There’s a reason you buy best-in-class companies, and that was painfully obvious to Dan Kline on a visit to Comcast’s Universal Studios on Saturday. We’re also going to discuss whether we should be worried about inflation, the potential for a housing bubble, and Peloton’s woes with its treadmill. Maxx Chatsko and Steve Symington join the show for a fast-paced look at seven topics along with a few special surprises, and your questions.

Transcript

Sam Bailey

Welcome to 7investing Now, a show that teaches you how to take a long term view on investing by better understanding what’s happening in the market now.

Dan Kline  

Good afternoon 7investors and welcome to the Monday edition of 7investing Now if I sound pumped up, it’s because I am excited about this show. I am a little bit amazed by the European Super League that they’re talking about, and Tottenham, where my brother works, fired its manager. So I’m trying to get into British soccer here trying to understand it. There’s a lot going on. My name, of course is Daniel Brooks Klein. I am the host of the program. I’m being joined by Steve Symington and Maxx Chatsko, guys, is the Premier League even on your radar. Is it something you think about here in the US if you’re not related by blood to a top executive?

Maxx Chatsko  

Yeah, Dan, I was meaning to get your thoughts on the European Super League. But it was like too late last night when I found out that was actually a story. So after the show up to follow up.

Dan Kline  

So here’s one of the things we can absolutely talk about it until I discuss it with my brother. One of the challenges I had, and it’s followed me with with a lot of the stocks I cover, is when he was with NFL teams sometimes he would tell me something about NFL rights, or digital negotiations, and I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. So I had to be really careful with what I knew when I could say.  Like sometimes he’d tell me something that I sort of supposed, and I talked about previously, but the second he said it I put him in trouble. You know the NFL is very strict, my brother (and we’ll get to our show in a second), my brother is very close to ESPN’s Todd McShay. They grew up together in Swampscott, Massachusetts and on his birthday McShay texted him happy birthday and the Dolphins forensically went through his phone to make sure there wasn’t anything being leaked or inappropriate there. It is a very serious leak.

But that is not what we are going to talk about today. We are going to do something I’m calling “7 on 7”. We’d like better names, but basically there’s a lot going on today, so we’re going to talk about seven topics. Sam Bailey, do you have the graphic in the background there to bring up our seven topics are: 1) Disney World versus Comcast Universal Studios. I’ve been to both they are very different and I’m going to talk about it. 2) Are you worried about inflation? 3) WeWork wants to go public again. Dear god that has been a debacle. 4) Are we in a housing bubble? I hope not because I am under contract to sell my condo. Thank you for the many people who inquired. 5) Goldman Sachs sours on Editas Medicine, Maxx Chatsko is gonna take the lead on that one. 6) Will the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s warning hurt Peloton, and 7) What red flag will make you consider selling shares?

Then of course, we will hit our finisher, but guys, before I talk about my weekend, which was spent partly at Universal Studios, Steve, you put your family at risk of being eaten by bears. We joke about this a lot but you actually did that this weekend, care to explain?

Steve Symington  

Well, yeah, I don’t know. That’s just the risk of stepping out the back door, right?  I live on the edge of town in northwest Montana. We went on a nice easy little four mile hike up Blue Mountain Recreation Area, but we found ourselves on a part of the mountain that was not crowded at all. So every pine cone that fell I was like, ahhh, because I didn’t bring bear spray. And yeah, we’re like, where is our bear spray? And you had to ask me if that was a joke, but I was dead serious.

Dan Kline  

I picture Steve’s life as as being like an episode of Naked and Afraid where they show the people who are surviving and then they cut to stock footage of something incredibly dangerous. So it is definitely something. But Maxx, you said you were running. Were you running because you were being chased? I know things have been a little bit difficult there in Pittsburgh.

Maxx Chatsko

No, no, that wasn’t even the highlight of my weekend. I bought one of those old timey push reel lawnmowers, Dan, and that’s how I cut my grass this weekend. So I got to work out and I can show up my neighbors at the same time.

Dan Kline  

So let me warn everybody, they’re doing internet work in my complex. If for some reason I disappear. It could be because my internet got knocked out. Someone was just pounding on my door, which I hope wasn’t my wife warning me. Well, I hope it was my wife because no one else should be in the house. But that being said, if I disappear guys try to get along without me.

So here’s the deal. We’re going to start with Disney World versus Comcast Universal Studios. And this is why I invest in best in class companies and Disney is a best in class company. So let’s talk about the pandemic. During the pandemic I’ve been to Disney multiple times. When you walk into Disney there’s spacing everywhere, there’s social distance markers, if you so much as put your mask below your nose, a person with a sign comes over and warns you. If you don’t then replace it a hired goon comes over and makes it clear you’re supposed to. I’m teasing a little bit, but security is really, really good, lines are spaced, there’s Plexiglas on many of the rides so your distanced.  There’s limited capacities in the stores. For going to a theme park in a somewhat dangerous situation, they’ve done the best job you possibly can.

I expected the same for Universal Studios. We haven’t been back to Universal Studios. Two things I really noticed. First of all, they are wildly understaffed, and why is this important? Because you want to see a company operate under pressure. When I’m investing in a company. I want to see how it does when things are not going well, and I get there, my pass didn’t work. Turns out my credit card that it was on had expired a couple of weeks before, I had to wait over an hour in line, there were three available windows. And as you might imagine, quite a lot of people that had similar problems to me because they hadn’t been back. So that was a red flag. Then I walk into the park. And while they’re making announcements about masks and social distancing, none of it was taking place. They are saying they have a 35% capacity. I’m just going to go on the record and say, I think they’re lying. I’ve been there at times when it was busy. And I understand some of the high volume shows and and other things that take crowds away weren’t operating. But it was very, very crowded, not quite Christmas crowded, but 90 minute waits for rides and they’re not doing distancing on rides. They’re not running at limited capacity. It was very disappointing.

Now, I am not a Comcast investor, because Comcast on the cable side is pretty terrible. But I’ve always said if they spun off the theme parks and NBC, I’d be really interested in that because they do have a premium theme park experience. But with with that being said, it was not a fun experience. It did not feel like a safe experience. My son did one ride. We waited in line 45 minutes to get a slice of pizza. This stand, not a complicated menu Steve, they had pizza, churros, and soda. Now admittedly, some of the problem was the human beings who would get up to the front of the line and not have made a selection after 25-30 minutes when really there’s not that much choice. It’s not that difficult. But at every area, they were cheaping out with people. They were doing nothing to enforce masks. They were doing nothing to enforce things like, you can’t smoke when you’re walking around, it was absolutely dangerous. I did however, get some Butterbeer, and that is something that made it worth the trip. It’s way too expensive, but it is absolutely delicious.

