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There is a rule in investing and portfolio management that every investor should learn on day 1: Rule 72.
If you make an average 3% return annually in the stock market, doubling your money takes about 24 years. You get the 24 years by dividing 72 by 3%. The 3% return is the average annual return of retail investors like you and me, according to many studies that have calculated the average return of retail investors over several decades. Ouch! 3%, 24 years! But 24 years is too long! How can you double your money faster than the other individual investors? Today, I will share three ways to double your portfolio FASTER than the market average. Let's talk about that! 
I'm Hoda Mehr, founder, and CEO of Stock Card, and on this blog and its accompanying YouTube channel and Podcast show, I share detailed fundamental analyses and interesting investment stories.
This post is part of our educational series to help you hone your fundamental investing skills. Catch up with the other post on How to Invest Like Buffett? or how to Find the Highest-Returning Stocks? Remember, this content is for education and sharing ideas and not advice to buy or sell any securities. Sign up for a free account on Stock Card to get notified of these blog posts, YouTube videos, and Podcast shows every week. We only ask your name and email address when you sign up.
Let's talk about three ways you can double your money faster. Before we even start the video, I give you one strategy you can adopt today and reduce your time to double the money from 24 years to 7. Invest all of your money in the S&P500 Index ETF, ticker SPY. This ETF has returned an average of 10% in the last 30 years. 72 divided by 10 is about 7 years.
But if 7 years is still too long, watch the rest of the post. Logically, you need to generate higher returns to double your investment faster. That's simple to understand. If you generate higher returns, you'll move faster. But how do you increase your rate of return without gambling? That's the question. I can take my $100 to Vegas tomorrow, put it on the blackjack table, and try to double it in 5 minutes. Many investors try to achieve such returns by investing in crazy, highly volatile stocks, IPOs, and things like that. Those are possible ways to go about it, but they require lady luck to be with you, and many of us don't have the stomach to put our portfolio at risk and in the hands of the game of chance. We want to discuss logical and practical ways we can implement quickly to double our portfolios faster. I've found three strategies we can follow to achieve that goal, and implementing each strategy doesn't take too long, and anyone, even beginners, can do it. You adjust your portfolio once and sit back to see the results. I ordered the strategies from the most to the least common approaches. So, as we talk about the strategies, it gets more interesting. The first strategy: Invest more frequently
Investing as soon as possible and frequently as possible is one of the best ways to double your portfolio faster. This is because investing sooner gives you more time in the market, and investing more frequently allows you to take advantage of the market's downtrend and lower prices, resulting in higher returns in the same time period.
Most people don't do that because they want to find the lowest market prices. It's logical, but in practice, it's almost impossible to figure out when the prices are at their lowest in the stock market. If you invest frequently without trying to find the so-called market bottom, inevitably, you'll catch the market's bottom and invest at the lowest prices. I've seen this in our users' portfolios on Stock Card. In an attempt to find the market bottom, most investors wait too long, and the market goes back up before they take any action. Here's a real example. Let's say, 2 years ago, in September 2021, when the market got too expensive, you decided to monitor the S&P500 ETF price with the aim of finding the market's bottom. In fact, many of our users on Stock Card have stopped researching new stocks and ETFs about that time, and when we asked why, they said they were waiting for the bottom. If you were one of them, you could have waited until April 2022, and the price would have dropped by 10%. This could have been the bottom, and you could have invested your money. The problem is that even though the market went up slightly after that, had you waited a few more months, by September 2022, the ETF's price was down another 13%. In reality, none of us can predict the exact bottom, and in an attempt to find the bottom, we either jump in too soon or stay away too long, missing the market's best days by waiting for a bigger drop. Instead, you would have been in a much better position had you invested your $100 slowly and a small amount every month between then and now and caught the market bottom automatically by the nature of your frequent investments. This strategy is called dollar cost averaging and results in a smoother, less volatile, effortless strategy that can also improve your rate of return, especially if you are one of those investors who tend to stay away from the market far too long. Because of its effortlessness, it's ideal for beginner investors, too. The second strategy: Take more calculated risks
Another way to double your portfolio faster is to take more risks but calculated ones. This means investing in assets that have the potential to generate higher returns, even if they come with more risk. But the risk is calculated, and you still manage your risk by eliminating easy-to-see sources of risk.
