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Startup Video Company Explodes Past 54% Growth Rate

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p>Zoom Video Communications’ stock has fallen to its lowest level in more than three months after the company gave its Q2 earnings report on August 30. The video conferencing company surpassed Wall Street’s estimates, but its guidance for Q3 slightly missed profit expectations and seemed to hint at a post-pandemic slowdown.

Should investors invest in Zoom’s dip, or should they avoid the stock as more Americans go back to work and school in the real world? Let’s find out.

How fast is it growing?

Zoom’s revenue went up by 54% y/y to $1.02 billion during the Q2 and surpassed estimates by almost $30 million. Its adjusted net income went up by 51% to $415 million, or $1.36 a share, which beat expectations by $0.20. On a GAAP basis, its net income went up 71% to hit $317 million.

Zoom expects its revenue to increase 31% y/y in the third quarter of this year, which overtakes analysts’ estimates, but also expects its adjusted EPS to grow only 8%-9%, which misses expectations of 10% growth.

The company is still producing healthy growth on top of its triple percentage growth last year, but investors’ reactions seem to suggest they are still concerned about the post-pandemic growth. The stock was also trading near 73 times forward earnings and 26 times this year’s sales before its earnings report, and those high valuations show it may have hit a grand slam to go higher.

Will Zoom’s business stabilize after the pandemic?

Zoom’s margins should stay stable or increase in a post-pandemic world, since many of its new customers will stay on free plans instead of choosing paid tiers.

During the newest conference call, CFO Kelly Steckelberg stated that free users accounted for “around 30% of our usage as compared to 10% before the pandemic.” Lowering its dependence on these free users and shifting to enterprise clients could stabilize Zoom’s sock for the long-term.

I believe Zoom has plenty of room to grow since it has certainly disrupted a fragmented market which was filled with major players. Investors who believe the remote work trend will continue after the pandemic comes to an end should buy some shares of Zoom after this recent post-earnings drop. However, the stock is still on the high side and will be volatile in the near future — so it is not an ideal investment for anxious investors.

Author: Steven Sinclaire

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Trump Stuns With Market-Shaking Move No One Saw Coming

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Former President Donald Trump warned this Tuesday that putting money into cryptocurrencies is “possibly a disaster waiting to happen.”

Trump reported that he has “not been a huge fan” of cryptocurrencies during his exclusive interview this Tuesday, noting he doesn’t invest into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“I like the United States currency,” Trump said.

He argued that putting money into cryptocurrencies “hurts the U.S. currency” and “we should be invested in America’s currency.”

Tuesday’s attack against cryptos was the second one by Trump on FOX Business as Bitcoin and other cryptos are unregulated in our financial system.

Back in June, Trump said that Bitcoin looked like a “scam” and the euphoria around it was watering down the U.S. dollar.

“The currency should be the dollar. And I do not believe we should have all the Bitcoins out there. I believe they should regulate them very highly,” Trump said at the time adding that, “It takes the edge away from the dollar and the value of the dollar.”

“Who knows what they really are, but they certainly are something that folks don’t know much about,” he said. On Tuesday, Trump also claimed that cryptocurrencies “could be fake.”

Bitcoin has gone from its high of $64,888 in April to nearly $47,400 this Tuesday. The top cryptocurrency is still higher by 63% this year.

By contrast, the WSJ’s dollar index has not changed this year.

Trump, during his time in the White House, supported the dollar. When the dollar is weak, it makes it cheaper for foreign nations to buy American goods. During his long fight with China, Trump frequently accused the country of keeping its currency intentionally low to cause their exports to be cheaper.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has hinted that he supports cryptocurrencies, but talking to FOX Business earlier this month he said that the “field was not going to reach where it could if it tries to stay outside the law.”

He specified that these laws are money laundering, tax avoidance and investor protection.

Gensler gave the insight as the industry has been awaiting to see how the Dem appointee will approach the oversight of the cryptocurrency market, which he had reportedly stated should be brought into line with traditional regulation.

