What I Am Buying Today.

[rnsmth]

(02-02-2022, 09:03 PM)fenders53 Wrote:

(02-02-2022, 08:16 PM)Kerim Wrote: I think it is a grotesque over-reaction. Enough so that I just made my first after-hours purchase ever to increase my FB holdings considerably. Anyone who is selling because FB *only* increased EPS by 36 percent in 2021 is out of their mind. Slowing growth matters a lot with a stratospheric P/E, which this cash generating juggernaut does not suffer from.

Not making any predictions about time frame -- my holding period is generally measured in decades. (But the way things have been moving lately, it would not surprise me a bit if it was back closer to $300 by the open tomorrow, as people come to their senses. (Or maybe it will be under $200 -- who the hell knows anymore. But I'll be sleeping fine tonight.))

I think it will be awhile before it sees $300 again, but in the end it's very undervalued at $250.  It will be fine whenever tech is fine again.  What I want to know is who starts dumping shares in VERY profitable companies at 20% off, one minute after the press release?  My hunch is an institution throws up 10K shares at a ridiculously low ASK and starts the panic.  We know what they do after that.  Same thing happened to NFLX.  They aren't going broke either, but had a much higher valuation than FB.

I think it is good that Apple's privacy protections are costimng FB money.

[crimsonghost747]

(02-03-2022, 06:40 AM)fenders53 Wrote: I use it about 10 minutes per day. Boomer stuff like check a few interest groups, wish a few happy birthdays, sometimes check the newsfeed.  FB messenger is the easiest way to drop a non-urgent message to about a dozen people in my life.  I only know a few dozen people that are addicted to FB and post many times a day.  Used to be more.  My kid uses Instagram.  

My question back to you is where do the growing billions of free cashflow come from?  Why would advertisers pay so much to advertise on unused sites?

Instagram is certainly a success story. No doubt about it. Most of the youth these days seems to be using it on a daily basis. Whatsapp has been a success too, and I am also sure they are dying to figure out a way to push ads into whatsapp without everyone switching over to an alternative platform. But the issue remains, they have not been able to develop a single popular app, platform, or anything since.. well since they started Facebook. All the good stuff has been MA, and that road is dead.

I have to say that I am as puzzled as you are about the increase in ad revenue.
From their report: 
"For the full year 2021, ad impressions increased by 10% year-over-year and the average price per ad increased by 24% year-over-year."

Now 10% more ads I understand. But 24% increase in price per ad? I truly don't know. Maybe companies just have way too much money to spend on advertising.

[cemanuel]

Thoughts re FB since it's a hot topic. These are macro - nothing to do with earnings, cash flows, much of anything.

When I switched over to DGI I kept two growth stocks, FB and GOOGL. My thoughts were similar for each - big cap gains hit if I sold AND I thought there was a good chance they'd start paying a dividend at some point. In spring, 2019 I went ahead and sold FB (and my $180 looks a lot better now than 24 hours ago!).

I sold it for two reasons, somewhat related. I came to believe that FB was not likely to start paying a dividend at any point in the foreseeable future. I believed - and still believe - that it's the mega-tech company most at regulatory risk. Is it a monopoly? Sure - but so are GOOGL and AMZN. But FB is everyone's favorite whipping boy. Both political parties can find reasons to hate it. Now maybe I'm wrong on this and I'm certainly not saying it WILL happen - just that if it does, FB will likely be the first company to get hit with it, whatever "it" may be.

I do have it on my watchlist for my IRA and could buy but I'm still adding symbols and right now have 180 stocks to get down to 20-30 so that's very far from certain.

Final thought - PYPL is the kind of stock where I saw a 20% drop and shrugged my shoulders. I thought FB was past that - would have figured on 6-8% down for a rough reporting quarter. Of course it's AH but still didn't see it for a mega-cap company though I have not yet read through the ER.

[fenders53]

(02-03-2022, 08:13 AM)cemanuel Wrote: Thoughts re FB since it's a hot topic. These are macro - nothing to do with earnings, cash flows, much of anything.

