Fade In To You
Great Ones, I want to hold the hand inside you. I want to trade the stock that’s true.
I look to you and I see you trading Great Stuff Picks. I look to you and see the truth.
Dude, Mazzy Star on a Friday? How depressing. But if you’re saying what I think you’re saying…
Quiet, you. Also, I agree on Mazzy Star … but, again, I don’t control the jukebox in my head. “I git what I git and I don’t have a fit,” as my grandma used to say.
That said, there’s no Four Play today, Great Ones, because it’s that time again…
Why? What are we gonna do tonight, Brain?
The same thing we used to do every Friday, Pinky.
Dive into the Great Stuff mailbag!
It’s Friday Feedback time!
For all y’all newbies out there, Friday Feedback is when we take a stroll through the Great Stuff inbox and answer your stock market and investing questions. No question is too big. No fee is too big. We’re ready to believe you!
Actually, it’s free. There is no fee. But you do have to email us with your questions, rants, song lyrics … what have you … so that, you know, we can answer you here!
Don’t wait! Email us today at GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com.
Now, on with the show!
Omniscient Kapoop
Dear Joseph,
I bought Nikola you recommended. It went kapoop, and you told me to sell it for a big loss.
Later you said, buy the acquisition company DCRB at $15.90 a share before the merger with HYZN which I did. But, after the merger, it went down and down and you keep saying hold it, do not sell. My $15.9 a share of DCRB is now worth only $2.34 of HYZN.
Now they found HYZN was cooking the book. What do you have to say now?
I suggest you don’t recommend any stock unless you also OWN it. — John K.
Thank you for writing in, John!
Investing is a real pain in the a$$ isn’t it? Especially with some fool like me not buying the stocks he recommends. I’ve got no skin in the game is what y’all think.
Never mind that I took it very personally — and still do — that Nikola (Nasdaq: NKLA) royally screwed us all over by basically lying about its technological capabilities.
I’m not a lie detector, y’all. And I don’t have every scrap of information about every company I recommend buying stock in. Nobody does.
Still, I was royally pissed at Nikola … and I’m royally pissed over how Wall Street is treating Hyzon Motors (Nasdaq: HYZN). If you want an update on my stance on Hyzon, I gave it last Friday. Click here to read it now.
The short version, for those who don’t want to click: I’m still holding HYZN.
Now, to address the whole “don’t recommend any stock unless you also OWN it” deal…
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!
For clarification, Banyan Hill — the company that owns and operates Great Stuff — had some rules in place that prevented myself and all the other Banyan Hill gurus from trading or buying anything we recommended.
It’s not that we didn’t want to eat our own cooking. It’s that we weren’t allowed.
The reason being that I could potentially front-run my buy and sell recommendations by using Great Ones to help me pump and dump stocks unfairly. That’s called market manipulation, and the SEC really doesn’t like that.
I mean, short sellers and hedge funds do this $#!% all the time, but I wasn’t allowed because I might use y’all to pad my own pockets. But common sense has prevailed!
As another Great One pointed out:
So, I heard Ted Bauman mention that Banyan Hill company policy has changed and that you can now buy the stocks you recommend.
What are the new company buy/sell disclosure rules?
Will you now start buying some of your pics when you like the price? — Brent J.
Yes! I can finally put my money where my mouth is. And, yes, I will start personally buying stocks in the Great Stuff Picks portfolio — and I’m starting with Hyzon Motors.
Oh! Of course you are buying now that it’s trading at a 52-week low! You freaking shill!
Cool your jets, man. If I had been allowed to, I would have bought in at $15.09 back on February 11, 2021, when I initially recommended HYZN stock. If I had been allowed to…
The way this will work goes like this: I have to wait 24 hours after I recommend buying a stock in order to purchase it. Likewise, I have to wait 24 hours after I recommend selling a stock in order to sell it.
This gives y’all Great Ones time to buy in and potentially run up the price — or vice versa — before I even step on the field. That way, I can’t be accused of pumping and dumping or anything nefarious.
So today, I’m officially reiterating my recommendation to buy HYZN.
Click here to see my reasoning, if you want.
Since this is a Friday edition of Great Stuff, and it comes out after the close of trading, the earliest I can buy HYZN stock is Tuesday, August 16. Them’s the rules.
Y’all have until Tuesday to run that HYZN stock price up and make it more expensive for me to buy in. I deserve it, to some degree, I guess.
Open Mouth, Insert Great Stuff
As for the rest of the Great Stuff Picks portfolio, I will buy in incrementally when the time is right. And you’ll know the time is right because I will reiterate my buy recommendations and bold them as I’ve done above — and I’ll wait the required 24 hours before I buy.
Now, there are a few provisos … a couple quid pro quos to deal with regarding new stock recommendations.
Since these rules are new, and most of my investment capital is already spoken for, it will take some time before I’m all-in on the Great Stuff Picks portfolio. However, I do not plan to hold back new recommendations until I can buy in … that’s stupid.
I’ll continue to make buy recommendations when I see fit, regardless of whether I can take advantage of the trade or not. But I plan to start restructuring my investments over time so that we are all in this boat together.
And according to a different email from Brent J., it’s quite a fine boat indeed:
Mr. Great Stuff,
Just wanted to say thank you for what you do. I aways enjoy reading your newsletter. And you usually keep the marketing fluffery to a tolerable level. I own 8 out of 13 current stocks you’ve recommended, and my Great Stuff portfolio sits at a very respectable 45% gain (which also comes out to be an 11% annualized gain over 3.5 years) in spite of the recent market downturn. It’s trouncing the S&P 500 benchmark by 22%!
