Stock Trading

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

James Hardie Industries (JHX) Q4 2013 Earnings Call May 22, 2013 8:30 pm ET Executives Louis Gries - Chief Executive Officer, Executive General Manager of U.S.A, Executive Director and Member of Financial Statements Disclosure Committee Russell Chenu - Chief Financial Officer and Member of Financial Statements Disclosure Committee Sean O’Sullivan - Vice President of Investor & Media Relations and Member of Financial Statements Disclosure Committee Analysts Simon Thackray - Nomura Securities Co. Ltd., Research Division Andrew Peros - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division Andrew Johnston - CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, Research Division Liam Farlow - Macquarie Research Michael John Ward - Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Research Division Emily Behncke - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division Andrew Geoffrey Scott - CIMB Research Jason Harley Steed - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division David A. Leitch - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division Matthew McNee - Goldman Sachs & Partners Australia Pty Ltd,

As I type this, the market is exhibiting some bipolar disorder following multiple doses of Fed speak: Tuesday Bullard's presentation in Germany and Dudley's speech in New York, and Wednesday Bernanke's congressional testimony at 10 AM and the latest Fed Minutes at 2 PM. Amidst the market confusion, I took a few minutes to review the Wall Street Journal's May survey of economists to see what they had forecast for the 10-year yield and the Fed Funds Rate out to December 2015. The survey was conducted May 3-7 and 48 economists responded, although some omitted responses to some questions. The bond market is a few minutes from closing. A peak at Bloomberg shows the 10-year yield at 2.03 percent. Thus far in 2013 the closing low was 1.66 (twice, on May 1st and 2nd) and the closing high was 2.07 on March 11. The first chart shows

by Ron Rimkus, CFA According to legend, Russian minister Grigory Potemkin erected fake settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. According to Kyle Bass, managing director of Hayman Capital, central banks around the world today have erected their own Potemkin villages to deceive the public into thinking that the world's economic problems are solved. They aren't.In a recent conversation with Bass, a prominent central banker noted that a central bank pursuing aggressive monetary policy can have some positive effect on economic growth. However, the simultaneous engagement in expansionary monetary policy by many central banks yields almost no benefit to economic growth. To illustrate this point, Bass showed a chart of the balance sheet growth of the four major central banks (U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan (BOJ), European Centrak Bank (ECB) and People's

In preparation for sales of the new anti-obesity drug Belviq on June 7th, Arena (ARNA) scheduled six events in six weeks including two post-launch. The launch will usher in a $65 million milestone payment from Eisai (ESALY.PK), more than many movies make and 16-times more than Vivus' (VVUS) first quarter's revenue. This may justify red-carpet treatment since evidence suggests Arena will ultimately market an array of anti-obesity and anti-diabetic medicine. Last week, at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Health Care Conference (BofA), Arena's CFO gave an energizing talk while addressing many of my lingering questions. I was left convinced that sales of Belviq will easily exceed $520 million in the first year, which is more than recent estimates."Bel-Phen" Could Elicit a CrazeAt both the conference call and at BofA, Arena noted a planned meeting with the FDA this quarter to design experiments to address

Hewlett Packard (HPQ) reported earnings after the close today, May 22nd. The report sent shares soaring as much as 13% higher in after hours trading. On the face of it, this appears to be a rally driven by the concept that earnings were not as bad as they could have been. Because, there certainly is not much related to this earnings report that says HPQ has turned a corner and has a clear path to reinvigorating its business. On the contrary, revenue for every single reportable segment was down on a YoY basis. While earnings can be massaged through share buybacks and cost cuts until this company can begin to show revenue growth again, the risk will continue to be to the downside. HPQ is currently trading at levels, if they hold into the open of trading Thursday, it will mark a 52 week high for this company. I