When I switched over to DGI I kept two growth stocks, FB and GOOGL. My thoughts were similar for each - big cap gains hit if I sold AND I thought there was a good chance they'd start paying a dividend at some point. In spring, 2019 I went ahead and sold FB (and my $180 looks a lot better now than 24 hours ago!).

I sold it for two reasons, somewhat related. I came to believe that FB was not likely to start paying a dividend at any point in the foreseeable future. I believed - and still believe - that it's the mega-tech company most at regulatory risk. Is it a monopoly? Sure - but so are GOOGL and AMZN. But FB is everyone's favorite whipping boy. Both political parties can find reasons to hate it. Now maybe I'm wrong on this and I'm certainly not saying it WILL happen - just that if it does, FB will likely be the first company to get hit with it, whatever "it" may be.

I do have it on my watchlist for my IRA and could buy but I'm still adding symbols and right now have 180 stocks to get down to 20-30 so that's very far from certain.

Final thought - PYPL is the kind of stock where I saw a 20% drop and shrugged my shoulders. I thought FB was past that - would have figured on 6-8% down for a rough reporting quarter. Of course it's AH but still didn't see it for a mega-cap company though I have not yet read through the ER.

FB is definitely everybody's whipping boy.  I visit daily so I can see my boomer friends and relatives profess their enduring hate for FB, Zuck and MSFT and Gates, while using their products daily. 

My wife is not interested in the markets, and I told her about FB dip last night.  She hates Zuck and told me all money is not good money.  Guess I'm not sharing the dirty profits lol. She is also anti-vaccine.  She must have forgotten I put her entire ROTH in PFE many years ago.   She probably doesn't want any of that money either.    

No matter how you invest somebody will have a problem with it.

[bankerboy]

(02-03-2022, 08:13 AM)cemanuel Wrote: Thoughts re FB since it's a hot topic. These are macro - nothing to do with earnings, cash flows, much of anything.

When I switched over to DGI I kept two growth stocks, FB and GOOGL. My thoughts were similar for each - big cap gains hit if I sold AND I thought there was a good chance they'd start paying a dividend at some point. In spring, 2019 I went ahead and sold FB (and my $180 looks a lot better now than 24 hours ago!).

I sold it for two reasons, somewhat related. I came to believe that FB was not likely to start paying a dividend at any point in the foreseeable future. I believed - and still believe - that it's the mega-tech company most at regulatory risk. Is it a monopoly? Sure - but so are GOOGL and AMZN. But FB is everyone's favorite whipping boy. Both political parties can find reasons to hate it. Now maybe I'm wrong on this and I'm certainly not saying it WILL happen - just that if it does, FB will likely be the first company to get hit with it, whatever "it" may be.

I do have it on my watchlist for my IRA and could buy but I'm still adding symbols and right now have 180 stocks to get down to 20-30 so that's very far from certain.

Final thought - PYPL is the kind of stock where I saw a 20% drop and shrugged my shoulders. I thought FB was past that - would have figured on 6-8% down for a rough reporting quarter. Of course it's AH but still didn't see it for a mega-cap company though I have not yet read through the ER.

Agree, when governments can’t control something very well they tend to destroy it thru regulation. They’ve done it before and it’s likely to happen again….

I had over half my port in a BC growth fund that had heavy concentration of these names. Remember it had a 36% return one year in 2019 If I remember correctly. I diversified more into other index funds at that point when I thought their days were numbered. Probably too early of an exit but hey that’s life…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[crimsonghost747]

The issue that I've always had with big tech is that I do not think big tech and capitalism fit well together.
quickly in a couple of steps.
1. Some dude creates an amazing service, apparently a garage is their favorite place to figure this out.
2. The service grows because it's good. It gets investors and other backers because it's good and # of users is exploding.
3. These services are, almost always, created by a user for a user. It takes significant effort to transform them from a good service, to a profitable service.
4. And that is where it fails. The creativity, the passion, the idea of what we had in step 1 is gone. It's replaced by the need to monetize these millions/billions of users.
5. At some point, some dude makes a better version of this service in their garage. One that is made by a user, for a user. One that is focused on providing a good service, not at profiting from it's users in any way imaginable. We are back at step 1.