Rule 72 tells us that if our return is 10%, we need about 7 years to double our money. A 10% return is what most investors expect from investing in low-risk, broad market indices before any fees and costs based on historical data. What if we get a 1% higher? 72 divided by 11% equals 6.5 years required to double our money. How about a 15% annual return? The time to double our money is cut to 4.5 years. Which assets have a higher annualized return than the broad market index ETF? Riskier assets such as small-cap stocks or international emerging countries and specific high-growth sectors such as biotech or technology can give you a higher return than the market's average 10%. For example, Vanguard S&P Small-Cap 600 ETF, ticker VIOO, has had roughly 12% annualized return since its inception over 13 years ago vs. the 9.94% annualized return of S&P 500 ETF, ticker SPY. Similarly, VanEck Biotech ETF, ticker BBH, has had a 14.33% annualized return since its inception 12 years ago. The problem with these investments is that they are also more volatile. Looking at their recent performance, many small-cap or specialized ETFs have underperformed the overall market recently. You can easily get caught up in a down cycle, and your return gets even smaller than the market index in the short term. But what did we discuss in Strategy One just a minute ago? Invest slowly and frequently as the prices go down, resulting in higher overall returns. These strategies are all interconnected.
The third strategy: Develop EMOTIONAL control
Improving your emotional control is typically advice from your school counselor or marriage therapist. I'm not either of those. But controlling your fear and anger in response to the market's ups and downs is the most important skill you can develop, allowing you to double your money faster.
Let's talk about a very practical example. We all know the rule number of one of investing. Buy LOW, Sell HIGH. Look at your own behavior now. How many investments have you made in the last 12 months when the market is relatively lower than the all-time highs of the COVID rally in 2020 and 2021? BE honest! Were you buying things when they were high, hoping to sell higher? And have you stopped investing now because you are scared the prices are down? What happened to the old wisdom of Buy Low, Sell High? Looking at the retail investors' trading volume when the stock market goes down confirms that we all make the mistake of doing precisely the opposite of buying LOW and selling HIGH. During COVID's market rally, retail investors' trade volume was going up, and as soon as the market got a bit cheaper, the volume died down. Fear of losing more money and being scared when the market is down is a natural human reaction. But it's the enemy of your portfolio. Peter Lynch puts it the best: "In Investing Your Stomach Is More Important Than Your Brain"
In the $100 example I gave earlier, we discussed how investing slowly and steadily instead of trying to find the bottom can improve your return. In the same example, if you could control your emotions and invest MORE whenever the stock market drops by 10% or more, let's say in April 2021 and June 2022, you could have increased your investment return significantly. The more the market is down, buy more. This is NOT to say that you must wait for a market dip. This means you can increase your return if you increase your investment when the market is down, contrary to the emotional reaction our brains may have in such situations.
Dan Ariely, professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, gives one practical exercise that can help you strengthen your emotional control in investing. He advises investors to invest looking forward and assume they have no portfolio: Make investment decisions regardless of what happened to your portfolio. This means don't look at your portfolio when you want to invest. Don't ask yourself what I do now that my portfolio is down 20%. Assume you have no portfolio so the anger and pain of losing money don't cloud your judgment. Do your research looking forward, not based on what you have lost.
Today, we discussed three ways you can double your portfolio faster:
I'll see you next time!
Let's admit it: we always look for ways to beat the market's average return. Right? Well, I found a violin that had just done so.
Had you invested in world-renowned Stradivarius violins in 2010, the average annual price appreciation between 2010 and 2022 was 9.7%. Other violin brands, such as Joannes Pressenda and Lorenzo Storioni violins, have had 10.7% and 13.4% annualized returns in the same period, respectively. Compare that to the inflation-adjusted yearly return of 9.76% by the S&P 500 index, including all dividends reinvested in the same period, and sit down with the terrible realization that investing in a music instrument could have been your answer to beating the market. Putting that initial reaction aside, if the ultimate goal of investing is to grow our wealth, even if we don't want to invest in violins, in today's post, I discuss three critical investment lessons we can learn from Stradivarius violins. 
I'm Hoda Mehr, founder, and CEO of Stock Card, and on this blog and its accompanying YouTube channel and Podcast show, I share detailed fundamental analyses and interesting investment stories.
