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$Apple (AAPL.US)$ Why This Top Strategist Says Big Tech Stil...
$Apple (AAPL.US)$ Why This Top Strategist Says Big Tech Still Has Room to Run -- Barrons.comMentioned:AAPL AMZN ASML MSFT SAPBy Reshma Kapadia
Nicholas Colas writes a widely-read morning note for money managers that draws on the New Yorker's 30-year career on Wall Street, filled with insights gleaned from economic data, market dynamics, investor psychology, and disruptive trends.
Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, got his first glimpse of Wall Street from the mailroom of what is now Alliance Bernstein as the mutual fund industry was taking off in the mid-1980s. Colas began his official Wall Street career in 1991 as an equities analyst covering autos for Credit Suisse. He went on to work at SAC Capital, where he learned from hedge fund manager Steve Cohen the importance of understanding emotions in investing, and later worked at other firms as a market strategist and head of research before launching DataTrek in 2017. Colas has been bullish on Big Tech and the power of disruption for years, and began writing about Bitcoin in 2013.
Barron's talked with Colas about why he still likes U.S. stocks despite inflation, high valuations, and the risks of Omicron. In this edited version of our conversation, we also find out why he says it's crucial for investors to learn financial modeling and monitor cryptocurrency developments.
Barron's: What's the biggest shift caused by the pandemic that is most relevant to investors?
Nicholas Colas: Inflation. That has been the biggest change in the economy. Stuff costs more -- and not a little, but a lot more, and over two years. Food is up 15%; wages are not. As an investor, we have to think about how inflation will ebb and flow and impact corporate profitability. For big companies, it's good for profits.
Are worries about inflation's impact on corporate earnings misplaced?
So few analysts know how to model a company anymore. I was trained by people who built their careers in the 1970s. It comes down to understanding how costs flow through an income statement. People think if PPI [the producer price index] is up 4% and inflation is up 4%, earnings don't grow. That is absolutely wrong. Every company has a fixed cost structure that doesn't move with inflation. We see this in the data: Corporate profits in the 1970s grew just as fast as inflation did -- and the stock market grew just as fast as earnings.
The linchpin of this market is -- and has been -- corporate earnings. It's totally reasonable to think about $240 for S&P 500 earnings next year; the Street is at $222. For perspective, we were at $162 to $163 in years prior to the pandemic. We have set a new step function in corporate earnings -- and it seems permanent.
How can margins stay high, even as companies deal with rising labor costs, supply-chain issues, and regulatory pressures?
Pricing power. The S&P 500 is very different from any other index on the planet. It has two things going for it: Primarily it works in the U.S. economy, and U.S. fiscal and monetary policy was orders of magnitude more aggressive than Europe and Asia. So that was a huge bump, and allowed margins not to go to zero during the recession.
And we are talking about large U.S. companies, which have huge advantages in economies of scale and scope over smaller companies, and, because of the cash flows they generate from their U.S. operations, have much stronger competitive positioning overseas. The most important thing we have is big technology. It's impossible to overstate how important it is to have 20% of the S&P 500 in [Alphabet's] Google [ticker: GOOGL], Apple [AAPL], and Microsoft [MSFT]. There's simply no way to line up those business models with anything else.
These companies have been winners for years. Can that really continue?
There's human bias to momentum but also investment validity to sticking with momentum. I'm not talking about momentum [as a factor], but rather fundamentally things that are holding and increasing their competitive position. I don't see a reversion to the mean for tech margins because these companies have competitive positions in ways we haven't seen before, maybe besides Rockefeller's oil company and Vanderbilt's rail. Oil was relevant for 60 years, so when they say data is the new oil, it suggests data has a competitive window longer than traditional business models.
Should investors be buying dips in these stocks?
That's a separate discussion about how much confidence investors have in the global economic recovery. Probably in the second quarter, you will have a burst of enthusiasm for a synchronized global recovery -- and you could see Big Tech underperform for a couple of quarters because people will be enthusiastic about fin
Nicholas Colas writes a widely-read morning note for money managers that draws on the New Yorker's 30-year career on Wall Street, filled with insights gleaned from economic data, market dynamics, investor psychology, and disruptive trends.
Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, got his first glimpse of Wall Street from the mailroom of what is now Alliance Bernstein as the mutual fund industry was taking off in the mid-1980s. Colas began his official Wall Street career in 1991 as an equities analyst covering autos for Credit Suisse. He went on to work at SAC Capital, where he learned from hedge fund manager Steve Cohen the importance of understanding emotions in investing, and later worked at other firms as a market strategist and head of research before launching DataTrek in 2017. Colas has been bullish on Big Tech and the power of disruption for years, and began writing about Bitcoin in 2013.
Barron's talked with Colas about why he still likes U.S. stocks despite inflation, high valuations, and the risks of Omicron. In this edited version of our conversation, we also find out why he says it's crucial for investors to learn financial modeling and monitor cryptocurrency developments.
Barron's: What's the biggest shift caused by the pandemic that is most relevant to investors?
Nicholas Colas: Inflation. That has been the biggest change in the economy. Stuff costs more -- and not a little, but a lot more, and over two years. Food is up 15%; wages are not. As an investor, we have to think about how inflation will ebb and flow and impact corporate profitability. For big companies, it's good for profits.
Are worries about inflation's impact on corporate earnings misplaced?
So few analysts know how to model a company anymore. I was trained by people who built their careers in the 1970s. It comes down to understanding how costs flow through an income statement. People think if PPI [the producer price index] is up 4% and inflation is up 4%, earnings don't grow. That is absolutely wrong. Every company has a fixed cost structure that doesn't move with inflation. We see this in the data: Corporate profits in the 1970s grew just as fast as inflation did -- and the stock market grew just as fast as earnings.
The linchpin of this market is -- and has been -- corporate earnings. It's totally reasonable to think about $240 for S&P 500 earnings next year; the Street is at $222. For perspective, we were at $162 to $163 in years prior to the pandemic. We have set a new step function in corporate earnings -- and it seems permanent.
How can margins stay high, even as companies deal with rising labor costs, supply-chain issues, and regulatory pressures?
Pricing power. The S&P 500 is very different from any other index on the planet. It has two things going for it: Primarily it works in the U.S. economy, and U.S. fiscal and monetary policy was orders of magnitude more aggressive than Europe and Asia. So that was a huge bump, and allowed margins not to go to zero during the recession.
And we are talking about large U.S. companies, which have huge advantages in economies of scale and scope over smaller companies, and, because of the cash flows they generate from their U.S. operations, have much stronger competitive positioning overseas. The most important thing we have is big technology. It's impossible to overstate how important it is to have 20% of the S&P 500 in [Alphabet's] Google [ticker: GOOGL], Apple [AAPL], and Microsoft [MSFT]. There's simply no way to line up those business models with anything else.
These companies have been winners for years. Can that really continue?
There's human bias to momentum but also investment validity to sticking with momentum. I'm not talking about momentum [as a factor], but rather fundamentally things that are holding and increasing their competitive position. I don't see a reversion to the mean for tech margins because these companies have competitive positions in ways we haven't seen before, maybe besides Rockefeller's oil company and Vanderbilt's rail. Oil was relevant for 60 years, so when they say data is the new oil, it suggests data has a competitive window longer than traditional business models.
Should investors be buying dips in these stocks?
That's a separate discussion about how much confidence investors have in the global economic recovery. Probably in the second quarter, you will have a burst of enthusiasm for a synchronized global recovery -- and you could see Big Tech underperform for a couple of quarters because people will be enthusiastic about fin
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