Stock Trading

8x8, Inc. (EGHT) is a promising technology stock that is currently priced under $10. 8x8 is a California-based small-cap technology company and it has approximately 30,000 business clients as of 2012. The company develops and distributes telecommunications services for Internet protocol, telephony and video applications. As such, it offers Web-based conferencing, unified communication services, and cloud-based computing services. The 8x8 Virtual Office hosts private branch communication services for small and medium enterprises; the 8x8 Virtual Contact Center is a small call center solution that works with broadband Internet connection; and lastly, the Virtual Office Pro is a business communications solution that functions on an integrated Web-based portal through PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.On May 1, 2013, Virtual Office Desktop 8x8 was recognized by TMC, a global media company, as the winner of the 2013 Unified Communications TMC Labs Innovation Award. Recently, on April 16, 2013, the U.S. Patent

When I wrote last week that it was safe to sell, I should perhaps have checked the options tables first. Although the S&P index options that are favored by the institutional set were heavily tilted in favor of calls, the options on the SPY ETF were massively imbalanced in favor of puts. Over two million put contracts by my count went to zero last Friday after two little sudden pops in the SPY out of nowhere - one Wednesday morning, one Friday afternoon at about 2PM. Okay, so maybe the pops weren't out of nowhere (details on my website).Nevertheless, I sold the last of my unhedged SPYs Friday, and have no regrets. I do expect that yesterday's big reversal - from up 155 on the Dow to down 85 - is the beginning of the spring correction, though I don't believe it will be straight down. The market will

Start Time: 21:00 End Time: 22:03 Shanda Games Ltd. (GAME) Q1 2013 Earnings Conference Call May 22, 2013, 21:00 PM ET Executives Xiangdong Zhang - CEO and Chief Producer Richard Wei - CFO Tunghai Chien - President Ellen Chiu - IR Analysts Timothy Chan - Morgan Stanley Thomas Chong - Bank of China Mark Marostica - Piper Jaffray Evan Zhou - JPMorgan George Meng - Macquarie Securities William Hill - Barclays Andy Yeung - Oppenheimer & Co. Muzhi Li - Citigroup Presentation Operator Welcome to Shanda Games Limited First Quarter 2013 Financial Results Conference Call. The conference call will be recorded and available for replay in its entirety. A copy of Shanda Games 2013 first quarter results announcement can be found and downloaded from its Investor Relations website at http://ir.shandagames.com. At this time, all lines have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for questions

When I learned about BlackBerry's (BBRY) acquisition of QNX in 2011, I was admittedly curious about who these folks were and how the BlackBerry 10 OS was "built on a QNX OS." What was it that Research in Motion, and at the time, Mike Lazaridis, saw in this developer of UNIX-esque operating systems? In recent interviews, Thorsten Heins (BBRY CEO) lauded QNX's for providing the "embedded systems" behind rail trains, nuclear power plants, and medical devices. It turns out they also build the "infotainment" systems (including the UI, Navigation, Bluetooth connectivity, etc.) for over 20 million cars worldwide. Their customers include Acura, BMW, Audi, and believe it or not, Samsung.Here is what BBRY had to say in its most recent annual report, about QNX and what they have in store (Page 17, second paragraph): Leveraging and capitalizing on the embedded market. Over the past

Trading in Yongye's (YONG) common stock was halted while the company was on its way to going private. Yongye is currently being scrutinized by regulators while the trading remains halted. There are signs that Yongye is robust and may be able to survive the halt. There is also fear because so many previous and recent halts of Chinese reverse takeovers ended delisting. If trading in the stock resumes, Yongye will go private. If it gets delisted, the going private will break up. The belief of the writer is that for the interests of investors, NASDAQ will not delist the company and the going private will finally prevail. Below I will explain this in more detail and show you an example of NASDAQ facilitating a buyout. At the end, I will also explain why Yongye may survive the halt without regard to the buyout. The delay of filing was not the

The short answer is: Yes. Any weakness in the market is a buying opportunity today. The market sell-off on Wednesday was a result of only two factors: 1) Bernanke saying that bond purchases can be slowed 2) Fed minutes showing that participants are talking about scaling back the bond purchases. Point 1 above is an outcome of point 2, and not vice-versa. That is, Bernanke is still as dovish as he has always been. In fact, for most of his testimony he was focused on affirming that bond purchases have been working for the economy and he does not want to scale back anytime soon.And here is a finer point from both Bernanke's testimony and Fed statement from last month: The Fed is still keeping itself fully engaged in that if it sees any weakness then it will increase the bond purchases again.So this market sell-off is really

With Sirius XM's (SIRI) recently added debt, the rise in the stock price, and the shrinking of the share count via a share buyback program, it is perhaps a good time to explore the current valuation of Sirius XM. While there are many ways to value a company I like to use the EV/EBITDA method because Sirius XM is a media company and media companies tend to be valued on their EBITDA growth and free cash flow growth. (click to enlarge) The EV/EBITDA method is obtained by taking the Enterprise value and dividing it by EBITDA. Enterprise Value is the Market Cap + Debt - Cash. EBITDA is the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Historically, Sirius XM has traded at a multiple of between 17 (on the low side) and 24 (on the high side). As the components of the formula change, the multiple will change as well.

After all of the excitement leading up to it, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has finally launched its next generation low power, thin-and-light oriented product called "Kabini" for the 9W to 25W space. Anandtech, the world's leading hardware review site, managed to get its review up in a timely fashion, and as a result, the financial community can get a better sense of just what this product means for AMD and its future. The "Kabini" Lineup - 9W to 25W TDP Here's the lineup of parts that AMD is launching today: (click to enlarge) So what we see here is at the very high end, we get two quad core APUs: one with a TDP of 25W and one with a TDP of 15W. The dual cores consume from 9W to 15W, with varying graphics/CPU clock speeds.These will, as AMD points out in its competitive comparison slides, go head-to-head

"Sell on the rumor, buy on the news"; professional investors often buy a stock when a company reports poor earnings because the bad news is out and earnings and cash flows will only get better. This is NOT the case when Aegean Marine Petroleum Network (ANW) reported its first quarter earnings on May 16; I am using the 25% appreciation over the last few days to aggressively short the stock. Review of the quarter Aegean's revenues decreased 12.8% to $1.563B and gross profit decreased by 7.5% to $70.7m mainly due to lower volumes with some help from an increased gross spread. According to management, revenues were light because of seasonal factors (weather) and also increased credit risk management. Aegean's revenues missed estimates of $1.734B by $174m and earnings of $0.13 missed consensus estimates of $0.135.A deeper dive into the results tells a much different story. I looked up

The recent Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Bernanke induced fall in the AUD (FXA) has drawn lots of attention. Betting on the end of the commodity supercycle has been a common theme, or perhaps nightmare, in the past few years, seeing that commodity currencies have remained stubbornly high. Is the RBA and Bernanke's latest move likely to send the AUD into a downtrend?Yes, but don't expect big things to happen in the short run. As a speculator that's been anticipating the end of the commodity supercycle for years, I know how it feels like to see the AUD/USD at 1.00 and imagine it at 0.7 or even 0.6 at some point. But I think there is one salient point many market analysts and participants are missing. Who's your banker? The fact remains that foreigners own around 200 billion AUD of Australian government bonds. More importantly, the consensus view