CodyWillard

Cody Willard and John Mooney discuss Trump vs Clinton, Bank Bailouts and more. Is The Donald part of the establishment? Which candidate is better for the markets.

Cody Willard interviews Tim Sykes about trading penny stocks, why you have to avoid the scams that so often plague penny stocks and much more.

Stepping back and looking at the broader economic trends, the anecdotal data from my NYC whirlwind trip and the replies I got — my analysis continues to point to this economy being stronger than the consensus expects it is and most signs currently point to the economy continuing to expand, with some acceleration in the employment numbers too.

Given that economic analysis and forecast for more growth, I no longer expect the Fed to cut rates or issue any formal announcements of new forms of QE. This recently burgeoning tightening cycle from our US Central Bank appears more likely to continue than not. Remember that we want to be long when the Fed is in the early stages of a tightening phase, because for the last three decades the markets have boomed in the early- to mid- parts of the tightening phases (see 1996-1999, 2003-2007 for example). Conventional wisdom of “Don’t Fight the Fed” has been dead wrong during most of the cycles for the last thirty years. Recall that I’ve been more inclined to be bearish if I still thought the Fed was going to cut rates again.

Being more bullish because the Fed’s likely entering a tightening cycle is counterintuitive, perhaps, but it’s a fact that free thinking is the only way one can ever outperform the (oft-wrong) consensus long-term.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot of bearishness and general uneasiness about the markets’ ability to rally because of the Fed’s tightening cycle and the conventional wisdom being so widespread of “Don’t Fight the Fed.” Fund manager’s cash levels are nearing historic levels. Investor sentiment polls, not something I put much faith in but worth mentioning, are widely being reported as being at historic lows despite the markets relative strength of late.

Net/net, there are quite a few bullish underpinnings for this stock market. But as it often does, the markets ability to truly rally to new all-time highs in the months ahead will likely come down to individual companies ability to grow their corporate earnings.

Really, this looks like an ideal time to be investing in Revolutionary Companies that are set to benefit from both the cyclical economic/market set up as well as the secular growth they are creating on their own in new technologies and markets. I’m comfortable with our mix of some high growth mega-cap winners like Google, Amazon, Facebook with a few down-and-out smaller companies with compelling valuations like Twitte, with a variety of other Revolution Investment names like Nvidia and Sony and our other longs plus a few small shorts.

Todd Harrison joins Cody Willard to talk about life, business, politics, Presidential Election and much more. Find out Todd's favorite stock, how the stock market used to "rhyme" and who he's (not) voting for. Find Todd Harrison, Cody Willard and other successful traders on https://www.scutify.com or on the Scutify apps.

The Smart Phone Revolution is dead. Long live the Smart Phone Revolution.

There's a rising backlash against the smartphone dominant culture we find ourselves living in these days and that backlash is finally catching steam. I read an article today called "We've reached peak smartphone" and it captures some of the smartphone angst that's growing every day right now, including this quote:

"Smartphones are in a ridiculously boring place."

Are they? Or does such a statement say more about the author than the state of smartphones. I don't find my smartphone boring when I'm getting the latest real-time commentary about the stock market from people I respect on Scutify or when I open the Marketwatch app to read the articles they're featuring. I don't think it's boring when I check my stock portfolios on my brokers' apps on my smartphone. In fact, I prefer to use the apps over their websites even when I'm in front of my computer these days. When I read headlines, answer emails, talk on the phone, update my social media, post pictures, text and message friends and so on, I'm pretty sure none of that is ridiculously boring.

Moreover, it's not like we've seen the end of innovation in smartphones. Smartphones are going to become ever more interactive with our voices, our gestures and our actions. Siri still sucks right now, but in another five years with lots of artificial intelligence and other improvements, it and other voice interactions will actually be helpful. Motion sensors in smartphones will make it easier to navigate from one app to another without having to touch your screen. Wearables will also tie into smartphones and will enable both voice, motion and other interactions and features -- in another five years.

You can't take the snapshot of smartphone technology in 2016 and think it will apply in 2020. Smartphones, and future versions of "smartphones" are going to be the dominant personal computing center for billions of people for the next couple decades.

Smartphone fatigue is another factor that's impacting the way people think about the smartphone market right now. I'm sick of people looking at their smartphones, checking facebook, group messaging friends, reading emails, checking the news or otherwise not focusing on the real world going on around them. And I'm as bad as most other people about doing that too. We're all sick of smartphone-dominant culture, but we all do our part to create that smartphone-dominant culture anyway. Is that going to change?

Tech investing legend and Venture Capitalist Brian Gallo talks about how he's become so successful investing in tech, how he lost so much money in Twitter and where his next big investment will be.

Over the next few years, virtual reality will carve out its own niche in the consumer electronics space if it can just prove to both consumers and investors that it is not a fad that will disappear and never be adopted by the mass market.

Despite all my harsh criticisms and outright anger over bailouts, corporatist government policies, a race to devalue our nation's currency, zero percent interest rates enabling public debt creation that our grandchildren will have to pay back and so on...

