Author: WSTNN

Stocks Selling Below Cash per Share

by Fred Fuld III

It may be hard to believe that with so many stocks selling a nosebleed levels, especially the meme stocks, that there are actually stocks that not only sell below book value but also sell below cash per share. In addition, these stocks have little or no debt.

What this means is that if the company were to go out of business today, assuming the buildings, real estate, machinery, patents, and other assets were totally worthless, there would still be enough cash to distribute to all shareholders at an amount higher than the current stock price.

Here are a couple stocks that sell below cash per share, have no or almost no debt and have a price to earnings ratio of less than 20.

Digital Ally (DGLY) has a market cap of $67.5  million and trades at 2.83 times earnings. The company, which makes and markets advanced video recording products, recently reported that second quarter earnings increased by 44% over the same quarter last year.

Voyager Therapeutics (VYGR) has a market cap of $107.4 million and a P/E ratio of 6.17. It is a biotech company that focuses on the development of treatments for patients suffering from severe neurological diseases.

Just remember, the stocks are selling at a low price and have low market caps for a reason, and are speculative.

 

Disclosure: Author didn’t own any of the above at the time the article was written.

 

Stocks with the Highest Short Interest: Short Squeeze Plays

by Fred Fuld III

As I write this, the Dow Jones Industrial  Average is down 477, and the S&P is also down. Maybe while the market has dropped so much, now might be the time to look for short squeeze opportunities.

Here is a review about the short squeeze and its terminology. When you short a stock, it means that your goal is to make money from a drop in the price of a stock. Technically, what happens is that you borrow shares of a stock, sell those shares, then buy back those shares at a hopefully lower price so that those shares can be returned. This all happens electronically, so you don’t actually see all the borrowing and returning of shares; it just shows up on your screen as a negative number of shares.

Short selling can be profitable, but sometimes when the stock moves against the short sellers, and begins to rise, the short sellers jump in right away to buy shares to cover their positions, creating what is called a short squeeze. When a short squeeze takes place, it can cause the share prices to increase fast and furiously. Any good news can trigger the short squeeze.

Some traders utilize this situation by looking for stocks to buy that may have a potential short squeeze. Here is what a short squeeze trader should take into consideration:

Short Percentage of Float ~ The float is the number of freely tradable shares and the short percentage is the number of shares held short divided by the float. Amounts over 10% to 20% are considered high and potential short squeeze plays.

Short Ratio / Days to Cover / Short Interest Ratio -This is probably the most important metric when looking for short squeeze trades, no matter what you call it. This is the number of days it would take the short sellers to cover their position based on the average daily volume of shares traded. This is a significant ratio as it shows how “stuck” the short sellers are when they want to buy in their shares without driving up the price too much. Unfortunately for the shortsellers, the longer the number of days to cover, the bigger and longer the squeeze.

Short Percentage Increase ~ This is the percentage increase in in the number of short sellers from the previous month.

Check out the following list, but be aware, that often some stocks are heavily shorted for a reason. All these stocks have significant short metrics.

Stock Symbol % Float Shorted Days to Cover Stock Price
Workhorse WKHS 35% 2.2 8.97
Arcimoto FUV 34% 5.4 10.94
Blink BLNK 34% 6.2 30.09
Support.com SPRT 33% 1.5 8.31

So as an example, Arcimoto has 34% of the float shorted, and it will takeover five days for the short sellers to cover their positions, based on the average daily volume.

Obviously, there is no guarantee that these stocks will go up, but if I was short any stock, I wouldn’t want to waste any time covering my position if the stock started to move up sharply, before all the other short sellers clamor in and drive the price way up.

