Category: INO.com Contributors

U.S. Crude Production In February Reflects Unscheduled GOM Maintenance

Posted on by Robert Boslego

The Energy Information Administration reported that February crude oil production averaged a surprising 11.683 million barrels per day (mmbd), down 187,000 b/d from January. The drop was totally the result of unscheduled maintenance in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which averaged 1.719 mmbd. Production had been over 1.9 mmbd in November through January.

Crude Production

Despite drops in January and February, crude production still rose by a spectacular 1.219 mmbd from June through February, a period when capacity takeaway constraints had been expected to slow down the growth in Texas.

Production in Texas rose by 69,000 b/d to a record 4.890 mmbd. That was nearly offset by a decline in North Dakota of 64,000 b/d due to seasonal factors. Continue reading "U.S. Crude Production In February Reflects Unscheduled GOM Maintenance" →

US Stock Markets Could Rally Beyond Expectations

Posted on by Chris Vermeulen

Late Sunday afternoon, President Trump surprised the global markets with the announcement of increased trade tariffs with China relating to the ongoing trade negotiations and delayed trade talks between the two global superpowers. The global markets reacted immediately upon the open Sunday night (Asian open). The VIX short position puts quite a bit of professional traders at risk of big losses today while those of us that were prepared for an increase in volatility and price rotation is poised for some incredible opportunities.

The US stock market is set up for a price move that will likely make many people very wealthy while frustrating many others over the next few months. We’ve recently posted many articles regarding the 2020 US Presidential election cycle and the fear cycle that comes from these major political events. In November 2016, we remember watching Gold rally $60 early in the election night, then fall $100 as news began reporting the surprise winner. There is so much capital, and future capital expectations that ride on these election cycles – it can actually drive the markets in one direction or another.

Right now, we have two things we want to alert you to regarding our proprietary Fibonacci price modeling utility. First, the current trend is Bullish and the chance of a downside price move is still valid. Remember, one of the primary price rules within Fibonacci price theory is that price must ALWAYS attempt to seek out new highs and new lows – at all times. This means that once price establishes new price highs, any failure to continue establishing new price highs, through standard price rotation, will result in its price attempting to establish new price lows. Continue reading "US Stock Markets Could Rally Beyond Expectations" →

IPO ETFs A Better Way To Play Lyft, UBER, And Other Hyped Listings

Posted on by Matt Thalman

The IPO market is back on fire and investors are once again falling over each other trying to get a piece of the newest publicly traded companies. The recent initial public offering of Lyft (LYFT) is a perfect example of why investors really should avoid getting caught up in the hype of a big IPO. To see why all you need to do is look at the stock chart of Lyft and see how it has fallen after its amazing ‘pop’ on its first day of trading.

The stock has a high of $88.60 per share, but is currently trading below the $60 per share range and has fallen as low as $54 per share. Lyft is not the only example of this flawed IPO process. Facebook (FB), Snap (SNAP), Blue Apron (APRN), DropBox (DBX) are just a few of the other bigger name IPOs that have had lots of hype surrounding them and nice jumps on the first days of trading but soon fell out of favor with investors. With Facebook, while it may have taken some time to gain traction, the stock did come back from its post IPO fall and has performed well for investors, but the others have yet to do so.

The issue with heavily hyped IPOs is that the companies rarely live up to the hype and the stock soon falls below IPO prices as investors realize growth and actual fundamentals of these companies don’t match the pre-IPO hype.

Now, this isn’t to say that all IPOs are failures. Roku (ROKU), DocuSign, (DOCU), BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ) are all examples of recent IPOs that are trading higher than their initial public offering price and have rewarded shareholders.

So, you may be wondering how you filter out the IPO winners and loser? Continue reading "IPO ETFs A Better Way To Play Lyft, UBER, And Other Hyped Listings" →

Weekly Futures Recap With Mike Seery

Posted on by Mike Seery

We've asked Michael Seery of SEERYFUTURES.COM to give our INO readers a weekly recap of the Futures market. He has been Senior Analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets.

Michael frequently appears on multiple business networks including Bloomberg news, Fox Business, CNBC Worldwide, CNN Business, and Bloomberg TV. He is also a guest on First Business, which is a national and internationally syndicated business show.

S&P 500 Futures

The S&P 500 in the June contract settled last Friday in Chicago at 2941 while currently trading at 2939 unchanged for the trading week, but ending on a positive note up over 20 points due to the incredibly strong monthly unemployment number which was released this morning. The economic figures that have been released in the last week have been impressive as we had a 3.2% first-quarter GDP and now we added 263,000 jobs with an unemployment rate of 3.8% as I see further growth in the U.S. economy and higher stock prices. I have been talking about the S&P 500 for months, and I still believe we will continue the bullish trend as 3000 is my next level of resistance. If you are long a futures contract, I would continue to place the stop loss under the 2 week low standing at 2899. However, the chart structure will not improve so you will have to accept the monetary risk. The volatility in the S&P remains historically low especially at these elevated prices as I see no reason to be short as the U.S. economy is astonishing at the current time. The S&P 500 is trading far above its 20 and 100-day moving average telling you that the trend is to the upside, but for the bullish momentum to continue, we have to break the May 1st high of 2961 which was also the all-time high which I think will be breached possibly in next weeks trade.
TREND: HIGHER
CHART STRUCTURE: EXCELLENT
VOLATILITY: LOW
Continue reading "Weekly Futures Recap With Mike Seery" →

Hasbro Is Going On The Offensive

Posted on by Noah Kiedrowski

Hasbro (HAS) is turning the corner and going on the offensive with a slew of revenue verticals with its Disney toy licensing deal (Marvel, Star Wars and Disney Princess lines), Hasbro Studios (Transformers’ Bumblebee, My Little Pony, Power Rangers), E-Sports (Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering) and reinventing its legacy games (Monopoly and Nerf) while driving newer products (Beyblades). Hasbro blew out expectations for its Q1 2019 earnings and the stock jumped 16% breaking out above the $100 threshold, a level that hasn’t been seen in over 6 months. Hasbro is setting the post-Toys-R-Us bankruptcy narrative and laying out a business roadmap for long term profitable growth across its brands. Hasbro has had the tough task of getting out in front of the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy and working its way through the glut of merchandise. This positive sentiment has been further bolstered by positive commentary from its CEO that the company has effectively absolved itself of the Toy-R-Us related bankruptcy headwind. Hasbro has a compelling future across its portfolio with many catalysts on the near and long term time horizons.

Q1 2019 Earnings

Hasbro posted an unexpected profit for Q1 with EPS coming in at $0.32 against expectations of -$0.11, beating estimates by $0.32 per share. Revenue also came in much higher than expected with $732.5 million and beating estimates by 66.5 million (Figure 1).

“The global Hasbro team is executing very well and delivered a good start to the year,” said Brian Goldner, Hasbro’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Our long-term investments in new platforms provided a meaningful contribution from our digital and e-sports initiative, Magic: The Gathering Arena, as well as growth in MAGIC: THE GATHERING tabletop revenues. In addition, MONOPOLY, PLAY-DOH and TRANSFORMERS were among the brands posting revenue gains this quarter. We are beginning to see improvement in our commercial markets, notably in the U.S. and Europe, and operating profit was driven by high margin revenue growth and our cost savings activities. With most of the year ahead of us, we remain on track to deliver profitable growth for the full-year 2019.”
Continue reading "Hasbro Is Going On The Offensive" →