We would like your questions and comments. Again, the reason I brought that up is one of the things you have to look at with a company is not just its balance sheet, not just how it does with finances, but how it does with operations. Can it really do things well? Can it handle a crisis? It’s something I really admire about Chipotle, I don’t own shares of Chipotle, but when they had their Salmonella scare and their E. coli scare they responded really quickly and it still took their stock over a year to come back. I can’t imagine there’s not going to be video shared on social media that do some damage to Universal Studios. That said, whatever their capacity was they maxed out because when we left at about three in the afternoon, they were only letting people in as people came out.

Let’s move on to topic number two. Are you worried about inflation? I will start with Steve on this one. We hear a lot about inflation. Is it something that concerns you Steve Symington?

Steve Symington  

I mean, it’s sort of in the back of my mind. But over the long term, I’m not particularly concerned. I think right now, sort of higher inflation is on its way. It’s kind of a matter of when maybe? But, I guess I am admittedly sort of concerned in the back of my mind as well, because you have Michael Burry of The Big Short fame who’s out there warning of some Venezuela style inflation on its way, and I’m not sure I’m very worried about that in the near term. I think there’s levers that can be pulled to kind of spur this, but yeah, not particularly, it’s not something that guides my investing decisions right now.

Dan Kline  

I’ll take Maxx’s thoughts and then I will share mine. Again, we welcome your questions and comments doesn’t have to be about what we’re talking about. We’ll take questions at the end of the show. If there’s any that aren’t related, but Maxx, your thoughts on inflation here?

Maxx Chatsko  

Yeah, I’m not too worried about inflation, like Steve said, I think we can all expect it to be a little higher than it’s been in recent years or the last decade or two maybe. But, I guess I would expect that the Fed will have to raise interest rates above current levels sooner than they currently expect. Right now they say they’re gonna maintain that through the end of 2023, I wouldn’t be surprised to see maybe a little nudge up higher next year, certainly before 2024 in my mind. I look at the economy or what happened with a pandemic as an accordion. Everything was going ok, for the most part, and then suddenly, everything stopped. And now there’s all this pent up demand so there’s gonna be this spring. I think hiring is going to be very rapidly increasing here in the in the spring and summer. Obviously, we see things opening up. So I think it’s gonna pull inflation out. But I don’t know, if we’re going to turn into Venezuela, that’s a little.

Dan Kline  

Here’s what I think, I think it’s going to be very hard to tell, because there’s going to be some demand based pricing inflation. So we’ve talked about that, the second, it’s okay to do certain things, a lot of Americans are going to want to do them. So when it’s just normal, and no one looks at you funny, when you get in a plane and go to Disney World, or Las Vegas, or, or wherever it is, there’s going to be a pretty big bounce back of those activities. I mean, we’re seeing it here in Florida, where people don’t have to fly and even for capacity at the hotels now is all maxed out at the Disney hotels. But come the fall, or come Christmas, you’re going to see the ability to charge higher prices, due to demand. As someone who’s buying a resort condo, I guess that’s great. But as someone who uses many of those things, that’s also not that great, but I don’t think that’s going to reflect the real price.

I’ll give an example. When we had all the issues in Puerto Rico with the power grid. I don’t even remember when that was, a couple years ago, there was actually a strain on Central Florida hotel room system, because there were a lot of people who just decamped. And they got Disney area hotels, because they were inexpensive for much of the year. And then Thanksgiving came around, and all of those people got displaced by people who had reservations for those busier times. So they were having to drive to Georgia and Tennessee, and who knows where. So I think you’re going to see some inflation that might not reflect reality, it might not reflect a long term change. It’s sort of like if the ice cream store sells out because they have a limited edition flavor and it drives everyone there, it doesn’t mean that overall demand for ice cream is increased. That is a very bizarre analogy, my apologies for that.

I see a lot of you watching, I don’t see a lot of questions and comments, we would love to hear from you. Steve, you put this one on the list, WeWork his back.  WeWork tried to do a $50 billion IPO. This is a company that was so poorly run, I actually did an hour long show with our friend Dylan Lewis about the debacle of it. I really wish we had the production budget to actually interview some people. This was a company that their whole business is taking an office, renting it out to people on a co-working basis. You shouldn’t be able to lose money once you get enough people signing up, yet they were somehow losing billions of dollars, but Steve, they’re back.

Steve Symington  

I saw it and I’m like, okay, we have to address this eventually. And, you know, let’s frame this a little bit.  Recall, they tried going public back through an IPO in 2019. At one point, they had a valuation of as much as $47 billion, it was crazy. That figure fell, I think it was $5 billion over the course of just a couple of months, after basically the attempted IPO all but imploded after people started scrutinizing their finances and their rapid growth and losing billions of dollars at the same time. And some really strange financial agreements and ethical concerns over their founding CEO Adam Newman, who ended up taking a $1.7 billion golden parachute to step down from his position. But now they’re back. And they are planning on going public through a SPAC, surprise, surprise. With I think it’s BowX Acquisition Corporation, and I think the valuation this time around is about $9 billion.

They saw a pretty steep fall off in the revenue, I think, in 2020, for understandable reasons. And they kind of bounce back a little bit to where they were back in 2019. But some of the comments they’re making and the assumptions they’re making in their models for the SPAC are concerning, to say the least. There’s some really strange assumptions, lofty occupancy assumptions in their model. They’re saying they’ll go from 47% occupancy at the end of last year to 95% in 2024. And there’s some margin questions that were the same as they were the last time around. So lots of weird stuff going on. And I think they’re going to face some skepticism along the way, but at least their valuation isn’t $47 billion.

