#Stocks: Growth

[islandtimeinvestments]

Today's Investments: $BTC, $HIMS, $AGRO

Sold two cash-secured puts on stocks I wouldn’t mind owning if they were put to me: $BTC  Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF sold 1 May $36 put for $1.40 ($140) representing a 27.3% annualized yield $HIMS  Hims & Hers Health, Inc. sold 1 April $33.50 put for $2.04 ($204) representing a 71.7% annualized yield Sold some covered calls on a stock I already own: $AGRO  Adecoagro S.A. Sold 10 April…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24, and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

Even by Amazon standards, this is extraordinarily sleazy: starting March 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon's cloud for processing, even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/everything-you-say-to-your-echo-will-be-sent-to-amazon-starting-on-march-28/

It's easy to flap your hands at this bit of thievery and say, "surveillance capitalists gonna surveillance capitalism," which would confine this fuckery to the realm of ideology (that is, "Amazon is ripping you off because they have bad ideas"). But that would be wrong. What's going on here is a material phenomenon, grounded in specific policy choices and by unpacking the material basis for this absolutely unforgivable move, we can understand how we got here – and where we should go next.

Start with Amazon's excuse for destroying your privacy: they want to do AI processing on the audio Alexa captures, and that is too computationally intensive for on-device processing. But that only raises another question: why does Amazon want to do this AI processing, even for customers who are happy with their Echo as-is, at the risk of infuriating and alienating millions of customers?

For Big Tech companies, AI is part of a "growth story" – a narrative about how these companies that have already saturated their markets will still continue to grow. It's hard to overstate how dominant Amazon is: they are the leading cloud provider, the most important retailer, and the majority of US households already subscribe to Prime. This may sound like a good place to be, but for Amazon, it's actually very dangerous.

Amazon has a sky-high price/earnings ratio – about triple the ratio of other retailers, like Target. That scorching P/E ratio reflects a belief by investors that Amazon will continue growing. Companies with very high p/e ratios have an unbeatable advantage relative to mature competitors – they can buy things with their stock, rather than paying cash for them. If Amazon wants to hire a key person, or acquire a key company, it can pad its offer with its extremely high-value, growing stock. Being able to buy things with stock instead of money is a powerful advantage, because money is scarce and exogenous (Amazon must acquire money from someone else, like a customer), while new Amazon stock can be conjured into existence by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/06/privacy-last/#exceptionally-american

But the downside here is that every growth stock eventually stops growing. For Amazon to double its US Prime subscriber base, it will have to establish a breeding program to produce tens of millions of new Americans, raising them to maturity, getting them gainful employment, and then getting them to sign up for Prime. Almost by definition, a dominant firm ceases to be a growing firm, and lives with the constant threat of a stock revaluation as investors belief in future growth crumbles and they punch the "sell" button, hoping to liquidate their now-overvalued stock ahead of everyone else.

For Big Tech companies, a growth story isn't an ideological commitment to cancer-like continuous expansion. It's a practical, material phenomenon, driven by the need to maintain investor confidence that there are still worlds for the company to conquer.

That's where "AI" comes in. The hype around AI serves an important material need for tech companies. By lumping an incoherent set of poorly understood technologies together into a hot buzzword, tech companies can bamboozle investors into thinking that there's plenty of growth in their future.

OK, so that's the material need that this asshole tactic satisfies. Next, let's look at the technical dimension of this rug-pull.

How is it possible for Amazon to modify your Echo after you bought it? After all, you own your Echo. It is your property. Every first year law student learns this 18th century definition of property, from Sir William Blackstone:

That sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.

If the Echo is your property, how come Amazon gets to break it? Because we passed a law that lets them. Section 1201 of 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony to "bypass an access control" for a copyrighted work:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

That means that once Amazon reaches over the air to stir up the guts of your Echo, no one is allowed to give you a tool that will let you get inside your Echo and change the software back. Sure, it's your property, but exercising sole and despotic dominion over it requires breaking the digital lock that controls access to the firmware, and that's a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense.

