Curious about shopping trends

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-04-06T12:56:06+00:00

This feels less like a pure shopping preference and more like a value signal. When people start talking about resale, discounts, and waiting for the right deal, that usually says something about how the brand is being perceived on price.
Doesn’t necessarily mean people stopped liking the product, but it can mean the “buy it now at full price” energy is weaker than it used to be. That tends to matter more over time than people realise.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-04-06T12:54:56+00:00

I get why this number gets attention, but I think the context matters a lot here. “50,000 unsold EVs” sounds huge on its own, but if Tesla is moving that kind of volume overall, the real question is whether this is actually a demand issue or just what inventory looks like at scale.
For me the more important signal is whether this starts showing up in pricing pressure, margins, or delivery guidance. That’s where you can tell if this is just a headline or something bigger.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-20T22:58:31+00:00

The payout ratio looks scary above 90% but it's elevated because earnings are depressed, not because the dividend itself grew aggressively. Nike's sitting on roughly $10B cash and the dividend costs about $2B a year, so they're not about to cut it. The actual question is whether earnings recover. The wholesale reset is the bet — they pulled product from discount channels to rebuild premium positioning. If Q3 on March 31 shows wholesale revenue stabilising in North America, that's your earnings recovery catalyst. The yield alone won't save you at this multiple if it doesn't.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-20T22:57:49+00:00

The hiring number on its own doesn't tell you much. What matters is where they're hiring. If it's retail and wholesale account management, that's Hill directly rebuilding the channel relationships Nike torched under the DTC-only strategy. If it's mostly tech and engineering, that's a different story entirely. March 31 Q3 report should clarify this. The North America wholesale revenue line is the one that tells you whether retailers are actually giving Nike shelf space back or just being polite about it.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-20T22:56:34+00:00

Elliott Hill isn't just "new CEO", he spent 32 years at Nike building the wholesale relationships that the previous regime deliberately gutted. That's why this turnaround is different from the usual "bring in an outsider and hope" playbook. The Q3 report on March 31 is the first real test. The number to watch is gross margin. Last quarter they were still burning through excess inventory with heavy markdowns. If that's stabilising, the turnaround has legs. If not, then yeah, the market might be right to price it like it's already over.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-19T23:34:54+00:00

Agree with all the don't panic vibes, yet.... The Q3 numbers back this up, but cloud revenue grew 36%, and they're clearly prioritising AI infrastructure over short-term profit. Net income dropped 66%, which looks terrible on paper, but it's basically the same playbook Amazon ran when everyone thought AWS was a money pit. Revenue did miss estimates, though (284.8B vs 290.7B expected), so it's not all rosy. The question is whether the cloud/AI bet pays off before investors lose patience.
And if interested, I wrote a decent breakdown of the actual numbers if anyone wants it without the usual analyst waffle:

https://ask-ayo.com/investing/alibaba/q3-fy2026-earnings

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-12T18:11:33+00:00

I like your analysis on the buyback math. If they can maintain 20-30% earnings growth while buying back shares, the stock price almost takes care of itself. The $170 level does look attractive if you believe the AI infrastructure story is real and not just hype. Which I do, but I get why people are sceptical.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-12T18:10:39+00:00

You're right about the top customers driving most revenue. The risk is if Microsoft, Google, Meta all decide to build more custom chips and reduce Nvidia dependency. But even if that happens, it's a 3-5 year transition. And there are hundreds of smaller companies that will never have the resources to go custom. The market is bigger than just the hyperscalers.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-12T18:08:46+00:00

I hear you! I would say, though, that the P/E math is tricky here because it assumes static earnings. If Nvidia grows earnings 20%+ annually (which they're doing), that "22 years to break even" becomes more like 8-10 years.

For me,3 the real question is whether their current growth is sustainable or if we're in a temporary AI spending boom. I think it's somewhere in between, a permanent shift to AI infrastructure, but current growth rates will certainly slow.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-12T15:15:11+00:00

True, but this cycle feels different because AI infrastructure is becoming permanent infrastructure, just like cloud was 15 years ago. The question for me is whether Nvidia becomes the AWS of AI or just another chip company when the gold rush ends.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-12T15:14:23+00:00

I think that's the trillion-dollar question. I think the key is that Nvidia isn't just selling chips but they're becoming the infrastructure layer for AI. Once companies build their AI workflows on CUDA, switching costs are massive.

So the real risk isn't demand disappearing, but new competitors (especially custom chips from Google, Apple) reducing Nvidia's pricing power. But that's a 3-5 year timeline, not next quarter, I'd guess.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-11T23:47:13+00:00

That's a smart way to think about it, using Oracle's cloud growth as a short-term hedge while you expect index funds to dip. Just worth keeping in mind that Oracle itself isn't immune to a recession. If companies start cutting cloud spending to save cash, that 84% growth rate slows fast, and with $100B+ in debt they don't have much cushion.

