The 7investing Podcast

The stock market is filled with noise these days. Whether it is the obsession with meme-stocks, the focus on momentum-based swing trading, or the hype cycle driving valuations up to ridiculous levels, there are a lot of speculative (and potentially problematic) factors that are influencing investment decisions. Our podcast guest today is someone who's helping to cut through that noise and help investors focus on the more important signals. Dillon Valdez (@BluSuitDillon on Twitter) in an individual investor who's searching for the business world's most important developing trends, then digging into fundamentals to uncover the companies who will most profitably benefit from them. In this exclusive interview, Dillon chats with 7investing CEO Simon Erickson about the specific things on a company's financial statements he looks for in his investing process. He describes why full-stack monitoring and international e-commerce are two secular trends that investors should be aware of, and why Datadog (Nasdaq: DDOG), DLocal(Nasdaq: DLO), and Global-e (Nasdaq: GLBE) are three companies of particular interest to him. Publicly-traded companies mentioned in this interview include Datadog, DLocal, Ford, Global-e, MercadoLibre, SentinelOne, and Snowflake. 7investing's advisors or its guests may have positions in the companies mentioned. Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Join the 7investing Community Forum: https://discord.gg/6YvazDf9sw Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

Brad Freeman, better known as @StockMarketNerd on Twitter, is a long term growth investor and author of the Stock Market Nerd Newsletter. In this week's 7investing podcast, Brad and 7investing Lead Advisor Luke Hallard chat about Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH), the online dating portfolio company that owns services including Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge, PlentyOfFish, and 40 other dating websites and apps worldwide. Brad shares his wildest dating story (spoiler alert, his mom would approve), the guys discuss Hinge’s “the dating app designed to be deleted” marketing campaign, Luke has a dig at the age discrimination in Tinder’s opaque pricing, and Brad walks through Match Group’s financials and a recent key acquisition that might be opening up new frontiers and taking Tinder beyond online romance. If you’re considering an investment in Match Group, swipe right on today’s episode and learn more about this dating category leader.

As a host of macro concerns continue to weigh on the global economy, investors are increasingly reassessing their risk tolerances and looking to contain volatility as much as maximizing returns. With this in mind, 7investing lead advisor Matthew Cochrane interviewed Value Stock Geek in this podcast on his self-proclaimed Weird Portfolio, designed to avoid bubbles, limit drawdowns, and safely build wealth. The Weird Portfolio consists of six low-cost ETFs representing five different asset classes and geographic diversity. While each of the asset classes are highly volatile on their own, when combined in a portfolio they have an overall smoothing effect, as each asset class delivers different returns during different environments. When back tested, the Weird Portfolio delivers returns that come close to equaling the stock market's total returns while dramatically reducing volatility. In the interview, Value Stock Geek walks Cochrane through the asset classes of the Weird Portfolio and the role each one plays, including U.S. small cap value stocks (20%), small cap international stocks (20%), real estate (10% domestic, 10% international), long-term treasuries (20%), and gold (20%). The Weird Portfolio is just part of Value Stock Geek's overall portfolio, however, with the rest dedicated to individual stocks that he believes are wonderful companies at wonderful prices. Cochrane and VSG discuss their mutually shared positions in Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG), and why VSG believes both have durable economic moats and trade at attractive valuations. VSG also introduces Cochrane to Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD), an asset-light third-party logistics provider, focused on international freight forwarding. Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Join the 7investing Community Forum: https://discord.gg/6YvazDf9sw Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

Unfortunately, investing is something most people learn through trial and error -- especially the error part! Our very own lead advisors have painful (and now funny) stories to tell from their bad, terrible, and no good investing mistakes when they were learning how to navigate the markets. We've made plenty of mistakes and accumulated over 100 years of combined experience along the way. Now, we want to share that with our student members to help accelerate their wealth-building journeys. That's why we recently launched 7investing Office Hours, a student-only call where students can learn about investing and ask questions directly to our team. We promise -- there are no stupid questions! What, exactly, is a market cap? Are options going to make you rich? Is that penny stock a good idea? What shampoo does Matt use? Everything and anything is fair game. We'll also be featuring special guests that will share their perspectives and mistakes, as well as a rotating cast of lead advisors to discuss recent recommendations. 7investing Office Hours will be scheduled on the first Friday of every month and open to all active student members. Please bring your questions for the team! Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Join the 7investing Community Forum: https://discord.gg/6YvazDf9sw Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

