OK, before you start to laugh let me tell you that periodically I do a crazy speculative buy. I decided to purchase today 10,000 shares of (BLOAQ.PK) BlockBuster Inc for a Whopping $700 and some change or roughly 7 cents a share. Even though speculative, I have thought through this carefully and will tell you my reasoning why this could be a good long play or short term trade. Either way if I make money that is all I care about.
My first test of this stock was when I was helping my son move this weekend. Always listen carefully to the young twenty somethings. You can learn allot from them. He was talking to us about how he thinks NetFlix really sucks with their price increase. He said he has been watching shows on Hulu and just orders movies from his BlockBuster app.
I said Blockbuster? He said yes that they have an app now that he can just order streaming movies from. I thought this was interesting and they also have the vending machines like Red Box. OK, this sounded too good to be true. Everything I had heard is that BlockBuster has claimed Bankruptcy and was history. Well, let me tell you they are not history yet and seem to be coming back to me after hearing the younger in the group telling me they were getting DVD’s and ordering streaming movies from BlockBuster.
After some digging I read a few articles on Blockbuster (BLOAQ.PK). They completed the sale of essentially all of their major assets to Dish Network for something like $320 million for a company valued at over $800 million.
Dish Network got an established brand name and 1,700 physical store locations. A piece of every video-rental pie, from DVD-by-mail subscriptions and strip-mall rental kiosks to the every popular pay per view digital streaming services. Now if they play the strategy right and focus on the best of both RedBox and the streaming I could actually see BlockBuster bounce back.
If they can build there reputation back up, reduce costs and increase earnings and mend some bad relationships created from the bankruptcy I think they could be a viable player again. I mean come on they were a household name and went down in flames because they did not keep up with the moves in technology.
I think if they sit back with this new ownership and look at the success of RedBox and the positives and negatives of some of the recent moves that Netflix has made and set themselves up to take the best of both worlds, you could have a come back king.
Now of course this is all based on how smart their strategic planners are and how good they are at execution. I really do think they have the Brand already and as a speculative play I will take the risk.
I know the last stock a few years ago my son kept telling me about and how great their products were was Apple Inc. Enough said.
What do you think about BLOAK.PK BlockBuster Inc. as a speculative play? Can they come back as a successful player? Leave Your Comments Please!
Take Care and have a great week!
Today I want to talk about GLD or the SPDR Gold Trust Exchange Traded Fund.
I have a 10% portfolio holding in GLD and am still long on Gold. This exchange traded fund could have some pull back potential, but to tell you the truth I think it would just be a buying opportunity.
Now looking at the 5 year trend it is hard to want to bet against GLD. I mean gold has done nothing but go up for years. Why would you want to play with fire by betting against it? I put it in my portfolio as protection against the unknown whatever that means?
But it works and it continues to do well. I just wish I knew someone that could really tell me how to forecast the top to Gold if there is such a thing.
I mean right now watching all the news and reading all the articles I can on the economy it feels like everything is ready to crumble again. I am an optimist, but things are really getting ridiculous.
I mean so what if they do announce a QE3? I think that is terrible news to flood our economy with more printed money?
The U.S unemployment rate is still over 9% and in reality I think it is really sitting at about 16%. I mean come on lets count the people that gave up a long time ago or took part time jobs at McDonald’s so they can feed their kids. Things are rough out there.
Then there is Europe. All the talk is about Greece defaulting, but Spain and Italy are right behind them and this could be upward of 3 trillion dollars the last I heard. How do we fix this problem of countries including the U.S being in so far over their heads?
Then we want spending and growth? How do you get that when the governments need to cut back on spending?
Even if we do get some corporate job growth out there from innovative companies many of the manufacturing jobs seem to be sent overseas. I mean Apple Inc. is booming and headquartered here in the U.S but much of their manufacturing is done in China.
The auto companies reported increased auto sales in August. That is one positive note and can have a great impact on job growth in the U.S as well as their suppliers. But what if the government has to cut back on spending?
The 3 biggest things in our U.S budget is Social Security, Medicare and Defense spending. Do you really think the politicians are going to cut all the older struggling folks social security or medicare, well the answer is no. So if we cut defense spending then you are talking about thousands upon thousands of job losses as well as all the companies that supply those defense contractors.
Now you are talking about very high paying jobs which will tend to offset the job increases we have seen from the car companies. Oh and by the way those high salary people who work for the defense contractors buy allot of cars.
So do you see why there is the fear in the economy and why so many people are flocking to buy Gold?
There is fear that our leaders don’t know what to do either. It is such a complex political and financial mess that I am not sure who will be able to lead us out of it.
President Obama is going to be giving us his jobs creation plan this week. It should be really interesting. When he first ran for office I heard of all kinds of plans to create jobs through Green Manufacturing companies for Solar and Wind. Lately many of these have been going under and are very financially unstable. Why is this and why couldn’t we create jobs in these industries?
I will watch his speech and hope for the best. The markets may rally with this pep talk but think when the reality sets in we will come to the conclusion that drastic action must be taken to get a balanced budget which may lead to more job losses.
Right now I am staying in GLD and the SPDR Gold Trust will keep on chugging upward I think. If I see signs of a pull back in Gold I will look at it as an opportunity to buy. A good way to play a pull back if it does happen is with GLL which is the ultra short for Gold. If you look at a 2 year chart though this play has not worked well and has fallen every month as gold has climbed in value.
I wish I knew if there was going to be a big decrease in the price of gold and I would buy a nice chunk of GLL, but I just don’t see that happening right now in our current environment.
Let me know what you think about the price of gold and GLD and what strategy you are taking.
You all have a great week!
I have a true story for you.
This week I highly benefited from the announcement that the AT&T
T-Mobile Deal was off the table.I was completely shocked though when I saw it and had just bought some S Sprint Nextel
Shares at 3.40 just a few days before this. It popped and I sold all my shares and took the profit.Now today I am glad I did that trade, but to be honest I want to do it again. Now the stock is back down to $3.53 and I want to buy up a nice chunk possibly on Tuesday. This is the type of stock that can be good for trading up and down or just to go long on.
I truly believe this stock can benefit from the merger being killed and now off the table. I like Sprint’s strategy of building out their 4G Network and really like the CEO in charge Dan Hesse.
With the iPhone 5 on the way for Sprint I could see a good comeback. I know it is a bit risky with their huge capital requirements, but like the plan and the turnaround they have had in their customer service and are topping number one in this area.
I thought this video shot on Mad Money back in Early June was an awesome discussion on the potential of Sprint Nextel as well as the pending merger. It is cool to see how they were just talking about the negatives of this merger and now in late August it being stopped.
I am wanting to go long Sprint and am planning on adding it to my portfolio. Think it could be a profitable move, just like this week’s trade was after the announcement. What do you all think about Sprint as an investment or trade? Please leave your comments below.
I just signed up and registered at MillionDollar.CNBC.com.
This is an awesome idea and opportunity to trade stocks and foreign currency if you have never done it.
I have been trading stocks for a few years now and love it. The only thing I am weak at is trading currencies. I tried it awhile back with a system called EZForex and it was kind of cool. I made a few bucks, but also lost. This currency trading platform was basically daily trading of currency pairs like EUR/USD.
There are various strategies on the website and it goes into the contest rules and gives you some educational videos on currency trading. You build a portfolio from $1 Million Dollars in play money.
You can use $900,000 on Stocks and $100,000 on Currency trading. You build your own portfolio and can have up to 5 different portfolios.
The contest starts at 9:30 eastern time on September 19th and ends at 4:00 on November 25th.
You can actually win one million dollars in this challenge. There is also a Maserati sports car and a few exotic vacations.
Wish me luck. I am going to play this hard and even if I do not win I am expecting to learn a ton about trading through this challenge.
I am a huge fan of CNBC and watch it everyday, so it should be fun listening to the updates to this challenge and to see the winners.
I highly recommend you click on the link above to go and register yourself. Why not try to win and learn at the same time?
Looking forward to this challenge. Let me know if you sign up by leaving a comment on our blog.
Take Care!
Steve
Well, Ben Bernanke spoke today and mentioned he felt like the markets and economy were on track for long term growth. It amazes me how the markets move sometimes to this kind of stimulation from one man when last week the markets were so nervous. What has changed?
The you have Warren Buffet going in and buying $5 Billion Dollars of Bank of America and it jumping on the news. Has anything really changed? Why would they be at any less risk to the housing markets demise and lack of a turnaround with their huge exposure to this still. I know they have cash and are very liquid, but their stock had dropped to six bucks and some change. Now that Warren steps in the stock is worth 25% more in one day?
Most of the time the markets just don’t make sense to me as well as the overall markets and the way they work. Believe me though, I am really trying to understand. I love trading and the stock market and continue to improve my knowledge and learn from some of the experts out there to continue to modify my trading strategies to become more successful and to continue to grow my portfolio.
I just watched a great video by Carter Worth who is Managing Director and Chief Market Technician for Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc.. He does a very good analysis of precious metals as well as discussing the S&P500 and his forecast of where we are in relation to the high’s and low’s we just hit with the 20% declines in the markets.
I am including this video here on Making A Million Dollars so you too can learn from his chart analysis and strategies.
According to Institutional Investor’s 2010 All-America Research team, he is the second highest technical analyst on Wall Street. Carter holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Boston University.
Oh and by the way, I had set a stop loss on SODA and the stock sold off. It may be a trade for another day and I do think it is an interesting company but couldn’t take any more pain with it. I bought it fairly low as I said but wow, the additional drop was not expected. I will continue to watch the stock and may do more chart analysis on it, but am out for now.
I actually did a short trade on SD or Sandridge. It had hit $6.39 a share and sold today at $6.72 for a quick $500 dollar profit. I also bought HAL for a quick trade. Overall I was up between the two 600 bucks. I needed this trade since I took a bath on SODA and was down a grand on it.
I will do some research this weekend for good trades for the upcoming week. If you guys have anything good in regards to trades or stocks you are looking at please leave a comment here.
I am looking at SD again if it drops back down. If you have any opinions on this stock, leave a comment. Thanks
I was reading a comment about stock symbol SDS or ProShares UltraShort S&P500 on Yahoo Finance.
It was a stock market strategy that made sense to me after reading it.
It corresponds to twice the inverse of or opposite of the daily performance of the S&P500.
Now I was a little hesitant about trying this, but I am into testing strategies.
I bought about 200 shares at around $23 of SDS. I have some stock positions, but like everyone am nervous about this volatile market.
Things seemed very weak so I bought and held SDS in case the market drops or in this case the S&P500.
Even though my stocks would be down I can at least hold them until they bounce back.
But, the strategy is if I am feeling the pain on my stocks, SDS should bounce up as the S&P500 falls.
Sure enough the market dropped 400+ points in one day this past week and my SDS jumped to over 25 per share.
I then hesitated on closing out my position as I thought there might be more upside and therefore downside in the S&P500.
I decided not to risk the profit and closed the position out on SDS and made a quick $400+ profit.
I am no expert in all the details behind SDS, but it did seem like a good strategy.
I was happy I made money and might try it again depending on my analysis of the S&P500.
Now if the market rallied, I would in theory would be down and would have to hold SDS, but my other stocks would be up.
What do you all think about this strategy? Have any of you heard of SDS and do you ever trade it? Please leave your comments.
This video by Jim Cramer with the SodaStream CEO explaining the company guidance which resulted in a tremendous drop in the stock price.
If you read my post about SODA yesterday, you will see that I bought 150 total shares through dollar cost averaging. I bought my last lot of 50 at 36 bucks a share.
I really felt that this stock was a great one based on my research on the product as well as the performance of the company itself in the latest Q2 release.
Well this is beautiful guys! Jim Cramer has the SodaStream CEO on who did an awesome job of explaining the company and future. I was impressed and want to buy more. I am just very happy I got in on this at this low price, it feels like a gift. Now better yet I looked and today SODA was one of very few stocks that were in the green and after hours it is up over 40 per share. That is saying something with the stock market plummet that hit the markets today. I see this jumping way back up when the markets start to rally again.
The markets are so volatile now it is hard to predict anything. But with Christmas coming up and SodaStream machines being purchased for gifts in the U.S I think this could be huge. They only have a very small market share in the total scheme of Pepsi and Coke being the leaders. But when you look at the discount you can get on making Soda and saving on bottled water, this is a very economic as well as environmentally friendly machine.
I am going long on SodaStream.
Take care stock fans.
Please leave your comments.
Steve
I have been watching Stock Symbol SODA for a few months now. This is Soda Stream International. They are based out of Israel.
SodaStream turns tap water into sparkling water in under 30 seconds, with no clean-up with their home soda makers. They claim to protect the environment at the same time since there are no heavy bottles to carry, store or throw away. You add and mix flavors to choice to make your favorite drink. Simple to clean and reuse. The machines have a variety of colors to match with any decor.
The machines are sold at Best Buy, JCPenny’s, Macy’s, Sears and many other department store outlets. I really like the fact the machines are helping the environment. My wife drinks allot of Pepsi and could see this really saving us as well as with bottled water. I was so interested I am going to go down and buy a machine and try it out.
I saw this stock has dropped like a rock and actually feel it is a great time to pick some up cheap. I have been dollar cost averaging into this stock with 3 different purchases. Today I bought some as low as 36 dollars per share. I really feel this stock is really oversold.
Here are a few numbers from their recent press release on their investor relations page at SodaStream.com.
Revenues Increased 38% to Euro 53.3 Million
Adjusted Net Income Increased 161% to Euro 6.1 Million
Net Income Increased 138% to Euro 5.1 Million
Adjusted Diluted EPS Increased 61% to Euro 0.29 or $0.42*
Company Reports Record Consumable Sales and Record Consumable Unit Volumes
Aug 11, 2011
7:30am
After announcing these excellent Q2 numbers the stock plummeted due to a flat forecast for the second half of the year with no really clear guidance.
Maybe they were unclear, but this company has been discussed for a few months now and questions as to whether it is just a fad or a viable product. After looking at the site and product myself I really am impressed. Also, after cranking out the impressive numbers above is proof of the strong sales and earnings. The drop from the 70′s down 50% to the 30′s to me is just way overdone and think my purchase will pay off over the next few months.
I do not think this company is a fad and think fear is driving this down. Leaving a vague forecast is what it sounds like they did wrong. Uncertainty especially in these fear driven markets can make investors jump ship quick. In this case I think that is what happened. I really believe if the company gives better guidance and a more clear picture and direction that company is moving in, investors will be more at ease and the stock should rebound. That is what I am banking on.
Please leave your comments and thoughts on this stock and article.
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