Welcome back, everyone. We have a lot to get into, we had some news over the weekend, a lot of news. In fact, on one of my biggest Holdings, which is Apple, Apple still the top holding right now because it's had a lot of gains. I'm currently at fifty, four thousand dollars in this company, with 19,500 of it being gains. Now, Apple had their Apple event, where they introduced all their new devices with their small. Iterative changes changes like, the dynamic Island.
Now that little Notch at the top of the screen, it's Useful. It can actually do some things. These little changes to many are being mocked like apples. Not innovating the company's reached a plateau. It's not going anywhere. All these type of flat arguments I'm just going to say it right here. The commentary that I hear from the majority of investors are wrong on Apple. There's simply wrong. They believe the company has plateaued, it's hit a peak, it doesn't have much room for
growth apples. Just an older company that's matured and it doesn't really have anywhere to go from here. These comments from investors. The Apple has already matured and it has nowhere else to go is missing the forest from the trees. They're missing the main picture here and why this company eventually we'll get to over $200 per share. So in this video, I'll be laying out the case of why Apple will get above $200 a share.
Now, I also just recently had some big news Vici raised their dividend by 8%. I'll be giving my thoughts on that as Vici is one of the biggest Holdings in my portfolio and fact right now, it's my second largest holding so I'll be going over this dividend. Raise news and You know what? I think of it and then we also have the subject of inflation to go over tomorrow. The CPI readings from August are going to come out and that will dominate the new cycle for the
rest of the week. Everyone will be talking about inflation. Now the news media takes a very short term view on this subject. They say falling gas prices are raising. Hopes that inflation is slowing down. That's the news right now. Inflation might be coming down. So what do you know, the market right now is going up, this is how my yah pick the market is in the short term, the new Media is focused on day by day week by week and month by month. They're not focused on a
multi-year period. They don't take an eagle eyes, view on anything. But on the Joseph Carlson show, we do take an eagle eyes. You, if we go back five months, I came out with a video that was kind of a contrarian video most people at the time, we're worried about inflation, going up, and up, and up. Because at the time, it was only going up. And I came out with a video saying that we hit Peak inflation, we already hit it and inflation's going. NG to go down.
Here's why? And I want to go revisit that case because I think this video will prove to be correct. So as always, we have a lot to jump into in this episode. Let's go ahead and start off with a quick portfolio update and then we'll jump into the Apple news. Now this is my portfolio, the passive income account, it has three hundred and sixty six thousand dollars of value, 43 thousand dollars in gains and it is a dividend growth portfolio.
So a decent part of the overall returns is going to be the compounding effect of these great companies paying me dividends. And then, these dividends being reinvested into sometimes different companies that offer better value but are also dividend-paying companies that's the compounding life cycle of this portfolio. Great companies that pay dividends the dividends buy more shares of different great companies that pay dividends.
Now, one of the most important companies in this portfolio is Apple and apple had their major event last week and I want to jump in and give my quick take on this event. The first thing that I want to say is that investors on Apple, the majority of investors that I see cover. This stock and commentate on this stock, and different people on Reddit, and Twitter, and social media, and YouTube, most
of them are wrong. They're dead wrong on Apple, and they're missing the forest from the trees, they focus on these little things like this thing right here. This island that changes and now it's Dynamic. And they mock it saying the apples no longer an Innovative company is just doing these little incremental, iterative adjustments to its phone and it's basically flattened out. There's no room for the phone to mature or grow. Any more at this point investors commentary on the Apple watch
Ultra this new more rugged. Big extreme Apple watch was just as erroneous investors looked at this and said who would pay $800 for a rugged Apple watch and this isn't as good as the Garmin or name off some other extreme watch that's been doing it for a while longer. They're doing these direct comparisons from watch to watch. Investors are looking at this
all wrong. I heard a lot of the same chatter around the Apple earpod Pro 2's the even though they have a new case and you can track the case as better, charging better noise cancelling. All these little iterative adjustments, most investors take away is that this wasn't that impressive of an event. There wasn't anything that blew them away and the apples not really innovating at the same Pace that they used to. The company is matured, its kind of washed up at this point.
Apple's no longer the Innovative young iconic company that they To be and many investors in their series of incorrect assumptions, go so far as to say that Apple shouldn't be trading at $160 per share. It shouldn't be trading on a 24, P/E ratio. The company should be knocked back down to a 15 PE back down to $100 per share. All of this is wrong investors. Here are wrong on Apple, and I'll lay out and explained very clearly why they're wrong.
