X

Trade the way that suits you

Munger wishes cryptocurrencies had never been invented

bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

ASX 200 closed up 0.2% on Friday, but down 0.5% for the past five days. It's up 9.9% year to date.

Lots of stock tips came out of the 2021 Sohn Hearts and Minds conference, with legendary investor Charlie Munger saying that he wished crypto currencies had never been invented.

The 2021 Sohn Hearts and Minds investment leaders conference was held in a virtual format on, Friday 3 December. It's Australia’s leading finance conference and biggest fundraiser for medical research.

Billionaire investor and vice chair of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger says the market is now “crazier than the dot-com era’.

The 97-year-old Mr Munger, a longtime partner of Warren Buffett, is based in southern California, and was interviewed at the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference by his long time follower in Australia, Caledonia’s Dr Mark Nelson.

Mr Munger told the conference many current share market valuations were out of touch with fundamentals.

He said his optimism on Chinese opportunities had moderated, but he considered it an essential trading partner.

Mr Munger also backed China’s approach to cryptocurrencies, which he said he wished had never been invented.

“The Chinese made the correct decision, which is to just simply ban them,” he said, reported The Australian Financial Review.

Some of this year’s stock tips include:

AVALARA: Fresh from picking last year’s 180 per cent gainer Nasdaq-listed Bill.com and other big winners like Docusign three years ago, Babak Poushanchi, is back at the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference with another stock pick, writes The Australian Financial Review. This year the Cota Capital founder and tech-focused investor has named Seattle-based tax software business Avalara as his top pick.

SPOTIFY’s market-leading position in the future of audio will catapult the business to among the so-called FAANG stocks alongside the likes of Apple and Amazon, powering revenue growth and its share price, according to Hamish Corlett, co-founder of TDM Growth Partners. The 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference pitch is a do-over of Corlett’s 2019 pick for a business he said has become even more attractive given its pole position in the audio market and an attractive valuation that sits at just half of Netflix.

ONSEMI: Munro Partners’ Nick Griffin has pitched Nasdaq-listed Onsemi as his stock pick at this year’s Sohn Hearts & Minds conference, labelling it the ‘hidden hero’ of the path to decarbonisation, The Australian reports.

Short FLIGHT CENTRE: Regal Funds Management co founder, Phil King is recommending at the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference that investors sell shares in travel company Flight Centre, arguing that the stock has rebounded too strongly since its lows of last year with the company still facing headwinds with the shift to online travel bookings. King, who is the only fund manager at the Sohn Hearts & Minds conference tipping a short, said Flight Centre’s shares have doubled from a low of $8.75 last year with the onset of Covid to their current levels of around $17.33. “We think it is too much. We think it is a short,” he said at the conference, The Australian reported.

GITLAB: Yen Liow, managing partner Aravt Global, says Gitlab is a founder-led software business that is focused on DevOps which is rapidly growing into a large market with pricing power that is expected to last for decades, The Australian reported. Liow stumbled upon the company while researching Atlassian, which itself generated 20 times the return on capital since its IPO. The $15bn company listed on the Nasdaq in October and trades about $80m a day. Its focus is on source code management within the so-called DevOps stack, where a duopoly exists with Microsoft’s Github and now GitLab, she told the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference. 

DELIVERY HERO: It’s an “age of instant gratification”, according to Tekne Capital Management’s Beeneet Kothari, and at the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference he is picking restaurant delivery group Delivery Hero to ride the innovation in last-mile logistics in the $US1 trillion takeaway food sector, according to The Australian Financial Review.

MEGAPORT: Firetrail’s Eleanor Swanson believes Megaport is currently one of the best stories on the sharemarket, and has the potential to join the ranks of Australian-founded technology companies such as Atlassian and Afterpay, she told the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference.

BENGO4: Jay Kahn’s Flight Deck fund seeks out stocks in “roads least travelled”, and Kahn reckons it has unearthed a “multi-bagger”: Bengo4, which he describes as Japan’s DocuSign. Until COVID-19 hit, Japan’s banking and government documents needed a traditional hanko stamp, and electronic signatures weren’t used. In April, the government relaxed regulations and Kahn sees an opportunity. It’s still very early days he told the 2021 Sohn Hearts and Minds conference, according to The Australian Financial Review.

TECHTRONIC: Cooper Investors’ Qiao Ma says that despite cordless power tools provider Techtronic Industries being an industrials company, it’s really a technology company at heart. The Australian Financial Review said Ma named the Hong Kong-listed stock as her top pick at the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference, Ma explains that Techtronic is more of a Silicon Valley company than an industrials company.

BEAUTY HEALTH COMPANY (SKIN): Joyce Meng AT FACT Capital tips US-based Beauty Health Company’s core asset is HydraFacial, a patented skin treatment offered at beauty spas and clinics whose popularity has grown via social media with the hashtag hydraglow. The treatment costs around $200 a session and is recommended on a monthly basis. According to Meng at the 2021 Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference, its “savvy” product design, much like their skin, creating ideal content for social media platforms.

PINNACLE: Elley Griffiths’ David Allingham picked Pinnacle, projecting it can earn more than $2 per share over the long term in part because of its stake in Hyperion Asset Management.

COINBASE: Atreides Management’s Gavin Baker said his pick, Coinbase, will be boosted by the lack of competition in the US, where big tech fear regulation.

WISE: Builders Union’s Markus Bihler pitched the freshly listed London-based fintech Wise.

 

 

 


Disclaimer: CMC Markets is an order execution-only service. The material (whether or not it states any opinions) is for general information purposes only, and does not take into account your personal circumstances or objectives. Nothing in this material is (or should be considered to be) financial, investment or other advice on which reliance should be placed. No opinion given in the material constitutes a recommendation by CMC Markets or the author that any particular investment, security, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. The material has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research. Although we are not specifically prevented from dealing before providing this material, we do not seek to take advantage of the material prior to its dissemination.

Sign up for market update emails