#our little inbox trades have become my favorite thing about tumblr

[springgirlwaiting4fall]

The fluff has taken over again... Could you work a little magic for 4 and 17? 👉🏻👈🏻

I didn’t know if you wanted 17 again or it was a typo and you wanted 7….so I did both. Also I’m a selfish bitch and used this to practice writing in 1st person. 😘

#4 Temple Kisses.

As soon as I read temple kisses I knew right away who this prompt was for: Eddie Kingston. My grumpy, antisocial, loud, ready to fight for those he love in a heartbeat Eddie. Who is also sensitive, unsure of himself and so loving. He doesn’t have to pretend to be tough, because he is crazy enough to fight anyone. And when he loves his love is true and loyal. Eddie doesn’t need to recite poems or buy fancy gifts. He shows his love in smaller more personal ways, like calling me sweetheart or the way his arm wraps around my shoulder and pulls me into him. My favorite act of love is when he kisses my temple. If I had a long bad day, he pulls me into a hug and kisses my forehead. Before leaving for work after our goodbye kiss, he gently kisses my temple. When he has been on the road for days and he finally gets home at 3 in the morning, the first thing he does is kiss my temple, being careful not to wake me. Those are our special moments that no one can take away from us.

#7 Loves being the little spoon.

Ethan page is a fricken couch hog, he lays across all the seats instead of laying in one of the recliner seats. It drove me absolutely insane, when I would get home and see him taking up the whole couch watching YouTube videos. I end up just laying on top of him. Eventually he rolls his body so I’m laying behind him. I’d stretched my arm over him and press the side of my face against his back. This turns out to be the perfect spot to take a catnap as his boring unboxing or toy review videos always lull me to sleep. Now it has no gotten to the point where when I get home, Ethan moves his legs, so I can automatically crawl behind him. And if I don’t wrap my arm around him fast enough, he does it for me. At night we have to play Rock Paper Scissors to see who gets to be little spoon in the bed.

#17 Loves hugging you from behind. M

My lovable dumbass best friend Max Caster has a new crush and of course he Confided-in me because and I quote “read books like her, so tell me how to get in good with a babe that is smart.” After staring at him thinking that no one could be this much of an idiot and ignoring my heart break because he likes someone else I just walk away shaking my head. Later that night I hear him asking Anthony Bowens for advice. Bowens looks at Hook and tells him to ask him. Hook says “just be sexy,” before walking away. I guess Max decides to practice on me because for the next week he just hangs all over me and tries to discuss whatever book I’m reading. By hanging on me I mean that whenever he sees me, he just latches on to my back like some weird spider monkey. The first time he did it Max didn’t think about the fact that I am almost 100 pounds lighter than him and he is almost a foot taller than me, so he put his whole weight on me and we end up falling to the ground. And it was adorable and funny, even though I pretended I was annoyed with him. We’re all alone backstage in some random hallway. It’s been about a week since he started all of this and it kills me to ask about how it’s going with his crush, because I know when he does eventually ask her it, It’s going to destroy me not having him hang all over me anymore. “Still in the friend zone,” he answers hugging me from behind his head resting on my shoulder. “Oh my god! Is this still going on?” Taz New York accent has us jumping apart like we’re kids in a basement making out. “Jesus Christ Christine pull your head out of your ass. It’s you he likes. And Max man up and ask her out instead of moping around in the locker room.”

[kane-and-griffin]

PSA

Hi kids!

This is a gentle public service announcement to let you all know that I’m no longer engaging in any more discourse about the kink meme. 

This has become a really polarizing topic, I think the fandom’s collective ability to discuss it in a constructive way has eroded quite a bit, and the “callout posts” about it have themselves begun to feed an alarming amount of sensitive or triggering content into public social media spaces, which, quite frankly, runs a far higher risk of landing in front of the eyeballs of someone who needs to avoid it than when it’s safely quarantined in spaces like LiveJournal and Ao3.

It is staying open for at least the next couple weeks, and I intend to keep writing Kabby fic for it and sharing that fic here, as well as on Ao3.  I’m a big proponent of people curating their own social media spaces, so if you need to unfollow, block, blacklist, etc. because that is a nope for you, that doesn’t bug me in the least and I don’t take it personally.  We all have to know where our boundaries are.