First of all, the complaints about Innovation, let's just revisit some investing He's here, stocks do not go up because of innovation. That is not a reason that stocks go up in price if a company's more Innovative, it does not mean the stock will go up. So people saying that Apple's not innovating enough there for their stock. Price should go down are making judgments based off of false premises stocks. Do not go up because of innovation, and they don't go down because of a lack of
innovation. Innovation is not a driver of stock prices. If Innovation was the primary driver of stock prices, Then why is the ark Innovation ETF the focus is on investing in all the most Innovative companies in the world down. 62 percent over the past trailing year. These so-called Innovative companies are innovating at a faster Pace than the rest of the market yet. This is the worst performing Fund in the past year in the
entire fund management industry. Well, again, the answers simple stocks don't go up because of innovation, stocks, go up because of money, because of earnings. And because of free cash flow, profits Drive stocks up. Upward. Not Innovation. And one thing. Apples, incredibly good at even better than Innovation is making money last year. Apple made ninety two point nine, five billion dollars in
free cash flow. That's money left on the table after paying for all their Capital expenditures for Apple to do whatever they want with. And the company does put this money to use in most cases they do it's called BuyBacks, which is buying their own stock. So, that's the first problem with the Apple bears with the people thinking the stock is
going to get cut. Half the problem with this assumption is that you'd have to have a lot of people selling the stock and not a lot of people buying the stock. We know that there's going to be one big buyer of Apple stock all the time and that buyer is Apple. They are chunking away at their share count, every single year. Lowering, the amount of shares outstanding apple is the biggest
buyer of their stock. So apples already a highly profitable company that any time the stock dips, they can simply buy it back themselves further, putting up. Upwards pressure on the stock price, but that isn't the biggest reason that these Apple naysayers are wrong. There's another thing I want to focus on that again, is left out of the conversation all the time. When it comes to Apple, see the problem is, anytime an Apple event happens, everyone focuses on the hardware.
They focus on the actual devices like the new watch coming out, the new form factor for the phone. There's a new camera, the new are pods. They focus on all the new devices and that isn't the biggest growth driver for apple and Apples Revenue has been flat for the past year. It hasn't really been growing over all the past. Couple of quarters. It's been it mostly around the same area. Apple Skeptics will say that. The company's growth is basically done the company's reached maturity.
It's going to be this old kind of Boomer stock that just pays a dividend and it won't really have any strong Revenue growth, the prom with looking at things through this lens of total revenue without breaking down. The revenue is not all revenue is the same some revenues worth a lot more than other Revenue for example, Walmart's Revenue last year was over half a trillion dollars, it was five hundred and seventy two billion
dollars. This company has massive amounts of Revenue, but yet a company called Microsoft is worth over five times what Walmart is despite having less than half the revenue, how can a company? Have less Revenue be worth five times as much. It's because of margins, Microsoft's revenue is more valuable than Walmart's revenue and likewise we can actually look at Apples Revenue, segment breakdown. Apple earns Revenue through different business lines and those revenues are of different
value. The most valuable part of apples revenue is the highest margin portion of their revenue called Services. Services includes AppleCare Apple music. Apple news, Apple Fitness, Apple TV, plus all of their app store sales, all of the stuff that's completely digital. That has relatively speaking, no, marginal cost of reproduction. These are things that cost nothing to really make but they can sell it to as many people as they want. Digital sales has High-margin revenue.
And this is a portion of Apple. That's growing at a very brisk Pace over the past. Four quarters, their service Revenue has grown at above 12% per year, that is very fast growth, and a consistent basis, that's faster than most companies. And this has gotten to a point where just last quarter was Nineteen point seven billion dollars up. 12 percent year-over-year this is just their service revenue and what is driving all this service
Revenue growth? Will it subscriptions the reoccurring Revenue that Apple's working on growing? And I would say that they're doing a pretty good job. If Morgan Stanley's research on this subject is anywhere close to correct. They estimate the apples growing. Their service Revenue subscribers. The amount of subscribers by 30 to 40 million. New subscribers, every single quarter last quarter. They estimated that they had 860 million subscribers. This chart is growing fairly
quickly. It looks like a growth company and this is the most important type of growth that the company could have. If the He was growing their hardware sales and their subscribers were going down. That would spell trouble for Apple. They'd be going in the wrong direction. That's not what's happening their phone and device sales are going along as normal, but more importantly, their subscription
revenue is growing. So when you see investors, look at the total revenue for apple and say that, the company's growth is slowing their top line, revenue slowing down and they've obviously plateaued because they're not innovating. There's multiple wrong assumptions there. First of all Innovation doesn't drive stock price appreciation. Prophets Drive, stock price appreciation, apples, top line, revenue is slowing. That's correct. But their most important form of Revenue.
