Tech Review | Tencent Posts Fastest Growth in Seven Years (video)

Tech Review (TR 2017-11-18)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech news with commentary, analysis and opinion: Features • 1) Tencent Posts Fastest Growth in Seven Years, 2) Social Media & Fake News, 3) Cord Cutters OTT Subscriptions, 4) Investing: The Week, S&P 500 Index, Investing Notes, Tax Reform, 5)ICYMI.

1) Tencent Posts Fastest Growth in Seven Years

Bloomberg.com video published Nov 15, 2017:  Tencent Holdings Ltd. (Domain: tencent.com) posted its strongest growth in more than seven years, riding the success of games like Honour of Kings and a rapidly expanding internet advertising business. Bloomberg's Peter Elstrom reports on "Bloomberg Technology."

Tencent's Q3 earnings beat expectations, profit of $2.7B up 69% YOY, revenue of $9.8B, up 61% YOY, due to mobile and desktop gaming businesses.

Tencent Holdings Ltd shares HKG: 0700 (pricing in HKD)

2)  Social Media & Fake News: How did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social | TheGuardian.com: "In all the fuss over misinformation, one crucial aspect is ignored: the way people now perform their relationship with news in order to win the approval of others." 

See also: How We Can Be Certain That Mueller Won't Prove Trump-Russia Collusion? | ZeroHedge.com: "Following the presidential election last year, anonymous sources from within the intelligence community were hemorrhaging leaks to the press on a regular basis that were damaging to the incoming administration. If there was any evidence to be found that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election using hackers and propaganda, the US intelligence community would have found it and leaked it to the New York Times or the Washington Post last year. Mueller isn’t going to find anything in 2017 that these vast, sprawling networks wouldn’t have found in 2016." --[Editor's note: which is why Wall Street and the markets have never paid serious attention to all the crazy "fake news" anti-Trump stories constantly issued by liberal media (WaPo, NYTimes, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, et al) since the election, which are now wearing thin even in "the Swamp."]

3) Cord Cutters in the U.S. can pick from more 200 OTT Subscription Services, but the top three dominate: 1. Netflix; 2. Amazon Video (Amazon Prime); 3. Hulu (SVOD)--ParksAssociates.com. [Editor's Note: Add in YouTube.com and Google Play Movies & TV a la carte via internet streaming, app or Chromecast, what else do you need?] See also: 

• TheVerge.com: Disney’s streaming service has won, and it hasn’t even launched yet--When you have the most important franchises in the world, nothing else matters.
• SeekingAlpha.com: The Brilliance Of Google's YouTube Strategy.

• TheStreet.com: Cord-cutting Is Leading Disney, Fox and Others to Take Drastic Action.

• Amazon scraps bundled video services | Reuters.com.

4) Investing

The Week: Wall Street ends the week on a weak note as investors remain focused on the tax bill | fxstreet.com: Following Thursday's rally, major equity indexes in the U.S. started Friday under pressure and "closed with modest losses as investors speculate the fate of the tax bill." [Editor's Note: see Tax Reform under Investing Notes below.]

The US benchmark S&P 500 index has hit dozens of records in 2017, and recently set a record for how long it has gone without a decline of 3%, and as of November 14 it hasn’t closed with a drop of 0.5% in 50 sessions, the longest such stretch since 1968, according to data from LPL Financial--MarketWatch.com.

Investing Notes:

• Tax Reform: On Nov 15, the U.S. House approved a Tax Reform Bill (HR 1, the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act), 227-205, with 13 Republicans and all Democrats voting nay. The Senate has yet to vote. See also: A Tax-Cut Bill to Make Scrooge McDuck Proud | NYTimes.com. 

"Corporate incentives have been perverted in the past decade, and instead of allocating capital to ensure long-term business growth, companies have rushed to cash out, with shareholders benefiting the most, while management teams got record bonuses as a result of their stock price-linked compensation bogeys ... the only thing Trump's [tax] reform will achieve is to dramatically accelerate recently slowing [stock] buybacks, which in turn will push stocks to new all time highs"--The Moment Gary Cohn Realized His Entire Economic Policy Is A Disaster | ZeroHedge.com.