Dan Kline  

So here’s the thing, good for Adam Newman, you know, when your dad is Alfred E. Newman, which I assume is dad? No I’m kidding there. That is a reference I don’t even know if Maxx will get. That is in Mad Magazine, you’re not familiar with Mad Magazine? That is a really silly reference I just made there. No, here’s the problem. I don’t think we know what co-working looks like post pandemic. And I think it’s very much going to change market to market. So, New York City, you can make the argument that some companies that had offices in New York aren’t going to have those offices, and some of their workers will still want an office experience, because apartments are small, and maybe they’ll get a stipend to go to a WeWork. You can also make the argument that that won’t happen, and that people will just want to work at home, and they’re not going to want to spend four to $800 a month or whatever it is. I have a co-workspace, they are a dime a dozen. There are lots of them. I picked one that was funky and not as corporate as some of the others, largely because it had parking, like that is not a big differentiator. Steve, does this sort of show us that SPACs can be dangerous that you’re really only getting a pretty small picture of the financials, compared to a traditional S-1 IPO?

Steve Symington  

Maybe, not necessarily, I guess, there’s concerns over SPACs because they’re so simple. And, and you sort of have to take some of these projections with a grain of salt. So a lot of what we’ve seen with companies going public via SPAC is very lofty projections for what their businesses will accomplish. And a lot of people just say, yeah, this is great, you’re going to quadruple revenue next year. You should approach them with some skepticism. Some of them may be decent values, but you really need to look at the finances with a skeptical eye as you move forward with a lot of these special purpose acquisition companies.

Dan Kline  

This might be a good business. It’s a good business model. But it’s also a business model that you have to execute really well. You have to know the market, you have to keep corporate expenses low. I think they’ve gotten rid of like the lavish parties and the other ridiculous things they were doing. But some of the perks that they were using, like there’s a beer closet, it’s like all right, like there’s beer at my co-work too. But there’s also not all-the-beer-I-can-drink because beer cost money and you have to translate that into the bottom line. I am going to watch this one. This is not one I could ever imagine opening.

We see the question on Skillz we will take that after we finished 7 on 7. You’re watching 7investing Now we are going through seven topics. 7investing, seven topics makes sense. We are finishing this afternoon taping our pitches for next month. Part of what we give members of 7investing is videos where we explain our pick for next month to our fellow lead advisors and we all weigh in, we all ask questions. I’m doing mine today, I think there’s gonna be a lot of pushback, it’s kind of a risky pick compared to what I normally pick. It’s a lot of fun, and we release those on the eighth of the month. So if you’re a 7investing subscriber, you not only get our written recommendations, which give you what we think, you also get a much longer video presentation. And, what our fellow advisors think how we answer their objections.

How do you get that? You pay us $49 a month, or $399 a year at 7investing.com/subscribe. Sam Bailey if you want to bring that up, that is 7investing.com/subscribe. A great time to join, you get access to all of our past picks. You get Maxx’s Sunday gravy recipe, you get, you know, all sorts of images of Steve’s family on mountains, crazy things. You don’t get any of those things you get lots of great investing advice.

We’re at topic four. Are we in a housing bubble? Steve, you’ve posted some pretty lofty prices in your obscure part of my Montana. Are we in a housing bubble? I’m going to talk about it because I live in the height of the housing market right now here in south Florida. But Steve even go first.

Steve Symington  

I’m not convinced we’re in a housing bubble. It’s I think prices feel crazy right now. But I think it’s one of those things where demand is outpacing supply pretty consistently and you have people kind of shifting areas of the country. They’re moving from very expensive places to less expensive places coming in with cash offers. I would not rule out a correction in prices in the near term. But I think it’s one of those things where you can look at what happened in the 90’s and the early 2000’s before we kind of crashed there. But that’s the other thing is that bubbles can last a whole lot longer and go a whole lot further than people think they can. So I guess it’s all your definition of corrections along the way. But prices are pretty bonkers here, I will say that much.

Dan Kline  

Prices here have gone insane for single family homes. And I do worry if you own a single family home that was worth $300,000 before the pandemic, and now you’re getting multiple bids in the $450’s. Great for you if you sell it, the challenge is you have to live somewhere. So we made the decision that we were going to sell our home because our home didn’t work for us. It was too small for our needs during the pandemic it was downtown, which didn’t make a ton of sense when downtown isn’t the safest place to be right now. So we are under contract to sell our condo, we’re living in a rental property. And we’re going to buy in Orlando, a different, cheaper market.  It’s not going to be a property we live in, it’s going to be a vacation home investment property. But we’ll still be owners if we wanted to retire there, we could, so it’s great.

I do believe we have some housing bubbles, I think they’re, you know, Miami, West Palm Beach, I think there is some irrational buying and a ton of building. And at some point, those two things are going to hit a Nexus where there’s just an available supply. I do think it’s going to vary market to market, places like New York where we’re seeing the lowest rental and sale prices in a long time. We’re not talking huge drops, so it’s not going to take a massive amount of demand for it to come back. Maxx, I know this is not your area. I don’t think you’ve owned a home, but I think you’ve looked at some. What are your thoughts on a housing bubble?

Maxx Chatsko  

Yeah, Dan, Steve, you guys have bought proximately 23 more houses than I ever have in my life.

Dan Kline  

This will be 19 I believe over the course of my life with my wife, between houses and apartments and co-ops.

Maxx Chatsko  

Okay, I was exaggerating, but I guess not. So you know, the way I mean, I don’t know if it’s a bubble. But again, like you pointed out, it’s the mismatch in supply and demand. Obviously, in the last year, people weren’t moving. They were staying put during the pandemic, that makes sense. And I think I’ve seen some numbers on this. I don’t know how detailed they are. I’m sure there are data sets out there. But a lot of the activity going on now and recently has been from investors. So not necessarily people who are looking to move to a new primary residence. So if that group of buyers and sellers moves back into the market it seems that the supply and demand could balance out or come closer to balanced. So I don’t know if it’s a bubble, but I don’t know if it’s sustainable either. I think we could see some prices drop. And like you said it’s region specific.

Dan Kline  

I am hoping the bubble pops after my condo closes. Before I’ve purchased a property because the properties we’re looking at, which are, you know, relatively modest price properties are $20,000 or $30,000 more than they were at the beginning. And at the beginning. I mean, the four months ago when we started this process of deciding to sell, I’m okay with where they are now. But if they inch higher, and you are seeing some high end products, some high end places just sell at incredible prices. A friend of ours is looking at a resort community in Orlando, and they’re getting bought up in the $600,000 to $700,000 with people not even seeing them, and I get it, it’s new construction from a reputable builder with a good brand name behind it but still really difficult.