Author: Scott Dowdy

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Billionaire Predicts The Unthinkable About Cryptocurrencies

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Billionaire investor John Paulson has given harsh words about cryptocurrencies this week, saying that digital currencies are “a limited supply of nothing.”

Paulson, who is the co-founder of Carlyle Group and became famous in 2007 by shorting the United States housing market, made the remark to “Bloomberg Wealth,” adding that cryptos are a bubble that will “eventually turn worthless.”

“I would say they are a limited supply of nothing,” he said. “There no intrinsic value to any of them except being in a limited amount.”

“Once liquidity dries up, they will go down to zero,” he said. “I would not recommend anyone invest in cryptos.”

Bitcoin was off almost 1% to $47,818 this Monday but it sill keeping a ytd gain of 65.5%, while Ethereum was lower slightly at around $3,179 and Dogecoin was off by 27 cents.

James Edwards, crypto specialist at Finder, stated that “Bitcoin is in the back seat right now as the competition between layer-1 coins like Solana, Cardano and Avalanche increases.”

“Bitcoin is likely to go near psychological resistance at about $50,000 until a catalyst event creates a new wave of buying,” he said.

Markets are still centered on the public narrative, Edwards said, “so if there is no news like another top tech company adding Bitcoin to their holdings, then I would not be surprised to see it come back as low as $43,000, depending on past market cycles.”

In other crypto news, Citigroup reported last week that the company was considering allowing bitcoin futures trading for some institutional customers, citing greater demand in the crypto space.

Analysts have noted that governments around the globe are increasing their efforts to regulate and control cryptocurrencies.

Winston Ma, a former director at China Investment Corp., reported that Canada was enforcing a tightened regime for crypto exchanges in past months.

He said that the Ontario Securities Commission has stopped two trading platforms that give crypto services from using the popular stablecoin Tether, according to official regulatory reports.

“It seems that Canada is joining the United States and China, the two largest cryptocurrency markets and also the two top regulatory enforcers, in taking these actions against stablecoins such as Tether,” said Ma.

Author: Scott Dowdy

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How To Make An Extra $1,000 In Social Security (Per Month)

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Social Security benefits can help you enjoy a better and more comfortable retirement life, but it can be hard to pay the bills using your benefits alone.

The average retiree gets around $1,500 a month, as reported by the Social Security Administration. This comes to around $18,000 a year, and unless you have some money saved waiting for you in your retirement fund, it might be challenging to pay your bills.

Fortunately, you might be entitled to more in benefits than you believe. If you are divorced or married, you could be eligible to get extra cash in divorce or spousal benefits.

Spousal benefits explained

If you are currently married to a person who is entitled to get Social Security, you might be eligible for spousal benefits depending on that person’s work record.

The most you can get in spousal social security benefits is half of the money your spouse will get at her full retirement age (known as FRA). As one example, if your spouse will get $2,000 a month at her FRA, the max amount you can get in spousal income is around half of this, or $1,000 a month.

If you are collecting over that in benefits thanks to your own work history, you do not qualify for spousal benefits. But if your benefit is under what you would get in spousal benefits, you will receive the higher of the two totals. That means if you are bringing in, say, $800 each month based on your work history and you are eligible to get $1,000 per month in spousal income, you will get $1,000 per month — not $1,800 a month.

Divorce benefits explained

Divorce benefits are like spousal benefits in a lot of ways, but there is one important difference — you cannot be married.

To qualify for these divorce benefits, your past marriage might have lasted for around 10 years. If your ex-spouse then remarried, that won’t change your ability to get divorce benefits. Claiming divorce benefits also will not stop your ex-spouse’s new partner from getting spousal benefits.

As with spousal benefits, the most you can get is 50% of the total your ex-spouse is getting at his or her full retirement age. Also, if you have been divorced for under two years, you will need to wait until your spouse gets Social Security before you can start getting divorce benefits.