Disclosure: Author didn’t own any of the above at the time the article was written

The Perfect Investment: 5.45% US Government Guaranteed with No Minimum Investment

by Fred Fuld III

What would you think of an investment with the following characteristics:

1. Over 5% guaranteed return on your investment within less than a month!
2. Inflation-proof
3. Short term or long term investment: your choice
4. Guaranteed by the United States Government
5. No minimum investment
6. An easily transferable bearer investment with no registration required
7. The investment will never go down in value

The Perfect Investment

Can you guess what this investment is? It’s the Forever Stamp, the stamp issued by the US Post Office used to purchase one ounce of postage, no matter how high the price of postage rises, even if the postage rate rises to $1, $10, or even $20 per ounce.

The price of first class postage will be increasing before the end of this month on August 29 by 5.45%, from 55 cents to 58 cents. However, if you buy Forever Stamps by August 28, you can still use the stamp for one ounce of first class postage.

The price of first class postage has continued to rise historically. Back in 1968, the price of a first class stamp was only 6 cents. The price has jumped by 867% since then, which works out to 4.5% annualized.

You can still buy these stamps and take advantage of this ‘investment’. Over the long term, with inflation inevitable, postage rates will continue to increase.

So who would this purchase be useful for?

If you still pay a lot of bills using checks in the mail

If you own a small company that does a lot of mass mail-outs

If you are part of a club or organization that sends out printed monthly newsletters (there are actually a lot of these groups that still send printed newsletters)

If you mail out merchandise sold though eBay, Etsy, and other online sites without using the built-in postage service (many sellers of low priced items just use regular postage)

If you want to send out a sales-oriented flyer for your business as an alternative or in addition to an email blast, using some of the more unusual Forever Stamps to get people’s attention to open their mail

If you want to just sell your stamps down the road at a profit to either collectors or those that want to use them for any of the above reasons (there are almost a thousand listings on eBay right now for Forever Stamps, many selling close to face value)

Forever Stamps

Billion Dollar Whale: One of the Biggest Financial Swindles in History

by Fred Fuld III

If you haven’t read the book, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, by Tom Wright & Bradley Hope, you need to read it.

Do you know what all of the following have in common (in no particular order)?

Paris Hilton
Leonardo Dicaprio
Martin Scorsese
Malasia
Swiss Banks
Kleptocracy
Wolf of Wall Street Movie
Hollywood
Wall Street
Goldman Sachs
$500,000,000 Yacht
Miranda Kerr
$325,000 Ferrari
Supermodels
$33.5 million Manhattan condominium
President Obama
President Trump
Jamie Foxx
Busta Rhymes
Kasseem Dean
Alicia Keys
Swizz Beatz
Money Laundering
Cyprus
China
Macau
Indonesia
Bali
United States
12,000 pieces of jewelry
567 handbags
423 watches
FBI
Casinos
Million dollar parties
Las Vegas

All of the above are connected to a man named Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman who is accused of swindling billions of dollars, indirectly from the Malaysian government, and spending it on huge parties with actors, models, numerous bottles of champagne, gambling, and entertainment, in addition to expensive homes around the world.

Ironically, according to the book, Low funded the Martin Scorsese movie The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which was based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, the convicted stock market manipulator and boiler-room operator.

The story of Low reads like a financial mystery and thriller, and I rarely say this about a non-fiction book, but it is a page-turner.

So if you are looking for some end of summer reading, and if you like to read about frauds, scams, and swindles,  Billion Dollar Whale will definitely keep you occupied.


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Should You Be investing in the Olympics?

by Fred Fuld III

The 2020 Olympic Games began on Friday, July 23, in 2021 of course. If you haven’t been watching the Olympics, you are missing the greatest sports event of the year.

The Olympic Games have many sponsors and several of these worldwide Olympic Partners are publicly traded.

Some investors believe that the sponsoring of this event will help increase revenues for the company sponsors. Others believe that if these companies are putting up all this money, that they expect a return on their investment.

So if you have wondered if investing in these companies would provide a good return, then check out the results below.

