Tag: Donald Trump

How to Speculate on the Results of the Presidential Election

by Fred Fuld III

If you have been wondering what the percentage chance of a particular candidate winning an election, there is a website you can check out.

It shows the betting odds for the U.S. presidential election and the odds for the Senate control and the House control, based on the oddsmakers.

The site is called Election Betting Odds. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) for Americans, there are laws prohibiting betting on political elections in the United State (with one exception which will be described later in this article).

The Election Betting Odds site is based primarily on Betfair.com, the major betting site based in the UK, along with other sources. Americans are not allowed to bet on this site.

However, if you are a U.S. citizen and you really want to speculate on the outcome of the upcoming elections, you can use a site called PredictIt.org. Why is there this loophole?

Well first, Predictit.org is an experimental project operated for academic purposes at New Zealand’s Victoria University under permission from the CFTC, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

Second, the maximum you can “invest” is only $850, so there is not a huge risk to traders if they lose. Bid amounts range from one penny to 99 cents.

The interesting feature about PredictIt is that there are numerous politically related possibilities that you can speculate on, not just the presidential election.

Here are just a few of the things you can bet on:

  • Which party will win Florida in 2020?
  • Will Nancy Pelosi become Acting U.S. President on January 20?
  • Who will win the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic gubernatorial primary?
  • Will Trump resign during his first term?
  • Who will be the next justice to leave the Supreme Court?
  • Will a federal charge against Rudy Giuliani be confirmed by Dec. 31, 2020?
  • Will Kim Jong-Un be Supreme Leader of North Korea on Dec. 31?
  • Will Benjamin Netanyahu be prime minister of Israel on Dec. 31, 2020?
  • Will Scottish Parliament call for an independence referendum in 2020?
  • Will NASA find 2020’s global average temperature highest on record?

I found it fascinating just to browse through to see all the different things that people are speculating on.

Why Did Donald Trump Register the DonaldTrumpSucks.com Domain Name?

Based on an article that originally appeared at Stockerblog.com on August 19, 2015

A domain name is, in simple terms, the address for a website. For example, Apple.com, Google.com, and Yahoo.com are all domain names. Domain names are often referred to as URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) or website addresses. Usually, it is what comes after the http:// or the https://, and sometimes you see a www thrown in there.

Some people actually register domain names as investments, which for the right name, can pay off handsomely. For example, whoever originally registered fb.com, eventually got lucky and sold out to Facebook (FB) for $8.5 million. The person who owned loans.com sold to Bank of America (BAC) for $3 million, with mortgage.com going to Citigroup (C) for $1.8 million. There are many other high priced domain sales that can be found in the Stock Market Trivia book.

Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, owns the DonaldTrump.com domain of course. Well technically, the registration shows the ownership as the General Counsel of The Trump Organization, originally registered back on March 7, 1999. It is registered through GoDaddy (GDDY).

But when I checked out the owner of DonaldTrumpSucks.com back in 2015, I expected that it might have been registered by a Republican opponent of Donald Trump or possibly someone on the Democratic side. Yet it turns out that this domain is also owned by The Trump Organization.

DonaldTrumpSucks domain 1

When checking again today, it shows the same thing.
DonaldTrumpSucks domain 2
What is interesting is that this particular domain was registered on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014.   Was that the day that Trump really decided to run? This domain was registered through GoDaddy.
Trump’s company has registered over 3,000 domain names, and according to an article by the International Business Times, the organization buys tens of thousands of domains every year.
Some of these purchases are for legitimate purchases, although currently the pages don’t appear to be live. For example:

trumpequities.com
donaldtrumpbriefcases.com
thetrumpexperience.com
trumpwatches.com

Trump isn’t buying all of them them for investment though. Apparently, many are purchased for guarding against “predators.” Here are some of the domains acquired by Trump:

trumpnetworkmarketingsucks.com
trumpnetworksucks.com
trumpcorporationsucks.com
trumporganizationsucks.com
trumpnetworkfraud.com
trumpnetworkponzischeme.com

All of the above point to a generic GoDaddy web page. However, it is interesting to note that if you go to TrumpSucks.com, it brings you to The Office of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The owner of TrumpSucks is unknown as it  is privately registered through Domain Privacy Service.

The problem with acquiring the anti-Trump domain names is that there are thousands variances of domain names that people can come up with. One example, that I would rather not put in writing but begins with an F is owned by an individual who apparently has had it registered since 2004. For that matter, another domain, which has as its last part, a four letter word that begins with the letter S is also owned by an individual, and was registered a few years ago. Neither of these domains have developed web sites.

But even without the dirty words, there are other top level domains such as .net and .org that could be used with the anti-Trump words, As a matter of fact, an individual just registered donaldtrumpsucks.net in August 2015. And donaldtrumpsucks.org was registered exactly one month ago. Both with the registrar of, who else, GoDaddy, and neither of which are developed.

I’m not sure what the intent of these individuals are. Maybe they think they can resell their domains to the Trump Organization. Have fun dealing with the Trump lawyers.

But is there an investment angle to this, other than trying to find a good (bad) domain to resell to Trump? The one investment that sticks out is GoDaddy, due to its popularity as a domain registrar. Potential investors should be aware that the stock trades at nosebleed high price earnings and forward P/E ratios.

It will be interesting to see how the Trump domain activity plays out. If anyone has any ideas on an investment angle to the Trump domains, please post in the comment section below.

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

Would You Put Whiskey in Your Gas Tank?

It may be hard to believe but cars can now run on whiskey, in addition to gasoline and diesel, according to a BBC article. Actually, it is whiskey residue from the whiskey making process called biobutanol. And the best feature is that the automobile engine doesn’t have to be modified.

But it is not just cars consuming liquor; humans seem to do a bit of consuming themselves. Last year, the sale of alcohol was $25.2 billion in the US, a 4.5% increase over the previous year, and the seventh yearly increase in a row.

Relax and Lose Weight

With money flowing into the coffers of liquor producers, some investors are taking a close look at companies in the alcohol industry. Studies have shown that liquor may help you lose weight, will help relax you (obviously), and might even cure blindness. Investors who believe that booze stocks can benefit from these alcohol health benefits, have several choices to choose from.

Jack Daniel’s

Brown-Forman Corporation (BF-B) is a liquor distributor which is famous for its Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort brands. The stock has a price-to-earnings ratio of 28, a forward P/E of 26, and provides a fair yield of 1.48%.

 Johnnie Walker

Diageo (DEO) is a London based alcoholic beverage distributor that markets numerous brands of whiskey, including Johnnie Walker Scotch whiskey, Crown Royal Canadian whiskey, JeB Scotch whisky, Buchanan’s Scotch whiskey, Windsor Premier Scotch whiskey, and Bushmills Irish whiskey. It also sells vodka, rum, and wine. The stock trades at 24 times trailing earnings, and 20 times forward earnings. It sports a higher-than-industry-average yield of 2.5%.

How to Invest in Donald Trump

Did you know that you can invest in a stock that developed and distributes Trump Super Premium Vodka? The company is Drinks Americas (DKAM), a Connecticut based company that trades Over the Counter on the Pink Sheets, and last traded for one hundredth of a cent. The vodka received four out of five stars by Spirit Journal. Unfortunately for potential tasters, the beverage is no longer sold in the US.

For a free list of stocks in the liquor and wine industry, click on the following link:

Wine & Liquor Stocks

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