The highest margin portion is continuing to grow at a very high pace and that is their subscription Services. That's the reason that we can look at different ratios from Apple like their gross margins and even though they kept the prices, the same during a time of high inflation, they will continue to keep gross margins of 42 to 43 percent without increasing price. Isis at all. That is because of service Revenue subscription revenue and higher efficiency with their products.
Apple stock isn't going to hit two hundred dollars because they're the most Innovative company in the world. The reason that Apple will hit two hundred dollars per share is because they're going to make more money than any other company in the world. So as of right now, I do have a heavy bed on this company I could sell and take profits. But I'm going to continue to hold it until I see the story
change right now. I consider Apple to be a consumer defensive company like, Kellogg's or Oh soup, but they have better economics, they lock and customers. They keep them in their ecosystem and they eventually slowly push them into subscriptions where they get very high margin Revenue. That's the story of apple. And so far, I don't see that changing now, there's always a chance with every bad I make, and every company invest in that, I could be wrong. So, maybe in this case, the
Bears are right. And Apple stock will go down to a hundred dollars a share, but I don't think that's going to happen in my opinion. My thoughts on this and where my He is I think the stocks going to $200 per share. So as of right now, I'm staying invested. Now, we do have to talk about Vici here for a minute because we had some great news from this company. This has been one of the stories that I think has been one of the cleanest investing stories in my portfolio.
Meaning the company operationally has been fantastic. The leadership has executed perfectly, in my opinion, they haven't made really any seeming mistakes. The stock price is appreciated. The dividends have grown the operating. In the company's profits, have grown. And just recently, they announced an eight point, three percent increase to their dividend bringing it to 39 cents per share per quarter from 36 cents per share per quarter.
Now, I know if you're new to investing an eight point three percent increase doesn't seem like anything fantastic, but that is a substantial passive income increase for doing nothing. I literally did nothing for this stock to pay me more. And these profits aren't just because the company's paying out a higher and higher amount. It's because the company is actually growing their rents.
They're growing their income and then the returning that from the company's, paying them rent to me the shareholder. So when I look at Vici, it meets all the qualifications. I look for for a dividend Growth Company. It pays me a growing dividend on an incremental basis. It has stability, I think it has a wide mode, it has great leadership and the stock is continuing to increase the dividend over time without me. Even reinvesting. Right now I have 42 thousand dollars in this company.
That's around 1240. Is so I am heavily invested in Vici. It's my second largest holding because of the appreciation, the company has had, and I've really enjoyed the dividends that it's paying. Here's the company's dividends over time. The first one was $77. That's the first month that I was buying into the company. Heavily. I made a trip to Vegas. I saw how completely packed it
was. I looked at different opportunities to invest there because I wanted to own a part of it. And that's when I started doing my initial research back in July 8th, I bought in heavily in the company buying 20. A thousand dollars worth.
And then the more research I did, the more I invested in the company, even though the stock price at this time October, it started to Trend downwards and I was receiving those, those criticisms on YouTube, I continue to invest in the company at one point over doubling my position, the dividends went from two hundred and sixty two dollars per quarter to four hundred dollars then 406 and then the last one was for 45. Now I've done the math on what
this 8% increase. Will be and it will add around two hundred dollars per year to my Vici position. So roughly around $50 per quarter. So, now without me doing anything with my share count being the exact same with, no drip, no reinvestment. My dividend will go from $445 to around 500 dollars per quarter. That is a significant amount of income from one company to thousand dollars per year from Vici alone. So even though I'm not actively buying Vici right now and when
they pee A dividend. I don't reinvest it back into beachy, I'm very happy about this. Raise that 8% increase. Bumping the dividend up to $500, makes it so that every three months I get to pick out what company, my portfolio deserves, this Capital, which one is presently the most undervalued and that further compounds, the portfolio. And in terms of VG's, dividend raises and my expectations. This is well in line with my expectations, the company is a dividend grower.
They've grown their dividend every single year, since 2007, 15. Since they first started, I think they'll do the same next year. A seven to ten percent dividend raise. So thank you, Ed Pitonyak and the team at Vici. I appreciate your hard work. Now, moving on we have to talk about inflation and I'll give you my prediction of the inflation reading tomorrow as well as a call.