7investing and CryptoEQ recently announced a partnership, to help investors get a better consolidated view of the opportunities in both equities and in cryptocurrencies. 7investing provides its top seven stock market recommendations every month, while CryptoEQ provides its top-rated cryptocurrencies. The two companies are now joining forces and publishing a monthly Collision Course conversation, where they discuss important recent developments and the impact they’ll have on both equities and crypto. This month, our teams discuss the Biden administration’s recent Executive Order meant to “ensure the responsible development of digital assets.” 16% of Americans have now invested in or used crypto, and the consolidated market cap of all cryptocurrencies during the past five years has increased from $14 billion to $3 trillion. The stakes are high, and the implications for investors will be massive. These video conversations and the complete transcript are only available for 7investing subscribers and will be published as monthly Advisor Updates. CryptoEQ will also publish a written recap of the conversation – including additional context on the events – in their monthly subscriber email newsletter. If you’d like to access that newsletter, please sign up for CryptoEQ using this link. Companies mentioned in this conversation include Block, Coinbase, PayPal, SoFi Technologies, Tesla, and UiPath. Cryptocurrencies mentioned include Bitcoin and Ethereum. 7investing or CryptoEQ’s advisors may have positions in the stocks or cryptocurrencies of the companies that were mentioned. Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Join the 7investing Community Forum: https://discord.gg/6YvazDf9sw Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

As an investor of nearly twenty years and multiple market corrections, 7investing Lead Advisor Luke Hallard has earned his battle scars in the stock market. In this episode of the 7investing podcast, Luke chats with 7investing marketing manager JT Street about the approach he’s developed to building and managing his personal investment portfolio. Luke and JT reflect on the challenge of keeping your cool during times of high market volatility, how to protect yourself with diversification without impacting long-term growth prospects, the objective and subjective factors that go into assessing whether a company may be a great investment, and much more! The questions from today’s podcast came from the 7investing Discord, you can join the conversation live at https://discord.gg/5SxyySSNqN. Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

Decades ago, scientists grew excited about the possibility of engineering biology with standardized parts, similar to the foundational changes that enabled the semiconductor industry to blossom into one of the most important in the global economy. Or for the less technical crowd, like Legos. What should this new way of working with biology be called? The term “intentional biology” was originally proposed, but too many academics scoffed at the proposal, as it implied what they had been doing to that point was “unintentional biology.” Eventually, the field settled on the term “synthetic biology” that remains in use to this day. There’s just one problem facing investors: What the heck does “synthetic biology” mean? Synthetic biology isn’t an industry. It’s a way of thinking. It’s about applying engineering principles to biology to create living products and services with predictable functions. Reproducibility may not sound like a significant problem, but a 2016 Nature review found that 60% of scientists couldn’t reproduce their own results. Results from peer-reviewed publications – the gold standard of science – couldn’t be replicated 70% of the time. As our understanding of biology grows and our ability to more precisely engineer it deepens, living technology will enter and disrupt many economic sectors. This includes health care and agriculture, but also those not commonly associated with biology, such as mining, digital data storage, energy storage, and more. In an appearance on the 7investing podcast, Dr. Drew Endy, one of the founding fathers of synthetic biology, provided a framework for understanding how biotechnology and synthetic biology differ. Biotechnology was enabled by three core technologies including recombinant DNA (the ability to clone genes), polymerase chain reaction (PCR, or the ability to amplify genes), and DNA sequencing (the ability to read genes). Synthetic biology is being enabled by three core technologies including the coordination of labor (the ability to standardize biology and generate reproducible results), abstraction layers (the ability to make engineering more accessible through user interfaces), and DNA synthesis (the ability to write genes). Although the field of synthetic biology has reached a critical mass and is advancing quickly, investors are reminded that it’s still early. Perhaps the best analogy is to tech stocks. In the late 1990s, if you thought that the information superhighway would fundamentally reshape the economy, then you would’ve been 100% correct. But you also might have invested in Pets.com. Many of the most valuable “net stocks” either hadn’t been founded (Google was founded in 1998, Facebook in 2004) or hadn’t launched their transformational services (the cloud computing division of Amazon Web Services launched in 2006) or products (the first iPhone launched in 2007). Today, if you think synthetic biology will fundamentally reshape the economy, then I think you’ll be proven 100% correct. But there sure are a lot of Pets.coms out there right now. Many business models are still being tinkered, while many grand visions still remain beyond the technical capabilities of scientists in 2022. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to think that some of the most valuable synthetic biology companies of our lifetimes haven’t been founded yet. In this episode of 7inFocus, 7investing Lead Advisor Maxx Chatsko introduces investors to synthetic biology and provides his thoughts on the attractiveness of Amyris (NASDAQ: AMRS), Codexis (NASDAQ: CDXS), Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA), Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ: TWST), and Zymergen (NASDAQ: ZY).