We’re going to talk about Editas Medicine. Before we do that, Steve, you wanted to take a couple of comments from one of our newest members and explain what happens next. So Steve, grab that comment.

Steve Symington  

Sure. So Debabrata, forgive me if I mispronounced that, said I subscribed to 7investing yesterday and waiting to hear the next step. Welcome to 7investing, we’re happy to have you. And you might note that we just published our subscriber Zoom call this morning there’ll be a full transcript forthcoming.  In that call we talked about our most intriguing recommendations. There will be another article coming out later today about those picked from among our past recommendations. We’ll also, in about a week and a half, have our newest recommendations coming out on May 1st. So we’re really excited for that. So keep your eyes peeled for those things. And if you have any questions in the meantime, let us know. Also had a question about Skillz. Should I take that now?

Dan Kline  

We’ll take that one at the end.

[Name not known] says it is a crazy market in the California Bay Area too, yes that is always a crazy market, but it is actually one that’s gone through some softness, a lot of people moved out of San Francisco temporarily during the pandemic. That said, even with some tech companies saying, oh, you can work from home forever. We’ve covered this before. I don’t actually think people are gonna work from home forever because if you work from home, I think it’s harder to get promoted. I think it’s it’s harder to get noticed. I think you’re gonna see a wider range like we’ve seen this with some of our friends in the DC area who have moved farther away from their office, but they can still get to the office. I know our decision, you know, to put the 7investing office at the geographic center of the US to make it as inconvenient for all of us as possible. I have questions about that. No, just kidding. We do not have an office.

But Maxx, we’re gonna go to number five here of our 7 on 7. And you wanted to talk about analysts expect lackluster clinical results from Editas Medicine’s first asset, why don’t you give a little background and talk about that one.

Maxx Chatsko

So on Friday, Goldman Sachs came out and initiated coverage of Editas Medicine, which is one of the first CRISPR gene editing companies that’s public. And they initiated it at a Sell, which is something we don’t do here at 7investing, we don’t have price targets, or buy and sell and all that we’re just long term buy and hold. But they came out and said they’re very bearish on Editas Medicine, they give it a price target, it was about half of what it was at the open on Friday. So very, very bearish. And the reason for that was that the analysts said they expected very lackluster results, they expected this asset to fail from Editas Medicine. So that would be EDIT-101. It’s being studied to treat a rare form of blindness. So we saw a lot of the CRISPR stocks all fell on Friday, and they’re down again today. So investors might be wondering, you know, what does this mean for the rest of CRISPR companies and as a therapeutic modality, and I think it’s still a little too soon to extrapolate anything from that comment from Goldman Sachs.

It should be noted that this analyst is also bullish on CRISPR therapeutics and Intellia Therapeutics, so the two other CRISPR gene editing companies that are out there, and again, this is like one of the more complicated therapeutic modalities, right, we can use CRISPR, gene editing tools in vivo, so editing cells in the body, we can use it ex vivo, so editing cells outside of the body, those have differences for risks and technical capabilities and considerations. Also, the tissue type matters, right? So Editas Medicine is injecting this directly into an eye, other companies are going after, you know, cells in the bone marrow trying to edit those or editing cells in the liver. So we can’t really take a failure in one of these areas and extrapolate it to others. But there are broad concerns and challenges that will be facing CRISPR gene editing on the whole, you know, we haven’t generated any data in humans yet. So we have to be careful to remember that CRISPR gene editing has not really encountered its hard technical engineering problems yet. So with all of the high valuations in this space, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing some of these stocks drift a little bit lower, but I don’t think investors should be panicking just yet.

Dan Kline  

Maxx, isn’t this what you sign up for? You know, when you invest in emerging unproven technology, there’s going to be good data, there’s going to be questionable data there’s going to be I mean, I’m not sure this Goldman Sachs analyst, you know, has the requisite scientific background to be making comments. But that said, isn’t it kind of, that’s the game. That’s what you’re in for here?

Maxx Chatsko  

Yes. So, these data, by the way, aren’t expecting till the end of the year. So maybe they were just extrapolating from preclinical data from non-human primates. So basically, monkeys. So again, it’s not like these data have come out. And they they this asset has failed. We don’t know that yet. But yeah, when you when you’re investing in drug developers, I mean, obviously, to accept that there’s going to be failures in those pipelines, right. No therapeutic modality, or pipeline has a 100% success rate. Now, that said, again, some of these valuations are a little crazy, right? I mean, think about CRISPR, everyone knows about CRISPR. It’s and TV shows and commercials, and it’s like everywhere, right? Your crazy uncle probably knows about CRISPR.

Dan Kline  

No he does not. I have one of those. And I can guarantee you he does not know about CRISPR. But that may not be the norm.

Maxx Chatsko  

All right. Well, there you go. But so it’s pushed a lot of these valuations like pretty high, right? I mean, a lot of these are preclinical companies, you know, they’re valued at like $4 or $5 or $6 billion dollars earlier this year, that’s highly unusual. So when there’s that massive valuation risk built into some of these drug developers, it does kind of amplify the other risks, like the development risks and the commercial risks. So you know, something like this comes out, it’s indirectly affects all these other companies and they fall like 5% or 6% or 10%. So you just have to accept this volatility given the valuation risks.

Dan Kline  

Just don’t look on some of these companies wait to get the data. There’s no reason you know, for supposition at this point.  This is topic number six, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a warning about Peloton’s treadmill. Let’s point out that the treadmill is a relatively tiny part of Peloton’s business but there have been 39 accidents there was a death and they are basically saying don’t leave this plugged in around pets or children. The stock has been down quite a bit today, we’ve seen other deaths on treadmills. I think it was you Steve who shared that Mike Tyson’s son died on an un-plugged-in treadmill. I think this is, and all apologies to anyone whose child was injured. I think for the most part if you follow Peloton guidelines for this this is a lot of hot air about nothing but Steve, is this a real risk to Peloton stock in the long term?