Olympics Stock Index

Company Symbol Price 7/23/21 Price 8/4/21 Gain/Loss
Airbnb ABNB 138.73 147.4 6.25%
Alibaba BABA 206.53 200.71 -2.82%
Bridgestone BRDCY 21.88 21.93 0.23%
Coca-Cola KO 57.01 56.1 -1.60%
Dow Chemical DOW 60.11 60.99 1.46%
General Electric GE 101.68 102.91 1.21%
Intel INTC 53 53.9 1.70%
Panasonic PCRFY 12.21 12.19 -0.16%
Procter & Gamble PG 139.79 142.43 1.89%
Toyota TM 179.85 182.18 1.30%
VISA V 249.02 236.67 -4.96%
TOTAL 1219.81 1217.41 -0.20%
EQUAL WEIGHT RETURN -7.96%

You will notice that the worst performers to date are VISA (V) and Alibaba (BABA) and the best are Airbnb (ABNB) and Procter & Gamble (PG).

Based on an equal weighting of all the companies, the total return from the start of the Olympics on July 23 to today, August 4, is a negative 7.96%, far worse than the market as a whole. The S&P 500 was only down 0.21% during that same time frame.

Yet there is still more time for the Olympics Stock Index to recover as the events don’t end until August 8.

 

Disclosure: Author owns TM.

Robinhood Investors Getting Rich

by Fred Fuld III

Last Thursday, Robinhood (HOOD) went public at an IPO price of $38 per share. The stock sold off a little that first day, but today, the stock reached a price per share of $85 shortly after the stock market opened.

This works out to a 123% gain in one week. Not too shabby for a recent IPO.

Even if you had waited until yesterday to buy the stock on the close at $48.50, the gain would be 75%.

Robinhood has almost turned into a meme stock, not due to a short squeeze but do to the popularity of the stock, as it has garnered much attention on Reddit.

Options started trading on the stock today, and the volume and activity is huge. The strike prices range from 20 to 95 for all expirations from August to January of next year. Will higher strikes need to be added? Who knows? Maybe even lower strikes.

The August implied volatility is over 200% and September is in excess of 170%.

It will be interesting to see if Robinhood turns into another GameStop (GME) or AMC (AMC), or if it takes you for a RIDE.

 

Disclosure: Author owns two shares of HOOD.

 

 

Top Cement and Concrete Stocks

Just one month ago, President Biden announced his support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan. These expenditures should benefit the companies involved in the production of concrete and cement.

The first occurrence of cement took place 12 million years ago. Did you know that many thousands of years ago,cement was made out of cow dung, along with lime and mud. This cement was called ‘daub’. If you are looking for a good infrastructure play, maybe cement stocks could be a solid foundation for you portfolio. All of the following have market caps above $1 billion.

CRH PLC ( CRH ) is an Irish based cement and building materials manufacturer. The stock has a price to earnings ratio of 34 , and a yield of 2.37%.

Cemex ( CX ) is a Mexico based cement and construstion materials manufacturer. The company is currently generating negative earnings and does not pay a dividend.

Eagle Materials ( EXP ) is a Texas based manufacturer of cement and gypsum wallboard. The stock has a P/E of 17, and a yield of 0.73% .

James Hardie Industries ( JHX ) is another Ireland-based manufacturer of cement products. The stock has a P/E of 58, and does not pay a dividend .

Vulcan Materials Company (VMC) is an Alabama based producer of construction aggregate. It trades at 35 times earnings and pays a yield of 0.83%

US Concrete (USCR) is a Texas based concrete producer, which trades at 52 times earnings. It does not pay a dividend.

 

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

 

Funny Company Mergers

by Fred Fuld III

Time for some humor. These are the names that would result if the following publicly traded companies were to become involved in a merger.

If the following companies were to merge: Caterpillar, Gottschalks, Uranium Energy, Tongjitang Chinese Medicines, you would end up with Cat Gott Ur Tong.

