Peloton Surges in Subscriber Base →

Peloton reported it’s earnings today and smashed it. Wall Street loved it sending its stock up 5% in after-hours. Take a look at this highlight below!

For starters, Peloton added an insane 1.1 million users to its digital fitness platform from March 16 to April 30, amid a free trial promotion. The thinking here is that Peloton could convert these free trials into paying memberships, and eventually into a bike or tread.

The fact that I have at least 5 friends who just recently purchase the bike in the last two weeks alone makes me think that Peloton can even go higher and maybe, just maybe, they’ll release their rumored rower or just buy Hydrow. I hoping for the latter as I already love my rower so much and I think that Peloton’s digital base and software will only make the Hydrow experience that much better; as long as they keep the current athletes.

Note: I have a small position in $PTON and am going to hold onto it for a few months.

Update: Wall Street is loving it and Peloton (use my referral code for $100 off: QZGJZA) is up 10% after hours and I think we’ll continue to see a more money flooding into Peloton with their respective less expensive at-home competitors rising as well. At the same time, I’m seeing publicly traded gyms / membership workout services continue to tumble.

Klarman on Our State of the Economy →

Klarman’s critiques of Washington and of irresponsible business practices share a common target: the selfish disregard for the future. “If we think of free enterprise and democracy as games, a lot of people are breaking the rules and disrespecting the other players and even the game itself. Mitch McConnell is disrespecting the game. Donald Trump doesn’t even know what the rules are. Free enterprise has been good for me and for the world. It has been good for my two-hundred and eighty employees. It has been good for my clients. Let’s honor the system. Let’s make sure that we leave and improve it for the next generation to benefit just as much as we did and with as much respect as we showed.” Otherwise, he said, “What kind of scorched-earth cost might we have to pay for that?”

I wish I had the whole paper from the Davos summit or even Seth Klarman’s out of print book, “Margin of Safety,” that goes for $1000 or so. We must evolve.

Read Between the Lines but Just in Case →

But just in case they failed to pick up on her [current President Joanna Geraghty] obvious signals, here’s the message in its most simple and straightforward form: “JetBlue Is For Sale!”

Guess you don’t have.

Nintendo Stock Jumps 5% on Switch Sell-Out →

Today was Nintendo's big day! It was so big with the Nintendo Switch release at midnight, that their stock even jumped 5%. No, I wasn't able to get in, but I'm still thinking there is room for growth. If you haven't already read, Zelda scored a 10/10 on IGN which is a pretty big deal! I'll be playing tonight after the family goes to sleep.

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Will Twitter's Periscope Turn GoPro Around? →

Do you really believe that a Twitter / Periscope and GoPro solution will bring the stock back up from it's 90% drop over the last year? This chart seems to think so.

GoPro has teamed up with Twitter, according to the Wall Street Journal, and announced that its Hero 4 cameras are able to connect to Periscope and live-stream whatever the user is recording.

The connection is designed to allow users to use both their smartphones and their GoPro cameras intermittently without interrupting the live broadcast.

I still don't own a GoPro but would like one if and only if I can actually start filming while on duty. =)

As Expected, Apple Watch Chips Away at Traditional Watch Sales →

The market for watches that cost less than $1,000 is most at risk, as consumers in that price range have indicated they’re the most likely to buy an Apple Watch, Levin said. Sales of watches costing between $50 and $999 registered drops in June, the biggest being a 24 percent decline in timepieces from $100 to $149.99, according to NPD’s data.

This is huge. I'd go as far and say it's a significant swing in the market especially in light of all the newcomers such as Marc Jacob and Nixon. This is their territory.

Use Sqaure Cash for This Reason Alone!

Once he realized his account had been hacked, Grey contacted Chase first. To his horror, the bank informed him he’d need to close out the account. Because he’d linked Venmo to his Chase routing number—rather than to a debit or credit card—the account, which he’d had since college, was irreversibly compromised. That meant, in the short term, no access to his money. Grey got to work filing a claim with Chase to dispute the $2,850 withdrawal.

As I've recommended this exact reason alone, use Square Cash! Ask me for an invite / request and we BOTH get $5!

via Slate

JetBlue Adds Apple Pay for InFlight Purchases

With many airlines accepting only credit cards these days, I'm glad to see jetBlue getting onboard with Apple Pay. Bravo! And in a few months, we'll be paying with our Apple Watches! ^_^

Starting next week, passengers on select JetBlue Airways flights can use Apple Pay on their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets to buy food, drinks and certain onboard amenities when the plane reaches cruising altitude. You'll be able to upgrade to available premium seats, too.

Update: Looks like a new app will go along the iPad minis too! Way to utilize tech jetBlue!

Apple Pay in the air, JetBlue will deploy iPad minis and NFC-enabled cases to more than 3,500 inflight crewmembers. In addition to the cases with Apple Pay compatibility, each iPad mini will be loaded with a custom-designed iOS app — The Inflight Service Assistant — which will give inflight crewmembers access to customer manifest and flight data to provide the best experience possible to JetBlue customers.

A Short Rundown of MCX

Mike Issac from the New York Times on MCX.

First announced in 2012, CurrentC is an effort by merchants to build their ideal mobile wallet. CurrentC is designed to link directly to a customer’s bank account instead of a credit card. This is a strategic move, analysts say; in bypassing the credit card companies, merchants can avoid the high fees that they are required to pay on each credit transaction they process.