A few last words on this topic and then I’m done. 

(P.S. this post contains no potentially triggering references to any of the specific kinks or fics in question.  It’s safe for all.)

There are many fics on the kink meme and Ao3 that I can’t and won’t ever read.  There are many kinks that squick me out.  But if you’re asking me to condemn specific writers or specific fics because they upset you, just know I’m never going to do that.  Even if it’s a fic I would never read myself.  My position is always going to be that I’m a writer and I stand with writers.  Even when I disagree.  Even when what they wrote squicks me out. 

“But what about this kink? Surely you can’t defend that writer.” 

Yes I can. 

“Okay, but what about this???  This very upsetting thing involving your favorite character?” 

Yeah, even that one. 

Free speech is most important when it isn’t convenient.  It’s most important when you have to go to bat for the rights of people to say shit that makes you want to die inside.  It’s why the ACLU defends Westboro Baptist Church.  If I only held to my values when it related to people who agreed with me and did exactly what I approve of, then they’re not values, they’re personal tastes I’m trying to legislate on everyone else.

My best friend and I were discussing this on Twitter yesterday when this cropped up over there.  We have very, very different personal tastes.  As in, there are rarepairs I write for and kinks I enjoy reading that hit some places of really deep “please don’t discuss that fic while I’m in the room” discomfort for her.  And we’ve learned, over the past years, how to be sensitive and respectful to each other about those things.  I offered - without her asking - to write a censored version of one of my fics to remove a personal squick of hers so that she could read it and not feel left out of the fun the rest of the group chat was having.  She, in turn, never once judged or shamed me for writing the thing that made her uncomfortable in the first place . . . which is just as important. It’s crucial to our relationship that, just as I don’t judge her for her preferences, she doesn’t judge me for mine.  And I don’t judge other people for theirs, even when they’re MILES away from things I would ever consider erotic, or even feel comfortable reading.  Because another trigger which is very, very real - which for many of us is deeply lodged within our body and our sense of self - is the trauma of being publicly shamed, outed, maligned, or criminalized for your sexuality.

I am gay, and for eight years I was a youth minister at my church.  When I was in my mid-twenties, an anti-gay hate group found a video clip online of a documentary about LGBT Christians that I had been interviewed for, and they emailed it to the entire staff of the church where I worked, the school, and the office of the diocese.  Until you have been outed by force, against your will, to your pastor, your coworkers, your middle school health teacher, the school moms whose kids are in your youth group, and the fucking Archbishop, with a letter explaining that young people are in danger from your deviant sexuality; until you have been on the receiving end of a campaign of online harassment that went on for four years; until you have read a complete stranger write on her blog, not three months after your mother’s funeral, that she hopes your mom died without knowing she had a gay child, to spare her that humiliation; then you cannot possibly imagine the sense of sexual shame that I have carried for my entire adult life about the idea that the things I do in private behind closed doors, or even the things I think about in the privacy of my own mind, are fundamentally evil and wrong.  

This is why I do not make assumptions or judgments about other people’s sexuality.  There is a wide gulf between the things that turn you on in fiction and things that turn you on when done to live human beings (including not just your own sex life, but any other area such as the sex trade, trafficking, the porn industry, etc., where real human beings may potentially experience harm). 

If I can make a distinction between you enjoying a television show where people have murdered each other without assuming you are a murderer, I’m not going to come after anyone for what they masturbate to, no matter how squicky I find it, by assuming they would practice or endorse criminal sexual behavior in real life.  

If you were in a car accident, it might be really, really traumatic for you to watch movies or TV shows that show graphic depictions of car accidents.  That’s 100% legit.  It would be fair for you to expect a warning about that content so you know what you’re getting into and can skip that episode, close your eyes and look away during that part of the movie, or say “nope this isn’t for me, that’s not content I’m comfortable with.”  And nobody would judge you for that.  However, there are other people who have been in car accidents who might be fine with it.  It might not land in their body the same way.  They might find it cathartic to watch the thing that happened to them from a safe distance in a context which is fictional.  They might process the trauma they went through - which is the same as yours - in a way that looks totally different.  

None of this is universal.  There are no hard-and-fast rules about what sexual fantasies are and aren’t okay.  For example, I know at least two fics which I’ve seen alluded to as being content that should not exist because it triggers survivors of _____, which were written by survivors of that exact thing themselves.  You have every right to protect your own boundaries, but you cannot assume that everyone else’s boundaries are in the same place.  