See also: Let's be honest — this isn't actually tax reform | TheHill.com.

• Richest 1% Now Own More Than 50% of the World’s Wealth--Fortune.com: analysts at Swiss bank Credit Suisse say inequality is only going to get worse over the coming years, with millennials having a particularly tough time. The Global Wealth Report was released Tuesday together with a statement: "The outlook for the millionaire segment is more optimistic than for the bottom of the wealth pyramid.”
• Public pensions all over the U.S. are in trouble, drastically understating the current value of future liabilities. In the opinion of Yale's Chief Investment Officer David Swensen, the  projected annual returns of many pension funds will be increasingly difficult to hit in the coming years.  Swensen told Bloomberg.com, despite achieving a 13.5% annual return over the past 32 years, he is now preparing university officials for much lower returns averaging around 5% for the foreseeable future.
• Vanuatu: The Final Days of a Tax Haven | Bloomberg.com.
• European Stocks Suffer Longest Losing Streak In Over A Year (As EU Credit Crashes) Nov 15, 2017--ZeroHedge.com.
• Bitcoin Twice Burned--Mt. Gox’s bitcoin customers could lose again--Reuters.com. See also Tezos, a cryptocurrency that raised $232 million in July, is in crisis--"One of the biggest cryptocurrency crowdsales hasn’t lived up to the hype"--ArsTechnica.com.
• Frothy: Da Vinci portrait of Christ sells for record $450.3 million in NYC--Reuters.com.
• "How To Forecast Markets"--A Departing Top JPMorgan Strategist Reveals What He Learned After 30 Years--ZeroHedge.com: "Markets are not Math or Engineering, but a forever learning and adapting system with all of us observing and participating from the inside."
• Keep It Simple: 11 Rules for Equity Valuations | CFAinstitute.org: 1. Avoid Complexity. 

Editor's Note: Next week the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ will not open on Thursday, Nov 23, in observance of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, and both will close early at 1 p.m. EST on Friday, Nov 24.

5) ICYMI Tech News:

• Amazon cuts prices again at Whole Foods ahead of the holidays | Reuters.com: “Price cuts are permanent.”
• Why I Returned My iPhone X | nymag.com: "I loved the phone, but not enough to spend this much money on it." See also: Hackers Claim to Break Face ID a Week After iPhone X Release | WIRED.com, and alleged Apple infringement of patents to be investigated by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC)--Reuters.com.
• Fisker has filed patents for solid-state batteries claiming an energy density 2.5 times that of current batteries, capable of providing a 500-mile driving range, and could be recharged in as little as one minute--Autoblog.com. See also Is This The Tesla Killer? | ZeroHedge.com.
• T-Mobile US to propose significant share buyback: Deutsche Telekom owns about 64% of T-Mobile $TMUS, will not tender shares but may buy even more shares--Reuters.com. See also T-Mobile to roll out U.S. 5G network by 2020 | Reuters.com.
• How container shipping could reinvent itself for the digital age--McKinsey.com.
• Reuters.com: More EU cases against Google to come says EU commissioner.
• Missouri AG subpoenas Google in antitrust investigation--TheHill.com. See also Missouri Attorney General | ago.mo.gov: "probe into Google's practices including user data collection, use of other sites' content, and if search results favor its own services." 
• Israel prepares to send tax bills to Facebook, Google--Reuters.com. 
• 25iq.com: A Dozen Business Lessons from Waffle House (domain: wafflehouse.com).
• Trump Effect? U.S. farm sector looks to automate--Reuters.com [Editor's note: this is one thing that can happen when a sector loses easy access to low-wage illegal migrant workers.] 
• FCC unanimously approved rules allowing the blocking of robocalls--TheHill.com. The FCC is also set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 net neutrality order in December. 
• Homeless Explosion: Tech Boom, Surging Rents Creating Homeless Crisis On America's West Coast--ZeroHedge.com.
• "Your best work isn't nothing, it's the heart of what you have to offer. Finding the long, difficult way is worth the journey, because it's the best way to get what you deserve."--Seth's Blog: Money for nothing | sethgodin.typepad.com.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
Follow @DomainMondo

DISCLAIMER