Why giants thrive
The power of technology, globalisation and regulation
This is why a simple investing strategy that goes ‘long’ equal weight the three biggest, fastest growing, and most successful tech companies (AMZN FB and GOOG) has done so well. Is past performance indicative of future results? No, but as far as strategies go, it’s hard to beat.
If someone says an investment strategy is ‘fail safe’ usually that’s an indication that it’s time to run to the exits, but Facebook, Amazon, and Google are exceptions, just by virtue of their immensely strong fundamentals and the fact that after a decade or longer no one has been able to come up with viable alternatives to compete with them. I remember in 2004 during the Google IPO, pundits said that anyone could come up with a ‘Google alternative’…lol 12 years later and we’re still waiting. Or in 2008-2012, predictions of a ‘Facebook alternative’, which of course has yet to happen and likely never will.
In capitalism 2.0, Bigger is better.
Just because Myspace lost to Facebook doesn’t mean Facebook will suffer a similar fate.
Airbnb, Uber, and Snapchat…all more valuable than ever, with no viable competitors on the horizon, and their valuations and market growth just keep rising, year after year, to no end, despite endless predictions by pundits of a bubble.
Contrary to popular belief, predictions of collapse are actually as common, if not more so, than predictions of a continuation of a trend. During the 80’s – 2000’s housing boom, predictions of a housing bubble were commonplace. Predicting the 2006 housing crash does not make one a contrarian, because such bearish predictions were actually as common as predictions of the housing market rising. If that seems backward, it’s because the media as of 2008 has given more attention those those who predicted a bubble. For example, Michael Lewis’ bestseller The Big Short, about how some canny traders made a fortune betting against the mortgage market. But the media also ignores all the forecasters who were wrong on the way up, only to be right purely by chance in 2008. Likewise, during the 90’s dotcom bubble the media gave more attention to those who were predicting higher prices, but there were still roughly the same number of people who were predicting lower prices, but it’s just that they were mostly ignored, creating a false consensus that everyone was euphoric.
From a market perspective, the number of sellers (pessimists) has to roughly equal the number of buyers (optimists). For prices to keep rising, you need people to sell to the buyers.
These huge tech companies companies don’t need to innovate that much, rather they have market dominance and effortlessly print money through their ad platforms and other services. As the Economist article mentions, they tend to be very well insulated from global economic events (unlike the energy sector or financial sector), and these huge tech companies are also especially well suited to take advantage of global markets. Google, Facebook, and Amazon derive a significant chunk of their revenue overseas. And they can use foreign markets, loopholes, and other accounting schemes to dodge regulations and taxes that are unavoidable for smaller companies.
Up until the late 2000’s, major tech companies seem to have a about a decade of solid growth and stock price appreciation, before tapering and contracting or even collapsing (Cisco, Oracle, Sega, Sony, Atari, 3com, Research in Motion, etc.), but nowadays, as of 2004 or so, major tech companies seem to do a much better job at retaining their growth, market share, and share price appreciation.
Also, the stock market has done a much better job of quickly punishing losers (gopro, fitbit, etc.) but also rewarding winners. The investing landscape is much more choosy and selective, which could explain why active management is having such a hard time in an otherwise very strong bull market. It’s not like the late 90’s when all tech stocks were indiscriminately bid higher. You have the pick the cream of the crop or you will fail. You have all these experts who manage millions or even billions of dollars and they are just as clueless as average investors.