This blog is and remains a primarily Kabby-only blog which I do care very much about keeping a safe space.  I have always, and will continue to, post occasional fic here with Raven or Bellamy OT3s, and am absolutely happy to help you out if there is a way I can be more helpful in tagging that content for you so you can blacklist it and keep your Tumblr safe if that’s something that makes you uncomfortable.  It is always, always okay to come to me with “hey can you tag this thing so I can filter it.” 

In terms of the kink meme, the fic I’m writing and sharing here is primarily Kabby.  I have written for some other pairings, which you can find on my AO3 in my collection of kink meme fills (Doctor Mechanic, etc.) but this is a Kabby blog designed for Kabby shippers, so the kink meme fics I’m writing are largely for them.  They are also all labeled very carefully when I share them to AO3 with the specific prompt I was filling, and a plethora of tags, in case the kink they’re about hits a button that is a nope for you. 

I am always, always open to helping you guys create safe internet spaces by opening up a conversation about ways I can tag fic more helpfully.  But just as I do not police who anyone sleeps with or what gender(s) they’re attracted to - because I remember on a visceral gut level the shame and trauma I felt when that was done to me - I do not police what anyone masturbates to, fantasizes about, is turned on by, writes about, or reads about.  

Before anyone gets the wrong idea that my inbox has been flooded with assholes, I should be clear that 99% of all the conversations I’ve had on this topic - whether people love the kink meme, hate it, can only handle parts of it, don’t read smut fic at all, or don’t care what anyone else does behind closed doors and just wants to go back to talking about whether Isaiah’s tweet this afternoon legit means Jaha got killed off??? - have been thoughtful and civil and great.  The Kabby fandom is awesome and the majority of the really ugly drama has been swirling around around at a distance from our happy little corner.  But I still get occasional anons about this which seem pretty clearly intended to draw me into conflict I have zero interest in, so I wanted to state, one last time, very clearly, that I’m not going to be engaging in any of those from this point forward, and explain as thoughtfully as I can the reasons why.

MOM LOVES Y’ALL A LOT, THANK YOU FOR BEING AWESOME

[preciousmetals0]

Tesla’s Cash Flows; Verizon’s Crossroads; Facebook Erodes

Tesla’s Cash Flows; Verizon’s Crossroads; Facebook Erodes:

Tesla to Bears: Eat My Shorts

Do we have any Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) bears reading today?

I know you’re out there. You write in to Great Stuff every time I say something positive about the company. Well, get your emails ready. Today, Tesla’s taking a victory lap … and I’m saying: “I told you so!”

Let’s get right to the heart of the matter, shall we?

Tesla reported blockbuster quarterly results last night. They were good … really good. As in, “Tesla turned in another profitable quarter” good.

Yes, Virginia. Tesla is profitable, earning $2.14 per share in the fourth quarter and beating expectations by more than 20%. Revenue came in at $7.38 billion, besting Wall Street’s target of $7 billion.

Now, we’ve seen Tesla put up profitable quarters before. What makes this one so much better?

Two factors really stood out this time. First, Tesla reported free cash flow of $1 billion for the quarter. That’s impressive just for the sheer fact that the company’s capital spending grew 27% in the same quarter.

Remember the Gigafactory in Shanghai? That cost the company $412 million to push through. Despite the added spending, overall capital expenditures were lower than 2018.

You’re starting to lose me here, Mr. Great Stuff. Just tell me what’s going on, please!

OK, so that’s a lot to take in. In layman’s terms, Tesla is spending less, spending smarter and bringing in more revenue. This is what every company dreams of doing. It’s how things are supposed to work.

What’s more, things will get even better for Tesla this year. The company projected 2020 sales of more than 500,000 vehicles.

Not bad for a company that many people believed would never be profitable.

The Takeaway: 

Wall Street’s Tesla bears are eating a lot of crow today.

Here are two of my favorites:

Ben Kallo, an analyst at Baird, said: “A lot of retail investors actually have a deeper and more accurate insights than many of the big institutional investors and certainly a better insight than many of the analysts.”

