Alphabet Inc (GOOG)

Market share in advertising is at about 25%, and he doesn’t believe anybody has had higher than that. Doesn’t know if they can hold onto this, but it is going to be very difficult for them to increase it. He would prefer companies that have lower market share, but more runway, something like Facebook (FB-Q). Facebook also has some non-core businesses, things that have yet to generate a profit.

He is quite constructive on this. It is part of the oligopoly on the Cloud space. They have a couple of things going for them along with a headwind that they are fixing. Core ad spending is up almost 20% and they continue to pull in more ad spending. Spending was getting out of control, but are working on that. Valuation is not out of line for the growth you are getting.

Doesn’t think there is a day that goes by when you don’t use Google. They totally dominate Search and is the world leader by far. They are also investing in all these other wacky and interesting things. Totally unappreciated, relatively speaking, but it is a company that is almost a “must own”. There is a lot they can do in terms of monetization with the video and stuff, that they are not yet doing.

AAPL-Q vs. GOOGL-Q vs. AMZN-Q. He likes these two as well as AMZN-Q. You could make a case for all three. He owns all three. These guys are changing the world. AAPL has not had an announcement for a while, but will have announcements in the next year. They could pull back a bit, but he would own all three.

He is very keen on this. They are doing great things. On advertising and search, they are taking away from the incumbents and have lots of things in the hopper. Great balance sheet and a really durable franchise. Going forward, the virtual reality and artificial intelligence are going to be really big components for them.

This is a huge company, and the core advertising is still up 17% year-over-year. 66% of ad spending is still off-line. They are getting more than their fair share and focusing on things that matter, such as machine learning, autonomous driving, AI. (Analysts’ price target is $1050.)

Owned since 2009. Sell? That was a fabulous buy. When he has a stock that goes up a lot, he takes some money off the table. Sell enough that your original stake is off the table, so that no matter what happens you can’t lose any money. You also have to look to your portfolio diversification. This should be sold down and diversified into other names.

Technically this is in a long upward trend. Hit an all-time high today. This has a history of moving higher in 2 periods; from November right through until January, and from around March through to June. This is a good one to be in right now.

You must weight political positions with investment data. Policy is forming in the US, but there are truths about economical data that we cannot ignore. The prospects for US investment are hard to ignore. He cannot own this one in his portfolio because it does not pay a dividend. Cloud computing is a story that is playing out and Google is a leading company in this business. It is a pretty good choice to hold. Buy it on weakness.

One of the most important themes in this market are the big Internet content companies. The things they have going on in this business are quite remarkable, not to mention their key businesses which are doing remarkably well. This is a theme that investors have to be invested in.

(A Top Pick May 13/16. Up 18%.) This is 6% of his portfolio and will remain his biggest holding. There’s $200 billion of advertising that is going to move from old media, mainly TV, to the Internet over the next few years. This is not that expensive. This is still a Buy.

As the largest search engine, it garners a lot of the digital online advertising. She can see very good secular growth in digital advertising. Corporate advertising budgets have about 35% allocated to digital, and sees that increasing over time. They will garner a big share of that because it is the leading search engine. This is not a value stock, but more of a GARP stock, trading at about a 25 forward PE. Has consistently grown its revenue in excess of 25% organically, and a lot of that is falling to the bottom line. Earnings are also growing at a 25% clip. (Analysts’ price target is $1000.)

Last year it was F.A.N.G. Huge market cap and huge performance. After a stellar year you assume you would flat line. But GOOGL-Q has keep on charging ahead. It is surfacing again in an evolved fashion. They have the cash flow, the growth and they know how to monetize. They are not just search. They have translate, music, etc. Services are a small but growing stream. Technically it is working and in a great sector. Mid to high teen levels of growth.

(A Top Pick Feb 24/16. Up 17%.) This still looks pretty decent in terms of valuation. Trading at 20X forward earnings with a 17% long-term growth rate, giving it a 1.2X PEG ratio. In technology, this looks pretty cheap. Thinks they will continue to do well with mobile ad sales and YouTube sales. Cost controls are also helping them.

One of the cheaper top growth tech names in the US. The management team should come up with some new products at some point.