Tag: poll

The Super Bowl Indicator - Seahawks (Bulls) VS. Patriots (Bears)

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Have you ever heard of the Super Bowl Indicator? Who do you want to win? Are you a Bear or a Bull?

How it works

The Super Bowl Indicator rules state that if a team from The National Football Conference (NFC) wins the Super Bowl, a bull market will prevail. If a team from American Football Conference (AFC) wins, a bear market will prevail.

The New England Patriots are from the AFC, and they will represent the bear market in 2015. The Seattle Seahawks are from the NFC, and they represent the bull market. If the Seahawks win the Super Bowl, there is an 80% chance that the markets will rise this year.

I don't know about you, but I want the Seahawks to win again this year.

There are two notable exceptions as of late:

2013 saw the Baltimore Ravens (AFC) win the Super Bowl, and the DOW rose 26.5%. This should have been a bear market.

2008 saw the New York Giants (NFC) win the Super Bowl, and the DOW fell 33%. This should have been a bull market.

Some notable DOW gains from previous years:

1975 saw a gain of 38% when the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl IX.

1989 saw a gain of 27% when the San Francisco 49ers won Super Bowl XIX.

2003 saw a gain of 25% when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won Super Bowl XXXVII.

With the big game coming up today, I thought it would be fun to revisit the Super Bowl Indicator and see who you think will win the Super Bowl.

Who do you want to win the Super Bowl?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Have a great time with friends and family watching the big game!

Every success,
Jeremy Lutz
INO.com and MarketClub.com

What are today's top 50 stocks? This free list will share the big market movers on a daily basis to help you find trading opportunities.

View this list for free now.

What Do McDonald's, Microsoft and Yahoo All Have In Common?

Posted on by The INO.com Team

The simple answer is that all had new leaders in the last couple of years. But, here is the problem - they're all old school, old hat, and not so relevant anymore to investors.

Take a look at the latest casualty in the boardroom. Don Thompson was the CEO of McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD) and he held that position for just over two years, during which time McDonald's went nowhere and had zero growth. He is stepping down effective March 1st and Steve Easterbrook, will be taking over the reins of McDonald's. The problem I see with McDonald's is that it's associated with fast, unhealthy food when the entire food industry is turning to healthy eating. You only have to look at places like Baja Fresh, Chipotle and a host of new up-and-comers in the fast, casual, healthy dining service industry to see where McDonald's has completely missed the boat. Like the stock market, perception is everything and the perception is McDonald's just doesn't cut it anymore with most young parents and millennials.

Ray Kroc had a brilliant idea when he first stumbled on the original McDonald's in California back in 1954. Here he discovered Dick and Mac McDonald's fast food restaurant in San Bernardino, California. One year later he incorporated McDonald's Corp. and the rest is history. Now 60 years later, like a lot of corporations, it has lost its relevance in the marketplace and it's going to be extremely hard to play catch-up and change their image. What do you think?

When was the last time you were in a McDonald's?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) had a similar start to McDonald's, only this time, a young Bill Gates bought a program from a hacker for $50,000 (remember DOS?) and promptly turned around and licensed it out to IBM for a cool $1,000,000 a year. Continue reading "What Do McDonald's, Microsoft and Yahoo All Have In Common?" →

Twitter, Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) 1 Year later

Posted on by The INO.com Team

It was one year ago to the day that Twitter, Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) had its IPO on the NYSE. The reason Twitter went with the NYSE was because of the recent fiasco that Facebook experienced with its own IPO on the NASDAQ. Twitter did not want to repeat Facebook's disastrous roll out with all its negative publicity.

For those of you who don't know what Twitter does, it is an online social communications and networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets".

On November 7th, 2013, Twitter, Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) shares opened for trading at $26 and closed out the day at $44.90 which gave the company a valuation of $31 billion. This made instant billionaires of founders, Evan Williams who made $2.56 billion and Jack Dorsey who received $1.05 billion.

