A Software Insider's Point of ViewStocks

AI Begins And Ends With Nvidia Despite the massive buzz on AI, only a few core companies that power the Age of AI will succeed. The high capital costs of research and development investment, the time required to take a product to market, and the ability to cross competitive moats create a massive barrier to entry. In fact, only a few vendors have shown significant profits in AI:

Expect Software Giants Hunters To Soon Be The Hunted In A Digital Giant's Quest For Growth Six of the Magnificent Seven (Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet [Google], Amazon, Meta [Facebook]) stocks have entered the four comma club -over $1 trillion in market cap. With a combined market cap of over $13.2 trillion, these six players continue to defy physics with continuous quarters of double digit organic growth. Digital giants by definition have deployed five key strategies:

Two Year IPO Drought Coming To An End In 2023, only 148 companies completed an initial public offering (IPO). This was the worst year on record and followed a 15% decline from the number of IPO's in 2022, another disappointing year. In 2023, ARM was the sole blockbuster tech IPO. After a brutal two years with a paucity of tech IPOs, the market is poised for a resurgence in 2024.

Three Factors Drive Growth In MATANA Stocks 1. AI Powers Valuation Growth, But Earnings Growth Keeps Momentum Going, 2. Ads Are Back For The Remaining Digital Giants, 3. Cloudy Times Ahead (For Now).

The Q1 Tech Earnings Breathe Life Among The Digital Giants. With just Apple left to report in the tech earnings season, three major trends have emerged

Big Tech and Market Reset Bring Optimism To Markets While many in the market are still psyching others into a recession, the fears are subsiding and the NASDAQ appears to be where the optimists are. Five factors have led to the mini rebound in this market of lowered expectations as watchers await the fed rate decision.:

The NASDAQ Composite closed out the week with its biggest two-day rally since 2008. CPI numbers hinted that inflation was subsiding and hope sprung that the Fed would take a less severe stance. Should the Fed hiking slow down from 75 basis points to 50 basis points, market watchers remain hopeful and some took advantage of the early signals of slowing inflation.

All Eyes On Digital Giant Earnings With recession headwinds driving lower valuations and earnings uncertainty in high gear, the level of fear remains high. However, in the past week, NASDAQ was up 5.2%. So the big question,will these digital giants hold their gains ahead of earnings season?

Disintermediate or Be Disintermediated On September 15, 2022, Adobe announced the largest acquisition of a private software company and the largest acquisition in Adobe’s history. In a half cash, half stock deal for approximately $20 billion, San Francisco-based Figma would be acquired by San Jose-headquartered Adobe. Adobe is paying a 50 times annualized recurring revenue (“ARR”) multiple for Figma which is expected to surpass $400 million in ARR exiting 2022.

Not All Big Tech Companies Are Equally Created The MATANA stocks continue to do well despite a confluence of crises. MIcrosoft, Apple, Tesla, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Amazon, collectively showed that big tech, digital giants who:

Goodbye FAANG, Hello MATANA. The FAANG stocks (i.e. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) have had a great run as the large cap digital giant leaders. However, with Facebook and Netflix facing massive declines in year over year subscriber growth, their valuations have taken a hit along with the macro conditions of rising interest rates and global instability.

Crypto FOMO Drives Capital Flows Out Of Big Tech (For Now) Retail investors have taken money out of the equity market and rotated into crypto to catch the wave. With all crypto's now worth more than $2 Trillion in market cap and Bitcoin standing out at $1 trillion, this poses a risk to the US dollar dominance as the reserve currency.