Apparently the big consortium of retailers forget that US citizens love their credit cards and their in-store branded credit cards more than using their check cards / bank account thus allowing for instant gratification. Using your bank account is like using the cash that more don't have and, in my opinion, will definitely limit what people buy in store or at least make you think twice until your next pay period.

CurrentC would also give retailers the ability to track shopping habits across the dozens of stores that belong to MCX, a data set that has traditionally been held by credit card companies, not merchants. If retailers had access to this data, it could be used to deliver relevant deals and loyalty points to consumers, which could increase these companies’ bottom lines.

The tracking in the app is ridiculous.

Critics of CurrentC say it appears much more difficult to use than Apple Pay. Instead of contactless payment technology, CurrentC will rely on QR codes, a type of bar code that merchants scan to complete the transaction. It will also be an app that users must find and download from Apple’s App store.

Wait what are QR codes? Seriously???

iMore has an even more "In Depth Look" as well as a cluster of articles about the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX). Some quick highlights include:

On launch, the app immediately does a few things. First, it starts sending pings to https://my.currentc.com/mobile/pinggateway every two seconds or so. No interesting data is sent in the requests and blocking them seems to have no impact on the app. Next, a deviceState request goes out. In the request are your device type (iPhone or iPad) and a unique device identifier. This identifier is stored in the device keychain so even if you delete the app and re-install, it persists, allowing CurrentC to track users across app installs. The third and last request seen on launch is a call to Localytics. Localytics is a mobile analytics company and is used in countless other apps. As with the many other apps using Localytics, this call seems to include a variety of analytics information: not surprising for many apps, and not surprising for CurrentC (though it probably should be for an app seeking to handle payments and personal data).

Exclusivity or be fined for using a competitor's method e.g. Apple Pay, but there are no fees for leaving except the huge $500,000 investment in their tech.

Before you get too excited, think about these other questions that iMore has posed.

Why do they want to retrieve your device's MAC address? (Don't worry, as of iOS 7, the OS returns a fake MAC address of 02:00:00:00:00:00 which is what CurrentC seems to be sending to their servers)

Why do they want to log your device name, WiFi network name, and number of running processes?

Why do they use a unique device ID that persists across multiple installs?

Why do they send pings every 2 seconds?

Just in case you forgot the highlights of how Apple Pay works, it's quite amazing:

• Touch ID authentication ensures that only users authorized at the device level can make payments.
• NFC keeps the transmission distances down to a few inches versus showing a visible QR code.
• Token-generated single-use card numbers ensure that in the event of a retailer breach, the hackers get a card number that's already worthless instead of your real card number
• Accessing your credit card gives users additional spending power versus drawing from a cash account, lets users earn points, miles, or whatever perks are on their favorite cards, and adds a layer of intermediation between a security failure and your money.

Wal-Mart, who by the way is the head honcho of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), commented via Business Insider as to why they shut off NFC and use of other technologies. Awful, illogical and archaic. Another reason I don't shop there, although I might have to start avoiding places like Best Buy, CVS, Rite-Aid and whomever else is being bullied by this consortium.

There are certainly a lot of compelling technologies being developed, which is great for the mobile-commerce industry as a whole. Ultimately, what matters is that consumers have a payment option that is widely accepted, secure, and developed with their best interests in mind. MCX member merchants already collectively serve a majority of Americans every day. MCX’s members believe merchants are in the best position to provide a mobile solution because of their deep insights into their customers’ shopping and buying experiences.

I'm done.

update: just shortly after posting this, CurrentC was hacked and users emails were exposed. You have to realize that there were the merchants that lost your credit card information to the hackers last year. Same company. Same technology.

Don't Listen to Them! iPad Sales Don't Disappoint!

MG Siegler is concise and right on. iPad sales this quarter was only disappointing to those who thought that Apple would sell more than 19 million units. Seriously though, think about it… Apple still sold 16 million iPads... in 3 months! The fact that this product category is only 4 years old and in total have sold over 210 million, that's quite a feat!

As a standalone business, just based on the last 12 months of revenue, the iPad would be in the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500. Think about that for a second. The iPad alone is bigger than almost all Fortune 500 companies.

For a full breakdown of sales, head over to 9to5mac.

Inside a Wall Street Dinner

From the inside it rains foie gras and rack of lamb. These are the people our government now depends on and bails out during time of crisis'. Don't get me wrong, I have no personal qualms, but that's just how it is these days. Below is just an excerpt but you can read Kevin Roose's new book, "Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits" out today on Kindle or Hardback for more juicy tidbits.

The last thought I had, and the saddest, was that many of these self-righteous Kappa Beta Phi members had surely been first-year bankers once. And in the 20, 30, or 40 years since, something fundamental about them had changed. Their pursuit of money and power had removed them from the larger world to the sad extent that, now, in the primes of their careers, the only people with whom they could be truly themselves were a handful of other prominent financiers.

Perhaps, I realized, this social isolation is why despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary, one-percenters like Ross keep saying how badly persecuted they are. When you’re a member of the fraternity of money, it can be hard to see past the foie gras to the real world.

Here's a full list of all Kappa Beta Phi members as well that was just published two days ago.

via NYMag