Author: Blake Ambrose

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3 Cryptocurrencies With Almost Guaranteed Returns

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There are more than 11,000 cryptocurrencies out there right now, and it is not easy to find which might become successful long term.

Unlike when you put your money into stocks, when you purchase cryptos, it is hard to look at the fundamentals because the market is too new. You also cannot be sure people are being honest because there is little regulation.

Many cryptos will go away as we go into the next phase of this asset. Because of this, the cryptocurrencies that will likely do well are those with stronger leadership, good foundations, and better long-term visions.

Three cryptos with better futures than Dogecoin

1. Ethereum (ETH)

The man behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, is a crypto visionary, and the project has brought in an active community of developers. Ethereum is the second-top crypto by market cap, and was the first one to have smart contract capability. Smart contracts are little pieces of self-executing code that work on top of the blockchain. They elevate it from a system that has individual transactions to a network that can run software. Because of this, almost 3,000 apps and many other cryptos are built on top of the Ethereum platform.

2. Cardano (ADA)

Cardano was created by Charles Hoskinson, one of Ethereum’s co-founders. It is a third-generation crypto. Rather than upgrading to deal with issues of energy consumption, Cardano used the lessons from Ethereum and Bitcoin to create a whole new blockchain. It’s created to be more sustainable and faster from the start.

Cardano has proven real-world capabilities. It has many projects in developing nations, like a partnership with Ethiopia. This pilot scheme will use Cardano’s blockchain to record the academic results of 5 million students, giving them all tamper-resistant educational credentials.

It remains to be known whether Cardano’s slow and steady strategy is too slow, but I do think it has a very good future.

3. Aave (AAVE)

Decentralized finance is a term for software that removes banks from financial processes. For example, you may use crypto as collateral to get a loan without needing a credit check or even doing paperwork.

Aave is such a lender. Investors can bring in interest by giving their crypto to a lending pool. They then get a percentage of the interest that borrowers have to pay on their loans. It has a good reputation and some good partnerships. And this new loan industry might potentially change the way we bank.

Author: Steven Sinclaire

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This Stock Could Double Your Money Before 2025

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During the top of the dot-com bubble back in 2000, Intel’s market cap was over $500 billion. At this time, its rival AMD was only valued at $12 billion.

But today Intel has a cap of only $215 billion, and AMD is now $130 billion. Let’s see why Intel’s value went down and AMD’s went up, and whether or not AMD might eclipse Intel by the year 2025.

How Intel lost its top-dog status

Intel was valued at almost 50 times its 2020 earnings at its peak decades ago. Today, the stock is at around 12 times forward earnings, compared to AMD’s 35 p/e ration.

Investor’s enthusiasm for the company has waned as it lost the CPU market to AMD in the early 2000s. However, AMD continued its resources too thinly after it went into the GPU market with its purchase of ATI in 2006, and it struggled to fight against Intel and Nvidia across two different fronts.

But over the previous five years, the tables have turned. Intel has struggled to keep its two-year “tick-tock” cycle of shrinking CPUs and then refining them, and its foundry was overcome by TSMC in the “CPU process race” to create smaller and better chips. It repeatedly dealt with shortages and delays, and frustrated OEMs went to AMD.

AMD eventually switched their CPU manufacturing to TSMC’s more advanced process. That choice allowed AMD to create more advanced CPUs than Intel, while giving a stable supply of GPUs and CPUs to OEMs.

Because of this good move, AMD had 39.8% of the global CPU sales in Q3 of 2021, according to PassMark, while Intel had a 60% marketshare. That shocking reversal caused AMD’s revenue growth to beat Intel’s by a huge margin over the previous five years:

Will AMD overtake Intel by 2025

Analysts believe AMD will grow faster than Intel over the next couple of years.

We should take these estimates with a grain of salt, but they reflect the power of AMD’s GPU and CPU businesses, its good sales of custom APUs for video gaming consoles, and Intel’s market share declines across the laptop, desktop and server markets. Intel’s earnings will also possibly decline as it increases its domestic foundries and creates new chips.