I may be young but I've spent a fair part of my life around computers. There are very, VERY few companies that I have seen avoid the above when you look at it from a long enough time frame. Microsoft is a good example of one that did avoid it. Google seems invincible now, and may very well be due to it's place in our culture. However, the large majority of Google's products, including their famed search engine, are inferior to what you can find if you go looking into the garages of people in "step 1" of my amazing "tech vs capitalism manifesto."

[fenders53]

(02-03-2022, 08:03 AM)crimsonghost747 Wrote:

(02-03-2022, 06:40 AM)fenders53 Wrote: I use it about 10 minutes per day. Boomer stuff like check a few interest groups, wish a few happy birthdays, sometimes check the newsfeed.  FB messenger is the easiest way to drop a non-urgent message to about a dozen people in my life.  I only know a few dozen people that are addicted to FB and post many times a day.  Used to be more.  My kid uses Instagram.  

My question back to you is where do the growing billions of free cashflow come from?  Why would advertisers pay so much to advertise on unused sites?

Instagram is certainly a success story. No doubt about it. Most of the youth these days seems to be using it on a daily basis. Whatsapp has been a success too, and I am also sure they are dying to figure out a way to push ads into whatsapp without everyone switching over to an alternative platform. But the issue remains, they have not been able to develop a single popular app, platform, or anything since.. well since they started Facebook. All the good stuff has been MA, and that road is dead.

I have to say that I am as puzzled as you are about the increase in ad revenue.
From their report: 
"For the full year 2021, ad impressions increased by 10% year-over-year and the average price per ad increased by 24% year-over-year."

Now 10% more ads I understand. But 24% increase in price per ad? I truly don't know. Maybe companies just have way too much money to spend on advertising.

Companies are spending more on digital advertising every year.  That is the secret sauce of FB, GOOGL etc.  Sure, it will level off someday.  Everything levels off.  The game isn't static.

And yes, all future world dominating companies are apparently started in garages by guys who couldn't get a date.

[EricL]

(02-03-2022, 06:40 AM)fenders53 Wrote: I use it about 10 minutes per day. Boomer stuff like check a few interest groups, wish a few happy birthdays, sometimes check the newsfeed.  FB messenger is the easiest way to drop a non-urgent message to about a dozen people in my life.  I only know a few dozen people that are addicted to FB and post many times a day.  Used to be more.  My kid uses Instagram.  

My question back to you is where do the growing billions of free cashflow come from?  Why would advertisers pay so much to advertise on unused sites?

This is pretty much my experience. Check-in a few times a day, post a couple of times per month.

[divmenow]

I haven’t been on Facebook in over 5 years. It was cool back in the day catching up with past school friends, but People are getting tired of seeing the same BS of Facebook! Stupid pictures of food and a place for Sally to hang out and bitch lol

This just no use for Facebook anymore. In fact most adds are scams. So many people click on those buy those products and never receive them. Facebook had to take a loss on each of those. The ones that use to enjoy no longer do and moved on. We’re taking about that 13-30 demographic. And once they lose interest it’s over. Sure they got this meta universe thing but they are spending billions of dollars on it and I it’s years away. Instagram still has some speaks All or most users are coming from foreign countries

[crimsonghost747]

I have yet to make a purchase this week, at least from what I can remember, so it was time to do it now.
Grabbed a bit of Airbus and U.

I just realized that I bought two who don't pay a dividend. (though I expect Airbus to start paying again in 2023 or 2024)
I guess I need to find some dividend payers next week. :p

[fenders53]

Added a bit of FB

Triple beat from VSTO. Cashed all my options in on the opening spike. Market will probably yawn like usual lately. Some quarter my shares will run again.

[divmenow]

HON and CI getting hit hard. Not just tech

HUM up big now. Congrats who bought the dip