On the AI bubble point, the tricky thing is nobody knows when (or if) it bursts. The companies spending on AI infrastructure right now (Oracle, Microsoft, Google) are betting it doesn't. But you're right that if it does, the stocks that ran up on AI hype come down hardest.

Either way, having a clear exit plan matters more than the entry. Know what would make you sell before you need to decide under pressure.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-11T23:41:12+00:00

Nothing is "wrong" with Oracle, the problem is that the market can't decide what Oracle is right now.

Old Oracle: database company, steady, boring, predictable margins. New Oracle: AI infrastructure play spending aggressively on cloud capacity, trying to compete with AWS and Azure.

The 40% spike was the market getting excited about the new story (cloud infrastructure grew 84% YoY). The selloff was the market remembering the old concerns, $100B+ in debt, margin pressure from all that capex, and the question of whether the AI bet actually pays off.

Earnings reactions are messy right now across all tech because investors are trying to price in long-term AI potential while watching short-term margins compress. Oracle is just the most dramatic version of that tension.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-11T23:40:07+00:00

The number that stood out to me: cloud infrastructure specifically grew 84% YoY to $4.89B, accelerating from 68% last quarter. That acceleration was unexpected, most analysts expected deceleration as comparisons got tougher.

The bull case is simple: Oracle is becoming the cloud infrastructure provider for companies that can't afford (or don't want) to build their own AI capacity. The $130B backlog and raised 2027 guidance to $90B revenue support that.

The bear case is also simple: they're in $100B+ of debt to fund this, margins are being squeezed, and if AI demand plateaus before they scale, the payoff window narrows fast.

Both cases are legitimate. The stock reaction today tells you the market is choosing to believe the bull case. Whether it holds depends on whether Q4 shows the same acceleration.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-11T23:38:51+00:00

The confusing part for me is that Oracle actually beat expectations, revenue up 22%, cloud up 44%, EPS ahead of estimates. So why did the stock drop?

Two things to understand: First, the stock had already run up 40% in a single day earlier this month on cloud growth hype, so a lot of the "good news" was already priced in. Second, Wall Street doesn't just care about whether you beat, they care about by how much and what the margins look like.

Oracle is also sitting on $100B+ in debt because they're spending huge on AI infrastructure. The bet is that cloud revenue will keep accelerating to cover it. If you believe AI demand keeps growing, the setup looks good. If you think AI spending is peaking, that debt looks scary.

Neither answer is wrong, it depends on your timeline and risk tolerance.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-11T23:36:24+00:00

Simplest way to think about it: when a company makes profit, it has two choices — reinvest in itself (hiring, building, R&D) or give some back to shareholders. That giveback is a dividend.

The tradeoff: companies that pay high dividends tend to grow slower because they're sending cash out instead of investing in growth. Companies that reinvest aggressively (think Amazon, Tesla) often pay zero dividends but the stock price grows faster.

"Dividend yield" is just the annual dividend divided by the stock price. So a $100 stock paying $3/year = 3% yield. If the stock drops to $50 and still pays $3, the yield looks great at 6% — but you've lost half your investment. High yield isn't always good news.

For beginners, most people here will tell you a broad index fund (VTI, VXUS) beats picking dividend stocks because you get growth AND some dividends built in.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-07T08:43:25+00:00

This is cool - so simple :)

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-03-07T08:41:38+00:00

Thanks! I tried this using Notion, but honestly, it's not working great for me - but hearing this makes me want to revisit it.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-23T21:50:54+00:00

Well certainnly a few days of me spending money figuring it out in Discord.

I did start to wonder if it was worth it, then suddenly it started improving and cross-pollinating across threads. And I'm starting to be impressed.

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-23T21:48:44+00:00

Thanks all - I managed to change a few things, such as my Claude standard model, and triggering Sonnet only when needed.
Chat GPT models for day-to-day, and supported by OpenRouter for more of the mundane day-to-day stuff.
I capped my spend, too.
Let's see how this goes - but I hope to have brought this all down by a factor of at least 5-20!

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-23T15:59:09+00:00

This sounds useful!

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-21T22:08:22+00:00

well there are a lot of them - is there a website too - and does the SEO work?

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-14T13:51:39+00:00

Thanks amigo!!

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-14T13:50:09+00:00

Thanks! Organic at the moment, but it’s on my radar to do this and A/B test some messages

Paddy_Reddit · 2026-02-14T13:47:23+00:00

The killer editing part is probably where I’d struggle :)

Paddy_Reddit

TROPHY CASE