The Echo is an internet-connected device that treats its owner as an adversary and is designed to facilitate over-the-air updates by the manufacturer that are adverse to the interests of the owner. Giving a manufacturer the power to downgrade a device after you've bought it, in a way you can't roll back or defend against is an invitation to run the playbook of the Darth Vader MBA, in which the manufacturer replies to your outraged squawks with "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

The ability to remotely, unilaterally alter how a device or service works is called "twiddling" and it is a key factor in enshittification. By "twiddling" the knobs and dials that control the prices, costs, search rankings, recommendations, and core features of products and services, tech firms can play a high-speed shell-game that shifts value away from customers and suppliers and toward the firm and its executives:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

But how can this be legal? You bought an Echo and explicitly went into its settings to disable remote monitoring of the sounds in your home, and now Amazon – without your permission, against your express wishes – is going to start sending recordings from inside your house to its offices. Isn't that against the law?

Well, you'd think so, but US consumer privacy law is unbelievably backwards. Congress hasn't passed a consumer privacy law since 1988, when the Video Privacy Protection Act banned video store clerks from disclosing which VHS cassettes you brought home. That is the last technological privacy threat that Congress has given any consideration to:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

This privacy vacuum has been filled up with surveillance on an unimaginable scale. Scumbag data-brokers you've never heard of openly boast about having dossiers on 91% of adult internet users, detailing who we are, what we watch, what we read, who we live with, who we follow on social media, what we buy online and offline, where we buy, when we buy, and why we buy:

https://gizmodo.com/data-broker-brags-about-having-highly-detailed-personal-information-on-nearly-all-internet-users-2000575762

To a first approximation, every kind of privacy violation is legal, because the concentrated commercial surveillance industry spends millions lobbying against privacy laws, and those millions are a bargain, because they make billions off the data they harvest with impunity.

Regulatory capture is a function of monopoly. Highly concentrated sectors don't need to engage in "wasteful competition," which leaves them with gigantic profits to spend on lobbying, which is extraordinarily effective, because a sector that is dominated by a handful of firms can easily arrive at a common negotiating position and speak with one voice to the government:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Starting with the Carter administration, and accelerating through every subsequent administration except Biden's, America has adopted an explicitly pro-monopoly policy, called the "consumer welfare" antitrust theory. 40 years later, our economy is riddled with monopolies:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/monopolies-produce-billionaires/#inequality-corruption-climate-poverty-sweatshops

Every part of this Echo privacy massacre is downstream of that policy choice: "growth stock" narratives about AI, twiddling, DMCA 1201, the Darth Vader MBA, the end of legal privacy protections. These are material things, not ideological ones. They exist to make a very, very small number of people very, very rich.

Your Echo is your property, you paid for it. You paid for the product and you are still the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Amazon says that the recordings your Echo will send to its data-centers will be deleted as soon as it's been processed by the AI servers. Amazon's made these claims before, and they were lies. Amazon eventually had to admit that its employees and a menagerie of overseas contractors were secretly given millions of recordings to listen to and make notes on:

https://archive.is/TD90k

And sometimes, Amazon just sent these recordings to random people on the internet:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/20/amazon-alexa-user-receives-audio-recordings-stranger-through-human-error/

Fool me once, etc. I will bet you a testicle* that Amazon will eventually have to admit that the recordings it harvests to feed its AI are also being retained and listened to by employees, contractors, and, possibly, randos on the internet.

