Supercharged Tech Stock Revival Fuels the S&P and Dow
By : U.S. equities still have some runway left for gains, and tech is leading the way. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google’s parent company Alphabet – otherwise known as FANG stocks – are the cat’s meow once again. After shunning the FANG stocks in Q4 2018, investors welcomed the tech leaders back with open arms in Q1 2019, bolstering the market caps of these companies and fueling gains in the S&P 500.
Now it seems that the party in FANG stocks will continue throughout the second quarter. Even though the Dow doesn’t include any of the FANG stocks, it does consider Microsoft and Apple among its components, which positions it to benefit from the ongoing rally in tech.
The S&P 500 index has advanced 14% year-to-date, thanks in large part to FANG stocks. These tech leaders plus Microsoft and Apple, the latter two of which also trade in the, have seen their combined value expand by more than $872 billion year-to-date, almost completely offsetting the $945 billion in market cap that was shed at year-end 2018, the Wall Street Journal points out. In addition to a robust backdrop for tech, the stock market has been buoyed by a combination of attractive interest rates and a U.S. economy that refuses to quit, despite what the bears say.
Tech stocks through April 18, 2019 | Source: WSJ and FactSet
Tech Bull Favors Netflix, Holds Other Tech Stocks
Janus Henderson Portfolio Manager Denny Fish is a tech bull whose investments include Microsoft as well as a couple of the FANG stocks. He told the Journal:
“The climate couldn’t be any more different from last year. Investors are now thinking through a more positive outcome, whether it’s or the Fed.”
Fish especially likes even though shares are already up more than 40% year-to-date.
Netflix’s value has ballooned by more than 40% year-to-date. | Source: Yahoo Finance
Second Quarter Expectations
. : U.S. Equities Show Relative Strength
— TradeTalks (@TradeTalks)
Dow and S&P 500 to Benefit
Technical analysis research firm Nasdaq Dorsey Wright is touting U.S. equities as the place to be in 2019. Jay Gragnani, the firm’s head of research, says he “[continues] to see growth as a dominant theme in the market” including individual tech stocks, not to mention the Nasdaq 100. He goes on to say that the tech sector has now “eclipsed its 2018 highs.” Nonetheless, there appears to be more runway for tech to move even higher.
Investors might want to thank the Federal Reserve for the expected rally in tech stocks in 2019. With fewer places to hunt for growth and income, tech stocks are especially appealing, which bodes well for both the S&P 500 and the Dow if pressure from non-tech related stocks doesn’t get in the way.
“Forkcoins,” or “Initial Fork Offerings” — alternative coins that “split off” from bitcoin — are all the rage right now.
The latest trend in the cryptocurrency world was kicked off last summer with the launch of Cash
. The bitcoin offshoot is a top 3 cryptocurrency by market cap according to websites like . Perhaps even more importantly, it is now offered by some of the world’s biggest bitcoin exchanges and wallet providers, including Coinbase, Bitstamp and Blockchain. The second bitcoin offshoot, Gold, also claimed a top 10 cryptocurrency spot seemingly out of nothing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, a series of new forkcoins has been announced over the past couple of weeks, ranging from Diamond to to and many more.
Since this week, anyone can easily create their own forkcoin with the click of a few buttons. lets users tweak bitcoin’s parameters and other properties to fork into a unique bitcoin offshoot by simply filling them in on a user-friendly website.
The service is created by a pseudonymous developer who simply goes by the name “One,” who is assisted by “Two,” Forkgen’s “social media intern.”
Two told bitcoin Magazine that the service intends to democratize the creation of bitcoin forks.
“Even leading developers have shown it is too hard to create forks of the bitcoin blockchain without making critical errors,” Two said, referring to the recent SegWit2x launch. “Forkgen creates a level playing field where anyone can easily create working forks. Then it reduces to a much simpler problem of marketing your new altcoin. More people are good at that part.”
To test the service, bitcoin Magazine decided to create our own Initial Fork Offering.
Right now, Forkgen lets users pick a name and three-letter-ticker for their forkcoin, as well as a block weight limit and a block height for the fork to take place. Additionally, Forkgen users can choose whether they want to implement replay protection to ensure no one accidentally loses their forkcoin. Further, they can opt for a mining difficulty reset to make new coins easier to mine at first. Forkgen users can also pick the letters and numbers to start the coin addresses and private keys with — and they can decide how much they want to tilt the bitcoin logo to distinguish it from the original, like bitcoin Cash did.
Given these tools, we designed our forkcoin: “bitcoin Magazine Cash,” with the ticker “BMG.” We opted for strong replay protection and a difficulty reset, to make the coin as usable as possible. The bitcoin Magazine Cash protocol will have a block weight limit of 20120501, an ode to bitcoin Magazine’s launch date (May 2012), which is also five times bigger than bitcoin’s limit. Addresses will start with a B or an M, and private keys with an i. Finally, the logo will be tilted 45 degrees counterclockwise, for no particular reason.
bitcoin Magazine Cash forked away from bitcoin at block 500400: a couple of hours before publication of this article. Anyone who held bitcoin private keys at 12 PM UTC on December 21, 2017, has now been awarded their free BMG. It should be possible to claim these coins with the bitcoin Magazine Cash software and your bitcoin private keys — though we don’t actually recommend this (for reasons explained below).
As of yet, it unclear whether any exchanges will support the fork, but Two suggests that all of them really must:
“Exchanges should be obligated to split and distribute all arbitrary fork coins despite the systems expense and security risk. Who are they to decide what makes one fork more legitimate than any other?”
Interactive Performance Art
Although the service should work, on its website Forkgen describes itself as “interactive performance art.”
A play on , a now-defunct altcoin generator, Forkgen emphasizes how easy it is to create bitcoin forks, that — like the thousands of altcoins out there — in the end are of questionable relevance. Where Coingen was created during the first big altcoin boom of 2013 and 2014 that birthed bitcoincodebase forks such as Dogecoin, Vertcoin and Viacoin, the recent trend of forkcoins is really the same thing, the Forkgen project seems to suggest.
Two ardently denied Forkgen is something akin to joke.
“This is VERY SERIOUS. Read the FAQ,” he said. “Forkgen is the embodiment of Satoshi’s True Vision™ where if big blocks are good for scaling then many chains are even better.”
Instructions and Disclaimers
Binaries for bitcoin Magazine Cash (BMG) can be downloaded here for , and . However, bitcoin Magazine cannot in any way guarantee the authenticity of these binaries that were provided by Forkgen — nor does Forkgen. Download and run the software at your own risk; and keep in mind that exposing private keys that hold value to untrusted software is a particularly bad idea.
Additionally, keep in mind that bitcoin Magazine merely created this software as an experiment; we have no intention of actually maintaining it, nor will we support bitcoin Magazine Cash in any other way.
Want to create your own bitcoin fork? With the coupon code “GreatLeaderCraig”, bitcoin Magazine readers get 50% off for the next 6 days. (Make sure to double check that this discount is really subtracted before making the payment; the Forkgen website was having some issues at the time of writing this article.)
Finally, bitcoin Magazine does not endorse using this service: We cannot guarantee the authenticity of Forkgen or its software in any way.
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