out of these investments.\nThat can be a big mistake, of course. Most people struggle to see the market's true short-term highs and lows, meaning they get out (or in) at less than ideal times. Often, the best decision you can make is deciding to do nothing at all, taking your lumps on faith those beaten-down stocks will eventually recover.\nWith that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three long-term investments you can actually commit to for the long term. Each one is built not only to last, but to thrive no matter what the future has in store.\n1. Alphabet\nSure, it's technically a consumer tech name, and technology is generally prone to being made obsolete by, well, newer technologies. If there were ever a tech name shielded from the never-ending cycle of improved tech, though, it's likely Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL).\nThink about it. While there was a time when consumers clearly functioned without either one, the internet and smartphones have become de facto centerpieces of our lives. Chances are, we're not going to give them up now. And Alphabet is the powerhouse on both fronts, with Google fielding 92% of the world's web searches (according to numbers from GlobalStats' statcounter) and its Android mobile operating system installed on nearly 73% of the world's mobile devices. In fact, when broadening this look to all consumer tech devices like notebooks and tablets, there are more Android-powered devices than there are machines running Microsoft Windows.\nThis reach of course positions Google as a gatekeeper to the world wide web, giving Alphabet a variety of ways to monetize all of its platforms.\nAnd it's done so quite well. The company's year-over-year revenue comparison has fallen in only two quarters since 2006, and one of those quarters was the second quarter of last year when the COVID-19 pandemic was rapidly spreading. In fact, we've also only seen the company's quarterly top line fall twice on a sequential basis -- from the previous calendar quarter -- for the same time frame, and again, one of those two instances was linked to COVID-19. It's all due to consumers' habitual reliance on Google and/or their Android devices.\n2. Walt Disney\nEntertainment giant Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) is nowhere near as consistent as Alphabet when it comes to driving revenue; the pandemic was downright devastating to the company. Nevertheless, Disney is a long-term winner -- not because it does one thing incredibly well, but because it can do a variety of things incredibly well when one piece of its business is struggling.\nImage source: Getty Images.\nYou likely know all about Disney's theme parks and movies. You've also heard plenty of late about their streaming platform, Disney+. What you may not realize, however, is how minor those ventures are compared to the company's other lower-profile operations.\nBefore COVID-19 rattled the world beginning in early 2020, television -- Disney, ESPN, and ABC -- collectively accounted for roughly one-third of Walt Disney's revenue, parks and resorts along with licensed product sales made up another third of its top line, films were 16% of its business mix, and its direct-to-consumer and international arm (think Hulu and ESPN+) contributed 13% of its top line. With the pandemic still crimping some segments of the entertainment industry and after the launch of Disney+, direct-to-consumer alone now makes up nearly one-third of the company's top line, while other divisions now contribute relatively less revenue.\nBut that's the point. Walt Disney's always got something to sell to someone; oftentimes it's got several products and services to offer to the same consumers. It may not be completely recession-proof, but it's certainly recession-resistant, and it's also able to capture more than its fair share of growth stemming from a strong economy.\n3. SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust\nFinally, add the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEMKT:SPY) to your list of long-term investments you'll be glad you tucked away.\nUnlike Walt Disney and Alphabet, owning an index-based fund isn't an attempt to outperform the market. It's just an attempt to match the market's overall performance; in some ways it's also an admission that, given enough time, you probably can't beat the market.\nStatistically speaking though, that's not a bad bet.\nData from Standard & Poor's tells the story, pointing out that measuring results from the end of the year 2000 and the end of 2020, around 94% of actively managed mutual funds available to U.S. investors didn't perform as well as the S&P 500 Index (SNPINDEX:^GSPC). The results are similarly bad when you look at shorter time frames.\nWhy can't many of these professional fund managers do what they're presumably trained and paid to do even when they're giving it a full-time effort? Because timing trade entries and exits is hard to do well. That doesn't prevent these folks from attempting it in their hunt for market-beating results, however.\nIt's possible you could have better luck. In fact, the whole purpose of highlighting Alphabet and Walt Disney is that these two names have the potential to outpace the broad market's gains.\nBoth of those individual stock picks still require long-term holding periods to make the most of their potential, though. So the best thing to do is likely to just leave them alone as long as you can, and round them out with an index-based ETF you can also truly commit to for the long haul.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":343,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":882897562,"gmtCreate":1631672029956,"gmtModify":1631890660015,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"More infor needed before making decision&nbsp;","listText":"More infor needed before making decision&nbsp;","text":"More infor needed before making decision","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/882897562","repostId":"2167555562","repostType":2,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":430,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":889933352,"gmtCreate":1631100972376,"gmtModify":1631890660021,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Oh","listText":"Oh","text":"Oh","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/889933352","repostId":"2165360472","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":163,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":882897995,"gmtCreate":1631671991517,"gmtModify":1631890660017,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Good infor","listText":"Good infor","text":"Good infor","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/882897995","repostId":"2167563598","repostType":2,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":341,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":812648880,"gmtCreate":1630586864540,"gmtModify":1631890660024,"author":{"id":"3584268106923844","authorId":"3584268106923844","name":"VinkaloZendo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a32aef07a08a12ffb1b8024b3b3abbf","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3584268106923844","idStr":"3584268106923844"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Agreed","listText":"Agreed","text":"Agreed","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/812648880","repostId":"1100563900","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1100563900","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624956396,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1100563900?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-06-29 16:46","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Facebook: Simply Unstoppable","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1100563900","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets , cumulatively make for a compel","content":"<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.</li>\n <li>Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.</li>\n <li>The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets (DIEM), cumulatively make for a compelling growth story.</li>\n <li>Although the company is highly controversial and rightfully so, this article focuses more on the quantitative analysis and less on the morals and ethics behind this investment. That, we shall leave to you.</li>\n</ul>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3b3414073b72a391e760025594ec111f\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"528\"><span>nemke/E+ via Getty Images</span></p>\n<p><b>Investment Thesis</b></p>\n<p>Facebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!</p>\n<p><b>What is Facebook</b></p>\n<p>Known to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e3d08f4df186c4705a5300f40d6b8a5e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"429\"><span>(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>The world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.</p>\n<p>The firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the&nbsp;Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7cb9d05bb00f3038cec301c72ef56827\" tg-width=\"608\" tg-height=\"378\"><span>(Source:Pew Research Center)</span></p>\n<p>To Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.</p>\n<p>When we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than&nbsp;1000 companies publicly committed&nbsp;to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.</p>\n<p>Despite this, Facebook&nbsp;beat on Q2 earnings&nbsp;and saw an increase of&nbsp;10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.</p>\n<p>The results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.