If you’ve ever travelled abroad or tried to send money across international borders, hidden fees and unfair exchange rates have no doubt been a massive and expensive headache.

In this week’s episode of the 7investing podcast, Lead Advisors Luke Hallard & Krzysztof Piekarski sit down with Rina Wulfing, Senior Manager for the North American policy team at Wise ($WIZEY) to discuss the company’s original founding story and mission: to empower its users with a transparent system that sends money cost effectively and instantly across borders.

We discuss junk fees — what they are and how Wise is working with regulatory agencies to limit their adverse impact on customers.

We also discuss why direct access to US banking systems is limited to certain types of financial institution, and why this hits US consumers and businesses (and visitors!) in the pocket.If you ever travel internationally, or are looking to upgrade your legacy banking arrangements, today’s episode is a must listen conversation that will give you better insight into the finance industry, and will save you money!

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ShockWave Medical (Nasdaq: SWAV), the innovative pioneer of intravascular lithotripsy, has received an all-cash acquisition offer from Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) for $335 per share. In today's episode, 7investing advisors Luke Hallard and Simon Erickson discuss why we made ShockWave a 7investing recommendation, several financial details of the offer, and what investors should expect going forward.

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Investors are continually looking for a good deal in the stock market. But how exactly should we define value?

Quantitatively, publicly-traded companies should serve as compounding machines for their investors. They raise capital -- either through debt or by issuing stock -- then put it to work into projects. If the after-tax profits they generate are greater than their associated costs, they're creating value for us as the owners of the business (i.e. as the investors).

But the investing world is also extremely complex. Markets are changing and being disrupted by new technologies every year. CEOs and leadership teams are continually trying to balance between their desire to be visionary and their need to be efficient. Underinvesting in growth could put a company several steps behind its competitors. Yet going "all-in" on an acquisition that turns out badly could very quickly light their shareholders' capital on fire.

So what are we as the investors to do?

Are there specific metrics we should look at, to determine if a company is using our money responsibly? How should we figure out what the right price is to pay for a stock? And are their any specific stocks out there right now, which might be significantly undervalued and could represent a great bargain for us as investors?

investing CEO Simon Erickson recently spoke with John Rotonti, who is the host of the JRo Show podcast (and available on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts).

John previously worked for nine years at The Motley Fool, where he was an analyst on several newsletters and most recently served as their Head of Investor Training and Development. Simon and John have been friends for a decade, and we recently exclusively published his interview with legendary Fidelity fund manager Joel Tillinghast on our own 7investing site.

Tune in for an in-depth and fascinating look at how to find value in today's stock market.

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We are on a quest to find the best stock opportunities of the year for investors. Enter for free, with a chance to win a $1,000 Amazon gift card and a free year of 7investing!

To complement our contest, we'll be publishing seven head-to-head matchups between stocks; and we'll include the winners in our own 7investing Team entry.

Our third head-to-head matchup is two companies who are embracing artificial intelligence to make their platforms even better, between The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD) and Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR).

After that, it's the battle of the animals as Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX) takes on American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO) in a battle for retail dominance!

Listen to hear the cases for these companies and then head to the 7investing X account to vote for your favorites!

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As part of our Best Stocks of 2024 Contest, we're narrowing down the picks that will be the start of 7investing's entry into our contest! Between now and March 1, 2025, we'll see which stocks will catapult one of our lucky fans to victory, free subscriptions, and a $1000 Amazon gift card.

Of course, we'll analyze some great companies along way, like Celsius (CELH), Novo Nordisk (NVO), Uber (UBER), and Rocket Lab (RKLB).

Tune in to hear our breakdowns of these companies and to learn more about how you ca win our Best Stocks of 2024 Contest!

To enter, go to www.7investing.com/contest/

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The Wall Street Journal’s 2024 Health Forum in Boston recently showcased the technology, business, and policy regulations that are impacting the health care industry. With a massive disruption in the medical weight loss industry, new treatments that permanently alter patient DNA, and the ever-present COVID response and its aftermath, this year's conference had plenty of intrigue.

For investors, there were several publicly-traded companies who took the stage — including CRISPR Therapeutics (Nasdaq: CRSP), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: VRTX), Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) and Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA).