Du Pont, YouBet.com, Bell Industries, Even Technologies, Magic Software Enterprises = Du, You, Bell, Even, Magic

Honeywell and Dewey Electronics = Honey Dew

Agfeed Industries, Pfizer, Fortune Brands, Fomento Econmico Mexicano = Fee, Pfi, Fo, Fom

Exxon Mobil, Markel Corp., The9 Limited, Spotlight Homes = Ex, Mark, The, Spot

Harken Energy, Herald Resources, Fallen Angels Income Fund and Singapore Fund = Hark, the Herald, Angels, Sing

Deckers Outdoor Corp., The9 Limited, Hallmark Financial Services = Deck, The, Hall

Apple Inc., Omega Navigation Enterprises, Intel = Apple, Ome, I.

For more stock market jokes, go to InvestmentTrivia.com.

Who Owns the One Letter Domain Names?

by Fred Fuld III

Domain names have become a hot investment over the last 20 years, with several selling for over a million dollars. In case you are not familiar with them, domain names are, in very simple terms, the website address. For example apple.com, facebook.com, and google.com are all domain names. The most common ones end in .com but some end in .net, .org. .biz, .co, and other top level domains.

Did you ever wonder who owns a.com, b.com, or c.com. There are only twenty six letter domains that are even possible, but getting those one letter domains is even more difficult to get than one letter stock ticker symbols.

To start with, the dot com letters ‘a’ through ‘p’, ‘r’ through ‘w’, and the letter ‘y’ are all controlled by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, also known as the IANA, the organization which oversees the allocation of IP addresses and domain names.

In case you were wondering about the zero dot com through 9.com domains, they are controlled by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

Some companies were lucky enough to register one letter dot com domains before December 1, 1993 (or buy them from someone who registered them by that date), as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority put a restriction on single character domains at that time.

But there are still a few that are owned by companies.

a.co is owned by Amazon (AMZN).

g.co is owned by Google (GOOG)

s.co is owned by Snapchat (SNAP)

o.co and o.info are both owned by Overstock.com (OSTK).

0.co (that’s a zero dot co) is owned by Overstock.com (OSTK).

0.info (that’s a zero dot info) is also owned by Overstock.com (OSTK).

q.com is being used by Quantum Fiber.

t.co is owned by Twitter (TWTR).

x.com has been owned by x.commerce, which was developed by eBay (EBAY). Current ownership shows up as being private.

x.co has been owned by GoDaddy to be used as a URL shortener..

y.co is owned by XBN Ltd., formerly YCO Group, a luxury yacht company, which is a subsidiary of Fifty Four Four Ltd..

z.com used to be owned by Nissan North America Inc., which is owned by Nissan Motor (NSANY), which trades on NASDAQ. It is now owned by GMO Internet, Inc. (GMOYF), a Japan based Internet services company which trades on the Tokyo exchange and the US OTC Market.

i.net is owned by Future Media Architects, a privately held company based in the British Virgin Islands.

c.tv, h.tv, k.tv, l.tv, o.tv, q.tv, s.tv, t.tv, w.tv, y.tv, and z.tv are also owned by Future Media Architects.

d.tv has been owned by Worldwide Media, Inc. publisher of  TheDomains.com.

u.tv is owned by ITV plc (ITVPY), a British media company. The company trades on the London Stock Exchange and the US OTC Market.

Want to know what companies have one letter stock ticker symbols? Here they are:

Agilent Technologies Inc. (A)

Barnes Group Inc. (B)

Citigroup, Inc. (C) formerly the symbol for Chrysler

Dominion Energy, Inc. (D)

Eni SpA (E)

Ford Motor Co. (F)

Genpact Ltd. (G) formerly the symbol for Gillette

Hyatt Hotels (H)

Jacobs Engineering (J)

Kellogg Company (K)

Loews Corporation (L)

Macy’s, Inc. (M)

Realty Income Corp. (O)

Ryder System, Inc. (R)

SentinelOne (S) formerly the symbol for Sprint Nextel Corp. and formerly the symbol for Sears Roebuck

AT&T, Inc. (T)

Unity Software (U)

Visa, Inc. (V)

Wayfair (W)

United States Steel Corp. (X)

Alleghany Corp. (Y)

Zillow (Z) formerly the symbol for Woolworth, now known as Foot Locker (FL)