Market Update for January:
MAMAA Mia! Here we go again …

Stock markets can be emotional places and those who are able to remove emotion from their investment decisions are the ones who most often succeed. The key to gaining long term capital growth is looking at the quality of the underlying business and its potential to grow in the future.

Currently the largest of these MAMAA components is Apple, and what a giant it is. Despite recent falls in its share price, the business still increased its revenue in 2022 by US$29 billion to a whopping US$394 billion. To put that into perspective, that is nearly US$45 million an hour. For the time it’s taken you to read this update, based on 2022 revenue, Apple would have made US$3 million – and that number will grow this year, and the year after and the year after that … you get the picture.

Facebook (Meta), despite its fall in share price, gained another 39 million users in 2022. That is approximately the population of Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland combined.

The driver for this growth is developing economies. Living in the world we do, it’s difficult to comprehend that 36% of the world’s population, nearly 3 billion people, still have no internet access.

This will continue to change as urbanization continues and Frontier markets become Emerging, and in turn Emerging markets become Developed. Those living in rural areas who currently have no internet access will soon have access. Conversely, the number of people who are currently online who choose to disconnect can probably be counted on one hand.

So who will benefit from this? MAMAA. All these companies developing world market share will grow as more and more people get online and clamor for these tools.