Moby Live: Jerome Powell, Zoom Reversal?, PayPal sliding, Crypto, EV's & More!

The following is a transcript of our weekly live podcast. We discuss everything from Zoom's stock coming back to earth, to the ever-evolving EV market, as well as Jerome Powell's re-nomination and everything that means.

• If you'd like to listen live next week, join our discord here: Discord Channel
• If you'd like to listen to this in Apple Podcasts: Click here
• We're also on Spotify: Click here!

Peter Starr Northrop:

And now coming to live from our coast to coast trading desk, this is moby.co live, a weekly live discussion about the economy and the market forces that power your world. As always I'm Peter Starr Northrop, your host, bringing you another, just like an early conversation. We usually do these on Thursdays at market close, but we figured I didn't think anybody wanted to be here for Thanksgiving dinner. If you want to have Thanksgiving dinner with us virtually let us know, and maybe I can set that up for next year. Otherwise, our audience I got an awesome conversation about another goofy week in the economy. We're thinking about jobless claims. We're thinking about inflation and Jerome Powell getting extension. We're thinking a lot about the EV and crypto market and a couple of interesting picks that are going in interesting directions.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Lots of volatility here, that's the name of the game during Q4, especially during this very interesting recovery period. So let's get into that. I'm as always joined by Justin Kramer, our chief analyst, and co-founder here at moby.co Justin, man. Most important question up front, dude. What are you thankful for this year, my dude?

Justin Kramer:

No. it's a good question. I'm honestly thankful for what we've built so far, the community, the early adopters, it's going to be really fun looking back in a year from now and seeing everyone here in the audience, seeing everyone who's joined the discord community, who's followed us on Instagram, see where they were relative to where they were a year ago or AKA today. So, I'm really thankful for what we've built so far, and I'm really excited for what's next.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Exactly. And that's the same thing for me. I'm overjoyed watching us go from zero to one across this year. It's been a very slow burn and it's very amazing watching that really accelerate, but no, people don't want to watch us brag or anything, they want us to pat ourselves in the back. They're here for the actual advice.

Justin Kramer:

Yeah. No, no, totally. I just think it's fun regardless. We weren't even in Instagram last year, and now we're 150K followers.

Peter Starr Northrop:

We didn't even have an Instagram at Q4 2020. That's no way.

Justin Kramer:

Sorry. My brain is mush after COVID. We did have an Instagram, but what I meant to say is we didn't have an Instagram at the start of last year.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Got you. I was about to say, I'm like, that's a rise my dude. Either way, but yeah. It's one of those things where COVID has made... I feel like it's... Last Thanksgiving was maybe a week ago and then like this entire year has just blurred into it. And not only that, but just the mayhem of starting a business, speaking of which we're here at market close on Wednesday. I'm willing it to be Thursday right now. Please just let it be Thanksgiving dinner now. We're here at market close on Wednesday. Again, we're experiencing a lot of interesting volatility. The market is going in every possible direction all at once. We're entering the quantum market. At this point, things are going down. Things are skyrocketing. There's so much energy in the economy that it's hard to find the signal amongst the noise.

Peter Starr Northrop:

So let me just get into the highlights right now. Initial jobless claims were at their lowest points since 1969. This week, Justin, there's a lot of really interesting stats in terms of why we're seeing the market recovery. And we're also seeing a really interesting move in the jobless claims where... Continuing jobless claims are also going down a lot as well. The US labor board did not give us any real indication why these numbers are down. They didn't give us their reasoning based on the numbers. But when you're looking at this, are we seeing more encouraging signs of a recovery? Are we seeing that services are taking over to the point that like, it doesn't matter like, to hell with your supply chain, I'm just going to make the market work no matter what.

Peter Starr Northrop:

What's going on here, captain, what's going on, Justin? What are we thinking about in terms of the overall recovery, as we're finally seeing initial jobless claims reports go down and at the same time, the great resignation happening in the backdrop where we're seeing even more people quit their jobs more and more? Where are these people going? What is happening to this labor market, dude?

Justin Kramer:

No, it's a great question. And I feel like, especially now it's very confusing because COVID by any means is not gone. Although, I am in Florida so it basically is gone. But most other places it's not gone by all accounts.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Mentally gone, we should say.