This post is part of our educational series to help you hone your fundamental investing skills. Catch up with the other post on How to Invest Like Buffett? or how to Find the Highest-Returning Stocks? Remember, this content is for education and sharing ideas and not advice to buy or sell any securities. Sign up for a free account on Stock Card to get notified of these blog posts, YouTube videos, and Podcast shows every week. We only ask your name and email address when you sign up.
Such market-beating performance by violins comes from a few criteria they share with good investments. They can teach us critical investment lessons by looking into how Stradivarius violins's price appreciated.
Investment Lesson One
The first of such lessons is the value of scarcity in investing. Antonio Stradivari, a Luthier, or simply a violin maker who lived in the late 17th - early 18th century in Cremona, Italy, made roughly 1,100 violins. His sons continued the business with more violins. However, today, only about 650 remain. Those original violins are highly desirable instruments that can be priced as high as $16 million in global auctions. They are inherently scarce, loved by violinists and collectors worldwide, and no more will ever be made.
Scarcity is loved by investors. Investing in gold or commodities such as Silver, Copper, and even Oil pays off because of their limited supply. That's also why stock market investors hate when a company they invested in issues new shares. It dilutes current investors by making more shares available in the market and each share becomes less valuable. In contrast, when companies buy back shares, in most cases, investors applaud. Buying back shares makes each individual share more scarce and valuable. Scarce things tend to grow in value. Investment Lesson Two
The value of a well-reputed brand is another lesson we can learn from a highly sought-after violin. A good brand is an accumulation of quality and market perception. Some studies have shown that not only did Antonio Stradivari build a limited number of high-quality instruments, but he also had his proprietary method of wood processing, resulting in pristine sound. The violins by Stradivari are known for their unique sound quality, differentiating them from many other brands that have come to market since the 17th century.
A strong brand, such as the Stradivarius trademark and name, is considered a moat in investing. It refers to a company's ability to protect its products, services, and price level against its competitors. Establishing a brand representing prestige, status, and quality takes years, making it almost impossible for competitors to compete in price. In that context, Stradivarius violins are similar to Apple Inc. Both brands are known for quality, well-protected intellectual property, and luxury image. Investing in either is an excellent high-returning decision. Investment Lesson Three
The lessons we can learn about investments from Stradivarius violins don't stop at scarcity and brand moat. The most valuable Stradivarius violins are those built by Antonio Stradivari in his lifetime, at least three centuries ago. Today's investors in those violins have enjoyed excellent returns in the early 21st century. Time and the power of compounding over time are as important in investing as moats and scarcity. A good investor understands it takes time for the price appreciation to compound and result in a market-beating performance
Bonus Investment Lesson
Many stock market investors may not believe investing in collectibles like vilions is appropriate. Warren Buffett, the legendary investing mentor to a few generations of investors, focused on income-producing assets such as companies' securities. He would likely not consider violins an asset in his investment portfolio. I agree. I also don't have $16M in free cash to invest in a violin. The aim of this show isn't to persuade you to invest in violins, either. However, we can still learn a lesson or two from them, even if we agree with Warren. And that's the most crucial lesson Stradivarius violins can teach us. Investment lessons are all around us. All aspects of day-to-day life can teach us about investing. We can look into other aspects of life and draw parallels between them and investing. Those life lessons are even more memorable and long-lasting.
So we talked about three + a bonus investment lessons Stradivarius violins can teach us. It reminded me of another post I recently published about looking into the top 10 holdings of the portfolio of super investors such as Buffett, Howard Marks, Bill Achman, and Michael Burry. If you missed that one, watching and listening to it after this episode is good. Link in the show notes. I'll see you next time! Instacart is one of the hottest tech IPOs in 2023. It is expected to go public with a nearly $10B market cap, making its founder almost a billionaire while making many Silicon Valley investors, including Y Combinator startup accelerator, a lot of money. But Instacart wasn't always this hot idea and startup, nor was its founder a successful entrepreneur. Aprova Mehta, the company's founder, is an Indian-born who went to school in Canada as an Engineer and later moved to the U.S. to work for Amazon. He had worked on 20 products and startups in the two years between quitting his job at the eCommerce giant in 2010 and launching Instacart in 2012, and sadly, all had failed. From building an ad network for social gaming companies to spending a full year developing a social network specifically for lawyers, he tried many companies, and none stuck. Instacart's $10B valuation and IPO success is the story of building the right product for a massive market at the right time. Its success sits at the intersection of eCommerce and Gig Economy, and it can be a great investment when it goes public. If you are curious about Instacart, ticker CART, let's research it together.  I'm Hoda Mehr, founder, and CEO of Stock Card, and on this blog and its accompanying YouTube channel and Podcast show, I share detailed fundamental analyses and interesting investment stories.
