New Strong Sell Stocks for March 25th

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Analysis

The acceleration of anti-bot and anti-scraping measures is not just a nuisance for researchers — it reallocates value from informal data capture to paid, permissioned feeds and gatekeepers of edge infrastructure. Expect scraping failure rates to rise from single digits to the 20–60% range for many retail scrapers over a 3–12 month window, which forces quant funds and alt-data buyers to either pay for licensed APIs or absorb signal decay, compressing alpha for small players and lifting revenue per customer for gatekeepers.

Operationally, stronger bot detection increases page-rendering CPU and JS execution at the edge, raising demand for edge compute and WAF services; that creates a measurable ARPU lever for CDN/security vendors. A structural move of even a few cents of ARPU per 1B pageviews maps to tens-to-low-hundreds of millions of incremental revenue for the largest providers over 12–24 months, while simultaneously increasing churn risk for incumbents that can’t monetize or justify higher fees.

Second-order winners include licensed data vendors and exchanges as institutional buyers scramble to replace unreliable scraped feeds, and residential-proxy providers who can monetize scale. Key tail risks: rapid adaptation by scraping ecosystems (residential-IP markets, headless-browser automation) could restore free-data access within months, and any regulatory crackdown on fingerprinting/CAPTCHA abuse could blunt monetization, creating binary outcomes on a 6–18 month horizon.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long NET (Cloudflare), 6–12 months: take a 3–4% portfolio position or buy 12-month calls. Thesis: edge compute + WAF monetization lifts ARPU by ~10–20% if publishers shift to paid APIs; target +30% upside, stop-loss -15% if guidance weakens.
• Pair trade — Long AKAM (Akamai) / Short FSLY (Fastly), 3–9 months: 1:1 notional. Thesis: incumbents with mature security suites and enterprise contracts capture migration dollars faster than smaller CDNs; target 20–30% relative outperformance, risk is market-wide recovery in low-latency demand.
• Long ICE (Intercontinental Exchange), 12–24 months: 2% position. Thesis: paid data and licensed feeds gain share as firms abandon brittle scraping; estimate mid-single-digit revenue tailwind over 2 years. Downside: slower institutional procurement cycles delaying benefits.
• Hedge fund cost mitigation — Buy put protection on small-cap alt-data vendors (identify names with >40% revenue from scraping), 3–6 months: protect downside while reallocating funds to paid-data partnerships. R/R: small premium for puts vs potential 40–60% downside if clients churn to licensed feeds.