I Don't Give Investment Advice, but...I still track my performance—so here are 10 updates on previous posts
I don’t give stock market tips here, although sometimes it looks that way. Here’s a real tip: Don’t stake your money based on The Honest Broker—he doesn’t actually hold a broker’s license—except maybe the price of a premium subscription. But I do offer forecasts and frank opinions on trends and businesses, and occasionally revisit these prognostications in later posts, Below I share ten rapid-fire updates on past articles, and see how they fare in the light of recent events. The Honest Broker is a reader-supported guide to music, books, media & culture. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you want to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.1.I’ve repeatedly warned that Apple is struggling (see here and here and here and here). This puts me in the crosshairs of Apple fans—and there are lots of them. They tell me I’m all wet, and that this company is still a shining growth stock. But we now have first quarter numbers. Below you will find the stock market performance of the S&P 500 during the last three months. Green represents a rising share price, and red is shrinking—the size of the box is proportional to the company’s market value. The stock market rewarded investors with a ten percent plus increase—the best first quarter in five years. But not every company delivered gains. The nasty horror story here is Apple. Meanwhile, Apple canceled its auto development program—after ten years of investment. The company is also offering discounts on its hyped new virtual reality headset, which I suspect will seriously underperform expectations. This makes me look like William Tell. So I get to strut for a few minutes. I’m sticking by my previous assessment. Apple will make a significant acquisition within the next 18 months. Otherwise the company will stagnate. 2.I wrote about singer Eva Cassidy on the 25th anniversary of her death, but recently a video of her performing live has circulated on social media—and I’d never seen it before. This captures her rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s song “Time After Time.” This reminds me of how much we lost when Cassidy died at age 33, without a record contract and largely unknown at the time. If she were alive, Cassidy would have celebrated her 61st birthday a few weeks ago.  3.In December, I predicted that 2024 would be the year when alternative media starts flexing its muscles, outpacing large legacy institutions and driving the news cycle. This is actually happening faster than I anticipated. The latest figures just came out on podcasts—which now attract 100 million weekly listeners. That’s 47% of the adult population. The podcasting audience has doubled in the last decade and there’s no sign of flattening in the growth curve. 4.While on the topic of alternative media, this is worth sharing: Substack recently announced that total paid subscriptions on its platform have surpassed 3 million. According to Axios, this is “up from 2 million announced last year and 1 million in 2021.” Those numbers would be impressive under any circumstances, but especially in the context of huge layoffs and shutdowns throughout the macroculture media. I can’t complain because (full disclosure coming) I’m a shareholder of Substack. I admitted, however, when I announced this investment that “I don’t really care about making money from Substack stock.” I did it as a way of “putting my values into active practice.” But this power shift from macro to micro is a big deal, and still in its early stages. What happens next? I predict that many of the major stories leading up the November election will break in new media before getting covered by mainstream journalists. Let’s watch and find out. 5.Perhaps the most ambitious assault on the monoculture—or at least the priciest—is coming from director Francis Ford Coppola. He doesn’t even have a distributor, and is spending $120 million on a new film called Megalopolis. But does that bother him? Probably not... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to The Honest Broker to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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I Don't Give Investment Advice, but...
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