Joseph Spak of RBC Capital Markets wrote: “We fully admit things are better than we expected and there is a lot of positive news flow and data points going Tesla’s way.”

While the bears admitted defeat, the Tesla bulls celebrated. “It’s becoming clear, in our view, that Tesla is on a path toward becoming the world’s only relevant publicly listed auto maker,” wrote Alexander Potter of Piper Sandler.

Now, I like Tesla, but I don’t know if I’m willing to follow Potter’s lead and call it the “only relevant publicly listed auto maker.” I think we’re still way too early in the game for that.

However, if Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) don’t get their act together soon, Tesla could soon be the only relevant publicly traded American automaker.

Finally, you might be wondering if it’s finally time for you to bite the bullet and buy into Tesla. That answer is a firm “NO.”

Tesla is overbought and needs to consolidate or pull back more than a little. For the best long-term returns, you’d ideally want to target the $550 to $600 region. It may take a little while to fall back to those levels, but everything driving the shares higher right now is hype.

We don’t buy hype … and neither does Banyan Hill expert Jeff Yastine.

Jeff’s eye for spotting hidden value comes from his 15-plus years of financial news coverage. And now, he has his sights locked on a $5 stock that’s set to make waves.

With its life-saving innovation, this one company is set to revolutionize health care. There’s little hype surrounding this stock today, but Jeff predicts its value could triple in the next few years.

Click here to see why Jeff believes this pioneer is set to soar.

The Good: Am I Blue?

Why, wouldn’t you be too? (Couldn’t resist breaking out a little Billie Holiday.)

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) is most certainly not blue. It’s a nice, happy shade of green today … thanks to Azure, Microsoft’s cloud services.

The software giant once again beat Wall Street’s earnings forecasts, riding a 27% spike in intelligent-cloud revenue to $11.15 billion. Azure-specific revenue surged 62%.

Overall, total revenue jumped 14% to $36.9 billion, and earnings topped expectations by $0.29 per share.

Microsoft projected Azure revenue to reach between $11.85 and $12.05 billion for the current quarter, touting its market dominance even in the face of stiff competition from Amazon.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) Amazon Web Services.

“Azure is the only cloud that offers consistency across operating models, development environments, and infrastructure stack, enabling customers to bring cloud compute and intelligence to any connected or disconnected environment,” CEO Satya Nadella said.

The Bad: Door No. 1, Please

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) gazed longingly into the horizon today, shedding a few percentage points after a mixed bag of earnings.

America’s largest mobile carrier added 790,000 phone connections. When you consider rival AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) added only 229,000 … so far, so good.

The problem here is Verizon’s media division, on which the company just wrote down a roughly $200 million charge. Who would’ve thought buying AOL and Yahoo was a bad idea? (I think we all thought that, actually.)

It’s like when my wife sends me to Walmart for groceries … and I come back with a Duck Dynasty Chia Pet and a gallon jug of Tabasco. After Tumblr’s fire sale last year, Verizon is 0 for 3 on the acquisition front.

VZ shares have gone practically nowhere since November … of 2018. Personally, I see two paths the company can take.

Mr. Great Stuff, what’s behind door No. 1 for Verizon today?

The company could take the “L” and leave its media unit behind in the noughties (that’s what we’re calling the 2000s now, apparently … or so my daughter tells me).

And door No. 2?

Verizon could pull an AT&T: buy some more content and roll out a streaming service. Yet Verizon’s AOL and Yahoo deals (worth $4.4 billion and $4.48 billion, respectively) were mere pennies compared to the nearly $109 billion AT&T spent for Time Warner.

But honestly, there’s not that much content out there left to buy. There’s what … MGM and Lionsgate? Those are about the only two worth mentioning. And Verizon would probably have to fight both Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) and Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) for either of them, pushing the price tag even higher.

Door No. 2 is clearly a bad idea for Verizon. After all, Great Stuff readers know how well the Time Warner ordeal is working out for AT&T…

The Ugly: Overhyped

By most measures, Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) just turned in a solid quarter. The social media giant beat earnings guidance by $0.04 per share and topped revenue expectations by $21 million.

But it wasn’t the actual numbers that scared investors today. It was the growth of those numbers. Facebook’s revenue rose 25% to $21.08 billion — its slowest pace in more than four years. Earnings rose 8% to $2.56 per share, slowing from 20% growth in the prior quarter. This also marks the smallest earnings beat Facebook has ever recorded.

