network. Welcome back to Morning Trade Live. Let's talk some tech. Oracle fresh leader for markets after earnings. Apple kind of a fresh laggard here. Down again today. Joining us Robert Cantwell founder and portfolio manager at Up Holdings Investment Management. We're going to do some trading looking at the options here in a moment. Robert let's talk some Oracle earnings first. Seems like a fresh transition of AI leadership into the cloud. What do you think. Well Oracle's done a heck of a job copying the Microsoft playbook here. And you know what we saw at the beginning of this year were companies like Microsoft and Meta that were being rewarded for the acceleration in AI investments that they were making from ramping up their CapEx budgets. And now, six months later, Oracle has been able to reposition enough of its revenue to tell a really big cloud story. And at the same time, Larry's bragging about acres of Nvidia GPUs. If that's a place where you're excited for your money to be going, he's helping. He's helping you spend it there. You know, one of the key things that we track is CapEx as a percent of revenue for these companies. And Amazon has quickly become the most responsible of this entire group, sitting around 10%. Microsoft has jumped to 20%, and Oracle is around 23%. So $0.25 of every dollar that the that the company is bringing in now they're spending on on building more infrastructure. So if you like their competitive position that's good. If you have concerns about them being the fourth player in that market, we're we're a little hesitant about what the future return on invested capital is that that Larry is going to be able to collect on that. So is it at this point, the market looking for someone that has maybe been living in the shadow, but not at the front of the train, because the valuation for Oracle seems more reasonable than some of the other stuff out there. I mean, it's basically in line. Well now it's a little bit different after earnings, but basically a little more expensive than the stock market like 25 times forward. But then some of these other companies are even more expensive. So is this like a catch up trade where investors are going. All right. Maybe Oracle's fourth, but it's still a pretty impressive fourth. It's a great question. And this this is where the accounting versus the reality can can sometimes you know really come into play. What I care about is how good is your platform that you're attracting new customers to your business, that you didn't previously have. And what Oracle has done in the position that they're in is they've done a great job of doing well enough with their tech to not lose their customers to Amazon. Microsoft or Google. And thank God that they've been replatforming quickly enough to win those customers transition them into cloud, and be able to reclassify their revenue to show that they're part of this future trend that's happening here. But I have yet to hear anything on the back customer calls that Oracle is winning RFPs against Microsoft, against Amazon in selling their cloud services to fortune 500 companies. So Oracle is doing everything it needs to do as a public company of transitioning. And it's better that they're this is very much like the SAS transition that we experienced ten years ago with companies like Adobe. It's great long term that Oracle has been able to do this with their existing customer base to rebuild, and they deserve a higher multiple for doing it. We're just still a little hesitant about participating in a number four player. In the market where you've got the big guys just spending so much money trying to compete you out of it. So that's that's where we're at on it now. Again, we think management's doing exactly all the right things, but there's still the number four player. No matter how you cut it up. What will you be looking for to know if there's any overspending or if they're not getting the reward for what they're putting in. Is that going to be just from a pure growth element? Obviously Oracle's kind of got some lagging. Legacy businesses, but they're pretty overwhelmed now by all this cloud growth. So what would tell you that all right. This is still a play that, you know has some proving you'd like to see a really marquee rip and replace deal happen. You know, something similar happened in payments category a year ago where, eBay was working with Adyen. And then they said, hey, you know, Braintree is good enough now that we're actually going to rip out Adyen and we're going to work with Braintree here, and that all of a sudden changed the entire market's perception of where Braintree sat in the competitive stack against stripe and Adyen. And now you've got a three player market instead of a two player market. And I think that's that. Something like that would really help, launch Oracle from being the fourth chaser to a little bit more of a disruptor to the larger incumbents, because if they're able to get one of those headline name deals off of Microsoft or off of Amazon, then I think investors really start to look at Oracle differently and arguably would command a premium multiple since they're the smaller company with higher growth in front of it. Wow. All right, understood, a pretty good argument. A pretty good looking chart, though, for a fourth player as