This post is part of our educational series to help you hone your fundamental investing skills. Catch up with the other post on How to Invest Like Buffett? or how to Find the Highest-Returning Stocks? Remember, this content is for education and sharing ideas and not advice to buy or sell any securities. Sign up for a free account on Stock Card to get notified of these blog posts, YouTube videos, and Podcast shows every week. We only ask your name and email address when you sign up. This episode is a mix of interesting investing-related stories and fundamental analysis. But before discussing either, let's talk about the elephant in the room. Instacart's corporate name isn't Instacart. It is Maplebear, doing business as Instacart. When the initial founding team incorporated the company in 2012, they registered it as Maplebear. Don't get confused if you see that name on the company's Stock Card when you research it on StockCard.io (our platform) or if you look it up on your brokerage account. Honestly, I spent an hour trying to figure out why Maplebear but didn't find a good answer. So, that's that! Now, to the real story and the fundamental analysis: The Right Product At the Right Time In a Massive ProductI started this episode by saying that Instacart is the story of building the right product in a massive market at the right time. The online grocery market is rapidly growing, with more than 25% expected annual growth rate until 2030. According to the company's IPO documentation, only 12% of grocery shopping is now happening online, and when you talk about a $1.1 trillion market, even a 1% increase in that rate means an $11B in revenue potential for Instacart. This is the advantage of building a product for a massive market such as groceries, which translates into a significant growth potential. By the way, if you want a list of other online grocery stocks, type it in the search bar on StockCard.io, and under the themes column, you'll find the list. If you are new to Stock Card, we manage a database of more than 500 themes and collections. We've got you covered if you are looking for online grocery, generative AI, EV stocks, or any other theme. Go to StockCard.io and look up the theme you are interested in the search bar. You can also use the screener to make your search even more accurate. For example, what if you look for online grocery stocks with growing sales? Go to the screener tool, put online grocery in the keyword search, and apply any additional filter you want. I just created this screener, and here's the link to it in the show notes in case you want to continue your research or copy the screener to your own Stock Card free account. Back to Instacart, the growth isn't limited to the online grocery market. The company has also realized the power and profitability of the digital advertising business model. Roughly 30% of Instacart's revenue comes from advertising. This is when consumer packaged goods brands pay Instacart to run special promotions, place their products in more prominent sections of the app, and let them run promotions and deals directly to the customers. When I use Instacart to order groceries, I am always shocked by big brands' promotions and deals on the App. For example, there is always a big push by PepsiCo to purchase more of its snacks to get free delivery. Indeed, when you dig into Instacart's IPO documentation, you'll realize Pepsi will invest $175M in the IPO, indicating how important it is for big consumer packaged foods brands to directly influence the consumers' purchase decisions, and the online store is the best place to do so. The digital advertising and the chance to grab shares of consumer packaged goods ad dollars expand Instacart's addressable market significantly. However, the idea of online shopping wasn't new, even in 2012, when the company started its operations. Neither was the idea of online grocery shopping. Before Instacart, there were myriad online grocery companies. Webvan was the most known online grocery company that had raised more than $400M in venture capital funding and operated for three years before it went under when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000-1. How did Instacart succeed when many failed? It's all about timing. The online grocery concept could not have found a strong demand until eCommerce truly gained mass traction. In the U.S., the 2010s decade was when eCommerce started to really take off. Moreover, Instacart could only scale when it could harness the advantages of the gig economy. The gig economy refers to independent contractors hired for a specific task. All Uber drivers and food delivery workers are considered gig workers, and that market also took off after the 2008 financial crisis as more people looked for supplementary income and other means to make any money. The gig economy has risen in the last decade, with a 15% annual growth rate from 2010. Since 2015, three years after its founding, Instacart dabbled in the gig economy. It now heavily relies on its independent "shoppers" who get paid hourly to use the app to do the grocery shopping on behalf of its customers. Without broad acceptance of the gig economy and the normalization of working as a gig worker, Instacart operations couldn't have been as profitable as it is today because it doesn't need to own its own fleet or hire its shoppers, which makes its operations quite scalable. How does building the right product at the right time and in a massive market fair against our usual fundamental analysis framework? Instacart (CART) Fundamental Analysis