It is hard to tell what will occur after 2022. Intel could miss its targets, resulting in greater market share going to AMD, or it might fulfill its goals and hit back against AMD with better chips.

If Intel messes up and its growth stagnates going into 2025, there is a strong chance AMD’s growth will go faster, its stock will then double, and its market cap will go past Intel’s. But if Intel does turnaround, its stock might rally and make it a lot more valuable than AMD yet again.

Author: Steven Sinclaire

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Biden Makes Big Changes To Social Security — Starts In 2022

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Whether you know it or not, Social Security has a huge role in helping to protect the financial well-being of America’s retired workers. When non-retirees workers were asked if they plan to use their Social Security income during their retirement, only 15% this year responded that it would not be necessary. Of the remaining people, 38% said it would be a “big” source of their income, which means an all-time high in this special poll.

Given the crucial nature of Social Security for retirees, there is arguably no announcement that is more awaited than the yearly cost-of-living adjustment, or as it’s known, COLA, which is given during the second week of every October.

Recently, it was announced that half the nation (around 169 million Americans), would mark a historic event next year.

On August 11, the Bureau of Labor published inflation data for July of this year. This report revealed that the CPI-W went up by 6% over the last 12 months. Keep in mind this is only one of the three data points needed to calculate an increase to Social Security in the form of a COLA. However, it means that the 2022 COLA could be the highest we have seen in a very long time.

According to The Senior Citizens League, which is a nonpartisan group that advocates for seniors, Social Security’s COLA is anticipated to increase by 6.2% in the next year. This would create the biggest jump in payouts since the 1982 COLA of 7.2%. In other words, the last time Social Security had a benefit increase this large, around 169 million Americans alive today were not even born.

If you are looking for a reason why prices are going up so quickly, transportation and energy can take a lot of this blame. In July, the CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), a measure that is similar to the CPI-W, had an unchanged 23.8% boost in energy prices over the previous 12 months. This is an end result of oil and natural gas costs rising greatly as economic activity has come back from its recession lows.

Likewise, transportation and vehicle costs are going sky-high. Prices of used trucks and cars showed a 41.7% increase in July (for the CPI-U) from the prior-year period, with transportation service expenses up 6.4%.

Author: Scott Dowdy

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Wells Fargo Analyst Reveals What’s Really Holding Gold Back

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After reaching a record more than a year ago, gold has struggled to get over $2,000 per ounce, and Wells Fargo says this is because of competition and not because of gold’s fundamentals numbers.

And this competition is, of course, bitcoin.

Gold was trading near $1,800 for the past couple of weeks, unable to break that level after the past flash crash at the start of August.

“All of that is happening even when quite favorable economic conditions exist, which should have boosted gold upward,” said John LaForge, a Wells Fargo real asset strategist.

“Gold has had a bad 12 months. At this time in 2020, gold sold close to $2,000 per ounce. Today, it sits nearer to $1,800 an ounce. Probably the most weird thing about gold’s sagging performance is that its fundamentals are quite good,” LaForge said. “Normally, lower interest rates, excessive money printing, a commodity bull cycle, and high inflation rates would have pushed gold higher, not lower.”

This is why LaForge stressed that it is not the Gold fundamentals but new competition behind the metal’s problems. “The bottom line — gold’s new struggle might not be because of fundamentals, but new competition,” he said.

The main competition versus last year has been the increase use of cryptocurrencies, specifically bitcoin’s surging popularity, LaForge said.

“While some cryptos can store value, we believe the higher volatility, and nontraditional returns justify our decision to classify them as alternative investments. We continue to see digital assets as an alternative investment for investors through a well managed fund,” he said. “The industry’s market cap has quintupled since Aug. 2020 to close to $2 trillion.”

When it comes to storing value, bitcoin fits the bill the best — from how it is being used by investors to how it works.

“Bitcoin is the largest and oldest in the industry, and it is usually compared to gold as a ‘means of storying value’ asset. Supplies for these two assets are scarce and take a lot of effort to extract, and higher prices do not lead to more production,” LaForge said.