well. Robert, hang with us, I want your apple take in a second. Tom, looking at the options here, I mean, look, no matter how you slice it, it's a big, big move on the chart. And it's a beautiful chart. Over the last year, how do you take that into account? Hitting all time highs. You know I start looking at things like hey the stock's up over 40% now year to date. How do you want to play this. Well if you miss the run up maybe you can offset some of your costs with an option strategy an overlay type of strategy. You're not going to chase it. No? Well, you can chase it. This strategy you're buying the shares a covered call strategy. So for every 100 shares of stock you buy, you sell an out of the money call I looked at for every 100 shares of Oracle you buy selling out of the money call. I looked at the October 18th, the monthly cycle, the 165 strike call. So you're giving yourself plenty of roadway to the upside on this one. So for every 100 shares you buy, sell one call against it. And you can pay a debit roughly of about $156 on that, maybe a little bit lower than that. The stock did move just off of session highs here. But that debit you pay is also your break even. So you're buying the shares at a discount because you're selling that upside call in there on the 165 strike. That gives you some roadway up to where it balances out as far as profitability. But as you get closer to expiration over the next 38 days, you can roll or adjust that short strike on a week to week or month to month basis. That creates credits, that increases potential profitability, lowers your break even point. So this is one of those longer term strategies where, hey, as long as I'm owning the shares, I can collect that 1% dividend yield. It's not a lot, but it's a little. And then usually typically we have some higher implied volatility levels on those out of the money calls, which allows you to collect more credits on those rolls or adjustments throughout the life of the trade. So this might be the way to do it a little bit more conservative, but maybe we've already seen the run up. Maybe consolidation is warranted. All right, all right. Fair enough. Okay. Like it cover call into Oracle, okay, Robert, give us a quick thought on Apple here as the stock's been kind of struggling a little bit around this glow time event with no I updates. Yeah the EU you know forcing Apple to pay the $13 billion number. That's really what's driving the stock right now. It's less the muted reaction to the lack of updates I think there's a ton of updates I'm upgrading my iPhone over this bigger phone bigger battery faster processor same price. You know, for all the folks that are complaining about Apple not delivering innovation, Apple now has or is on the verge of having products in the market that are actually going to, permit the use of all of these AI services that these companies have been investing tens of billions of dollars in. So when you think about the gatekeeper to innovation, that's exactly what Apple's position is in the market here. And thankfully, we now as as users are going to have access to technology that we didn't previously have and it's not there yet. And the other thing that people are complaining about is that there wasn't any sort of AI talk, because those features aren't going to be available for a couple of months, but that's just patience. And this company is the one that is going to bring us a lot of that technology that right now we don't have our hands on. So I think if anything, this was one of the strongest Apple releases that we've seen in years, given given some of the features that are that are now forthcoming and, you know, all the other companies that we can talk more about, I if you want to go there. But the market is beginning to sort of separate itself a lot like we've seen with the hyperscalers, but only going to go there if you want to, well, we got to jump 33 times forward, though, Apple patience. I don't know how much more market's got need to see that AI stuff trading most expensive pretty much ever Robert. Good thoughts though. Appreciate your time. Thank you Robert Cantwell Up Holdings investment management. Tom, give me an Apple trade real quick Robert likes the unveil. Yeah maybe some consolidation maybe a grind higher. But you mentioned that valuation is pretty high. So with the event passed right. The fine from Ireland, you know from the EU already in place. Looked at a call calendar to the upside here on the 225 strike. So going out to October 38th days to expiration by the 225 call sell that same 225 call in the September 20th monthly cycle that expires in ten days. So you got a one month wide call calendar on the 225 strike, paying roughly about a $2.80 debit. There's your risk on it, but look at the range that you have between about 217 on the downside and about 235 on the upside. On this one. So if you expect it to kind of grind higher, maybe remain consolidated. This is the type of strategy that takes advantage of it. You're paying less because implied volatility implied volatility levels have come down post the event. So this might be the way to play it. And you get some roles in there that can create credits and increase profitability on this one. But you want it to be at or near that. 225 got a nice, decent range in this one hour. All right. We