Been thinking about this after $DOCS announced share buybacks today. A fast growing small cap business, an year since IPO, in a slight turbulent market environment. I'd say I'm not impressed that they felt the best use of their cash currently is to buy back shares. Growing 40-50% and they didn't want to use that cash to fund growth? Keeping some cash on hand to bolster the balance sheet might not have been a bad idea either. Buybacks are cool but as a shareholder I'm not ecstatic.

What do you guys think?

A: Lol, you're the one to ask? Here's an example from your brokerage account:

Here's the second half of my introductory post. Any feedback is appreciated!

https://commonstock.com/post/a81177db-32c6-4eed-bb17-70f2ee7ae8c7 by @irritableinvestor

Okay so here's something new (for me). I've been meaning to start writing about something, somewhere but never actually acted on it, until this weekend. So I started a substack. Before I get the judgy looks, here's what it is and isn't:

This isn't a plot to earn any kind of money on any forum. No clickbait, no paid newsletter now or ever. It's all free, I'm a complete amateur in every sense of the word. I do this to start writing, to keep myself accountable, to hopefully get some feedback and to get better with time. I'll use this substack to talk about the things I like to read and learn about, and most of them are linked to earning or burning money.

With that out of the way, here's my first write-up:

Picked a generic story to start things, instead of doing a deep dive on $SNOW and setting myself up for even more embarrassment.

So yeah, if you have some time to kill, I'd appreciate if you go ahead and (nicely) tell me why this sucks and I should move on to something else. I won't feel bad I promise :D

Thanks!

https://commonstock.com/post/80c25c95-160a-473f-81a1-7e9373573340 by @tsoh_investing

I haven't seen this losing ground to competition argument so won't comment on that. Don't necessarily agree to that either. But to digress from the HBO post, I feel $NFLX has other problems.

My biggest concern with $NFLX is that it really cannot afford a subscriber slowdown at this stage. The bull case for $NFLX (as a business, not investment) is that it needs more and more stable subscription revenue to keep coming in, that'll allow it to increase its production budgets to create content globally, and still be able to function like a profitable, mature business.

If the subscribers slow down in these times of heavy competition, that becomes a death spiral of low subscription revenue, lower content budget, even lower retention rates due to mediocre/light content and so on.. And that'll be a spiral which would be very hard to control. One strategy to counter these content budget increases is to scale back from the number of geographies it enters, thereby scaling back the different types of content it has to create simultaneously. I don't know how good will that strategy by, in these land-grabbing times in streaming.

I also do not think $NFLX is untouchable as a media source that it can go on increasing prices to buy growth, as it has been for a few years. We have so many options to get content nowadays that no one platform really has an edge. If any platform does have some kind of an edge, it'll probably be the free one, $GOOGL's Youtube.

So I think $NFLX definitely has a lot to think about, and how much of that can be fixed by their ad-supported tier? No idea. But for those reasons, I'm out :)

I know the market can go absolutely anywhere over the short term, but just saw this visual for the first time and felt like a dip-buying genius.

Just because something is wrong doesn't mean it can't make you feel good :D

Okay, so let's talk $SBUX. The stock has been under some pressure lately due to multiple factors like the management/board messing up the CEO "transition" process, Howard Schultz somehow being unable to stay away from the hot seat, unionization efforts, macro environment affecting the overall market etc.

As a result of these, the stock is trading at (ballpark) 20x FCF, 2.5% div yield and people are skeptical of this being a buying opportunity. From all this, I see headwinds, but no real material risks to the core business itself (geopolitical barriers, antitrust, unproven leadership, lack of moat/pricing etc). I see a company which is a known brand across the developed and developing world and it attracts people for all kinds of things (caffeine, cold drinks, breakfast, or sometimes just holding something in that fancy cup). I don't see any of that changing or becoming significantly less profitable anytime soon. I see this as an accumulating opportunity.

Can anyone explain how all of that is just wrong?