Shah Gilani
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Mobile Wallet Technology: The Giant Killers in the Weeds
[Editor's Note: As Shah wrote in Part Two, "There will always be giant killers sharpening their tech offerings to stake their claims in the mobile wallet world."
In the third installment of this four-part series he names them.]
When it comes to the revolution in mobile wallet technology, Isis Mobile Wallet is a collaboration between some super-heavyweights.
Its founders and main partners are AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, Visa (NYSE: V), Discover (NYSE: DFS), American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Verizon Wireless.
This is a monster worth watching.
The idea behind Isis is to allow users to pay with "preferred" credit or debit resources available through their Isis-enabled phones by tapping or waving their devices at NFC (near field communications) terminals in participating merchant outlets.
Isis-enabled phones are being manufactured by additional partners Research in Motion, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Card.io is a mobile phone application (available at the Apple App Store and as a Google Android app) that allows users to receive and make payments by letting them (in the case of making a payment) enter an amount they want to charge on their app, for what they want to buy, and holding the card they want to use up to the phone's camera lens, which logs the card and processes the transaction.
Received payments can be channeled directly into the user's checking account, savings account, or PayPal account. Card.io charges a hefty 3.5% (of the transaction amount) fee and 15 cents per transaction.
Another mobile solution to not having a credit swiping machine in your pocket is offered by Square.
Square, named after the small square magnetic tape data reader that you plug into your phone's audio jack to convert encoded data from the tape on the back of cards to an electronic file, was started by Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter.
Electronic data from the magnetic strips on the backs of cards is encrypted automatically, sent to Square's servers and rerouted through the Global Payments Network. You sign the electronic receipt with your finger, which is then sent to you via SMS or email. Now anyone can accept credit cards for anything.
There are lots of start-ups and up-and-comers wading aggressively into the exploding mobile wallet space. Some of these companies will become giants and some will go the way of the dodo.
But, one thing's for sure, the winners will be worth investing in.
Why Facebook Stock is doing a Faceplant
Forget all the hype.
And you can even forget that I told you Facebook was a hyped-up offering, and that I would sell my shares if I was an insider, and that I definitely wouldn't buy the IPO on its first trading day.
Did you listen to me?
If you didn't, and you own Facebook stock (Nasdaq: FB), here's what you have to worry about.
The Facebook Stock Concerns
First, did you get your confirmation? Probably by now you did.
But the problems that NASDAQ OMX Group had sending out electronic trade confirmations in the heat of trading on Friday were staggering. (They eventually went "manual" on the opening day of the biggest tech offer ever on the biggest tech exchange in the world… how ironic… manual.)
There's nothing out there, nothing anywhere about who or how many people did or didn't get confirmations or when they got them. There's nothing out there because the exchange is panicking, and if thousands of confirms, or tens of millions of shares, are up in the air… well imagine what could happen.
Heavy Betting in the Middle of Mayhem
There's going to be a lot of very heavy betting over the next few days, weeks, and months on what's going up, what's going down, and what's going around:
- How far will Facebook IPO price go?
- How far DOWN from here will JPMorgan go, with the FBI and DOJ now sniffing around?
- How far AROUND the globe will the fallout be if Greece loses its game of chicken?
If you don't have the stomach for what's going to feel like an out-of-control rollercoaster ride, sideline yourself.
If, on the other hand, you like a lot of action, welcome to Mayhem – the preamble month to what will likely be the Summer of Some Discontent.
That is, unless you like rapid-fire trading.
Which, by the way, is not just fun, but can be very, very profitable. I'm in, and so are the subscribers to my Capital Wave Forecast. We're gearing up for some heavy betting in the weeks and months ahead.
So, what's front and center today? You know. The big three headlines: Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, and Greece. Are you sick of hearing about them? I'm not. I like trading the headlines.
Here's my "heads-up" on the big three headlines.
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The Facebook IPO Facts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Face it, you want it. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the Facebook IPO.
But, can you handle the truth? Will the hyped sensationalism be a boon or a boondoggle?
I'm not going to tell you what to do, whether you should buy Facebook sooner rather than later. That's up to you.
However, I will tell you that I won't be buying it right away, but, I will be buying it if…
First though, here's the good the bad and the ugly truth about the company, the IPO and owning "FB."
The Good News About the Facebook IPO
The good news is overwhelming if you're Mark Zuckerberg, any of the company's founders, executives, or venture capital backers, many of whom own Facebook stock (Nasdaq: FB) at a dollar a share.
