Alibaba Stock Price probably will continue to rise in 2020

Alibaba Stock Price can probably continue its powerful rise in 2020. Most likely, it can last a long time. It has been an interesting run for Alibaba (阿里巴巴) (NYSE:BABA). The trade negotiations between USA and China really weighed on the stock. The success of the company is impressive. Alibaba is up almost 50% over the past year. This good performance is similar to names like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG).

Think about the risks. Consider this, the Nasdaq Composite fell about 20% from peak to trough in the 4^th quarter. It bottomed about this time last year. These stocks were not going very high a year ago. BABA is actually only up about 22% over the past 24 months. It certainly seems this stock can have a good future in 2020 and 2021. Alibaba is an interesting stock to invest in. But also keep in mind, USA investors are more familiar with Google, Apple or Amazon.

Alibaba (阿里巴巴) is China's biggest online commerce company. It is also big all over the world. It has 3 main sites - Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com. They have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more internet business than any other e-commerce company.

Amazon has had a good year. It seems Alibaba has had an even better one. It is now within distance of surpassing Amazon as the world's biggest e-commerce company by market cap. Amazon is up 30 percent this year. Alibaba's stock has nearly doubled as both companies race to a $500 billion in value.

As of 19 December 2018, Alibaba's market cap stood at US$352.28 billion. In January 2018, Alibaba became the 2nd Asian company to break the US$500 billion valuation mark, after its competitor Tencent.

Amazon and Alibaba each have distinct features that make them purely e-commerce companies. However, their respective business models differ greatly. Amazon is a massive retailer for both new and used goods. In a different way, Alibaba operates as a middleman between buyers and sellers.

Alibaba is certainly able to leverage on the large number of customers on the platform. It also makes use of advertisement, keyword bidding and customer's data for profit. Alibaba's interesting accurate credit model helps to develop a trustworthy important reputation among customers.

Just like other e-commerce platforms of Alibaba, Aliexpress makes money by charging commissions as a percentage of the transaction value of goods sold. The commission range from 5% to 8% of the transaction value. However, Aliexpress also charges a fixed $1500 + store fee to start or change the store on the platform.

Alibaba is for B2B sales. Taobao is for small business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer sales (similar to eBay). Tmall is for B2C sales.

Paypal can be used on Alibaba. Payments can be made using PayPal, Visa, MasterCard or bank transfer. The announcement that Alibaba is accepting PayPal as a payment method is certainly notable given the competition between the two companies, as well as with PayPal's parent, eBay.

Altaba Inc. was formerly known as Yahoo! Inc. Altaba Inc. was a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company based in New York City. It was formed from the remains of Yahoo! Inc. after Verizon acquired Yahoo's Internet business. Verizon completed its acquisition on June 13, 2017. Verizon put the assets under a new subsidiary named Yahoo!

Since Altaba was delisted from the Nasdaq in October, the company’s value has increased. It’s possible that since there is no quoted market for the company’s stock and brokerage client statements may show no value for Altaba. Not long ago, Altaba (ticker AABA) shares traded in an over-the-counter market at about $20.50, up from its closing price of $19.63 on Oct. 2, its last day of Nasdaq trading.

In April 2019, the Yahoo spin-out Altaba sold its entire Alibaba stake and closed down. Altaba was a Yahoo spin-out created to house Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba. The entity existed as a proxy to Alibaba.

Yahoo! is now owned by Verizon Media. The original Yahoo! Company was founded in 1994. Yahoo was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s.

AliExpress is an online retail service based in China that is owned by the Alibaba Group. AliExpress can certainly be compared to eBay. Sellers are independent and use the platform to offer products to buyers. AliExpress started as a business-to-business buying and selling portal.

Baidu Tieba (百度贴吧) is the largest Chinese communication platform hosted by Chinese search engine company Baidu. It is an interesting online community that strongly integrates Baidu's search engine.

Lyft Stock Price sinks somewhat lower

Lyft Stock Price is at $46.28 on December 19, 2019. Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) stock sinks somewhat lower. Monday night’s close was at $47.39. Many analysts believe that LYFT has a better path to profitability than UBER. Lyft is now at about 35% below its $72 IPO price. The stock bottomed out at $37 in mid-October. It has recovered quite a bit since then.