Those are still impressive numbers. Are Facebook’s investors just spoiled?

The answer here is “yes” … with a caveat. Yes, Facebook investors will likely have to get used to lower growth rates for both revenue and earnings. It’s only natural since the company is near market saturation (a problem that Netflix is running into in U.S. subscriber growth).

But the real problem comes with government regulation. Antitrust lawsuits and investigations abound. Defending against those isn’t cheap, and that’ll be an increasingly heavy burden on Facebook’s bottom line. And if the government decides to drop the hammer? That’s even worse.

The ugly truth is that Facebook’s glory days are now behind it. You can expect more “disappointing” reports like this in the future.

You know the drill. You Marco. I Polo.

It’s Reader Feedback time!

Judging from your emails this week, there are two things on your minds: the overhyped coronavirus and internet browsers. Seriously, I didn’t know that browsers were still such a hot-button issue. It’s like I’m back in the days of Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Before we get to those topics, we have some praise from Beth R., who wrote:

I get so much in my inbox from Banyan that I can’t keep up, but I kept yours because of the humor. Love your style of writing. Love the rundown you put in on Roku, because seeing it listed out like that was helpful.

What I like about your email is that it isn’t all about “Something no one else wants you to know” or “Push here to read all about what the Wall Street bigwigs don’t want you to know.” You get the drift. And thank God I don’t have to sit and watch a video I don’t have time for.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you, Beth! We try our hardest to “keep it real” here at Great Stuff. And if we make you laugh while doing it, all the better! Some days, you just need a spot of humor to help the market go down. Also, no one wants to watch my ugly mug for half an hour on video. So, text is what you get!

On to the browser wars!

I switched to Firefox years ago, mostly for privacy, as Google tends to mine too much information from your history. — Gary S.

I’ve never used Chrome because I’ve never trusted Alphabet! — Tim P.

I’ve recently quit using Chrome and switched to Brave, which is based on the Chrome code base, as is Microsoft’s latest version of Edge. Brave looks and acts very much like Google Chrome without the privacy issues. Well worth checking out. — John S.

There are two themes when it comes to browsers: Great Stuff readers hate Chrome and Google, and love Firefox … and Brave? I have to admit — I’ve never heard of Brave before, but after quite a few of you recommended it, I’ll check it out this weekend. Thanks for teaching this old dog new tricks!

Time to get infectious. Mary S. wrote:

My friends are cutting up limes and clicking their Coronas. I am sure you have seen the meme? 

We have scary-virus exhaustion. 

Mary, I also have scary-virus exhaustion. It’s why I haven’t mentioned it today … except for right now, of course. So, my plan to avoid the coronavirus today failed, and it’s all your fault. I sentence you to a weekend of Coronas and limes.

As for the market, I still maintain that it won’t be that big of a deal until it starts spreading in Western countries. Thanks for writing in, Mary!

If you wrote in and I didn’t get to you, it might be because you cursed too $%*?@#! much. I still really appreciate the feedback, even if they won’t let me publish it.

And if you haven’t written in yet … what’s stopping you? Drop me a line at GreatStuffToday@banyanhill.com and let me know how you’re doing out there in this crazy bull market.

That’s a wrap for today. But if you’re still craving more Great Stuff, you can check us out on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

[goldira01]

Tesla to Bears: Eat My Shorts

Do we have any Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) bears reading today?

I know you’re out there. You write in to Great Stuff every time I say something positive about the company. Well, get your emails ready. Today, Tesla’s taking a victory lap … and I’m saying: “I told you so!”

Let’s get right to the heart of the matter, shall we?

Tesla reported blockbuster quarterly results last night. They were good … really good. As in, “Tesla turned in another profitable quarter” good.

Yes, Virginia. Tesla is profitable, earning $2.14 per share in the fourth quarter and beating expectations by more than 20%. Revenue came in at $7.38 billion, besting Wall Street’s target of $7 billion.

Now, we’ve seen Tesla put up profitable quarters before. What makes this one so much better?

Two factors really stood out this time. First, Tesla reported free cash flow of $1 billion for the quarter. That’s impressive just for the sheer fact that the company’s capital spending grew 27% in the same quarter.

