Category: INO.com Contributors

Chip Maker Hits Target, Beats Rivals and Bitcoin

Posted on by Aibek Burabayev

Last November I shared a promising trading opportunity to play on the Modern “Gold Rush” For Cryptocoins. Like the Great Gold Rush, I thought that those who sell equipment could benefit from new a “tulip mania” as this crypto buzz was called in the media.

I selected three chip makers, which were well known for the broad use of their products in the “mining” of cryptocoins. These companies are NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (AMD) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSM). Firstly, I made the same comparative chart analysis of their stocks as I usually do for the classic mining stocks; it is funny that the word “mining” I used here has a totally different meaning.

We were on the right path as despite the market euphoria there was one stock, which lagged behind the others and the gap was significant. The laggard Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It was the only one, which showed the negative price dynamics for the first ten months of 2017 with a -2.71% loss compared to +104.58% for NVDA, +43.94% for TSM and +14.62% for S&P 500. Continue reading "Chip Maker Hits Target, Beats Rivals and Bitcoin" →

Inexpensive Stocks: Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Cohort

Posted on by Noah Kiedrowski

The entire pharmaceutical supply chain cohort, specifically, McKesson (MCK), Cardinal Health (CAH), CVS Health (CVS) and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) are all near multi-year lows despite still posting growth albeit slow with healthy balance sheets and growing dividends. This cohort has been faced with several headwinds that have negatively impacted the growth, and the changing marketplace conditions have plagued these stocks. The political backdrop has been a major headwind for the entire pharmaceutical supply chain including drug manufacturers, pharmaceutical wholesalers, and pharmacies/pharmacy benefit managers. Compounding the political climate, the drug pricing debate continues to rage on throughout political and social media circles weighing on the overarching sector. This backdrop erodes the pricing power of drugs that ultimately move from drug manufacturers to patients with insurers and other middlemen playing roles in the supply chain web.

In an effort to address these headwinds and restore growth, companies within this cohort have made bold moves such as CVS acquiring Aetna (AET) to form a colossus bumper-to-bumper healthcare company. Cardinal Health shelled out $6.1 billion to acquire Medtronic's Patient Care, Deep Vein Thrombosis, and Nutritional Insufficiency business. McKesson has made a string of acquisitions over the past two years deploying $1.2 billion for Biologics, $2.1 billion for Rexall and $525 million for Vantage Oncology in 2016. This was followed by a $1.1 billion acquisition of CoverMyMeds, undisclosed acquisition costs for RxCrossroads and Well.ca in 2017. Thus far in 2018, McKesson acquired Medical Specialty Distributors. Continue reading "Inexpensive Stocks: Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Cohort" →

A Few Bond ETFs That Have Performed Well, Despite Rising Interest Rates

Posted on by Matt Thalman

Investors who buy bonds or bond funds are doing so because they want to reduce their risk and preserve their capital. Bonds work very well at doing this when the stock market or economy is declining, but not when economic conditions are strong.

Currently, the US economy is strong with 4% GDP growth, the S&P 500 coming close to setting a new all-time high, the unemployment rate at the lowest level its been in years. All of these indicators point towards the opposite of what bond investors want, especially the need for higher interest rates as inflation continues to creep higher.

Recently JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, said he thought the 10-year Treasury yield should be at 4%, not where it currently sits at the below 3%. He went further and said that 5% interest rates are coming and that investors need to start preparing. Some have argued that interest rates should already be in the 4% to 5% range.

If, Dimon and others are correct in their prediction that higher interest rates are coming than current bond holdings need to “Get out of Dodge” before they get burnt. We have already seen bond funds take a hit in 2018, but if rates do climb as high as 5%, the losses we have seen thus far may dwarf what is to come.

Not surprisingly the best Bond Exchange Traded Funds over the past year are the 3X leveraged short funds. Continue reading "A Few Bond ETFs That Have Performed Well, Despite Rising Interest Rates" →

Gold & Silver: Hard Ground or Quicksand?

Posted on by Aibek Burabayev

I know that most of the readers don’t like when I post bearish outlooks for the top metals as even if there are dozens of downloads, still nobody pushes the “like” button. It could be a fascinating research subject for behavioral finance or at least an excellent contrarian indicator.

Frankly speaking, I keep an unbiased stance and share my view of the structures that develop in the market. I just read signals that the market sends us all the time. From the start of the year, there are totally bearish outlooks were posted as we had strong signs in the charts and we can see that they proved to be right and one could make good money.

In this post I would like to address the question that arises these days, is this recent bounce a reversal or just another correction?

Let’s start with gold.

Gold Weekly Chart: Market Eyes $1122 To Complete The Structure

Gold Weekly Chart
Chart courtesy of tradingview.com

Before we start I recommend that you check out this earlier gold chart to see the price and triggers’ position before the drop and signals, which I outlined in that post to refresh your memory as more than six months passed. Continue reading "Gold & Silver: Hard Ground or Quicksand?" →

Facebook - $119 Billion Disastrous Conference Call

Posted on by Noah Kiedrowski

Facebook’s (FB) fundamentals were shining bright and outweighed its data misuse scandal from months’ prior leading into its Q2 earnings. In the wake of mishandling user data, Facebook’s stock tumbled from $195 to $152 or 22%. Facebook was well off those data misuse induced sell-off lows and marched right through its previous 52-week high and broke out to $219 for a nice ~44% rebound. This scenario ended abruptly on the heels of its Q2 earnings which came in shy of analysts’ expectations on the revenue front. Facebook also issued a major guide down in growth for the next few quarters tampering growth expectations in the near term. Facebook is facing a challenging confluence of slowing revenue growth, margin compression and stagnant daily active users in the near to intermediate term. Facebook’s CFO stated that investors could expect "revenue growth rates to decline by high single-digit percentages from prior quarters." Despite these headwinds, Facebook is still posting accelerating revenue growth across all geographies, expanding market penetration with Instagram’s IGTV, Facebook’s Stories and monetization efforts in Messenger and WhatsApp. Factoring in this high single digit decrease in revenue, Facebook is still poised to grow at a double-digit clip with the most recent growth rate coming in at 42% in Q2. The long-term picture looks bright for Facebook, and the recent sell-off is a good opportunity to initiate a long position as the company contends with and addresses all the issues across its platforms. Facebook remains a premier large-cap growth stock and inexpensive relative to other large-cap growth stocks in its cohort.

Disastrous Conference Call

Well, that was a disaster of a conference call. Facebook posted the largest one-day loss in market value by any company in stock market history. Facebook shed $119 billion worth of market capitalization after dropping ~20%. No other company has ever lost greater than $100 billion in market value in a single day (Figure 1). To add insult to injury, this was also Facebook’s worst day ever on the stock market. This sell-off came on the heels of a minor Q2 advertising revenue miss of $13.04 billion versus expectations of $13.16 billion and lower than expected daily active users in Europe. Key metrics suffered from data misuse and fake news issues within its platform. Continue reading "Facebook - $119 Billion Disastrous Conference Call" →