Mind you, the main driver of FCF and net income are related to tax credit allowance due to deferred tax assets in Q4 2022. This is when a company has paid too much taxes and can claim them back. In the case of Instacart, it had a much bigger valuation a year ago and is allowed to claim valuation-related tax assets. Looking at the above fundamental, Instacart has chosen the best moment in its operating history to go public and paint a good picture. However, I am concerned about the revenue growth, its business model's unit economics, and whether the expected roughly $10B IPO valuation is justified. Instacart (CART) ValuationAt an almost $10B fully diluted valuation, the company is going public with an almost 4.5X price-to-sales ratio. The 4.5X price-to-sales ratio means it required sustained 35% annual growth in revenue in the next 5 years to grow in that valuation. Historically, looking at it 1H of 2023 vs. 2022, the company achieved 31% growth. It also grew 39% in 2022, vs 2021. So, the recent revenue growth is right about the 35% target it needs to achieve to justify its valuation. However, if you look at the number of orders on Instacart in the first half of the year vs. last year, you see almost no growth. To justify the valuation, we need to see more evidence of such 30%+ revenue growth for a few more quarters to believe the revenue growth is sustainable. So even if the company has had its valuation from almost $40B in 2021 down to $10B in 2023, it isn't undervalued. But of course, companies don't reach their valuation just by growing sales. They become more profitable and generate more free cash flow to get higher multiples. There lies another concern. After deducting the cost of sale, the biggest expense for Instacart is the cost of user acquisition. In 2022, the company spent nearly $650 million on customer acquisition. In the IPO documentation, the company talks about how, before the COVID-19 pandemic, its unit economics wasn't mature. This means the cost of acquiring a new user was much higher than the revenue each user used to generate. During the pandemic, they saw significant organic use growth, leading to higher gross profit per user. There is the risk that people will gradually return to in-person shopping as we move away from the pandemic. I see it in my own behavior. I was 100% an Instacart user during the pandemic, and now less than once a month. Old habits die hard, as they say, and it took me a year to gradually put Instacart aside most weeks, but it is happening. I expect Instacart needs to spend more and more on advertising and consumer incentives and discounts. Even now, it is barely profitable. That's my biggest concern about buying the stock at the IPO. I want to see a few quarters of sustained user growth without a significant increase in user acquisition before jumping in. The advantage Instacart has is its market leadership. Other players such as Amazon Fresh, Uber Grocery, and other grocery delivery companies are far behind Instacart, and although they are gaining market share, as per the IPO documentation, Instacart benefits from a much higher average order value than the competitors. In the online grocery segment, Instacart has the lead over others. Is Instacart (CART) IPO A Buy? I plan to let it go public and see how it can sustain its revenue growth in the coming quarters. There is simply too much of a residual effect from the pandemic on consumer behavior that I would want to see a few more quarters of sustained growth. If you have a different strategy, share in the comments, and if you like an episode like this with a mix of investing stories and fundamental analysis, like and subscribe so I know what you want to watch and listen to more. I'll see you next time! I've read a fascinating study about cloning super investors like Warren Buffett this week. If you copied Warren Buffett's top 10 holdings and rebalanced them every quarter, you could have outperformed the S&P 500 by three percentage points yearly between 2000 and 2019. That's strong evidence that sometimes copying the right investor can be a good strategy. But not every investor is worth that much respect. A better strategy is to find the top investors, aka super investors, and use their top holdings as a source of new stock ideas. That's precisely what we are going to discuss in today's post. There are three stocks that 20 super investors hold the most in their top 10 portfolio holdings. I'll research them fundamentally first and then share whether adding them to our portfolios makes sense too  I'm Hoda Mehr, founder, and CEO of Stock Card, and on this blog and its accompanying YouTube channel and Podcast show, I share detailed fundamental analyses and interesting investment stories.