But it got even better because at the end of December 2013, Twitter had a market capitalization of $32.76 billion. Since those heady days in November and December of last year, things haven't gone quite so well for Twitter. For the year, Twitter is down over 34% and down almost 10% from its IPO closing price.

At the moment, this stock is not having a particularly happy birthday as all technical indicators are pointing south and show that the stock could go even lower from where we are now.

One area that could be very interesting for Twitter, Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) is an integration trend I see between tweets and TV/cable shows. That would be a big source of revenue for Twitter. Other areas such as social revolutions or crowd disruptions certainly are powerful, but I'm not sure how Twitter can make any money off of social unrest, which we are seeing more and more of these days. After all, who wants to sponsor a unpopular revolution?

While Twitter has been around since 2006 and has grown substantially since that time, the question must be asked, is this going to be a relevant source of social information in five or ten years from now? Or is something else in development that can make tweets and Twitter a thing of the past?

The overriding trend at the moment is negative. How far this trend continues on the downside remains to be seen, but it would not appear as though anyone is rushing in to buy this stock at the moment.

In recognition of Twitter's birthday/one year anniversary, I decided to put together a quick poll to get your feedback on just what you think about Twitter.

Are you a Twitter user?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Looking forward to seeing what you have to say and how you feel about the stock.

Every success with MarketClub,
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com
Co-Creator, MarketClub

There's Going To Be A War

Posted on by The INO.com Team

And it is taking place right now in your neighborhood. No, I'm not talking about ISIS invading your neighborhood, what I'm talking about is credit card payments to merchants.

Earlier this month, Apple announced its mobile payment system called ApplePay. The Apple iPhone 6 uses a technology called Near Field Communication or NFC, which is built into their new iPhones to pay for a product in a store that supports this technology. This is similar to Google Wallet which uses the same technology.

On one side of battlefield you have Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), on the other side you have a consortium of merchants led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT), , which includes CVS Health Corporation (NYSE:CVS) and Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE:RAD). That consortium whose name is MCX (The Merchants Exchange) want to use their own mobile system that they have been developing since 2012. That system is named CurrentC. What's that going to do for consumers? You only have to look at the MCX website to understand what their goal is.

From the MCX Web site: "Merchant Customer Exchange is the only merchant-owned mobile commerce network built to streamline the customer shopping experience across all major retail verticals."

From the press kit: "It will also offer innovative features and benefits, such as merchant loyalty programs and instant coupon savings, all stored on the phone and available right at the point-of-sale."

Sounds very similar to Google wallet and ApplePay, does it not? Mobile payment solutions such as Google wallet have not really caught on with Millennials or anyone else for that matter. It was only when Apple came along with their new payment system that the MCX realized they had to attack. The first part of the attack was putting pressure on CVS Health Corporation (NYSE:CVS) and Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE:RAD) to turn off their NFC receivers on their cash registers so ApplePay would not work. What is strange is that Target, who is also a member of MCX, will accept ApplePay as it offers a more secure and superior method of payment over a regular credit card. Looking at some of the recent challenges that Target has had with credit card theft, it is understandable.

So today's poll question is:

Who do you think will win the mobile payment wars?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

If you have any comments you'd like to share with us about this post or about mobile payments in general, please feel free to leave them below this post.

Life is never boring, even in the mobile payments section.

Every success with MarketClub,
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com
Co-Creator, MarketClub

Our Most Important Poll Ever - We Need Your Input

Posted on by The INO.com Team

I feel this is the most important poll that we have ever taken on our website. The reason I say that is that we have never faced uncertain times quite like this. Some of you are going to say, "Adam this is a political posting and not market related." I'm going to respectfully disagree with you as it has everything to do with the markets. What is affecting the minds of investors and the market has, in a large degree, everything to do with Ebola and ISIS. You only have to look at what has happened to the markets in the past two or three weeks. There is not a person I've spoken with in the past two weeks who isn’t concerned about Ebola and what's going on in this country. Forget politics, Ebola doesn’t care if you are a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent. Ebola has no political agenda. Continue reading "Our Most Important Poll Ever - We Need Your Input" →