Justin Kramer:

Mentally gone. Yeah. People here act like it's not happening, which is... It's fun but it's scary too. But on a serious note right now it's interesting because a lot of people are like, okay, well, COVID still going on. There are a ton of jobs that are still being affected. How is this unemployment rate at all time lows? Why are people quitting their jobs in mass? And you're really starting to see what people have called for is like the shift from all of in-person like highly jobs that could easily be replaced, can be automated, and seeing this shift into online jobs like technology and all these things have been happening, but they've really been exacerbated over the last... Let's call it over the last six to 12 months with COVID and forcing people to warrant these skills and start working from home.

Justin Kramer:

And so, we've seen the unemployment rate drop and drop and drop. And the important thing is, the unemployment rate is actually what people don't realize is the calculation of people looking for work. So while there might be a ton of people who are still unemployed. If people aren't looking for work and they're working for themselves, or they're not motivated because they're making more money investing. They won't be counted in that unemployment number. So the real number is actually skewed, but at the very least it going down and down is obviously a net positive. And so, what we've seen right now and what we'll can continue to see is that number continuing to decrease.

Justin Kramer:

Where it gets a little scary is when the market keeps going up, inflation keeps going up, unemployment goes down, spending goes up, all these things that lead to a supercharge or overcharge or overheated economy is where it starts getting a little bit nerve wracking in terms of having like this hyperinflationary environment or somewhere where the fed needs to step in, raise rates faster than expected and cool things down. And so, we've seen that happen before. And honestly, there's a good chance that could happen again. But if it does happen, we're looking at a severe pullback in a lot of the markets if the fed starts to move rates faster than expected. Jerome Powell's obviously been very adamant on not doing so, but with inflation above 6%, if it continues that way, we may very well see that happen.

Peter Starr Northrop:

And that literally gets into the next topic really well was, which is the news this week that Jerome Powell was getting renominated to run the fed. Jerome Powell was obviously a Trump appointee and Biden is just going to keep the steady hand at the till so to speak. There's a lot of really interesting noise around the Jerome Powell pick, obviously a lot of people in the day trading space, freak out a lot about just the money print or inflation and everything like that. So just getting your take, I want a quick sober look into exactly what it means having Jerome Powell run the fed a little further. Do you think it's going to be one of those things where he's going to stick to tapering? Is it one of those things where it's just better to have a steady hand at the till? What is this signal to the market?

Peter Starr Northrop:

The market didn't really react too much to Jerome Powell, basically getting renominated at it. And we're going to be sticking with this fed strategy. So when you look at this, you've already mentioned that the only thing that can really spook the markets and really cause that huge pullback is if rates go up higher in a faster way than people expect, is there anything else we should watch as investors as we see a lot of noise surrounding daddy printer, daddy Powell, because it's one of those things where... I have my ear to the ground every day, trying to understand how rates work. And it's getting to the point where there's so much noise running Jerome Powell, don't know what's going on.

Justin Kramer:

Jerome Powell is the meme of 2021, never has a fed chairman ever been so popular before. And so, to your point about Trump electing him in terms of getting him in there, him keeping rates low for a long time, he's definitely helped the economy. It's hard to argue against that. And so, him being reelected, I don't think came as too much of a surprise. And that's why I don't think the markets honestly moved too much when the news was announced, and going forward, I think we're going to see more of the same him saying inflation is transitory. And then he steps back on transitory, actually means, but him more or less continuing to take that stance. And then over time him continuing to say, they'll raise rates. They've pushed that out a bit. I would be skeptical to say if inflation starts decreasing, if they actually end up raising rates, it is somewhat long overdue and you start getting into this area of not being able to control the economy if rates stay that low for that long.

Justin Kramer:

And so, not to get too much off onto a side note here, but Japan did something similar to this earlier, I think five years ago, roughly. But in Japan they went to a negative interest rate policy and it didn't really work. And so, when you start getting to these low rates and you start getting into times of potentially economic, like turmoil or headwinds. Once rates are so low, you don't really have the ability to pull them back. And so, your lever is then jumpstart the economy in bad times isn't really that big. And so, that's what a huge fear is in terms of having rates low for a really long time. And so, by being able to raise rates and the economy not reacting poorly, that's the signs of a really strong and healthy economy. So when he says he wants to raise rates over time, as investors that's not necessarily something that we should be looking at in a poor way.