Steve Symington  

I’m unmuted now, so I think it’s a risk in that Peloton brand is so visible right now and I think one of the things that that people do is they sort of under appreciate the general risks involved with treadmills in general you know looking at the the events you know it’s not the Mike Tyson situation wasn’t a Peloton it was some other brand and you know, sort of a dangerous device and I think that Peloton is such a prolific marketer and its brand is so visible that it also you know the flip side of that is that anything negative happens it’s going to have to kind of eat that and it’s a it’s a tough situation and you don’t want to trivialize accidents and deaths of course when it comes to treadmill issues and treadmill accidents but Peloton for for its part has stepped out and issued a very kind of fierce rebuttal and said this is inaccurate and misleading. This is the Consumer Product Safety Commission we’re talking about. Of course that Peloton is vehemently disagreeing with so we’ll see how this plays out but obviously not great. From a brand and marketing perspective whether or not it actually is a Peloton specific thing or some issue with every product.

Dan Kline  

I referenced the Chipotle e-coli scandal before, when you hold yourself up as a market leader as top tier, the impact from this type of thing can resonate more even if in reality, it’s not their fault. And I’ll give an example. Every treadmill and I assume Peloton  treadmills have this I have never used a Peloton treadmill, they have that thing you’re supposed to clip to your shirt. So if you fall off, it shuts off the belt. I don’t know anyone who uses that I’m on a treadmill three or four times a week for at least a few minutes closing up my workout with my trainer. I’ve never put it on and I’m not the best at paying attention. So maybe I’m answering a Slack from Steve while I’m doing my cooldown. I could easily slam off my treadmill into the mirror and that’s behind me break the mirror do all sorts of damage to myself probably wouldn’t die but it wouldn’t be wouldn’t be pleasant. Is that the treadmill’s fault the treadmill has a safety device like you know if you jump in the water without your lifejacket. It’s not the boats fault. It’s not the company’s fault. It is your fault. So this is what I think we should be watching

Vegas Water Polo, I really would like to know the genesis of that name. says Hello Do you play water polo in Vegas? Are you a fan of water polo

Maxx Chatsko

Vegan, Vegan even better, Vegan Water Polo.

Dan Kline  

Vegan Water Polo also seems oddly specific as well. But maybe that makes more sense. We have a vegan fan who is also big in to water polo. Water polo, is a ton of fun, not something that comes up a lot as an adult. But we used to play at camp and it’s entirely a hustle and effort sport. I really liked it. But we’re gonna hit number seven here in 7 on 7, we’re going to take a question on Skillz, you still have a little bit of time we see the comments, we appreciate the comments. If there’s anything you’d like us to talk about, we are happy to do it’s still time to get those in. And I’ll start with Maxx on this one. What’s a red flag that will make you consider selling a company we don’t sell often. But there are some things that that absolutely would make us sell.

Maxx Chatsko  

So I try to avoid these companies, but years ago I owned one I won’t name who it is. But when companies hype themselves a little bit too much, right? It’s like if you had this, if you had like great technical and commercial potential or you’re executing, you wouldn’t need to be all hypee, right? So a company came out. And what they did was they sponsored an industry conference, like some event there. Then they issued a press release saying that because they had sponsored this industry conference, it showed that they were a leader in this space. I was like that’s not how it works. What do you guys like? It’s just like, who do they think they’re even fooling? Like I don’t know how decisions get made about that. You know, recently I’ve seen a number of companies do this since the beginning of the year Dan, companies will host their own investors symposiums and then they’ll issue a press release about it. And then after that, which is like an event they hosted they’ll say, oh, we had a successful investor symposium, and they’re just trying to like drive up the stock price and sometimes it works which is like the ridiculous thing, but I really try to stay away from companies that hype themselves up about companies that are keeping their heads down to just focus on executing and making better products.

Dan Kline  

This would be a lot like if we held the first annual best paid investing services awards, and surprisingly, 7investing sweeps. In fact, we win second place to nobody. Yeah, I am not a fan of that. I will point out Maxx, I’d be a great hype man. In terms of giving a press conference where I focus on something that’s really not important and make it seem like a big deal, I’d be really good at that. So if you’re running a failing company, if you’re the board of directors of a failing company, and you want someone who can gloss over how terrible you are, I’d be really good at that I could make Sears look absolutely fabulous until I’m turning out the final light. Your comment there, Steve?

Steve Symington  

I see the comments coming in. There’s some really good ones. red flags that it makes me consider selling a stock, significant pivot in the business model as one of the things, and specifically kind of abandoning parts of the business that would serve as incremental sources of shareholder value. That seems like a mouthful. But, you know, I can think of several examples that kind of made me sour on a company like GoPro, for example. They they hyped up just, you know, the combination of Maxx’s red flag hype in general. But they had this drone thing. And this was this massive incremental industry in addition to their action cameras they were supposed to do and then all of a sudden, they said, actually, drones aren’t a great business. And the margins aren’t really attractive. And they basically admitted they were being crushed and just discontinued. It was like, oh, shoot, you know, so now they have sort of the software subscription things for services. And, you know, there’s some interesting parts of the business. But that’s one of those things that was a significant red flag because it was something that was supposed to massively expand their addressable market, and they just abandon it altogether once they realized it wasn’t that great of a business. So yeah, definitely a red flag, pivots in the business model or something you should really tilt your head at.

Dan Kline  

To quote every Shark Tank episode ever. GoPro is a product, it’s not a business, like, at some point, how many point of view videos do you need of me on a waterslide or a roller coaster or skiing like I understand we’re a narcissistic society but it does seem to me like it was always a company built on a gimmick, and that that gimmick maybe isn’t sustainable. For me, my red flag is when a company tells you something is gonna happen in one quarter. And then the next quarter simply doesn’t mention it. I think that is a very scary thing. If like, if you have a company that’s like, yeah, we’re really excited about our new film division we think we’re gonna do absolutely great with with movies. And then the next quarter, they’re like, Oh, we got this new thing.

I brought up Sears earlier, Sears and JC Penney did this a lot. I think it was Cirrus launched a line with the Kardashians and it was all over could be JC Penney, I could be confusing the two. It was all over the stores. It was all over the earnings call. And I don’t think it did that well, because like, then it was gone. Some companies I like do this, and Starbucks did this with its soda line. They they had a huge splash of putting soda machines in every store. And then quietly, they disappeared. And I had to track down I have a friend but an associate I’ve worked with in public relations there who I like, and I finally got her to admit that this happened. I get it. It’s not material to Starbucks, it was never it didn’t work. It was never a big percentage of their sales. But putting a new piece of equipment in a Starbucks is a big deal. So when it doesn’t work, and there’s now no use for that equipment, and you’ve wasted a lot of money. That should be a public comment. And if you come out and say what they said to me. Yep, we’ve just continued the sodas. There wasn’t enough demand. We will find other uses for that carbonation technology, or something like four years later. I don’t think they have you know, I don’t think you just hype your success. Now does that change my thesis on Starbucks? Absolutely not. But is it a red flag and something to watch? It is.

