🍨 Daily Scoop: Let’s copy them again

By Hoda Mehr Thu, Jul 18, 2019

What you need to know?

If you are not listening to Podcasts, you may be missing a significant trend. Even Apple (Ticker: AAPL) is catching up.

Reportedly, the company is in the talks with media providers to buy exclusive rights to podcasts. This move is the second time Apple is copying Spotify (Ticker: SPOT). Spotify was among the first companies that brought music streaming to life. Apple went ahead and copied that move. Now, just a few months ago, Spotify purchased Gimlet Media, a top-rated podcasting company, and Apple is copying that move, again.

What does it mean for investors?

The news is not as bad for Spotify as some people may be interpreting. The move speaks to Apple’s widespread effort to do everything it can to stay an integral part of the lives of its customers. Podcasts can help.

• U.S. markets: All-around red signs have replaced all-around green arrows. All major stock market indices finished Tuesday lower than where they started the day and the week for that matter. Scroll to the Overall Market section to read more about what happened. 
• Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin price continued to hover around $9,000 per coin. Technical analysts are expecting the low of $7,500 before the coin recovers. Don’t be too surprised if you see an even lower price, just the same as if you see a much higher price. In the world of crypto, no one knows precisely what drives or pulls the market.

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It’s puzzling. 

What happened on Wednesday?

Except for Utilities, all other sectors and industries followed major stock market indices and finished Wednesday in the red zone. The S&P 500 even fell lower than its recent record of 3,000. There was no major macroeconomic news. No one fueled the trade discussions, the Fed didn’t comment on the interest rate, and investors were left alone to make up their minds.

Now What?

Most investors are as puzzled about the state of the stock market as is the CEO of the railroad company CSX. In his remark during the company’s disappointing earnings report, James Foote summed up the state of the economy and the market better than anyone else:

“The present economic backdrop is one of the most puzzling I have experienced in my career.”

The new cannabis of the food industry. 

Shares of Blue Apron (Ticker:APRN) jumped more than 24%, before giving back around 9% of the jump. Investors have come to expect no good news from Blue Apron (Ticker: APRN), but Wednesday was different. The company announced a partnership with Beyond Meat (Ticker: BYND), and the news worked like a charm.

While having Beyond Meat on the menu is not going to solve the company’s churn rate problem, but these days, meat alternatives are the new cannabis. Anyone having them are sent to the highs of the sky (ahem, pun intended).

Analysts may be missing a big point. 

For several weeks, investors were talking about the doom of Netflix (Ticker: NFLX). Iconic content such as the Friends and the Office franchises are leaving the streaming platform, and everyone has been worried about whether Netflix can grow. Wednesday’s quarterly earnings’ results confirmed the doubts. The company announced that paid membership only grew by 2.7 million. Last year’s membership growth in Q2 was 5.5 million, and that was enough for investors to send the stock price down by more than 13%.

However, investors forgot to pay attention to a few other sections of the earnings. As per Netflix’s management, the company is only capturing 10% of the TV viewing time in the U.S. It has established partnerships with players such as AT&T and Comcast, and is now offering a low-price mobile-only streaming plan in India. The content obligations declined by 2% as the company moves to owned content. If you scratch the surface and silence the negative chatter, no one has summed up the future of Netflix better than Adam Nash, DropBox’s (Ticker: DBX) VP of Products and Growth:

Elon Musk wants to connect your brain to machines. So, what happened?

We don’t know where Elon Musk is finding all this time, but in collaboration with Neuralink, he just published a whitepaper talking about the possibility of planting threads deep in human’s brains.

The intention is initially to help amputees to restore their lost abilities. However, Musk believes interacting with machines at neuro level is the only way humans can keep up with the machines and artificial intelligence.

While your chatting with your friend, ask them whether anyone is willing to let electrodes in their brains? Anyone?

Disclosure: Authors of this Scoop own shares of Apple (Ticker: AAPL) and Netflix (Ticker: NFLX).

About the Author

The authors of this Scoop are the editorial team at Stock Card, led by Hoda Mehr. Hoda Mehr is CEO and Co-founder of Stock Card and the host of Renegade Investors podcast. She runs a community of 40,000 stock market investors and manages Stock Card's successful flagship portfolio, Roll with Our CEO, on Stock Card Portfolio Store. Hoda is an Economist with an MBA from Concordia, John Molson School of Business. She applies behavioral economics, data journalism, and storytelling to all aspects of her work. Before starting Stock Card, Hoda worked as a strategy and insights lead at technology companies including Symantec, Aimia and Sony. Create a free account to do your stock market research easily and mistake-free: Stock Card Stock Card