Justin Kramer:

That's something that if it goes up that signals a healthy economy, a healthy market, these are things we want to see. The only thing we are scared of is if he does that faster than expected, then we can start seeing a pullback in the markets. And that's when it starts becoming a real, real problem. And so, the way they signal and the way they say they're going to do what they ultimately do is almost more important than actually what they do. So, we just need to make sure as investors that they're sticking to the timelines that they originally put forward, and then once they more or less execute on those timelines, we'll be in a position to hopefully judge if the market responds accordingly.

Justin Kramer:

And so, long story short, what we want to see is an eventual raising of rates. And so, that the economy can react strongly, the markets can react strongly. And then we get in a little bit more of a period where they can start peeling or pushing down rates if need be. And there's other instruments out there that are yielding higher returns, and we can start transitioning back a little bit. So, long story short. I think it's a net positive. It probably won't happen until next year, but if it happens sooner than expected, that is a definitely watch out for type event.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Precisely. It's always amazing to watch exactly how much power... Well, ultimately such a small organization, as such as the fed has. I know the fed is huge, but compared to the amount of power they wheeled, they're almost insignificant. These are really tiny numbers with absolutely massive consequences. And so, it's really important to realize that you need to have levers going in both directions. Negative interest rates don't work, so it's really exciting to see that we can potentially react to raising rates and having capital slow down a teeny tiny little bit without it blowing up the world.

Peter Starr Northrop:

But again, if it happens too fast, not so good. So we'll see as we, again, transition out of this really fast capital post COVID world. You know how I really know that COVID is over, Zoom stock finally came back to reality this week, it's down 20% on the week. Zoom's obviously been the pandemic darling, perhaps one of the biggest stocks of 2020, not necessarily the meme stock of 2020, but the stock whose story really completely tracked with the story of 2020 really well. Now we're in 2021, Zoom revenue is down and so, Zoom stock is down really hard. Justin, how do you think about this? Is Zoom still a good long term bet moving forward? Do they have any other levers to pull? Or as companies instead of get out of fully remote and go to these hybrid remote schedules? How do you see Zoom transitioning to the post-COVID world?

Justin Kramer:

Yeah, Zoom is in an interesting position because to your point, they were so popular during COVID. Once people were work from homes, every single stock that was more or less a tech stock that you didn't need to be in person for, did extreme well. And then so, when Zoom peaked in like October 2020, it's basically been on a downturn since. And so, we wrote about it earlier in the week they were reporting earnings this week, we thought they would fall more and they end up falling more pretty sharply this week. I think they're down over 20%. And now they're finally in the zone for us. That makes sense, that the valuation and what they're looking to do going forward starts to actually be somewhat affordable.

Justin Kramer:

And so, while I hate saying we're calling a bottom because it is impossible to call a bottom, I think we're starting to approach a bottom where evaluation is starting to make sense and buying in starts looking are more attractive. And so, when you look at their most recent earning score, three things or really four things stuck out to me. The first was that earnings went pretty much exactly as planned. They called for a large dip... Excuse me, sorry. Earnings went exactly as planned. The stock has and really continues to be in a downfall, but at the earnings call, they basically said, these are the revenue numbers we want to hit. These are the growth that you want to hit. And they did exactly what they set out to do.

Justin Kramer:

Their term is actually insanely huge too. While a lot of investors are really focusing on churn and growth in the SMB markets, Zoom is in a position to truly capture a massive market, not only in video communications, but really all communications. There's no reason that they can't go into Slack, go into phone, go into all these other avenues that people aren't thinking of.

Justin Kramer:

And so, when you look at their other revenue growth line items, phone revenue actually grew over 100% since last year. Granted it is relatively small business unit, but they are focusing on that going forward. Their enterprise customer growth, people who are spending over $100,000 a year, international revenue significantly grew. And these are all the things going forward that are going to help the company really continue to grow revenues. And obviously, even though people are starting to go back in person, Zoom is clearly an integral part and video chat for that matter is an integral part of what we do.