Remember the Gigafactory in Shanghai? That cost the company $412 million to push through. Despite the added spending, overall capital expenditures were lower than 2018.

You’re starting to lose me here, Mr. Great Stuff. Just tell me what’s going on, please!

OK, so that’s a lot to take in. In layman’s terms, Tesla is spending less, spending smarter and bringing in more revenue. This is what every company dreams of doing. It’s how things are supposed to work.

What’s more, things will get even better for Tesla this year. The company projected 2020 sales of more than 500,000 vehicles.

Not bad for a company that many people believed would never be profitable.

The Takeaway: 

Wall Street’s Tesla bears are eating a lot of crow today.

Here are two of my favorites:

Ben Kallo, an analyst at Baird, said: “A lot of retail investors actually have a deeper and more accurate insights than many of the big institutional investors and certainly a better insight than many of the analysts.”

Joseph Spak of RBC Capital Markets wrote: “We fully admit things are better than we expected and there is a lot of positive news flow and data points going Tesla’s way.”

While the bears admitted defeat, the Tesla bulls celebrated. “It’s becoming clear, in our view, that Tesla is on a path toward becoming the world’s only relevant publicly listed auto maker,” wrote Alexander Potter of Piper Sandler.

Now, I like Tesla, but I don’t know if I’m willing to follow Potter’s lead and call it the “only relevant publicly listed auto maker.” I think we’re still way too early in the game for that.

However, if Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) don’t get their act together soon, Tesla could soon be the only relevant publicly traded American automaker.

Finally, you might be wondering if it’s finally time for you to bite the bullet and buy into Tesla. That answer is a firm “NO.”

Tesla is overbought and needs to consolidate or pull back more than a little. For the best long-term returns, you’d ideally want to target the $550 to $600 region. It may take a little while to fall back to those levels, but everything driving the shares higher right now is hype.

We don’t buy hype … and neither does Banyan Hill expert Jeff Yastine.

Jeff’s eye for spotting hidden value comes from his 15-plus years of financial news coverage. And now, he has his sights locked on a $5 stock that’s set to make waves.

With its life-saving innovation, this one company is set to revolutionize health care. There’s little hype surrounding this stock today, but Jeff predicts its value could triple in the next few years.

Click here to see why Jeff believes this pioneer is set to soar.

The Good: Am I Blue?

Why, wouldn’t you be too? (Couldn’t resist breaking out a little Billie Holiday.)

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) is most certainly not blue. It’s a nice, happy shade of green today … thanks to Azure, Microsoft’s cloud services.

The software giant once again beat Wall Street’s earnings forecasts, riding a 27% spike in intelligent-cloud revenue to $11.15 billion. Azure-specific revenue surged 62%.

Overall, total revenue jumped 14% to $36.9 billion, and earnings topped expectations by $0.29 per share.

Microsoft projected Azure revenue to reach between $11.85 and $12.05 billion for the current quarter, touting its market dominance even in the face of stiff competition from Amazon.com Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) Amazon Web Services.

“Azure is the only cloud that offers consistency across operating models, development environments, and infrastructure stack, enabling customers to bring cloud compute and intelligence to any connected or disconnected environment,” CEO Satya Nadella said.

The Bad: Door No. 1, Please

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) gazed longingly into the horizon today, shedding a few percentage points after a mixed bag of earnings.

America’s largest mobile carrier added 790,000 phone connections. When you consider rival AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) added only 229,000 … so far, so good.

The problem here is Verizon’s media division, on which the company just wrote down a roughly $200 million charge. Who would’ve thought buying AOL and Yahoo was a bad idea? (I think we all thought that, actually.)

It’s like when my wife sends me to Walmart for groceries … and I come back with a Duck Dynasty Chia Pet and a gallon jug of Tabasco. After Tumblr’s fire sale last year, Verizon is 0 for 3 on the acquisition front.

VZ shares have gone practically nowhere since November … of 2018. Personally, I see two paths the company can take.

Mr. Great Stuff, what’s behind door No. 1 for Verizon today?

The company could take the “L” and leave its media unit behind in the noughties (that’s what we’re calling the 2000s now, apparently … or so my daughter tells me).

And door No. 2?