Not too long ago, software was sold with perpetual licenses. Often, software was bundled with hardware. In some cases, an annual maintenance contract was added to the perpetual license, which provided the buyer with software updates and patches. This sales motion meant significant upfront costs for the purchaser. Every few years, a new major upgrade landed, and the whole process repeated itself. Subscription software changed all this with the arrival of the Software as a Service (SaaS) sales model. Customers now pay for the software they use, on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. They always had access to the latest version of the software. And with cloud delivery, there are no upfront hardware costs. In a nutshell, companies went from spending on Capex to just budgeting software use under operating expenditure. However, in the SaaS model, clients can terminate a software contract if they don’t get the value they expected. And that would mean a loss of revenue (unlike perpetual licensing, where almost all of the payment is upfront). The implication means that the software should solve the customers’ problems; it needs to deliver on the promises of the salespeople. And that’s where Customer Success came into play. Today, Customer Success plays a critical role in software adoption. It plays a vital role in the SaaS land-and-expand model. In this interview, 7investing Lead Advisor Anirban Mahanti chats with Customer Success Manager Kyle Holden. Kyle is a senior customer success manager at Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA), where he works with enterprise customers ranging from 5000 to 25,000 employees. In this chat, we cover various topics, including: The origin of customer success How customer success has evolved How customer success works with sales & marketing and product development teams The importance of Dollar-based net retention (DBNR) and how investors should think about DBNR for large vs. smaller enterprise software businesses This is a fascinating conversation that enterprise software investors shouldn’t miss. Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education:  https://www.7investing.com Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

Investment in robotics is picking up, as companies are finding opportunities to deploy AI-powered robots into new applications. In this exclusive interview, Brian Gahsman -- the Chief Investment Officer of the Contego Capital Groups and the Portfolio Manager of the AlphaCentric Robotics and Automation Fund (GNXIX) -- and his colleague Jin Kwon describe how robots are being used to improve global supply chain bottlenecks, to improve the efficiency of e-commerce logistics, and to improve the patient outcomes of surgeries. Publicly-traded companies mentioned in this interview include Fanuc, GXO Logistics, XPO Logistics, Apple, Procept Biorobotics, Vicarious Surgical, Medtronic, and Stereotaxis. 7investing's advisors or its guests may have positions in the companies mentioned. Welcome to 7investing. We are here to empower you to invest in your future! We publish our 7 best ideas in the stock market to our subscribers for just $49 per month or $399 per year. Start your journey toward's financial independence: https://www.7investing.com/subscribe Stop by our website to level-up your investing education: https://www.7investing.com Join the 7investing Community Forum: https://discord.gg/6YvazDf9sw Follow us: ► https://www.facebook.com/7investing ► https://twitter.com/7investing ► https://instagram.com/7investing

Businesses around the world spend nearly $800 billion on advertising every year, and two thirds of that is taking place digitally. There are three players who dominate the ads we see when we're glued to the screen, as Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL), Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: FB), and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) together capture 74% of the digital advertising market opportunity. Yet there are big changes underway that might cause a shift in the balance of power. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) recently announced in its IOS 14.5 update enhanced privacy controls, which now allow iPhone users to opt-out of seeing personalized advertisements. Specifically, this move shields the mobile device's IDFA identifier from websites and apps, who might want to use it to place targeted advertisements for users. It was a crushing blow for companies who rely on those targeted ads. Facebook/Meta Platforms CFO Dave Wehner has mentioned the move will likely cost their company $10 billion in lost revenue in 2022. As expected, this restricted led to a mass-migration of mobile ad budgets away from Apple iPhones and toward Android devices instead. But now even Google is disrupting its own cash cow in the interest of protecting user privacy. Big G has announced it will be curtailing cross-app ad tracking within the next two years. These are important changes! The business world needs to advertise to drive sales conversions, and it needs direction from the tech giants on how they'll do personalized advertising while still respecting data privacy. Is this the beginning of the the walled gardens of Google and Facebook toppling, and being replaced instead by a new "Open Internet"? Are there new advertising media -- perhaps Connected TV -- that are becoming the battlegrounds that tech companies know they absolutely must win? How should investors decipher these technology changes? And are there specific stock market opportunities they should be considering? To answer these questions, we've brought in an expert. Dhaval Kotecha is an individual investor with years of experience in the digital advertising space. He has worked for programmatic advertising platforms and has accurately read the tea leaves to invest in many of the industry's top-performers. In this exclusive interview, Dhaval chats with 7investing founder Simon Erickson about the higher-level impact of Apple and Google's recent changes. The two discuss Roku's (Nasdaq: ROKU) recent earnings release and what might have caused the stock's significant selloff. Dhaval then describes several programmatic ad platforms, including The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD), PubMatic (Nasdaq: PUBM), and Magnite (Nasdaq: MGNI). And as a fun way to wrap things up, he explains his recent interest in non-fungible token ("NFT") marketplaces and how investors might think about their rising popularity. Publicly-traded companies mentioned in this interview include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Magnite, Meta Platforms, PubMatic, ROKU, and The Trade Desk. 7investing's advisors or its guests may have positions in the companies mentioned.