Justin Kramer:

So long story short right now where we're looking at Zoom, the valuation finally makes sense. Earnings are going exactly as anticipated. Their market is huge. They have really strong revenue growth and additionally, they have new lines of revenue growth going forward. So this is for the first time in a year after we've been shorting for it. This is really a time for us that we're actually continuing or starting to buy, and we'll continue to buy until shares slide a little bit further.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Precisely. And that's one of the awesome things to keep in mind. Is all the market forces that sometimes over inflate a stock price, or make it seem less valuable than it actually is. It's really great that Zoom is coming back to reality and that it's actually a sensible investment now. Obviously, the best time to buy Zoom was in 2019. And I wish I had, but whatever. Speaking of which, again, the real narrative this week is just really big moves in all sorts of directions. The market is all over the place. And one place where we have a really solid example of that is in the EV market. This week we saw Rivian come crashing down to earth a little bit after one of the most ludicrous IPOs in human history. It's starting to crash down a little bit, as Rivian announced that it's not going to work with Ford.

Peter Starr Northrop:

That was a really big part of its whole working model. And now that's just not happening anymore. And at the same time, one of their main rivals Lucid is actually starting to take off a little bit as there's a lot of positive indicators about their market share, moving forward, despite some questions about their involvement with the Chinese government and whether or not the US is going to even allow those kinds of sales. So Justin, what's your take on the EV market right now as every stock is going in every direction right now?

Justin Kramer:

Yeah. Obviously, we saw a massive run up a lot of November in terms of just IPO after IPO, in terms of having Rivian go and not only really an IPO for Lucid, but in terms of like, it's starting to catch limelight in October into this year. And so, it was flat for most of the summer. We saw the price go from $25 as high as close to 55 to 60 quite quickly, same thing to Rivian, we saw Tesla go up. And now to your point there's been a little bit of a period of... I won't say flatness because obviously these stocks are extremely volatile, but there's been a period of somewhat over the last week, a little bit of a pullback in terms of volatility. So Xpeng is a stock that we've covered before, continue to cover. It's a Chinese electric vehicle company.

Justin Kramer:

And so, when you think about the Chinese markets for electric vehicles, they're years ahead of where the American markets are. Obviously you have Tesla, which is years ahead of everyone, but the government is giving massive subsidies to EV companies within its borders. And so, Tesla is doing really well both here and there. Some other stocks are much earlier in terms of Rivian and Lucid in having a footprint there, but Xpeng is another company in the EV market. Again, that we've been talking about for a while that I think will continue to start getting more and more investor attention. And there's a lot of really strong momentum for them.

Justin Kramer:

So, to answer your question, there's a lot going on in the EV markets. And so, this is really a thematic bet on electric vehicles being like the centerfold of investor attention and of consumer wallets for the foreseeable future. We're seeing a once in a generation monumental shift in the way that people get transported, and not only people, but goods. So you think about cars that ship goods, boats, planes, people, they've been running on combustion engines for the last century. This is an entire overhaul of all of transportation. And we said it before, these are multi decade investments. Stocks you're holding onto for a long time. This is not going to play out tomorrow. I'm sure Tesla is going to have a 10%, 20% pullback at some point. And so will every other EV company. But these are stocks you're holding onto until you're old with gray hair, to be honest.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Precisely, it's one of those things you have to think about, even if there's an obvious correction coming to Tesla's ridiculous valuation, that correction is only a temporary issue. And once that correction happens and Tesla hits reality, that's a great time to get in. But even if you're in the Tesla game now, we're still going to hit those levels as the EV market continues to bake out. And if you're not super convinced on thinking about these Chinese EV companies, keep in mind audience that EV is to solve two problems, really. First of all if you're building EVs in China, you have a much easier access to semiconductors than basically any other manufacturer right now. The semiconductor shortage is still a thing, but Tesla and Lucid managed to get around it almost entirely and maintain shipments and keep growing shipments throughout this year.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Furthermore, the whole EV model is not just like, oh, EVs are cool. It's a centralized production strategy. It's one of those things where current cars have tens of thousands of moving parts. Whereas an electric motor is just a spiny thing and a bunch of batteries. So as long as you have enough lithium, you're basically good. It's one of those things where it solves a lot of the manufacturing problems of building a car as well, and therefore can get into these ridiculous valuations. And audience, what I've really appreciated too, going through this is all of the DMs I've been getting. Keep in mind, you can ask us basically anything throughout this. We do try to keep these conversations tight to exactly 30 minutes. We're on these last five minutes of this particular podcast. If you have anything you want us to touch on, hit us up on the voice chat channel, which is down there on the left hand side of your screen, just above where this conversation is happening.