</p>\n<p><b>Risks</b></p>\n<p>Other risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f694ca79d59162e95f05335ebefbca3d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Though representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.</p>\n<p>The current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.</p>\n<p>According to aCNBC article:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n</blockquote>\n<p>When the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.</p>\n<p>However, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.</p>\n<p>Though Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.</p>\n<p><b>Moat</b></p>\n<p>As mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2057a83640201edd89430e754f3f8525\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"431\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>Despite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US &amp; Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US &amp; Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce3456321584d2eea288f7e410215571\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"388\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US &amp; Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/84eaec3de9bafd595bf4ecf9ffdae16a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"430\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US &amp; Canada and 10.2% in Europe.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d72be6c3ca7eb809567503ffc1d4ed9\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"395\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>If Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.</p>\n<p><b>Growth Tactics</b></p>\n<p>When we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4d1d27ff399e3e6fdfbc44a3ff1fb6e6\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"557\"><span>(Source:Facebook Newsroom)</span></p>\n<p>The firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/38d87012cd9e376a0bed27a095b01828\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"418\"><span>(Source:Facebook Newsroom)</span></p>\n<p>What’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.</p>\n<p>Their continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.</p>\n<p><b>Financials</b></p>\n<p>Of the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1367468f26c73bde43f494b2b7fb49d6\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"467\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>FB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&amp;D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&amp;D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4b923685aa0489833ae8f50fcddf3601\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>A large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash &amp; Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/13b40cadc31458233d0ea83ce4917c33\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Given the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3f5b82506a0385a1265c494b21462678\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"43\"><span>(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)</span></p>\n<p>In their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.</p>\n<p><b>Valuations</b></p>\n<p>Being a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0878b205b837634b7d2528f57ebe84fc\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"321\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>Looking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1707f8cfee45ce9ebb0e3ac961e78f48\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"338\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Since 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/444e1473e814530e2332cea02637af53\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Moreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8494d3084eed106a9cb0bff0f27cfe7a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>At an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/55014da5e82d1a67caaeb34766b35940\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"294\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.</p>\n<p>Now shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5d67f3c257657bc10ee6be38c16d2a1f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"207\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>Turning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffe26a8eabec7045dc5a904497737623\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"501\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>Despite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/247661f12f62820f6266763f49531355\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>However, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce908799f1bf9091b49b94e03db7e476\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"284\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>However, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.</p>\n<p>With all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.</p>\n<p><b>Investor Takeaways</b></p>\n<p>To conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.</p>\n<p>With so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.</p>\n<p>That being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.</p>\n<p>End day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next time!</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Facebook: Simply Unstoppable</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nFacebook: Simply Unstoppable\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-29 16:46 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nThe #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.\nDespite an ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1100563900","content_text":"Summary\n\nThe #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.\nDespite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.\nThe strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets (DIEM), cumulatively make for a compelling growth story.\nAlthough the company is highly controversial and rightfully so, this article focuses more on the quantitative analysis and less on the morals and ethics behind this investment. That, we shall leave to you.\n\nnemke/E+ via Getty Images\nInvestment Thesis\nFacebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!\nWhat is Facebook\nKnown to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.\n(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nThe world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.\nThe firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)\n(Source:Pew Research Center)\nTo Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.\nWhen we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than 1000 companies publicly committed to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.\nDespite this, Facebook beat on Q2 earnings and saw an increase of 10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.\nThe results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.\nRisks\nOther risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nThough representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.\nThe current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.\nAccording to aCNBC article:\n\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n\nWhen the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.\nHowever, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.\nThough Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.\nMoat\nAs mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nDespite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US & Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US & Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US & Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US & Canada and 10.2% in Europe.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nIf Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.\nGrowth Tactics\nWhen we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nThe firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:\n\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nWhat’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.\nTheir continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.\nFinancials\nOf the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.\nData by YCharts\nFB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nA large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash & Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nGiven the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.\n(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)\nIn their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.\nValuations\nBeing a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nLooking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nSince 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nMoreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nAt an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nWhen we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.\nNow shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nTurning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.\nData by YCharts\nDespite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nHowever, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.\nWith all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.\nInvestor Takeaways\nTo conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.\nWith so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.\nThat being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.\nEnd day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next time!","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":268,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}