Hey Folks, No more taxi driving for me, instead I decided to become apprentice Index and stock option trader. You can follow my trades online, your comments will be more than welcome, if you have experience we might learn from each other how to make money in stock market. :) ... Thank you
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.
Seems like Sasol SSL chart became very compressed, also daily volume has been going on for last 12 days below 5 million shares a day, even on a days when stock lost more than 12% and went below $4.00 a share. I think, SSL will start to move up pretty soon. I am long another 10 contracts on June 19th @$7.50 at $10 per contract for total $100.
First time in a while I found company with great growth potential and fair valuation. Probably I wouldn't notice UPWK as a stock worth interest, if not for high volume day and substantial jump in price, because, usually I don't look for companies with valuations over 1 P/S. So I checked fundamentals, and I realized UPWK has market cap of less than 1.5 billion which is very unusual in technology sector, it doesn't make any profit, has revenue growth +20%, that's still nothing special to get excited about, until you read some more to find that Upwork is a leader in the field of remote hiring, it has been around since 1999, much longer than any competitor and has new CEO (Hayden Brown) in place with vision to execute growth at higher rate, possibly at +50% pace. So, the very next day I bought 2 call contracts with expiration June 19th and strike $12.5 at average price $1.55 per contract. Now, let's hope that Upwork continues on it's uptrend to make me some money :) Upwork's weekly charts since it's IPO in 2018
Upwork Inc UPWK CEO Hayden Brown on Q4 2019 Results.... video.
Venator Materials (VNTR) is very interesting company, besides wide range of products they offer, their valuation is incredibly low. Shrinking revenues and earning are not as bad as charts could make us believe or explain why this +$20 per share stock is trading now around $1.25. If there are some underlying problems with this company, we don't know that, but I would rather attribute oversold condition of VNTR to shrinking economy, lower demand for products and sluggish commodity prices. Is VNTR worth buying at this stage? yes and no, NO, because we don't know how long this economical slump will last and when commodity prices will start to move up to catch up with hidden inflation. YES, because right now VNTR is trading much below 0.1 price to sales and could be subject to hostile takeover, buyback from (HUN) Huntsman Corporation at price much higher than Friday $1.25 closing....ahmm, like between $7- $15 a share ?. Of course, what I am writing here is pure speculation, but still, in my opinion VNTR stock belongs to $5-$7 range or even higher. I don't intend to buy into Venator, because it is too risky, yet, I am thinking about following this stock with "Long shot" call option strategy, it costs only $5 per contract on June 19th $2.5 strike. If VNTR "decides" to move to the upside, I believe, the jump can be rather explosive, on high volume and that will propel call option prices skyward.
For last couple of years, so called "socially and politically correct" mostly governmental funds have been dumping "incorrect" stocks from their portfolios. First, they started with gun manufacturers, then time came to sell fossil fuel companies and booze enterprises . May be there wouldn't be anything special about it, after all, we can invest as we are pleased, but if all Canadian government funds dump local stocks like Molson Coors and Canadian oil companies which offer employment to Canadians and pay local taxes, not to mention dividends to investors, because they are "socially incorrect" and buy JD.com retailer in China, then may be Canadians should ask Chinese to pay their retirement benefits in the future ? .....just a thought