This post is part of our educational series to help you hone your fundamental investing skills. Catch up with the other post on How to Invest Like Buffett? or how to Find the Highest-Returning Stocks? Remember, this content is for education and sharing ideas and not advice to buy or sell any securities. Sign up for a free account on Stock Card to get notified of these blog posts, YouTube videos, and Podcast shows every week. We only ask your name and email address when you sign up. There is no actual definition of super investors. They are the most prominent hedge fund managers or investors we hear from in the financial media. People follow their advice, share their quotes, or read their books and writings. You must already know many of them. Warren Buffett sits on the top of the list as the undisputed super investor with $350B in assets, excluding the value of all the companies Berkshire Hathaway wholly owns. Howard Marks, Bill Ackman, Chuck Akre, Monish Pabrai, and Michael Burry, with a few hundred million dollars in assets under management, are some of the others on the list. Even Bill Gates is considered a super investor because of his $40B+ Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. In summary, the super investors list is the who's who of investors because they manage a lot of money, influence the funds' decisions, or are known in the media as great investors. I went through the top 10 holdings of each super investor's portfolio reported on their quarterly 13F document as of the 30th of June 2023. The list of top 10 holdings across the 20 super investors includes more than 150 individual U.S. equities. These super investors have a limited number of stocks in common, which shows how hard it is to find the best stocks to invest in now. The most common stocks among the top-10 holdings of the 20 super investors got picked by 7 of them. The second most common stock was picked by six super investors, and the third one by four super investors. It shows that even the top 20 super investors have differing views on which stocks to buy and hold for long. And if it's so hard to agree on the best stocks to hold, the fact that some stocks got the vote of confidence of even a few still confirms those companies' strengths and quality. Now let's talk about the top three stocks most held by super investors and research them one by one. Number 3 - Moody's (MCO)If you are a Buffett fan, you already know this company. He has owned and held it for a long time because of its almost monopolistic power over the credit rating market. A few posts ago, when we discussed Fitch Ratings downgrading the creditworthiness of the United States, we talked about three rating agencies owning almost the entire market, with Moody's and S&P controlling 90% of the market. These credit agencies run a very stable business. Their market isn't growing rapidly. However, their products and services are essential to a healthy capital market. Many banks, governments, hedge funds, insurance companies, and investors use the ratings to assess all kinds of risks and make decisions to invest billions of dollars, lend money to or insure businesses, etc. If you research Moody's fundamentals, you see relatively stable and slow revenue growth in the best of times. However, the company has a solid gross margin above 70%, indicating a real pricing power in the market. It also boasts a 25%+ net profit and solid, free-cash-flow-generating operations. In its latest quarterly earnings call, I listened to the management's plan for the future and was very impressed with how Moody's focuses on future opportunities. It is experimenting with generative AI with Microsoft's help, leveraging its extensive database about companies, countries, properties, and global markets. It is expanding its footprint across the global market, such as Latin America. It is expanding its ratings into tokenized and digitalized bonds and assets. For example, it issued a rating for the European Investment Bank's first-ever blockchain-based bond this past quarter. These are evidence of how Moody's leadership team stays ahead of the curve and focuses on the market's needs. Moody's is a financially solid and well-managed company—no wonder several super investors own the stock in their top holdings. I added the stock to my 2023 Watchlist because the company is overvalued compared to its historical valuation. With more than 11 times the price-to-sales ratio and more than 43 times the price-to-earnings ratio, this is not a cheap stock by any means. The valuation has jumped above its average of 20-25 times the historical price-to-earnings ratio since the middle of 2022 without any significant jump in the earnings per share. This won't be a 10X investment, but buying it at a reasonable price can be an excellent investment for many years. Number 2 - Microsoft (MSFT)The next most held stock by 20 super investors in their top 10 holdings is Microsoft, ticker MSFT. Not only is Microsoft a favorite among super investors, but it is also among the top 25 holdings of nearly 400 ETFs. Let's dig into its fundamentals and see if we should own it as those super investors do.
What a great business! Where do the growth and cash come from? Microsoft Cloud is now a bigger and faster-growing business than the old Microsoft Office and other productivity divisions. The Azure cloud storage was up 18%, and the Cloud services business was up 27%. This is no joke. Microsoft is a $2.5 trillion company, generating double-digit revenue growth in the cloud and AI market that will get even bigger in the coming years. It's a major investor in OpenAI, the developer of the all-famous ChatGPT application, and it has already started offering generative AI cloud services to its customers, such as Moody's. The company's double-down on AI and generative AI will make the cloud business even more prominent. On the valuation front, the stock is priced right where financial analysts expect it to be, with 35 times price-to-earnings and 12X price-to-sales ratios. Once again, just like Moody's, we have a beloved company by super investors and many other investors, which is richly priced. This again goes to my 2023 Watchlist for a chance to buy it at a better price.