*Not one of mine

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/15/altering-the-deal/#telescreen

Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexa_%2840770465691%29.jpg

Sam Howzit (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWC_6_-_Darth_Vader_Costume_(7865106344).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[thesillyexpresser]

Got introduced to Muderbot and ITS PEAK FRFR 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥

(Drew these when I finished book 2 but waited to finish the current series before posting this because I didn’t want anyone spoiling me anything)

[azusa2023]

"Fuel your financial journey with the power of US stocks! 🚀 Don't just watch, be a part of the wealth revolution! 📈 Join my dynamic stock investment group, where opportunities ignite, insights flourish, and success awaits. Seize the moment, let's rewrite the story of your financial triumph together! 💪💼

[barakahinsights]

The committee system exemplifies the power of collective effort and mutual trust in achieving financial goals. Whether you’re looking to save for a dream purchase, manage unexpected expenses, or simply cultivate better financial habits, joining a committee might just be the saving hack you need.

‪@barakahinvestments

[dailyfinancial]

Suzlon Energy: Multibagger Stock Investor Favourite Again? Will History Repeat with Explosive Growth?

“Is Suzlon Energy the next multibagger stock? Explore our in-depth share analysis, past performance, and expected growth to see if this investor favourite is worth your portfolio. Find out why Suzlon Energy is back in the spotlight!”  The Indian stock market has always been a hub of opportunities for investors seeking high-growth stocks, and Suzlon Energy Ltd. has re-emerged as a name that’s…

[wonindia]

M&M Reports 15% YoY Sales Growth for February 2025

Key News:

Mahindra & Mahindra reported a 15% YoY increase in its total sales for February 2025 to 83,702 units.

Tata Motors reported an 8% YoY decline in its domestic and international sales at 79,344 units in February.

Maruti Suzuki India reported a 1% YoY increase from 1.97 lakh units.

Glenmark recalls 1.5 million bottles of ADHD medication in US.

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank has finalised the sale of its stressed loan portfolio, which had an outstanding balance of Rs. 364.51 crore, to an Asset Reconstruction Company (ARC) for Rs. 34.26 crore.

Stocks to Watch: Avanti Feeds, Kotak Mahindra Bank(Nse), Maruti Suzuki India, Hdfc Bank, Icici Bank, Abbott India, Bajaj Finserv and view more.

[islandtimeinvestments]

Today's Trade: $HIMS

My $HIMS April $33.50 short put option is deep in the money due to a recent drop in the stock’s price. I received $2.04 ($204) for selling this option initially. Today I rolled the option out until May 16 and down to $25 strike price at a debit of $3.30 ($330). Although the stock was down 8.52% just today, I am confident it will recover or at least stay above $25.  

[dailyplanet-loislane]

Alphabet: A Tech Titan Undeterred by Regulator's Wrath

[grantmentis]

I don’t think they’d be able to sign SPA’s without going to the draft at least twice (or being successfully drafted the first time and released or signing with that initial team) but I’m curious if once the SDHL season wraps up that some players will come over on reserve roles, particularly the North Americans - I can’t see the Europeans especially ones on national teams coming over for like a month before worlds. Emma Seitz is a player that’s significantly raised her draft stock for me this year in the sdhl and has been phenomenal on transition and a lot of teams could use her

[meelsport]

Perplexity AI Stock and AI Market Growth: Top Insights for Investors

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of technological innovation, driving significant changes across industries. Companies like Perplexity AI are leading the charge with groundbreaking AI-driven tools, although Perplexity AI itself isn’t publicly traded at this time. However, the broader AI market growth offers numerous opportunities for investors. This article delves into the market…

[stockstarsblog]

Marcus Kitzmann: Ein Wegbereiter datenbasierter Anlagestrategien mit "GROWTH Investing"

Marcus Kitzmann hat sich schon seit einigen Zeit in der Finanzwelt als ein visionärer Investor und Analyst etabliert. Seine Karriere startete vor mehr als 20 Jahren in einem renommierten Family Office in Frankfurt, wo er schon früh für seine tiefgreifende Analysefähigkeit und sein Verständnis für komplexe Finanzmärkte Anerkennung fand. Nach und nach stieg er zu einer festen Größe im Unternehmen auf, entschied sich aber schließlich für die Selbständigkeit.