We’ve got a bunch of questions. We’re gonna close out the show before our finisher with your questions. That was a new segment we did called 7 on 7. I would love to hear @7investing. If you liked it, that is our Twitter handle @7investing. Did you like a little bit more fast paced, we covered more things? I don’t want to say it looked a little bit like some things I’ve done in the past minus viewer voting. But is this a subject and you’re welcome to share it in the comments here. Is this a format you’d like to see us do in the future?

Sam Bailey, our director behind the glass, I’d love to take the question on Skillz and I’m not even going to try on pronunciation given that I got vegan and Vegas wrong. Again, middle distances, post laser surgery are a little difficult for me. What do you think about Skillz? So I downloaded Skillz and Steve, I’ll let you weigh in a second here. The platform is wonky. It’s not particularly well designed. But what does Skillz do? They allow you to play all sorts of games, I play Solitaire on Skillz I’ll probably play backgammon on Skillz, and you can play in like tournaments for big prizes, which I don’t see how you’d win because I’ve never come anywhere close to like winning any significant amount of money. Or I play Solitaire against another person. I know it sounds ridiculous to say you’re playing solitaire against another person, but you play your game. They play their game, they’re both scored, where each paying quarter, and the winner gets 42 cents. Well clearly Skillz and its game partners get the other eight cents. I like the overall business model. I do not like the execution. I also question whether this is pretty easy to duplicate. It feels to me like something that your DraftKings, any of your online casinos, a lot of places could really easily duplicate. I don’t really see what the barrier to entry is.

So this is on my watch list. But when I download an app, and I go, uhhh, I have to download another app to play this game. That to me is not a great setup. I think they’ve got a ways to go. Maybe it’s investable at some point. I own a very small amount I own $100 worth. And again, I bought it because I was finding myself, despite complaining about it spending $2 or $3 a day playing, playing solitaire. I’m not sure that continues post pandemic. Steve, did you want to weigh in with some thoughts here?

Steve Symington  

Yeah, I mean, part of the allure of Skillz right now, and SKLZ is the ticker, is that it’s been kind of crushed in recent weeks. Right? So there’s several things that cause to kind of pivot out of growth stocks and into value stocks and reopening plays have kind of caused it. People were previously excited about mobile gaming platform that’s great for people stuck at home, right or wanting to play games on their phone, maybe not so much anymore. They had a secondary stock offering that made people annoyed. They got attacked by short sellers who were alleging that I think management was trying to enrich insiders. And there’s a lot of stuff going on right now that kind of has me sort of, I’m fine watching this. I was fine watching it when it was you know, 60%, 70%, 80% higher but I’m not so compelled that I feel like this needs to be part of my portfolio at this stage. That’s just my personal opinion on Skillz.

Dan Kline  

Steve said attacked by short sellers. I so thought you’re gonna say attacked by sharks. I was like, yeah, how did that happen? I know you throw darts. And I’m asking a generational question. Do you play any card games?

Maxx Chatsko  

No, I don’t even know that Skillz was a platform. I thought you’re just, oh, my bad skills that I have. I thought that’s what we’re talking about.

Dan Kline  

Yeah, I grew up. One of the first things I can remember doing is learning how to play gin from my grandfather. So I have I have played quite a bit of cards. Everyone knows I play blackjack. I find Solitaire is ridiculous. It is a pretty good way to keep your brain occupied in between writing things and hosting shows in our our 19 hour taping session. Later today. Bryce Coy asks, What are your thoughts on Munger and Alibaba? Steve, you wanted to take this? Did Munger say something about Alibaba?

Steve Symington  

Yeah. So this was last week, I’m pretty sure they’re referencing It was like a Barron’s article where Munger actually stepped out and surprised everybody by saying he actually preferred Alibaba stock, Chinese e-commerce play to Treasury Bills and cash equivalents. Right? And he isn’t doing this to be clear for Berkshire Hathaway, where, you know, he’s he’s sort of Warren Buffett’s right hand man, right? He’s doing this for the Daily Journal, where he served as chairman for like 5000 decades and he’s actually taken, I think it was like 165,000 shares of Alibaba and put them on Daily Journals balance sheets, sort of as an alternative to T-Bills and partly because the return on T-Bills is not attractive right now. And he said I’d rather own Alibaba stock. It’s a big solid e-commerce play, and big solid international e-commerce play and that surprised a lot of people but it’s not terribly surprising. When you kind of step back and look at the relative value that someone might see in that and the relative lack of value you might have in holding cash equivalents and and Treasury Bills right now.

Dan Kline  

He did miss a prime opportunity to say I pity the fool who invest in T-Bills. I was also toying with “don’t give me no backtalk sucker”, but I couldn’t figure out how to work that in organically. Zulfiqar [name not known] says thoughts on DraftKings. I’ve shared these many times. It always gets people mad at me on social media. I don’t believe in DraftKings. I understand that they’re an early mover. I understand that sports betting is going to be big. Sports Betting is also going to be a commodity. And I’m not sure that DraftKings has anything to draw you to it in the way that the major casinos do. We’re starting to see Caesars and MGM wake up. We’ve obviously seen Penn Gaming not quite as major have a deal with Barstool Sports that’s going to drive a lot of people. I’m not saying DraftKings won’t succeed. I’m saying the way people are connecting the dots. They’re making it seem like because it’s such a massive addressable market, like it’s going to be a success and to me it looks a lot like the cannabis market where some of it just stays illegal like some people just like their bookie or however they’re doing it or their office pool or, or whatever it is, and nothing changes that’s continued in the cannabis market. I, I have friends in Canada that said their cannabis using friends, like nothing changed for them, they still get the same guy, that same guy just probably goes and buys it legally somewhere.

So I’m not bullish on DraftKings. And I understand there’s potential opportunity there. But I don’t like daily fantasy, it’s rigged it isn’t fun. I don’t mean it’s rigged in that people cheat. I mean, that if you have access to data, there are people who build algorithms. It’s just it’s not fun for me. I like to gamble on sporting events only if I watch them, I don’t generally get into parlays and an in-game bets and things like that. So I do think that it’s a hype stock. I don’t think it’s going to play out all that well. And I apologize because I know a lot of people really, really believe in this. I might as well go say something negative about Tesla now just to get everyone and I’m kidding. I don’t please do not get up the Tesla arms there.