Author: Blake Ambrose

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Turn An Easy Profit Next Month With These Cryptos

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Every top currency today, like Ethereum, Bitcoin and Binance Coin, all share one thing — they were trading for just pennies on the dollar during their creation. Now that they have become mainstream, their huge market caps stop their prices from increasing too fast in a short time frame. But the same is not true for altcoins, which are alternative cryptos created after Bitcoin’s launch.

A large part of the over 11,000 altcoins are having a hard time getting traction. But that is not the case for a few that give high risks and high rewards. So let’s talk about two of these altcoins that can deepen your digital wallets. They’ve already brought in a four-digit percentage return over the last few years.

1. Avalanche 

Like Ethereum, Avalanche is a smart contract, programmable token. But it can handle transactions in under a second, whereas the Ether network might take as long as a few hours.

This advancement has heavy implications. By using an oracle coin like ChainLink, Avalanche can connect smart contracts with real-world APIs. This can allow groups to conduct instantaneous transactions given anything from stock market data, future prices, weather forecasts, news, etc.

It is not surprising that crypto traders and investors have already discovered the innovation. The token has gained an amazing 2,440.38% since its start during Sept. 2020. What’s more, this token is not inflationary, as Ether is. I would assume capital inflows will push the value of the token higher. The token has a max supply of 720 million. Also, the Avalanche network destroys some of its fees with each transaction. More than 180,000 such tokens have been burned since Avalanche was started.

2. iExec RLC 

iExec RLC is a new token that gives decentralized and on-demand cloud services. Investors or traders can connect their systems to the iExec network to give computing capacity and get rewards in RLC tokens for doing this. In addition, both data providers and software can monetize their services through the network.

It is more than an academic program. Right now, the company behind iExec RLC is partnering with IBM and Google to increase data security within cloud computing. Similar to the other cryptos, iExec RLC is not inflationary with a max supply of just 87 million. It has brought in 1,048.9% since its creation in 2017.

Author: Steven Sinclaire

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2 Stocks That Are Surefire Money-Makers

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There are many ways to describe the valuation of the stock market at the moment. The raging bull from the last decade and the huge rebound from the covid-fueled market downfall last year has boosted stock prices to sky-high levels.

But that does not mean there aren’t stocks that are still set to go much higher. Here are two growth stocks to buy that Wall Street believes might soar 30% or even more.

Pinterest

Pinterest’s shares are lower by almost 40% from their peak earlier this year. Analysts believe that the stock might regain much of this room. The consensus price for Pinterest means a 37% premium above its current price.

Investors soured on the company after it reported a fall in monthly active users (MAUs) in its Q2 update. That is concerning since advertisers pay depending on how many possible consumers they’re getting to.

However, I believe Wall Street’s optimism about Pinterest is based on solid footing. The company’s CEO, Ben Silbermann, stressed during the company’s Q2 conference call, “In the second quarter, monthly active users on our mobile apps increased in the United States y/y and internationally by over 20%.” The decline was seen from web users. That makes sense given the reopening of the economy.

In the long term, Pinterest should have better growth prospects. The company is attracting users more with newer features including interactive videos. They are also expanding their international reach.

Teladoc Health

Teladoc Health took an even worse downfall than Pinterest. The healthcare stock has lowered by over 50% from its Q1 highs. Analysts, though, think that Teladoc is a bargain with the average target over 40% higher than the current share price.

Like Pinterest, the top issue for Teladoc is that the user boom they had during the pandemic will go away. The company has already watched its membership growth slow down significantly.

But Teladoc keeps performing very well on many fronts. Its revenue per member per month has increased 142% y/y in the second quarter and boosted 10.3% quarter over quarter. The company’s utilization rate is also going up, along with their visit volume.

I am bullish on Teladoc’s long-term future. The company is just scratching the surface of the possible virtual care market in the United States.

Author: Scott Dowdy

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