For the last twenty years, I've often written and said on TV that "There's never been a better time and place to be alive than right here in the US, right now." I have bet my career and money on continued technological revolutions creating prosperity and wealth. Over the last dozen years or so, I've been betting that career and money on such big drivers as the Search Revolution, the iPod Revolution, the Internet Video Revolution, the Smartphone Revolution, the Cloud Revolution, the App Revolution among others. Trillions of dollars of market value have been created by the companies that have driven these revolutions.

A few themes stick out when I look at the history of Tech Revolutions over the last twenty years. One is that the big get bigger and it's often a winner-takes-all or sometimes two or three winners take all. Another important theme is that even within these revolutions that end up creating long-term trillion dollar values, there are cycles of boom, bust, bubble and crash. How many times has Apple, Amazon, Google and crashed over the many years that I've owned them, only to come back and hit new highs as their earnings and/or revenue growth rocked everybody's world's over the years. And you have to be careful not to get into tech revolutions too early. Here's a great comment and picture that I saw on Scutify today:

LunaticTrader - Who doesn't remember 1963? A Luxemburg born inventor demonstrated his "television goggles", now better known as a VR headset. He was only 50 years too early with his idea. His name was Hugo Gernsback: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... #VR

You need to be careful about picking the technological revolutions you invest in. 3-D printing investors have learned the hard way that if you invest too early in the revolution, however real it ultimately might turn out to be, that you can still lose your shirt if the tectonic plates aren't actually moving yet. In contrast, you can already see the technological tectonic plates shifting for a Virtual Reality Revolution that will change the way we watch movies, surf the Internet, do surgery and socialize on Facebook.

The fact remains there has never been so many tech revolutions setting up to boom over a five to ten year period as there are right now. Each of the following six Tech Revolutions are likely to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue up and down the economy, from supply and demand and components and software and services and maintenance and security and so on. I put a couple of tickers to watch for each sector and in coming weeks, I'll feature each of the following Tech Revolutions and the ways to invest in them in much more detail.

Artificial Intelligence - IBM IBM, Nvidia NVDA, Microsoft MSFT, Facebook FB, Google GOOGL.

Chatbots - Facebook, Microsoft, TenCent.

Virtual Reality - Facebook, Sony SNE, Nvidia, Google.

Wearables - GoPro GPRO, Sony, Ambarella AMBA, Google, Nuance NUAN.

Drones - Aero AVAV, Amazon AMZN, GoPro, Ambarella.

Robotics - Intuitive Surgical ISRG, iRobot IRBT, Mazor Robotics MZOR, Honda HMC.

I don't suggest going out and blindly buying all the stocks in each of these Tech Revolutions. We've got to do homework on each company's strategies, technological roadmaps, defensive moats, critical mass, platform creations and so on. I work on this stuff all day every day and here's what I can tell you:

There's never been a better time to be a Revolution Investor in the history of the planet than right here, right now.

Patience with our investing and our money can be the key to long-term success. Here's a great quote from investing legend BenjaminGraham to start out today's report:

"People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers."

There's a time and place for being aggressive, for trading, for using options, for betting big, for buying baskets of cheap stocks, for buying something fun, or investing in something you can actually play with. Long-time subscribers know that I am always opportunistic and you can safely assume that my patience with my portfolio is partly predicated on the fact that I just don't see a whole bunch of great risk/reward pitches right now. You know that the next time you see me trading and investing more aggressively, it's because I think the time and place for doing so is right. Not because I simply want to put money to work, want to seek out an adrenalin rush or give you a trading idea that's not terrific simply to be giving you a trading idea at all.

Most trading and investing subscriptions fit into one or two categories:

Same old ideas and themes over and over, no matter the economy, the prices, or the markets. Gold bug newsletters, permabears, and permabulls -- you know these hot shot thinkers who can lay out a million reasons why they're right and the markets are wrong.

Then there are the trading (gambling?) subscriptions that promise short-term trading ideas that are supposedly safer because you're not holding the trades long-term. Some target day-traders, others target swing traders, others promise riches from buying and selling complex option strategies.

I don't think there's a lot of value in either approach.

I want to have a long-term sustainable approach for both my own money and yours. I tell you guys up front that I think it's a terrible idea to lock yourself into any dogmatic analysis. The markets and the economy and prices change over time. Tech and political revolutions happen all around us every year. So you need to be flexible in your analysis, your timing, your trading, your investing.

It's an even worse idea to try to make steady income off of short-term trading strategies of any sort. Because you'll always eventually run into a cold streak, maybe one that lasts a few weeks or even a few months or even a few quarters. And if you're depending on short-term trading or short-term option strategies to support yourself and your family, you're going to end up in making trades in desperation rather than grounding your trading and investing in sound risk/reward analysis.

Let's remember why we're risking our hard-earned capital in the first place. This isn't supposed to be fun or exciting (though it can be at times). Let's continue to take the long view on our trading and investing. Maybe there is something to all this being flexible, being patient and investing in the most revolutionary companies on the planet.

I do think there are some interesting longs and shorts out there to look at and I'm going to make one small options trade today that I'm writing up right now and will send to you momentarily, but I'm still not ready to move on any of the others that I've been working on lately.

What sector and what stocks will be targets as tech M&A heats up; virtual reality stock picks' what's up with IBM and AI; how will Hillary vs Trump impact the stock market; and why I'm running for President as a write-in candidate for 2016.