Peter Starr Northrop:

In case, you have any actual questions yourselves, if there's things that you like want more nuance on, you can also just DM us at any time, basically. And we'll gladly look into any picks or anything that you're thinking about in terms of the questions you have. So as we get into this audience question segment, well, Justin, we finally did it, we almost got through an entire podcast without talking crypto, but obviously a lot of people in our audience were like, "Hey, what's going on with Bitcoin?" It's hovering at about 57. It hasn't quite hit 60k ever since it bounced off the ceiling of 69,000 a couple of weeks back. Main coins, altcoins, that market is still just pandemonium. What's going on with the crypto pull back? What are your thoughts in terms of this board of bull run? Are we still on the up and up? Is crypto finally slowing down? What are you seeing in terms of the crypto markets right now just thinking about this bull run that was at this stage?

Justin Kramer:

Yeah. I am the most... This is going to be a little bit like paradoxic corner sense, but I am the biggest bull skeptic I've ever met. And so, when I think about crypto and I think about the future of the industry, there's just so much volatility and there's so much going on. And I mean it in a good way, because there's new projects, there's so much innovation happening and it almost happens on a daily basis that if you cool as your eyes, don't pay attention to it for a month, where the crypto community was and where it is today is just so massively different. And so, the biggest things that stick out to me is the speed of innovation. The constant companies and funding, there is literally billions of dollars being poured into the space right now, both from investors, from venture capitalists, from really everyone and the community that is stood behind it.

Justin Kramer:

You have these die hard enthusiasts. If you go on Twitter, you go into discord channels, it is the most collaborative community I've ever seen. And so, those are the things that get me really excited for it. The things that don't get me excited, is like all the fraud, all the fluff, a lot of the bullshit that's going on in terms of people seeing money being poured into NFT. So they launched their own NFT and it's just a cash grab. And then it ends up diluting the value of a lot of markets. And so, I think that's what we're seeing right now, at least in the NFT market was a bunch of really solid projects a lot of projects, making a lot of money, very early on. A ton of people seeing that and now diving in and trying to do it for themselves.

Justin Kramer:

And so, now you have this market where there's a lot of bullshit, and there's also a lot of good projects. And it's hard to really differentiate the two unless you sit there and educate yourselves. And so, that's where we're seeing starting to see a pullback in the NFT market. And then on the crypto side of things, that infrastructure bill, since then, that's really been the catalyst for the pullback. And so, we've wrote about this on our website last week to summarize for people who haven't seen it so far. Basically the infrastructure bill that came forward had a piece of legislation in it that was aimed towards crypto investors. And so, that it lumped everyone more or less into a certain classification that we'll call a broker. And for those purposes, it made things more expensive, more friction, and it basically just slowed down how easy it was to transaction innovate.

Justin Kramer:

And so since then, there has been talks of making those changes or amending those changes. But until that happens, this has been a lot for the crypto markets to digest. And not only is this event a lot, this gives everyone the feel that there's more regulation and more things starting to come to fruition. And so the biggest fear, and it is a fear for mine too, is that the US government or some governing body puts in front legislation that they don't fully understand and totally alters the path of crypto. And that's not something we want to see, but when you see people who are making the rules and who are making the literal laws for crypto.

Justin Kramer:

It's people who fundamentally don't understand it. And so, that does make me a little skeptical, but all in all, the flatness we've seen in Bitcoin, the flatness we've seen in the markets, I think it's just par for the course. This is something, again, we sound like broken records, but using any period to add to our position within reason, I don't want Bitcoin to be 100% of my portfolio, but if there is general weakness and we look back in five years from now, we're going to wish that we didn't add more to it.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Exactly. And that's the thing too. It's always this long term game and the main coins, your Bitcoins, your Ethereums, your Solanas, are going to have long term upside because they have long term utility. And so, that's the thing you have to allow yourself to do, is not let yourself get distracted by the short term volatility, especially during the back half of Q4, as whales begin to slow down adding to their positions and more individual investors start adding to their positions as well, whales stabilize the market whereas new investors coming in and coming out tend to make it into pandemonium.

