Tony Nash is back in the BFM podcast to break down what´s happening in the US Market with IPOs like Doordash and AirBNB selling at a higher price than expected. What´s up with the tech stocks? It´s obviously IPO season, and what should investors do. Should they buy? Also discussed is the current oil price rally to the high 40s. What is the expectation or forecast for oil in the last month of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 for oil?
This podcast first appeared and originally published at https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/ipo-season-has-us-investors-agog-again on December 10, 2020.
BFM Description
Produced by: Mike Gong
Presented by: Khoo Hsu Chuang, Wong Shou Ning
It’s IPO season again in America and Doordash is first out the, well, door with a pop and wallop, while Airbnb is next, also with a higher price range, like Doordash. Which of the debutantes will be a Buy and which a Sell? And whither oil prices?
Tony Nash, the CEO of Complete Intelligence, discusses.
Show Notes
WSN: On global markets, we got to the line with us tonight, the chief executive of Complete Intelligence to break it down for us. Tony, thanks for talking to us. Nasdaq closed in the red after a 10-day rally. What’s your view? Is this just a technical correction?
TN: Well, Nasdaq still up 36 percent year to date. Things are still pretty good with tech stocks. But it’s been a lot of retail investors so far this year focused on fang stocks. Part of this decline today may be related to the stimulus talks. There are a number of other things involved, but if there is more stimulus, we may see more investment, especially in tech stocks. If you remember, the tech rally started in Q2 of this year really on people investing via Robin Hood in small increments. There were other institutional and retail investors, but Robin Hood investors really led to a lot of the run ups in these tech stocks.
KHC: And I want to pivot this conversation to an IPO, which is closed last night. So Doordash it debuted with an 80 percent jump to close at $189 from an IPO price of 102. Does that make you a buyer?
TN: It makes me a wait-and-see-er. Tech stocks have done really well. Stocks like Palantir are up 200 percent or something since their IPO. A lot of people are looking at those as an opportunity, which is quite possible. But tech IPOs tend to settle shortly after. We saw this with Palantir for a few weeks after the IPO. It declined, then it meandered. And then it really only started coming up over the past couple of weeks.
Doordash seems to have risen very quickly. I think it’s really on hopes, unfortunately, that a lot of the work-from-home stuff continues. Without work-from-home orders or stay-at-home orders, it’s really hard to see Doordash continuing at these levels. I think with a somewhat normal return or return to normal, people start going out again. Some of the people would at least rather go out than order in.
KHC: The other IPO is Airbnb, which is supposed to be priced later today. Is this a name you’re excited about?
TN: Sure I am. What’s interesting about Airbnb is it’s been very resilient with Covid. We’ve seen long-term rentals via Airbnb. We’ve seen people travel using Airbnb. When travel starts up again in a big way, they benefit as well. So it’s a really interesting name for me. It depends on what were the prices and where it goes. But on the face of it, it’s a very interesting name.
WSN: Yeah, it really is IPO season, isn’t it, Tony? I mean, what’s driving the liquidity? Is it still a retail market, institutional or a bit of both?
TN: A lot of it is retail. The retail investors are looking for the quick upside. People are trying to close out the year with as much juice as they can. I think a lot of the institutions were in very early. They take quick profits and then they just wait and see what happens. But if you look at the distribution, the allocation of some of these recently IPO tech companies, it’s a lot of retail investors.
KHC: With virus cases rising in the states, it’s almost certain that the FDA will authorize the emergency use of the vaccine today. So this brings back the question, do you think that the stimulus package that everyone is waiting or expecting, will they still be in the quantum of 908 billion or would it actually be downsized?
TN: I think it’ll be around the current level. The problem is, this is something that should have happened two months ago. And you’ve seen over the past two months, the U.S. economy really start to stall and sputter out. The employment picture is looking grimmer. The demand picture is looking a bit grimmer. If the U.S. wanted to keep things moving at the pace it had been in Q3, it really should have happened in late October. But it didn’t for political reasons.
And I think it’s really critical for these guys to come out with something before Christmas. The politicians look really stingy, like the real economy doesn’t affect them, which is true. And if they come out with something, they have the likelihood of looking like heroes before Christmas. So this is likely political theater so that they can build up some drama for a last minute agreement before the Christmas holiday.
WSN: Sliding over to oil, Tony, with crude inventories starting to build up, can prices break through the fifty dollar resistance level, do you think? And what are the catalysts needed to carry it across the threshold?
TN: Yeah, we think they can. So we’ve seen inventories build up. You know, they built up 15 million barrels over the past week, which is quite a lot well ahead of expectations. But, you know, we’ve expected oil to cross the 50 dollar mark in January, late December or in January. When we started saying this a few months ago, people really pushed back on this. We said we saw a spike in January in the crude price. And so we still believe that. NYNEX crude is trading at forty seven dollars right now. So even with the supply glut right now, we’re still seeing a forty seven dollar WTI price. So we think we’ll see high 40s, low 50s by January. Brent, of course, will be slightly higher than that. So we think breaking through fifty dollars is quite likely, especially at the start of Q1.
WSN: Hey, Tony, thanks so much for your time with us. Tony Nash, the chief executive of Complete Intelligence. And just to make a couple of remarks. And while we just discussed with him. The higher oil prices go, obviously the better it is for Malaysia because we are generally an oil country. West Texas is at 46, 47 right now is about 49 dollars, definitely, too.
He also talked about the Doordash and how he’s waiting to see Doordash. The numbers are not huge. They’ve only got like five million subscribers and they charged off the food guys 30 percent commissions to just deliver the stuff.
WSN: It’s not like they’ve had a choppy fiscal quarterly performance some months at some quarters up, some quarters down. And, you know what is so it’s so frothy. I mean, they nearly double the reference price on IPO day itself, already increased from two bucks, 100 to close 182 crazy, crazy days.
KHC: Well, I think, you know, at the end of the day, what is causing this one is that tech seems to be, you know, the darling darling on Wall Street. That’s when the second is that that clearly there still is a lot of cheap money flowing everywhere and nowhere to go.
WSN: Yeah, of course. Tony was talking about the Robinho traders, right?
KHC: Yeah. So as long as interest rates remain close to zero, I think people are willing to watch. And I used the funds, all investors, you know, regardless of whatever valuation. So it doesn’t really matter what your valuations are anymore. Exactly. So even like for Airbnb, you don´t even talk about earnings, you’re talking about price to sales because there is no earnings.
WSN: OK, well, talking about tech Facebook, right. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 46 states, 46 states, that’s just fall short of the full 50 complimented America. They’ve all brought antitrust cases against Facebook and accusing the company of using the social media dominance to crush competition. They’re calling for penalties that include a forced breakup and they are accusing Facebook of conducting a years long course of anti-competitive conduct.
KHC: Well, in particular, the FTC highlighted the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 as designed to neutralize any competition, because the argument is that they are a monopoly and they cut off services to squeeze rival developers. So the FTC said it was seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could potentially require Facebook to unwind its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions. Now, if I looked I remember correctly this morning, Facebook closed down, I think, close to two point six percent based on this news. So it doesn’t seem like, you know, markets are really concerned about this. Or maybe the point is any dispute with the government takes forever and ever and ever so maybe for the moment, I think people are just shrugging it off.