7investing CEO Simon Erickson joins JT Street to break down the conference and review the key storylines investors should be following if they want to capitalize on the current disruptions in the medical investing landscape.

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Enterprise software is so intriguing to investors. The rise of mega-platforms like Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META), powerful SaaS forces like Salesforce (Nasdaq: CRM), and micro-computer software providers like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) have created several of the best-performing stocks of the past two decades.

But things move fast in this innovative field. And we're living in an entirely different digital world today.

Enterprises have laid off hundreds of thousands of tech employees in recent years and have begun harnessing the power of generative AI. And a renewed focus on efficiency has led them to consolidate vendors, especially in somewhat-redundant fields like cybersecurity protection.

Will the next decade or two also feature the same pool of outperformers? Will the software companies of the Magnificent 7 still remain at the top of the market? Or will we see a new wave of AI-native competitors displace them?

In the second episode of 7investing advisors Anirban Mahanti and Simon Erickson's latest podcast series, the two discuss the enterprise software industry from an investor's perspective.

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The Fed's rampant rate increases have wreaked havoc on stocks in recent years. Yet we're perhaps finally seeing a light emerge at the end of the tunnel.

Projections released by the Fed suggest that America's central bank will reduce its Fed Funds target rate multiple times during 2024. The Fed ultimately wants to reach a median target rate of 4.6% by the end of this year.

Falling interest rates are generally good for business. It allows them to raise capital and more attractive rates and to begin reinvesting in growth projects once again.

For investors in those businesses, falling interest rates translate into lower discount rates. This is the metric that institutional investors on Wall Street use to discount a company's future profits to the present in their discounted cash flow models. When a discount rate falls (which typically happens when the Fed reduces the Fed Funds rate), future cash flows get discounted at a lower rate. And you ultimately end up with a greater present valuation and a higher stock price.

To subscribe for free to our 7investing podcast and have our episodes directly delivered to your Inbox, please join our free email list.

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It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

If you've never been the victim of a cyberattack or a data breach, the chances are that you will be soon.

Ranging from simple phishing emails to elaborate and highly-coordinated campaigns to steal government secrets, the severity of cyberattacks all across the globe is intensifying.

And the need to for best-in-class security vendors -- to proactively protect you before an "oh shoot" moment occurs -- has never been greater.

Yet how do we know who to trust? There are also thousands of cybersecurity providers who offer services to protect against cybercrime.

That ranges from small startups with a clever idea, to independent corporations like CrowdStrike (Nasdaq: CRWD) or SentinelOne (NYSE: S) who leaders in their niche, to consolidated behemoths like Microsoft  (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Palo Alto Networks (Nasdaq: PANW) with a full suite of products.

There's an massive pool of vendors to choose from. According to research from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSC), 13% of companies are working with at least 20 different vendors for cybersecurity alone.

So how should companies differentiate themselves in this crowded field? What dangerous security vulnerabilities still aren't yet adequately protected against? And how should investors figure out which publicly-traded companies to put their money behind?

To help us answer those questions, we’ve brought in an expert. 7investing CEO Simon Erickson recently spoke with Simon Taylor, who is the founder and CEO of HYCU, about how to tune out the noise and look for the true winners in this space.

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There's been a lot of hype this year about lithium ion battery darling Enovix (Nasdaq: ENVX). The company surged to $24/share in July of this year, only to run out of juice and plunge down into the single digits by November.

So was the energy behind Enovix all hype, or was there something more there? 7investing lead advisor Krzysztof Piekarski sits down with MrNotAdvice to see if there's more than just memes powering this potentially disruptive battery company.

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Its been an eventful and an emotional week for everyone at OpenAI.

The generative AI pioneer fired its co-founder Sam Altman on Friday. Within 24 hours, its Chairman and top lieutenants had all quit. By the end of the weekend, more than 90% of its employees have threatened to do the same. Now Altman's been hired by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and he might take those key employees with him. Meanwhile, OpenAI's Board is in chaos and is now begging Sam to rejoin them again.

What can investors learn from this sudden turn of events? Simon Erickson and JT Street discuss the lessons of OpenAI's surprising weekend on the 7investing Podcast.

For more insight, go to www.7investing.com to join our free email list.

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