Steve, this one’s from Stock Investor. I’m gonna say he because I’m pretty sure I that this is a he from from knowing them on on Twitter, but I could be wrong. So apologies. Any thoughts on space over the next decade? I think it’s gonna take longer than a decade. But any thoughts on space over the next decade?

Steve Symington  

Let’s address this from a standpoint of the broader space economy. And yeah, I I’m bullish on the space economy over the next decade, there’s gonna be a lot going on. From you know, you from the companies that are working on, you know, small satellite launches to space exploration, to tourism, to internet is going to be one of the big things that you’re going to see. You’ve got SpaceX, for example, which is not a public company at this point. But yeah, there there’s a lot with like satellite internet, bringing the internet to the what is it the roughly two thirds of the world that doesn’t have it right now? Which is crazy. It seems you think everybody has the internet, right? No, actually, most people in the global population don’t have access, and they’re increasingly getting access through their cell phones. But eventually, you’re gonna get, you know, high quality broadband through satellites, and other means and everything. So there’s a lot of opportunity to use space, not only from a providing services to consumer standpoint, but also from defense and security purposes to satellites for, you know, fed civil, local government stuff. There’s a lot going on, and it’s an industry that a lot of people see, you know, depends on the estimate, but doubling tripling quadrupling, over the next 10 to 12 years. And I think there’s gonna be a lot of places for investors to take advantage of that.

Dan Kline  

Sam Bailey, thank you for blocking that user. Nice to know we now have that feature. 99.9% of our viewers and fans are amazing. Occasionally you get a troll, and I’m glad we have the tools to deal with that. I’m going to take a quick comment, follow up from Stock Investor, then we’re going to talk about one final comment on market cycle

Stock Investor says, do you think David Gandler tweeting about Fubo stock on Twitter is a bad idea? This is the CEO of Fubo. Yes, I don’t think any CEO, we all know that I’m not bullish on fubo. I think Fubo is basically a gussied up streaming service. None of the streaming services have worked, particularly in terms of getting people to replace live television that it’s really difficult with critical mass and margin. And all the other reasons I wouldn’t invest in, you know, YouTube Live either or and Hulu Live is makes more sense because it has Disney behind it. And if you’re getting all the other Disney products, they are going to beat Fubo. But I don’t think CEOs should speak directly about their stock outside of professional interviews, and I mean, high quality professional interviews if he wants to come on and talk with us about his company. I think that’s great. But should you be doing a Reddit forum? No, I don’t think you should. Attempting to manipulate your stock on Twitter is a bad look. I understand. It’s a look pioneered by Elon Musk, who a lot of CEOs emulate, but it is not something I am a fan of. But I am guessing I am not on his interview list because I have not in any way been been bullish on his company. I wish it success. I would love every company to succeed as long as they’re doing the right thing by people. But that said, I don’t think the underlying product is a good idea.

But let’s close out with another question from Zulfiqar [name not known]. Sam, if you want to bring this one up, it’s the question on market cycles. Someone who hasn’t experienced the different market cycles do growth stocks behave in the same patterns. Maxx you haven’t talked for a while so I will let you start on this one

Maxx Chatsko  

You know, I think about this a lot. I brought it up last week on our, you know, marathon day. And it’s interesting to me like, there are a lot of new individual investors, right in the last year, and the last year has been relatively easy time to be an investor. But I wonder, you know, how many have a good perspective on how unusual the last year has been? Right? I mean, a lot of, at least in the areas I cover, right, in biotech, so drug developers, you know, in clean energy, renewable energy, things like that, like electric vehicles, batteries, a lot of these valuations are very abnormal. And even, you know, 18-24 months ago, we wouldn’t have even considered paying some of these prices and valuations. So it does make sense if you understand, you know, interest rates being zero, and there’s, you know, the risk free return rate is zero. So you’re gonna put money into stocks

But still, you know, as interest rates creep up, and that kind of changes the risk free rate of return. And I think money will eventually be redirected out of the stock market into other things like safer bets, you know, the boring things like bonds and corporate debt and things like that. So I don’t know about, you know, I don’t have much of a comment on cycles, but at least be aware that if you’re investing now, and you are paying relatively higher prices, higher valuations, you’re almost forced to be a long term investor, right? Because you might not see a return for another, you know, three, four or five years or longer. So the higher valuations are, the longer you have to remain a shareholder in order to see your return. So just keep that in mind.

Dan Kline  

Steve, I’ll give you the last word here.

Steve Symington  

Yeah. That’s a great question. Do growth stocks kind of behave in the same patterns in different market cycles. And the reason I think it’s being asked by a lot of people right now is because like Maxx mentioned, it was it was an easy year, right to be an investor over the last year or so. And, and that was, people sort of had this rude awakening the last couple of months, especially so far in 2021, that stocks don’t only go up, right, and sometimes they fall and they fall hard, and it hurts to see this. And this is just sort of par for the course. Right? And this is where stock pickers kind of prove their worth. Where you know, we kind of figure out which falls are merited and which valuations are merited for particular stocks that might have been crushed or stocks that might continue to go up. And I touched on this for an update for 7investing members. Titled “Is Value the New Growth”, and just last week, and that’s something you might consider taking a read. If you’re curious about this, and your 7investing member again, if you’re not you can go 7investing.com/subscribe join us, you can get some of those updates.

But it’s a tough thing to consider. And granted, you know, I don’t want to say this is unprecedented. But it’s a very unique scenario where we’re exiting a pandemic and the economy is reopening. And institutional investors are largely pivoting away from kind of high priced growth stocks and into value stocks and reopening plays. And there’s a lot going on right now. And it’s confusing. And when you see stocks that you really, really liked at higher prices fall 40%. It’s terrifying, but it happens. And this is sort of, you know, this kind of volatility can be par for the course for investors, and we’ll need to learn kind of how to steel yourself and how to handle it.