Peter Starr Northrop:

So just keep abreast of that. Justin, we have exactly one minute left and the most asked question right now, the thing I've got in the most of my DMs and one that's in the voice chat the most is thinking PayPal. PayPal is down 23% the last month off of fears of increased competition. Is it a buy opportunity or do you think PayPal has room to fall further as it stops being the financial services provider and starts being one of many as its space becomes more and more crowded?

Justin Kramer:

Yeah, it's interesting because when we first wrote up PayPal, it was on the heels of that acquisition with Pinterest, which honestly, again, if you didn't read it, the summary is that there was a lot more crossover that people thought for social shopping, for more commerce, for buy now pay later. And so, there was a lot of opportunities there that we've really liked, and there was a real chance that went through. Obviously since that fell through, it definitely changes the outlook for the stock. And so, when stocks like this start really losing momentum, and so it's down almost 30% in the last six months, that gives us a lot of pause and makes us a little bit nervous. And so to answer your question, I do think there is more room for it to fall. Having said that PayPal is still like an integral part of online commerce.

Justin Kramer:

The buy now pay later option is clearly extremely popular. When we look at stocks like a firm and companies right there that are enabling you to spread your payments over several different instances. So that's something they're going after heavily. And then most of the internet still has PayPal integrated. If you've gone through the interface, it's terrible. It's fucking awful, but it doesn't change the fact that they have market share and wallet share all over the globe. So yes, do I think it can continue falling? If it does continue falling substantially, I'll look at it as a buying opportunity. I still like the stock, but this doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to stop bleeding.

Peter Starr Northrop:

And I like that. It's one of those views where you just have to hold your thoughts until you see a much more significant downturn over a much longer period of time. And that's the main thing to keep in mind. We're in a very volatile Q4 and a very volatile period of our economy. We're going to see some stabilizing forces enter in. And our main thing is just making sure that, hey, the market stabilizes itself as we cement this recovery power through and come out the other side, not necessarily stronger economy, but certainly a different, more interesting economy as we build back to that strength. So it's an exciting time to say the least. So there's still a lot to be thankful for this year specifically not to be all lame and to tie together with the Thanksgiving messaging, but here on Wednesday, November 24th at market close, we're seeing a lot of encouraging signs. We're seeing a lot of things going in a lot of different directions. It's honestly just a high energy time in the market.

Peter Starr Northrop:

And I'm just excited to be here. Justin Kramer, co-founder at moby.co and our chief analyst here. Any final thoughts before I go ahead and read the credits here? It's been an awesome conversation, my dude.

Justin Kramer:

Yeah, no. I totally agree. It's been a great conversation. Just BS in terms of what's going on in the markets right now. I think that's it, Peter, from my end to your point like, I hate to be cliche. I'm not this type of person, but I am thankful for the community we have here today. Just even having everyone engage with us, read our stuff, give us feedback, it is beyond helpful. Just sharing us, telling your friends about us, it helps a lot more than you realize. So, we're for what you've done. We're thankful for what you will do. And it means a lot. So thanks again, everyone for listening and tuning in. We're hopeful we've been helpful so far.

Peter Starr Northrop:

Great final words of my dude. I'll go ahead and read us out. Audience again, thank you so much for being here for this whole conversation. If you like this, please just let us know if there's anything you want us to talk about. Again, head us up in voice chat, hit us up in Moby general, hit us up over on our discord. If you have any other specific questions you'd like to ask us, also feel free to email us, [email protected] If you want more Moby stuff, we are at youtube.com/c/moby.invest. We're also over on Instagram and TikTok as well. Find us there. We're going to be having a really interesting report, deep diving into inflation come out Friday morning on our YouTube channel. Otherwise, audience we really appreciate your time. Just so you know this podcast is produced, hosted and voiced by me, Peter Starr Northrop. Our chief analyst here is Justin Kramer, a co-founder here at moby.co. If you have any other questions for us, feel free to hit us up. Otherwise, as always, I'd like to leave you with peace, love and incremental gains. And everyone be well, thank you so much.