I'm closing out the year with my friends Kelly Evans and Tyler Mathisen. We covered Chinese retailers, auto parts, and Fintech. Let's break it down.

Video Length: 00:02:57

First we have Alibaba (BABA). Oh the days of hot Chinese e-commerce stocks, I remember the 2010s fondly. Today the Chinese economy is limping along even with unprecedented stimulus this fall. BABA's problem is legion. They are selling off their department store assets at a huge loss to focus on core offerings like cloud.

Wait, you want to compete in the AI space with AWS (AMZN), Azure (MSFT), and Google Cloud (GOOGL)? I would not.

Next is O'Reilly! (ORLY). This sleeply little auto parts store is actually a 70 billion market cap category killer. You may see a lot of Auto Zone stores around, but ORLY gets half it's revenue from professional services - think pro mechanics, body shops, muni vehicle pools. That is where the 15% growth is coming from. Along with aggressive stock buyback programs over the years, it's a high multiple boring firm that warrants some investigation if you are into the Peter Lynch "boring is profitable" thing. It takes courage to be boring.

Lastly, Upstart (UPST). For a little Wall Street insider folklore, a well know trader (known for selling get rich quick books and hocking option tip sheets to degenerate gamblers) famously was doing a CNBC hit discussing Upstart and the host asked "what does Upstart do?" - and this dumb @ss didn't know of course because he's a charlatan, but then proceeded to pretend the mic or audio was having issues. You can google it! The firm is one of these firms that gets in between the consumer and the lender (i.e. a leach), and claims they use AI or "technology" to quickly approve about 89% of everyone who asks for money. then, Upstart sells the garbage loans to about three lenders that make up 80% of the loan buyers (not concentrated at all!). Upstart keeps about 16% of the loans - read between the lines, those are the toxic waste they can't sell to anyone. I would say, how about we make a website that claims the same thing - approve everyone, and probably we would end up keeping 15-20% of the loans, but we would not have the expense of all the tech to underwrite... needless to say I'm not into it. I'd rather buy a big bank with the tailwind of less regulation, and stable rates next year.

Well, that's a wrap. It's been a great year!

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