Vom Family Office zum finanziellen Freigeist

In seiner Zeit in Frankfurt vertiefte Kitzmann sein Wissen über traditionelle Anlageformen und lernte, wie dynamisch sich verschiedene Assetklassen verhalten können. Seine Fähigkeit, aus einem Meer von Daten die vielversprechendsten Investitionen herauszufiltern, machte ihn schnell zu einer Schlüsselfigur innerhalb des Unternehmens. Mit der Zeit übernahm er größere Verantwortlichkeiten und begann, die Grundlagen seiner "GROWTH Investing"-Strategie zu entwickeln, die auf einer Mischung aus technischer und fundamentaler Analyse beruht.

Ein neues Kapitel: Leben und Investieren in Monaco

Nach einigen Jahren des Erfolgs und der familiären Veränderungen, einschließlich der Geburt zweier Kinder, entschied sich Kitzmann, sich aus dem Family Office zurückzuziehen, um sich mehr seiner Familie zu widmen. Er zog nach Monaco und begann, seine Anlagestrategie ausschließlich für sich und einen ausgewählten Kreis wohlhabender Familien anzuwenden. Dabei blieb er seiner Philosophie treu, dass "Emotionen an der Börse keinen Platz haben sollten".

Die GROWTH Investing-Strategie: Ein tieferer Einblick

Kitzmanns Anlagestrategie kombiniert Growth- und Value-Ansätze mit einer soliden Risikoanalyse. Die Strategie stützt sich auf sechs Hauptpfeiler: kontinuierliches Wachstum von Gewinn und Umsatz, detaillierte Risikoanalysen, positive Prognosen von Analysten, eine Sicherheitsmarge, fundierte Kursziele und eine Bevorzugung von Aktien in Aufwärtstrends. In schwierigen Marktphasen hat diese Methodik dazu beigetragen, die Portfolios seiner Kunden vor größeren Verlusten zu schützen, während in bullischen Märkten sogar überdurchschnittliche Renditen erzielt wurden.

Marcus Kitzmann online

Um anderen das Erlernen seiner Methoden zu erleichtern, bietet Kitzmann die speziell entwickelte "GROWTH Investing Software" an. Diese ermöglicht es Anlegern, sich durch die Flut an Marktdaten zu navigieren und fundierte Investitionsentscheidungen zu treffen. Sein Ruf als kühler Kopf in der heißen Welt der Finanzen und seine Fähigkeit, klare, analytisch fundierte Wege im Anlagedschungel zu gehen, machen ihn zu einem gefragten Insider-Tipp unter rational denkenden Investoren.

Tumblr Community: Engagiert euch!

Die Story von Marcus Kitzmann ist ein Beispiel dafür, wie analytische Präzision, harte Arbeit und der Mut, neue Wege zu gehen, zu nachhaltigem Erfolg in der Finanzwelt führen können. Seine Geschichte ist besonders inspirierend für junge, aufstrebende Finanzexperten auf Plattformen wie Tumblr, die nach realen Vorbildern suchen, die zeigen, dass es möglich ist, Beruf und Familie zu vereinen und dabei erfolgreich zu sein.

[flockrest]

my desire to have tu.lin be unrelated to the first sage of wind because i love the rito champions being just Some Guys who grabbed destiny by the neck with all their grit and drive and sheer, hard work VS my desire for the intrapersonal conflict that emerges from a lineage connection implying his 'specialness' comes more from Being Born rather than all the effort he put into forging a place for himself as a young rito warrior: FIGHT

edit: porque no los dos :)

[gentlemanclub1]

10 Proven Ways To Boost Your Business Income

Introduction: Running a successful business is not just about generating revenue; it’s also about maximizing your income potential. By exploring various strategies, such as upselling, cross-selling, and diversifying revenue streams, you can significantly increase your business income. In this blog post, we will discuss ten proven ways to boost your business income while providing examples to…

[screenshot-thoughts]

Shoutout to the GME wave of DeepFuckingValue 2021.