Maxx Chatsko  

It was it was interesting to me, was that the NASDAQ in like early March fell 10% or something, right. And among the team of 7investing lead advisors, we were like, oh, there’s some volatility like we’ve all been here we have perspective. But out on like FinTwit, or even some members, they were like, Oh my God, what’s happening volatility and like, we didn’t blink because we you know, this is what happens, right? Stocks go up, stocks go down. They don’t only go up. So that was interesting for me to see that like how we were just like, yeah, this happens. And a lot of other people who are maybe newer investors are like, what’s going on the sky falling? Yeah. So

Dan Kline  

Yeah, and there can be conceptual disconnects. Like we’ve heard this whole concept of recovery stocks and stay at home stocks. There’s no such thing. Most of those stocks are a mix of the two. So is Disney a recovery stock or a stay at home stock? If I’m at home, I’m watching Disney Plus, if I’m out maybe I’m going to Disney World or on a Disney Cruise. So Zoom, is Zoom really a stay at home stock when businesses were, We were all using Zoom well before we heard of a pandemic.

We appreciate so many of your questions and comments. The last couple that came in we do not have the time to do them. But feel free to hit us up @7investing on Twitter or join us on another show. It’s a couple of great questions that come in. But Sam Bailey I am tired here, I’m gonna gonna get some caffeine between our next shows. This has been a high energy show.

And you got it right let’s hit our finisher. Which of these will be the biggest winner in streaming. This was almost a tie between Disney, Roku and Netflix only 6%, I’m guessing Alan Sokoloff was saying Viacom CBS, that is probably part of the 6% there. But that being said, Disney, Netflix and Roku are all going to win. I think it comes down to Disney and Roku. Because Netflix has a cost structure that’s not great. I’ve talked about this a lot. If you’re Netflix, you have to produce like 300 shows to have 100 that are viable. Disney doesn’t have to do that. And I think either the Netflix algorithm has to get significantly better. Or they have to start making less shows and taking bigger bets.

I think there’s also a double edged sword that you’re working with, Disney’s a very controlling studio. Netflix has attracted top tier talent by saying, Hey, we’re not going to give you any notes. Well, when we don’t give notes, you get indulgent shows. I know a lot of people like Bridgerton, super-duper indulgent never would have made it that way, and it worked. So that’s great. But there’s a reason that people have executive involvement. There’s a balance for it. I don’t think Netflix has figured that out yet. So I would argue towards Roku and Disney. I don’t think Maxx has any thoughts on any of these companies. Or I don’t even know if Maxx owns a television. Maxx, do you have a television?

Maxx Chatsko  

I do have a television. Yeah. So I actually saw on Reddit, maybe not the best primary source. But there was a chart of market share and streaming from 2019 to 2020 or something, 2021. And it was interesting, like Disney+ was way up. Actually, HBO was way up. I know you’ve had some comments about that before too. And that wasn’t in the graphic. But what are your thoughts on that?

Dan Kline  

Yeah, I think HBO Max or whatever it’s called HBO, it gets HBO Max was free to people who subscribe to HBO. And they didn’t get widespread adoption, you got things that you didn’t get. So this is going to be the best year they’ve ever had in terms of all the Time Warner theatrical releases, debuted on HBO Max. So you got Wonder Woman, you got Godzilla vs. Kong, you got a lot of movies, and that hasn’t moved the needle, it shows you know how hard it is to get people’s attention. Normally, I would have gone to see Godzilla vs. Kong, I haven’t watched it for free in my living room. I don’t know if that’s my failing or they’re failing. But I’m caught up on Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I am super excited for next week’s finale. And then I’ll be primed for Loki or The Bad Batch or whatever is coming up next. Disney+ basically needs one show a week to keep me engaged. So they might not have the hours. So they’re gonna make up a lot of hours with families with little kids who watch Cars a billion times in a row or Frozen a thousand times I’m sure that’s going on in Steve’s house at various time. Steve, your thought on this you can have the last word.

Steve Symington  

Frozen is the best even my 13 year old is tired of that? The I think the answer to this question, which of these will be the biggest winner in streaming kind of depends on the way you look at it in absolute terms. I mean, I’d say Netflix is already a big winner, you know, and whether it’s worth buying over the other two today. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve owned Netflix since about 90 bucks a share. But Disney I would say in absolute terms would be the largest winner, but maybe relative to the size of its current business is that ability to grow. I might argue Roku as sort of this agnostic, hey, we’ll embrace everybody, we love you, please help us succeed kind of thing. And we’re in a third of all televisions that are Smart TVs. Roku, I think maybe has the biggest chance to grow relative to its current size. So I think I’d vote between Disney and Roku there, but I might lean Roku.

Dan Kline

Yeah, I actually think Disney can add over 100 million more subscribers in the next 12 months. It might take a little longer than that. But I am very bullish on it.

We are pushing up on the hour here. So that is it. For this edition of 7investing Now. My intention was actually to only go about 45 minutes, but we are in service of our viewers. If you have questions, and we feel comfortable talking about that subject, we are going to take those questions. This is your program. It’s an interactive show. And we’re very excited about that. We enjoy the support. We appreciate it.

If you have questions for us, you can send them to info@7investing.com. That’s for questions about the service about your membership about a possible membership, billing. Who knows what, but you know, if you have a question for us, it’s not really a place to ask us about individual stocks, we get a lot of, “Hey, what do you think of so and so”, and in general, if it’s not already on our radar, we’re not going to go and research a stock for an email. That’s a disservice to our members, because we should be focusing on our best ideas and the company is in our wheelhouse. We all have areas we cover. We don’t necessarily own every stock in the areas, of course we don’t, in the areas we cover. But if I’m out, you know, researching some SPAC I’ve never heard of, while I’m not doing my due diligence on all the other companies our members expect to hear from me on.

If you want to interact with us you can do that @7investing on Twitter. We don’t have a TikTok yet, we’ll be getting a TikTok at some point for us to do dance interpretations of our stock picks. But @7investing on Twitter, we are very active. We like to hear from you. We also tend to announce our live appearances and all the virtual conferences we’re doing. I did one yesterday with our friend Max Bosenko, which was a ton of fun. I know our very own Matt Cochrane is doing one of his.  I’ll be doing the Money Show live in Orlando. We’ll have details for that. That’s an in person conference because I live in Florida where there are no rules. I believe Simon Erickson will be doing a virtual conference for them as well.

Sam Bailey, thank you for all the help behind the glass. Maxx Chatsko. Thank you for the graphic. Steve Symington. Thank you for helping set the show up. And of course, all of you. We will see you Wednesday.