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The Investing Week Ahead: 11/29/21

Highlighting the most important topics to attack the investing week ahead.

29 Nov

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I’m almost finished with my “Small-Cap Recap” analysis breaking down Hims & Hers Health (HIMS), Shift Technologies (SFT), and Porch Group (PRCH) - expect that to hit your inbox sometime tomorrow.

FYI - I bought my first NFT this weekend! If you missed that post, I’ve linked it below.

In this post, we’ll cover:

  • Hot IPOs taking place this week

  • Quarterly financial reports worth reading

  • Investor events to keep an eye on

  • Major economic releases

If you want to learn more about the companies mentioned in this post, consider using Unhedged to conduct your research.

The Investing Week Ahead - Too Long, Didn’t Read:

No notable IPOs are taking place this week.

News related to the new COVID-19 Omicron variant will be a driver of markets as investors continue digest its implications.

We have a few well-known companies reporting their earnings results such as Salesforce, Snowflake, CrowdStrike, Asana, and Ulta Beauty.

It’s a light week regarding investor events, with our only callout being Credit Suisse’s 25th Annual Technology Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The US Employment Situation Summary for November is due by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.

IPOs to Watch this Week:

None! It’s officially that time of the year when companies coast into the new year.

According to MarketWatch’s IPO calendar here, we’re seeing a light two weeks of IPOs - with only a handful of companies (some I’ve never heard of) making their public debuts.

As always, when interesting companies IPO - we’ll be sure to bring them to your attention.

Key Earnings Announcements:

A handful of my portfolio companies will be reporting - alongside some other notable heavy hitters in their respective categories. 

November 29: Li Auto (LI)

November 30: Salesforce.com (CRM), Zscaler (ZS)

December 1: Snowflake (SNOW), Crowdstrike (CRWD), Veeva Systems (VEEV), Okta (OKTA), Splunk (SPLK)

December 2: Asana (ASAN), Ulta Beauty (ULTA)

December 3: Dole (DOLE)

A trend I’ve begun to see this earnings season is a company’s stock price not holding up after reporting stellar results - specifically those who had big run-ups recently. I wouldn’t be surprised if the trend continued into this week - specifically talking about Asana, Okta, Snowflake, Splunk, Veeva Systems, and Zscaler.

I don’t know why, but I have a weird feeling about Asana this quarter. Hopefully I’m wrong and my shares continue to trend higher, but if you’re overweight in the stock maybe this is your chance to de-risk going into the earnings results.

I’m obviously still long on Asana as it makes up 5% of my portfolio, but it’s hard to ignore these violent sell-offs post-release.

Investor Events:

As mentioned before, we’re keeping it light this week. 

November 30: The 25th Annual Credit Suisse (CS) Technology Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona

Notable Speakers include:

  • Andrew Anagnost, President & CEO of Autodesk (ADSK)

  • Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks (PANW)

  • Patrick Gelsigner, CEO & Chairman of Intel (INTC)

  • Colette Kress, EVP & CFO of Nvidia (NVDA)

  • Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow (NOW)

  • David Obstler, CFO of DataDog (DDOG)

  • Thomas Seifert, CFO of Cloudflare (NET)

  • Gary Dickerson, President & CEO of Applied Materials (AMAT)

Personally, I’m looking forward to Gary Dickerson of Applied Materials detailing his plans for the company. Remember, Applied Materials reported their earnings results just a few weeks ago causing their shares to slide -10% due to supply chain woes. The company missed their revenue expectations by more than $200 million (the low end of the original guidance), but were able to raised their gross margin by +3% to 48%.

If I were Gary, I’d be talking a lot about margin expansion plans going forward, as well as keeping people at ease regarding supply chain constraints.

Major Economic Updates:

We’ve all heard about inflation, but not much about wages. This week, we’ll get some additional color from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the direction of wage and employment trends. 

November 30: Case-Shiller US Home Price Index for September 2021 from Standard & Poor’s

December 3: US Employment Situation report for November 2021 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data from the Employment Situation report include total number of employed and unemployed people, unemployment rate, total number of full time workers, average number of hours worked each week, and average hourly and weekly earnings / wages.

This data is incredibly important as we continue to keep an eye on how inflation is impacting the overall strength of the economy.

Quick Reminder:

We’re playing the long game. 

Stock prices move up and down, but over the long-term great businesses prevail and compound. The markets are volatile and there’s a ton of near-term catalysts that could move us lower (Omicron variant, inflation, unfavorable job reports, etc.) - that’s why it’s important to have an investing strategy that works well for you.

How I’d go about investing if I was just starting out tomorrow:

  1. Contribute up to the match in my company’s 401(k)

  2. Invest $6,000 / yr into my Roth IRA - likely 60% index funds and 40% long term no brainers I believe in (AMZN, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, etc.)

  3. Open an online brokerage account to build a speculative “growth” portfolio - betting on companies (and crypto) we’ve mentioned around here (Asana, Upstart, Roku, Marqeta, Bitcoin etc.)

  4. Figure out my “retirement number” aka my annual expenses multiplied by 25

  5. Make a plan to achieve my “retirement number” by a reasonable date. Continue to do everything in my power to invest as much as possible, allowing me to achieve this figure sooner than expected

Reminder - this is at least a 20-25 year process, period. Retirement doesn’t happen overnight and we shouldn’t expect it to.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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