Tag: matt thalman

Trump Tweets Create Opportunity for Investors

Posted on by Matt Thalman

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs


When Donald Trump goes to Twitter Inc. (TWTR) to voice his negative opinions, investors should begin trying to find opportunities. Over just the past few weeks we have seen two separate occasions in particular in which the President of the United States has directed negative tweets at specific industries or companies. In both cases, first with Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and more recently with The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), his tweets have sent asset prices lower for a short period, before they have recovered, opening up big opportunities for investors.

Amazon

The end of March, beginning of April, Donald Trump assaulted Amazon with some tweets. First, it was that the company paid little to no state and local government taxes and then it was that the e-commerce company was a ‘scam’ which costs the US Post Office and therefore the American people, billions of dollars a year. Another string of tweets pointed the finger at Amazon claiming it was the reason thousands of retailers were going out of business, and millions of US workers had been laid off.

The tweets from Trump sent Amazon shares lower each day he would reignite his attack on the e-commerce giant. A 1-month chart of Amazon shows how the stock fell during the Presidents attacks and has since recovered.

Trump Tweets
From Yahoo Finance

Despite the fact that the President attacked Amazon and no real solution has come from the issues he pointed out, Amazon’s recovery appears to be nearly complete. This is not to say that the problems with Amazon not paying taxes or its contract with the Post Office couldn’t be reignited again in the future. But as most analysts have noted, the Presidents threats and claims against Amazon have no real teeth. Continue reading "Trump Tweets Create Opportunity for Investors" →

Facebook's Decline Has Hurt These ETFs

Posted on by Matt Thalman

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs - Facebook


When a major company such as Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is caught in a scandal, the declining share price doesn’t just hurt investors who knowingly bought shares of the company. It also hurts all those unsuspecting shareholders who may own part of the company through different Exchange Traded Funds.

On March 16th, shares of Facebook were trading at $185.09. The news broke that 50 million customers had their data taken from Facebook by a company called Cambridge Analytica and used to persuade American’s to vote for President Donald Trump. By March 27th Facebook shares had bottomed out at $152, a nearly 18% decline from the day before the story broke. As of this writing, shares of the social media giant have recovered a little, and now they trade at $160 per share, still a 13.5% decline.

Anyone that knowingly owned shares of Facebook before this story breaking has decided to either ride this rough patch out or jumped ship. But, some investors own shares of Facebook and have likely taken a beating because of the situation and may not even have known what was causing their portfolios to fall. Continue reading "Facebook's Decline Has Hurt These ETFs" →

Bitcoin Fell 35% in March

Posted on by Matt Thalman

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs - Bitcoins Price


During March, the price of Bitcoin fell just about 35%. It started the month at $10,805 and ended just below $7,000. Bitcoin’s decline in March has been massive, but what I find even more interesting is this decline has been somewhat slow and steady. In the past when Bitcoin would crash, 30%, 40%, 50% or even more, it would happen in a matter of days or even hours.

The slow decline is an indication that the Bitcoin craze or Bitcoin Bubble is likely over. When the craze hit a fever pitch following the Thanksgiving Holiday in the US, the price more than doubled in just about 25 days. The Bitcoin rally hit a peak on December 17th, 2017 when they were trading for more than $19,205 per coin. More so than that, the last time Bitcoin traded in the low $6,000 range, was before the Thanksgiving Holiday when it is believed many families sat around the dinner table and discussed the “can’t miss opportunity in cryptocurrencies.” Those discussions helped fuel 100,000 new accounts being opened that weekend and the price of Bitcoin hitting $9,000 for the first time.

The Thanksgiving dinner table conversations helped foster the “fear of missing out” trend that we saw catapult Bitcoin both into the limelight and at breathtaking prices. That fear soon faded as Bitcoin fell hard, from $19,205 to $14,500 in just five days, following it hitting its record and still all-time high. Ever since then the cryptocurrency has been on a downward trajectory.

The declining price has lessened interest from both the general public and big investors, and even now we have seen the media outlets reducing coverage on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Even Alphabet’s Google searches (Fig.1) are down dramatically since the peak. A further look at the price of Bitcoin (Fig.2) and the Google search trend of Bitcoin may tell another story. The two charts side by side look very, very similar. Continue reading "Bitcoin Fell 35% in March" →

Why Rebalancing Your Portfolio Is Important

Posted on by Matt Thalman

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs - Rebalancing


Despite only being three months into 2018, investors have been on quite a wild ride. The market started off the year as it ended 2017, on a tear higher, then the brief crash in early February, which led to a nice calm recovery during the remainder of the month just to run into what I’m calling “Whipsaw March” with the market jumping higher and lower by more than 1% nearly every other day. Not only have the major indexes been extremely volatile, but some of 2017’s biggest winners, big technology and especially the FANG stocks have seen their prices fall more than 10% in 2018.

Big pops that reverse fortune and the big drops that follow always cause investors to wonder what they could have done to protect themselves from the decline without completely abandoning their position.

The most straightforward and most effective answer to that situation is to rebalance your portfolio. Rebalancing is when you bring the percentage of your holdings back in line with each other.

For example, if you have a portfolio made up of 10 stocks and each represents roughly 10% of your portfolio, you would have a ‘balanced portfolio.’ Now if one of your stocks outperformed the others and ended up representing say 25% of your portfolio, instead of just 10%, then you would rebalance by selling some of your shares in that company until it represented 10% of your total portfolio. Continue reading "Why Rebalancing Your Portfolio Is Important" →

The Ultimate Buzz Word ETF

Posted on by Matt Thalman

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs - Buzz Word ETF


On January 30th the team at Exchange Traded Concepts, an Exchange Traded Fund issuer, released the "Ultimate Buzz Word" ETF, the Innovation Shares NextGen Protocol ETF (KOIN). Alright, I’ll admit, the name may not be loaded with buzz words. But the fund’s concept is loaded with recently popular buzz words such as “Blockchain” and “Artificial Intelligence.”

The KOIN ETF is a fund that tracks an index that uses artificial intelligence to pick global stocks which have current or future interests in blockchain technology. On the surface, this ETF just feels like someone trying to take advantage of today’s hot investing buzz words.

Even after Bitcoin rose from under $1,000 to above $19,000 in less than a year, most retail investors didn’t fully understand what blockchain technology was. But they knew that while a lot of big-name investors and economist were skeptical of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’, the one thing most people would agree on was that blockchain technology was great. Continue reading "The Ultimate Buzz Word ETF" →