Lyft, the ride sharing company, continues to grow. However, it is losing a lot of money. Its rival is Uber (NYSE:UBER). It is hard for these companies to raise prices, because they are competing against each other. Lyft certainly has grown revenue. However, it continues to lose money. There are not many signs for future profitability. Investors are hopeful that Lyft can become profitable in the future.

Here's something funny. Lyft algorithm is trying to block people with names like: Dick, Finger, Cock and Cummings. The ride-hail company is making an effort to tell these users to change their names. They risk getting booted from the service. This is creating frustration with people that really have last names like: Cocks. Good luck to those people.

In other news, E-bikes came back to the streets of San Francisco. They are part of a bikeshare system owned by Lyft. Some weeks later, all electric bikes were pulled from the system because some batteries caught fire. No one was hurt.

Above: Lyft’s Shuttle service. Lyft has officially launched in June the beta version of Shuttle: a carpool service that will travel along a certain route and make stops along the route.

Above: Lyft Prime Time Heat Map with Power Zones in Toronto.

Uber Stock Price rises in the month

Uber Stock Price has increased over the last 30 days. When you look at the entire history of the Uber stock, it does not look so good. Uber (NYSE:UBER) is at $29.99 on December 19, 2019. It’s hard to estimate that the stock will go up much. There has been some stock surge after a report of talks to sell Uber Eat’s India business. Uber Company is now valued at about $76 billion.

Uber Technologies Inc. is usually called Uber. The international ride-hailing company offers services that include peer-to-peer ride sharing, ride service hailing, food delivery, and a micromobility system with electric bikes and scooters.

Uber drivers are similar to taxi drivers. The Uber Eats business makes food deliveries. Very many restaurants are using this service. There are also some kitchen-only places that just get delivered as deliveries to people. There are even people that cook food in their residential house and then get it delivered to their customers through Uber Eats. It might take some time to reach Uber customer service, but it does exist. Uber Eats has rewards for drivers like get free food because it’s your birthday or other special promotions or coupons. You could enter promo codes. It’s possible to get uber gift cards. Uber Eats boosts are interesting. During certain hours of the day, the fares can multiply 1.1 or 1.5 or 1.9 or even by 2. Fares are different based on geographical locations. The downtown of a major city like Toronto is where you would get paid more per hour.

Now could be a good time to buy Uber stock. The stock could have bottomed out. It is quite likely that the stock will rise higher in the next month.

Amazon Stock Price dropped in past 6 months, but remain optimistic

Amazon.com Inc. is an international technology company. It focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming and artificial intelligence. It is one of the big 4 tech companies: Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook.

Amazon is the world's largest online marketplace, AI assistant provider and cloud computing platform (in terms of revenue and market capitalization). Amazon is the largest Internet Company by revenue in the world.

At first, Amazon started as an online marketplace for books. Later, it expanded to sell electronics, software, video games, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. In 2018, the 2-day delivery service, Amazon Prime, had surpassed 100 million subscribers worldwide.

Amazon has: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Audible subsidiaries, Amazon Publishing, Amazon Studios and Amazon Web Services. To add to that, Amazon subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, Whole Foods Market, and IMDb.

On December 19, 2019, Amazon Stock Price is doing well. The stock is expected to keep rising into the future. The Amazon Company is really dominating e-commerce, cloud computing, digital ads and media consumption. Amazon customer service is high quality. It’s possible to chat with them on the customer service telephone number. There is also Amazon live chat. Customers like using credit cards and other online payment methods.

Amazon has online job postings that include: home-based customer service agents, customer service manager and HR jobs.

Amazon has some interesting products. The Amazon Fire TV Stick is a new device in home entertainment streaming technologies. The Fire Stick plugs into your TV's HDMI port. It gives you access to your favorite TV shows, movies, subscription services, music, photos and games. Alexa is the voice-controlled Amazon assistant. It turns words into actions. Amazon Echo is a nice smart speaker.

Amazon also has Warehouse Deals. This means that there are offers for deep discounts on returned, warehouse-damaged, used, or refurbished products that are in good condition but do not meet Amazon.com rigorous standards as “new.”

The Amazon Kindle is an e-reader. It enables users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store.

I’m pretty optimistic for Amazon Stock going into 2020. But, remember to keep in mind that the shares (NASDAQ:AMZN) have dropped 6% in the past 6 months. Giants like Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) have had stock growth in the past 6 months.