My Highest Regards — Brent J.
I hope that makes you feel a little bit better, John K.
I’m not perfect. I never claimed to be. But as Brent J. points out, I’m not doing all that bad right now either. And now, I’m on my own way to Great Stuffness … or something.
Of course, you need to do what’s right for your own portfolio. If you’re a more conservative investor, and the mere thought of wading in the tech market waters gives you the willies … we’ve got you covered there too.
Most folks think you need to take on more risk to get better returns. They’re wrong.
Mike Carr recently proved it. In a back test, his strategy showed it would have helped you invest with four times less risk using conservative investments — all while capturing up to three times better gains than the S&P 500.
But Mr. Great Stuff, what are these conservative, low-risk trades with the power to defeat the market’s greatest benchmark?
Alright, now let’s see what else y’all have been talking about these past couple of weeks…
Got A Visit From The Cable Company…
Hey Mr. Great Stuff,
What’s up with ROKU. Don’t people know cable is dead? Watch time may be down, but people are watching what they want when they want it. Quality over quantity. Thinking this is a great buying time. What do you really believe?
There might even be a song about lots of channels nothing on.
Love what you do, — Jim
Jim! Glad you wrote in, buddy. I hope you were ready for a good rantfest …
So here’s the thing that most people don’t understand about Roku (Nasdaq: ROKU). And by “most people,” we’re talking about your average consumer, mom and pop investors, Wall Street investors — even tech analysts like Michael Nathanson from MoffettNathanson…
Roku isn’t a streaming device company anymore. It hasn’t been for a couple of years now.
Sure, the company keeps making streaming devices … but those are mostly for the very few people who don’t have one yet, or for current users to replace old Roku devices that may have stopped working.
Roku doesn’t really need to sell any more devices because most people already have one. Besides, margins absolutely suck when you’re dealing with devices and equipment.
Roku’s real business has turned to advertising. This ain’t anything new — advertising has always been the endgame. That’s why Roku sells those devices with such low margins.
Roku got the masses to buy a Roku device on the cheap … now it’s flexing its advertising muscles, no matter which streaming service you end up subscribing to.
Some folks — cough Wall Street cough — expected streaming’s pandemic-propelled growth to continue on after a return to “normal.” So traders went into full “bust cycle” mode and struck the stock down like a scorned heathen.
If you only looked at ROKU stock, you’d completely believe that streaming devices are dead, and so is ROKU. But the only reason ROKU stock has been hit lately is because of a pullback in ad spending across most major platforms. Social media, streaming … you name it.
But is streaming itself going anywhere? No, sir.
We can all agree that streaming is now the de facto way to watch most things. Roku has the best and cheapest streaming device on the market … if you don’t already have one. That gives Roku a massive global install base with millions of users looking at ads daily.
Roku built it that way … and they will come. Plus, during a recession, what’s the first thing many people will axe from their monthly budget?
The kids?
What? No … you go for the subscriptions, with the most expensive ones first. The fact that Roku has many ad-supported platforms gives it an edge when the budget-bargaining time comes.
Meanwhile, MoffettNathanson still wants to lament Roku’s “core business” of hardware sales, with no idea that that’s just an add-on to Roku’s ad business now. After all, why else would Roku buy out Nielsen’s top-of-the-industry video advertising tech?
It’s ads (and Rokus) all the way down.
Oddballs & Ends
And finally, a grab bag of random Greatness lingering ‘round the inbox:
Ah, some Rosemary Clooney! I can dig it, Bill. Thanks for writing in!
Fun fact: My sister sang at Rosemary Clooney’s wedding in Maysville, Kentucky. Linda Ronstadt was supposed to sing, but she got sick and had to cancel at the last minute.
So some people in the know suggested my sister … and boom, Bob’s your uncle, or something…
Also, my mom went to high school with George Clooney.
But you don’t want celebrity gossip, do you, Bill? Well, I’m gonna give you candy, ya boogie woogie bugle boy!
On the topic of song lyrics, Great One Robert W. over here wants more Lady Gaga on the playlist, while Cynthia F. is somehow missing out on all the Led we’ve been rambling on about.
Not sure how you missed it, Cynthia. The Great Stuff team has been pretty firmly stuck in ‘80s and ‘90s rock mode for weeks now. But we’ll redouble our efforts.
Meanwhile, I’m getting flashbacks to trying to be the DJ during my last cross-generational road trip… We’re gonna listen to Maiden, and you’re all gonna like it!
Get over TikTok?
No … no I don’t think I will. And when it comes to available data streams … it’s basically a big game of “pick your poison,” with Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google … and every other major tech company … oh, and the U.S. government and several other governments around the globe.
But we’re just going to worry about China? Come on!
Meanwhile…
Whatever you want to rant, rave, vent or ramble about, send it to our inbox: GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com. Write to us!
In the meantime, here’s where you can find our other junk — erm, I mean where you can check out some more Greatness:
- Get Stuff: Subscribe to Great Stuff right here!
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- Where We Live: GreatStuffToday.com.
- Our Inbox: GreatStuffToday@BanyanHill.com.
Regards,
Joseph Hargett
Editor, Great Stuff