I made earlier this year. Now, before we jump into this news on inflation, I have to give a shout out for today's sponsor, which is the Joseph Carlson patreon. If you have not tried out this patreon, I promise you're missing out the patreon includes qual trim, which is a website I Developed with a previous co-worker. That's a suite of software for investors. One of the big features on this is qual term, insights. It shows you all the trending stocks of the day, you can plug
in any company. See all the fundamentals, displayed on a single page. You can blow up any of these graphs and it's updated instantly after their earnings report, we also include a summary of the company and related news, articles and Analysis on every company called room. Also includes the dip finder, which shows you the trends over time of what companies are in a
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There's a lot to this software suite and we're constantly improving it and you also get access to a community of over 2,400 members where we have channels dedicated. Dated the discussing breaking news episode discussions on my show, we have an AMA portion where you can ask me any question directly. And we have over seventy five episodes of exclusive content. Most of these being around an hour long. So there's a lot of video content as well. So if you haven't already, join
the over 2,400 members. Try out the patreon. It's $10 a month with a free trial so there's zero risk to it. You can try it out for free. Now, getting back to this, major news, we have inflation data coming in for August tomorrow, that's when we find out. What inflation was like last month? It's trailing data, but it's still very important. It affects the interest rates. It affects the feds actions. And ultimately, it affects Equity stock prices.
So this is going to be the big piece of news that investors talk about for the rest of the week. The inflation data will be on the front page of Barons and Wall Street Journal and financial times and everywhere you look and I want to give a couple predictions and overall give more of an eagle eye view of what direction I think
inflation is going now. One thing that I'll mention is that the market overall investors and especially the news media are very myopic meaning that they don't take an eagle eye view. They look at everything from month to month week to week, and day-to-day their short-term Focus, because that's what generates clicks and money.
But if you actually back up and take an eagle eye view, we can see a clear Trend in the way that inflation is turning out, this is what inflation looks like, overall, this is the core CPI, which is when you rule out some of the more All tol portions of inflation. And you look at the core basket of consumer goods for inflation. This is what it looks like since January of 2020, it was normal at that. Point going from 2 percent down to 1.3 percent.
Then, of course, we had covid, it actually went down a little bit when covid first started, but then quickly, when the stimulus came out and Supply Chains, Got disrupted and everything happened. Inflation started to spike going up to three percent, three point, eight percent 4 percent, and then climb, Among all the way to six point five percent in March of 2022 inflation, hit its peak which was six point.
Five percent. Now at this time, inflation was only going up if we erase the right half of this graph after March, or 2022, there was nothing but seven consecutive quarters of inflation going up. It looked like the future is pretty Grim. But I made a pretty contrarian video at that time saying that I thought it was the peak. I thought that inflation was going to go down. After this point, the video that I released in March of this year
was called inflation. Is going down here is why the thumbnail of it said we hit the peak. A lot of people say that these type of videos are clickbait or that I'm just trying to get clicks there. But what I actually said in the title and the thumbnail of this video were my thoughts on where inflation was going. Now my thought process in arguments in this video that I released in March, we're pretty simple. I thought that inflation has ran up to the max extent commodity
prices were coming down. Whew. Oil prices were starting to crack and the overall year-over-year comps for inflation the previous year. We're going to become much easier based off of last year's core inflation data side out. There's a very good chance that inflation would start to go down and that's really what we started to see. Just to put this in perspective, here's what the call looked like. This is when I said that inflation at hit a peak, it was
exactly on the highest month. Now I don't say this to brag and I know that this is me highlighting one. Correct call that I've had. But this is a pretty significant call. All highlight when I get things wrong when I make mistakes, but I'm also going to highlight when I make a correct call, this is the exact month so far that core inflation. Hit its peak every single, subsequent months, since March 20, 22 inflation has come down incrementally even by just a small amount.
Now there's different analysis and projections on what the data will be released. Tomorrow. Most people believe that the overall inflation rate will be around 8% and that quorum. Inflation. This number here will go back to 6.1% Soul actually tick back upwards a little bit. That's where the consensus lies. But there are some people that think that it's going to continue to go down at least the core inflation.
So we'll have to wait to see what happens tomorrow, but even if it goes up a little bit in August, I still think overall most of these projections are correct over the upcoming six months inflation and core inflation. Should tick downward. If that happens, it'll give the More leverage to be able to do what they want.
They may not have to raise rates as aggressively as they're projecting right now and if the inflation data comes in underneath expectations for both overall inflation and core inflation, I could see investors really liking that news and stocks going up for another day. We had a green day today in anticipation of the inflation data if it does do. Well, if inflation comes down quite a bit, I think we'll see another big green day. So that's my prediction in the
short term. Nobody knows for sure. Sure, but I think overall inflation will continue to tick downward and I think overall my prediction that inflation peaked in March will prove to be correct. Now, that's all for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and subscribe. If you haven't already, I'll have more commentary on upcoming news, and I'm going to have more research on different companies,
that I'm actively buying. So if you want to see some in-depth research on these different dividend-paying companies, make sure you subscribed with the Bell icon,