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China's Real Estate Is a Huge Problem for Local Governments
China's real estate problem is also a huge problem for local governments because of how these local governments make money. In China, lands in the cities belong to the government. Companies buy the right to build a property over the land from the government for 70 years. Land-use sales revenue and real estate taxes represented 38% of the local government's revenue in 2020. This revenue will decrease if the real estate sector slows down. Some provinces received less than 20% of their annual land-use rights revenue in 2020. The real estate sector's dismay has already created a major budget issue for local governments.
The government is responsible for investing in the local infrastructure and is a big spender and a source of employment for locals, too. Lower revenue means lower spending and lower employment across Chinese provinces.
So, as we discussed, the problem isn't just that Evergrande and Country Garden are running out of cash. The problem can be as big as the middle class losing their wealth, the banking system losing liquidity, and local governments losing revenue. As you can imagine, this is a HUGE and potentially catastrophic problem for the Chinese economy.
The government is responsible for investing in the local infrastructure and is a big spender and a source of employment for locals, too. Lower revenue means lower spending and lower employment across Chinese provinces.
So, as we discussed, the problem isn't just that Evergrande and Country Garden are running out of cash. The problem can be as big as the middle class losing their wealth, the banking system losing liquidity, and local governments losing revenue. As you can imagine, this is a HUGE and potentially catastrophic problem for the Chinese economy.
Why The World Is Worried About China's Real Estate Problems
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts less than 4% GDP growth for China in the coming years. This growth rate indicates a more than 50% drop in the country's economic growth compared to the past four decades. A 50% drop in a country representing 18% of the global GDP is a big deal. Even more importantly, according to BCA Research, China has been the source of more than 40 percent of global economic growth over the past decade, compared with 22% from the U.S. and 9% from the eurozone. And, of course, China is a major trade partner to the U.S. Japan, Germany, India, Australia, and many other countries.
Bringing it to our portfolios, about 7.6% of the S&P 500's total revenue comes from China, according to FactSet. The tech companies in the S&P500 make 16% of their revenue from China. Semiconductor companies get 27% of revenue from the country. For example, the country represents 20% to 25% of Nvidia's revenue.
The world economy is a massive web of interdependencies and connections. If China is in trouble, so is the rest of the world.
Bringing it to our portfolios, about 7.6% of the S&P 500's total revenue comes from China, according to FactSet. The tech companies in the S&P500 make 16% of their revenue from China. Semiconductor companies get 27% of revenue from the country. For example, the country represents 20% to 25% of Nvidia's revenue.
The world economy is a massive web of interdependencies and connections. If China is in trouble, so is the rest of the world.
How Can We Protect Ourselves Against China's Real Estate Risk
First of all, before panicking and taking your money out of the market in fear of China's threat to the world economy, we must say that there is still hope, and the Chinese government may very well be able to control the situation before it becomes a crisis. These measures include cutting the interest rate, giving mortgage-related incentives, and working with property developers to manage and refinance their debt.
Where there is more risk for individual investors is to invest without considering the hidden risk that may arise from the situation in China. As they say, the blade you don't see usually cuts the deepest. For example, suppose you are pouring money into Nvidia because it is skyrocketing due to the AI demand. As discussed earlier, you must also consider that a possible economic crisis in China is a risk to your Nvidia investment.
In my view, the proper response to the possible economic crisis stemming from China or any other reasons is always the same:
See you next time!
Where there is more risk for individual investors is to invest without considering the hidden risk that may arise from the situation in China. As they say, the blade you don't see usually cuts the deepest. For example, suppose you are pouring money into Nvidia because it is skyrocketing due to the AI demand. As discussed earlier, you must also consider that a possible economic crisis in China is a risk to your Nvidia investment.
In my view, the proper response to the possible economic crisis stemming from China or any other reasons is always the same:
- Invest slowly, steadily, and based on logic.
- Invest in things you have researched well and understand, not on the news's whim.
- Only invest the money you don't need to pay for your food, rent, mortgage, and other immediate needs.
- And always be mentally and financially ready for the risks you may not have seen.
See you next time!
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