Verizon could pull an AT&T: buy some more content and roll out a streaming service. Yet Verizon’s AOL and Yahoo deals (worth $4.4 billion and $4.48 billion, respectively) were mere pennies compared to the nearly $109 billion AT&T spent for Time Warner.

But honestly, there’s not that much content out there left to buy. There’s what … MGM and Lionsgate? Those are about the only two worth mentioning. And Verizon would probably have to fight both Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) and Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) for either of them, pushing the price tag even higher.

Door No. 2 is clearly a bad idea for Verizon. After all, Great Stuff readers know how well the Time Warner ordeal is working out for AT&T…

The Ugly: Overhyped

By most measures, Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) just turned in a solid quarter. The social media giant beat earnings guidance by $0.04 per share and topped revenue expectations by $21 million.

But it wasn’t the actual numbers that scared investors today. It was the growth of those numbers. Facebook’s revenue rose 25% to $21.08 billion — its slowest pace in more than four years. Earnings rose 8% to $2.56 per share, slowing from 20% growth in the prior quarter. This also marks the smallest earnings beat Facebook has ever recorded.

Those are still impressive numbers. Are Facebook’s investors just spoiled?

The answer here is “yes” … with a caveat. Yes, Facebook investors will likely have to get used to lower growth rates for both revenue and earnings. It’s only natural since the company is near market saturation (a problem that Netflix is running into in U.S. subscriber growth).

But the real problem comes with government regulation. Antitrust lawsuits and investigations abound. Defending against those isn’t cheap, and that’ll be an increasingly heavy burden on Facebook’s bottom line. And if the government decides to drop the hammer? That’s even worse.

The ugly truth is that Facebook’s glory days are now behind it. You can expect more “disappointing” reports like this in the future.

You know the drill. You Marco. I Polo.

It’s Reader Feedback time!

Judging from your emails this week, there are two things on your minds: the overhyped coronavirus and internet browsers. Seriously, I didn’t know that browsers were still such a hot-button issue. It’s like I’m back in the days of Netscape and Internet Explorer.

Before we get to those topics, we have some praise from Beth R., who wrote:

I get so much in my inbox from Banyan that I can’t keep up, but I kept yours because of the humor. Love your style of writing. Love the rundown you put in on Roku, because seeing it listed out like that was helpful.

What I like about your email is that it isn’t all about “Something no one else wants you to know” or “Push here to read all about what the Wall Street bigwigs don’t want you to know.” You get the drift. And thank God I don’t have to sit and watch a video I don’t have time for.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you, Beth! We try our hardest to “keep it real” here at Great Stuff. And if we make you laugh while doing it, all the better! Some days, you just need a spot of humor to help the market go down. Also, no one wants to watch my ugly mug for half an hour on video. So, text is what you get!

On to the browser wars!

I switched to Firefox years ago, mostly for privacy, as Google tends to mine too much information from your history. — Gary S.

I’ve never used Chrome because I’ve never trusted Alphabet! — Tim P.

I’ve recently quit using Chrome and switched to Brave, which is based on the Chrome code base, as is Microsoft’s latest version of Edge. Brave looks and acts very much like Google Chrome without the privacy issues. Well worth checking out. — John S.

There are two themes when it comes to browsers: Great Stuff readers hate Chrome and Google, and love Firefox … and Brave? I have to admit — I’ve never heard of Brave before, but after quite a few of you recommended it, I’ll check it out this weekend. Thanks for teaching this old dog new tricks!

Time to get infectious. Mary S. wrote:

My friends are cutting up limes and clicking their Coronas. I am sure you have seen the meme? 

We have scary-virus exhaustion. 

Mary, I also have scary-virus exhaustion. It’s why I haven’t mentioned it today … except for right now, of course. So, my plan to avoid the coronavirus today failed, and it’s all your fault. I sentence you to a weekend of Coronas and limes.

As for the market, I still maintain that it won’t be that big of a deal until it starts spreading in Western countries. Thanks for writing in, Mary!

If you wrote in and I didn’t get to you, it might be because you cursed too $%*?@#! much. I still really appreciate the feedback, even if they won’t let me publish it.

And if you haven’t written in yet … what’s stopping you? Drop me a line at GreatStuffToday@banyanhill.com and let me know how you’re doing out there in this crazy bull market.

That’s a wrap for today. But if you’re still craving more Great Stuff, you can check us out on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing