Saturday, June 13, 2020

CCK, Crown Holdings, Inc Case study

CCK, Crown Holdings, Inc or Crown Cork & Seal Company as it used to be known, in December of 2001 was $1 stock.
There is nothing special about this company, an old and boring manufacturer of metal packaging which has been in existence since 1892.
I remember when CCK went below $1 a share in 2001 I gave up on watching it because there was no news about it, financial information was very limited and all I knew, that it had P/S below 0.1, shrinking sales and negative earnings. Since being very old company, I assumed that there might have some other problems behind very low price, like labor disputes with unions, high debt or something else.
I almost forgot about this stock, but sometimes later I checked price of CCK and I couldn't believe my eyes, it was trading around $10 a share in sluggish to bearish market of 2002

 *Below chart shows CCK trading range between September 2001 and March 2002

Example of CCK chart is interesting because it shows signs and patterns of accumulation of stock by "insiders", bankers and institutions, these guys don't buy 100s, 1000s of shares, they buy them in millions. Of course they buy into current information which is not available to average investor or trader.
All that mumbo jumbo you might hear on TV or read on investment portals, that market moved down because higher unemployment rate or moved up because of FED cut interest rates is nothing else but trying to give "reason" to  average Joe why market is fluctuating, in reality market/stocks are going through periods of accumulations and distributions or profit taking by "big boys". To move trillions of dollars worth of stocks up or down is a biggest industry in the world......and I still try to figure this out, why are they doing this? because for every winner in the market, there must be one who lost money.
*Market making,- Every stock in stock market has assigned institution or couple of them which are responsible for providing liquidity to particular stock when someone tries to buy it or sell it, any imbalance in buy and sell orders, make stock move up or down. Market makers have obligation to fulfill your order no matter what, even if they don't have shares of particular stock on hand. In situation like this, they take "short position", which means they will profit from this transaction only when and if stock price go below price they paid for.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, looks like market is overbought and it has been overbought for last couple of years......that Covid 19 "correction" is just the beginning of bear market which might last another 2-3 years... IMO

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