So far, the target range the stock is expected to be priced at–which was originally $28-$35/share– has been raised to between $34-$38.
And it could very well go higher before tonight's pricing deadline. The amount of shares to be floated is being raised too.
That's all good news for the insiders, the underwriters and the company itself.
FB is causing its own IPO hype, partly because it will be the largest IPO in U.S. history, in terms of the value it will put on the company, which will likely approach $100 billion. However, Visa in 2008 and GM in 2010 will have raised more money on their IPO debuts. (I know, calling GM's IPO a debut is strange to me too.)
Facebook will raise at least $13 billion (at the lowest end of the price and share offering range) and bank some $9 billion in cash on its balance sheet. That's good news.
But better than that, the company will now have a huge hoard of stock as currency to use to buy up companies and technology to advance its master of the social media universe status.
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Mobile Wallet Technology: The New Barbarians are at the Gate
[Editor's Note: As Shah wrote in Part One, "Your future is calling and the ringtone sounds like a cash register." Below is the second installment in this four-part series on mobile wallet technology. I hope you enjoy it.]
As I discussed in Part One, the sky is the limit when it comes to mobile wallet technology.
The big brand credit card issuers: American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover Card, along with every other card issuer and wannabe credit extension intermediary are all already into the mobile wallet space.
Their offerings vary and competition between them will be as brutal as it always has been. And that's good for consumers.
Creating choices for consumers to drive business will lead to more innovation and more services offered at more competitive prices. At least, that's the way the free market is supposed to work.
But, traditional credit card issuers that are forcing banks to compete to offer credit to card borrowers, aren't the "disintermediators" I talked about in Part One.
They help spread banking relationships across the spectrum, they do not remove banks from the equation. And because banks are all in the present equation, pricing pressures aren't prevalent and fees and costs remain stubbornly high.
But as you'll see, that's about to change.
The Greater Fear for the Banks
What banks fear most in the burgeoning mobile wallet world are New Barbarians breaking down the gates that traditionally walled off banks from meaningful interlopers.
The biggest, baddest New Barbarians at the gate are some of the biggest names in the Internet world, the social media world, and the telecom world.
If you want to make a fortune on the mobile wallet future the giant players and Barbarian disintermediators to watch and invest in include: Google, Yahoo (yes, Yahoo), Microsoft (believe it or not), Facebook (when it goes public), Nokia, Research in Motion (yes, I am advocating buying Nokia and RIMM), Apple, Verizon, and Vodafone.
There will be other giants worth buying, but until the ground shakes from their emergence, these giants have a giant head start in the mobile wallet world of the future, starting now.
Of course, keep in mind that the scope of this series is intentionally broad.
So, it's not the place to give specific reasons to buy specific companies. My purpose is to explain to readers the extraordinary opportunities inherent in the mobile wallet future.
But, if you want to know why these specific companies will be huge winners in mobile transactions and what they are doing to warrant their own exceptional futures, as well as when you should buy them, take heart. Keep reading Money Morning.
As it takes shape I will follow this report with specific recommendations accompanied by all the reasons and metrics you'll need to make informed investment decisions.
In the meantime, here's why these businesses are primed to rake in profits on the digital wallet phenomenon.
The Gloss is Coming Off the Eurozone
Europe, Europe, Europe…
I know, you're sick of hearing about problems in the Eurozone.
But the problem with Europe is that it won't go away. And if it does go away, we'll have even bigger problems. What a mess.
Of course, I'm talking about the Euro-currency zone and the European Union, not Europe itself.
I love Europe. I love every country in Europe. I love the different cultures. I love the different languages. I love the different societal models. I love the history of Europe.
And no doubt all the Europeans love all the same things about their Europe – except maybe some of their history.
But even more than loving Europe, Europeans love their own countries. Why? Because they have different cultures, languages, societal models, and differing views of their history. Vive la différence!
So, whose bright idea was it to gloss over (with shiny promises and, later, a shiny new currency) thousands of years of differences and shove all Europeans into a funnel in the hopes that they'd all come out the other end as one homogeneous mass of humanity?
Oh, that would be the bankers and financiers who wanted a United States of Europe so that the free flow of goods and services payable with a common currency would make everyone better off, and make themselves better, better off, by a lot of betters.
And now, what a surprise! There are differences all across Europe about, well, Europe and what it has become and where it has to go to get out of the mess it's created for itself.
How that's going to end is playing out right before our eyes.
The JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) Losses: Here’s What Happened
Yesterday's announcement by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) that it lost $2 billion on a "hedge" position is not only surprising, it's frightening.
I'll try and make this short and easy to understand, but the truth is that it's complicated. If we have a decent idea about what happened (and I do), it's bad. And if it's a tip-of-the-iceberg thing (which I don't believe it is), it could be really, really bad.
Investors put on hedges all the time. In fact, in our investment services like the Capital Wave Forecast we put on essentially the same type of "economic" hedges that JPM CEO Jamie Dimon is saying blew up on them. The economic hedges we put on are essentially hedges against long positions we hold.
For example, if I see some potential danger ahead, then I recommend we buy some protection, like buying the VIX in anticipation of rising volatility, or buying puts on broad market indexes.
The broad protective measures we take are economic hedges because they are not specific hedges designed to hedge potential loss in any one position. For example, if we owned JPM stock and we wanted to hedge our position, we might buy puts on JPM, or sell calls, or employ another specific hedge against our long position.
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Mobile Wallet Technology Will Make You Rich
Your future is calling on your mobile phone, and the ringtone sounds like a cash register.
The proliferation of affordable mobile phones has created a global paradigm shift that will give investors with vision innumerable investment opportunities.
As I discussed in an earlier article, you don't realize it but there's a fortune in your wallet right now. Mobile wallet technology will make you rich.
Let me explain.
Traditional wallets and purses are being replaced with smartphone "mobile wallets" that incorporate cameras, Internet connectivity, thousands of "apps" and increasingly, banking, credit and payment transaction technologies.
Knowing who the winners and losers will be in this world of tomorrow is the stuff investors' dreams are made of.
This report is the first in a series of four articles. Consider it your first reality check. Or better yet, your wake-up call.
From it you'll learn why the world is moving to mobile wallets, how we'll all get there, and when.
More importantly, you'll be primed for making investment decisions on hardware device makers, on network providers, and on what software solutions will be most in demand.
You'll be able to weigh the future of banks and banking, credit and debit card issuers, and their love-hate relationship with powerful non-bank commerce facilitators.
You'll be able to picture how some merchants will profit more than others, and what impact social media will have on commerce and payment schemes.
You'll understand what the singularly most important question is that hangs over our digital future: who will own, control and profit from the data that drives everything.
You will be able to glimpse what the big security issues will be and how to profit from them as well.
You will recognize who the giants are now, who are the up-and-coming giants, and who will be the likely giant killers.
You'll understand the importance of interoperability and what that means to creating economies of scale.
And you will be able to see how an evolving regulatory environment will change fortunes.
Above all, you will be tuned in and abreast of the changing dynamics and investment opportunities in this brave new world.
At its core, it is about change.
To continue reading, please click here…
The Views from Near and Far
There are always two ways (at least two ways) to look at everything, including the market. In fact, whether one looks at the market from near or far makes a big difference in what you see.
Like most complex equations with multiple inputs, synthesizing the different inputs is critical to what comes out on the other end of your equation.
In this case, I'm talking specifically about two inputs – the perspective from near and from far away.
And I am talking about how they affect one's view of what's happening in the market and where it's likely going to go next.
Thursday was a good example.
Early in the morning (in my travels), I saw that the Dow futures were up 82, and I thought, it could be a good day and we might finally tip the scales resting on the pivot point fulcrum we've been teetering on for a couple of weeks now.
As the morning rolled on, before the open, company after company reported earnings, and they all handily beat consensus estimates – some by huge margins.
From a distance, if that's all you saw, you'd be inclined to think, as I did, that the market was headed for a great day.
But that was just the far view…
Closer to the action (which I wasn't always seeing, because I was in transit), as one after another earnings report came out, again before the opening, the futures ticked down, lower and lower.
I didn't catch the open, so let's pretend I still don't know what happened at that moment.
The opening is important because sometimes it sets the tone for the day, especially if the futures are up big and the market opens up strong and rises steadily from there.
Of course, that's not always true, especially these days. But stay with me.
Later in the day, I'm walking past a TV monitor that has CNBC on, and I see the Dow down 116. That's a far view, again.
We ended up rallying towards the end of the day, and the Dow closed down only 68 points.
But again, that was the view from afar.
Sure, I see all that, and take the far view. But, I also take the near view.
Up close, earnings look great, and the U.S. looks like it's "basing" and laying the groundwork for reasonable growth.
All that is tentative, however, when we look closer.
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