Rising Tide Raises All Ships

     After Trump was voted President, there was a lot of talk about what he would do to the steel industry. He had been saying that China has been taking manufacturing jobs away from the USA and how he will bring them back. The reason China can do that is because they have subsidized the steel industry. And they have done it against the rules of any trade laws that had been made. Steel is so cheap that they are just dumping it into the US market leaving no market share for domestic manufacturers to gain. The question remains... How will Trump negotiate the trade laws so that he can bring back US manufacturing, in this case steel and iron, and how will it affect domestic manufacturing as a whole?

The Marijuana Market

        The marijuana market is the fastest growing market/industry in the world. After doing some research and reading online in an article written by Tirthankar Chakraborty, "The industry grew 24% to $5.7 billion last year," and "the industry is expected to grow by $7.1 billion this year," AND "that legal cannabis industry sales will grow more than 200% to $22.8 billion in the next four years" (4 Best Marijuana Stocks to Play the Green Rush, Zacks).

India's Money Problem

I was tweeting about this yesterday. I have had some more time to think about it and read about it and come to realize how the situation that country is in stinks. I'll do my best to explain, be patient!

Here is what the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, did to their money supply. 

I Love The Straddle

     

     Boy oh boy do I enjoy this strategy. It's a pretty simple concept to learn and

to understand. I have been using it in the game I'm playing and it has worked fairly well for me. I have been using it when I know there is going to be big news announced for a stock. Particularly earnings. Let me try and explain the straddle and the pros and cons with it.

(on the left we can see Tyga and Kylie perfecting the straddle)

Growing Asset Bubble

     In a change of pace from my past little articles, I want to go over this possibility of a future asset bubble: Student Loans.

     Let me set the scene. I was sitting in lecture for one of my economics classes at school. We have been talking about the history of the united states regarding recessions and depressions. As of late, we have been diving into the recessions since the early 1980's. In this particular instance we were talking about the asset bubbles that have popped and sent the economy down the tube. The oil price shock in 1990, the dot com/tech bubble in 2001, and then the housing bubble in 2007-08. [For those of you that don't know what an asset bubble is...it's the irrational increase in the price of an asset] Back in 2001 with the dot com bubble, the internet was finally becoming much more accessible to the public and companies were able to create websites. 

Options!

     I am in an investment club in school. Through investopedia, we use a simulator and have $100,000 of fake, no risk dollars to play with. It provides a great, great learning opportunity. I can kind of play with the things I have been writing about to see if I'm right, wrong, or on the right track with no risk of losing any real dollars. What I am thinking about now is learning about options. I firmly believe that the easiest and best way to learn how to trade options is to trade options. If I were to just go on my brokerage account and buy some contracts I'm 95% certain I would screw it up. With a simulator you can see what works, what doesn't, and HOW they work. 

Sowing the Seeds of Success

American Vanguard Corporation     [AVD]

I was flipping through some articles this past weekend and came across one written about American Vanguard and I thought I'd look into it. The first thing I noticed about the chart was the hammer,

hanging man?
[daily]

hammer 
[weekly]

obviously. But this time there will be more to it than just the candlestick pattern. Before I get into that some more...the candlestick pattern. Last trading week the company ended the week +5.61%. The week before that was the hammer pattern I have come to love so very, very much. Based on that there is still some room for growth. I'm not as bullish in the short run on this one as other based on the daily chart. It isn't very strong, but one could argue that a hanging man pattern happened and this next week will be in the red. This wouldn't be a weekly stock pick of mine, more of a long term buy-and-hold mentality. With this flawless transition, let's move into why I like this bad boy over the long term. 

EBAY To Start Trending Up

eBay Inc.  [EBAY]

     At this point you've noticed that I like the hammer. Definitely one of my favorite trend reversal indicators. If you look back through charts it's hard to find one that does't work out. I think I may have stumbled across one looking through some random stocks this morning. Before eBay released their earnings on October 19th I was looking into them and liked what their company was doing. Trying to revamp their buying and selling platform and bringing them back near the spotlight. I bring up their October 19th 3Q release because they closed at $32.52 on the 19th and then opened up $29.35 on the 20th. Pretty rough report. So it's been almost a month and things have cooled off a little bit. Since then, the stock has performed -2.96% which is in no way good, but nothing like the initial drop after 3Q. Anyway, I decided to take a look and this is what I saw on the weekly chart...

Chipotle With The Hammer(s)!

Chipotle  [CMG]



     I am in love with Chipotle right now. Talking about the stock, not the food. I love it, but am a cheap-o when it comes to buying fast, or fast-ish, food. I wrote about it earlier but I just can't get over how SOLID the chart is looking for the next 1, 2, maybe even 3 weeks. It's hard to say and obviously I want to point out that this isn't a sure fire thing. I can't tell the future. The markets are unpredictable and people act irrationally sometimes so in reality, ANYTHING can happen.
     

Books on Books on Dividends

Barnes and Noble  [BKS]

     Here's a store that a lot of people probably haven't been inside in years. I only go there because that's where I have to go to get my textbooks. However, I have been keeping up with this company for the last year or so and am just now writing about it because I actually forgot about it for a while. I remembered it today during class, took a look and it was up 6%! Fancy that! As per usual, I'm going to go through some of the reasons why I like this particular stock.

Anyone Else Feeling Gassy?

Kinder Morgan Inc.   [KDI]

Today oil & gas and utilities were bumping. I was checking out the finviz map and they were lit up bright green. 

 

LEFT: Oil and Gas refining.

RIGHT: Electric Utilites

(for reference)

The Unhappiest Stock On Earth

The Walt Disney Company  [DIS]

     What some people may not know, Disney bought Capital Cities/ABC back in 1995 and came into the ownership of ESPN. For the last few years ESPN has seen a steady decrease in the amount of *subscriptions each month and this last one was the worst they have ever seen. ESPN lost an estimated 621,000 subscribers in the last month. That's more than double the last couple months. So why will this impact Disney stock in such a negative way? ESPN accounts for about 75% of Disney's cable revenues. I looked up Disney's latest quarterly earnings and took a screenshot that you will see below.

The Happiest Stock On Earth?

The Happiest Place On Earth.                The Most Magical Place On Earth. 

The Walt Disney Company   [DIS]

     It was a rough year for Disney. From January 1 through October 28 the company lost roughly 10.6% in market cap from the $11.15 drop in stock price. That's not great. When you look at from exactly 12 months ago the numbers are even worse. Down 17% from it's high of $120.65. The price of Disney stock currently sits at $93.85 and has a *P/E of 16.84. I like to look at price to earnings ratios sometimes and compare them to other companies. The benefit of this is to see of the stock is trading cheaply, or more expensive. When it's lower, then it's cheaper and vise versa. It's VERY important to look at P/E compared to other companies within the sector. Comparing Disney and Ford would give you nothing. Using the stock screener on finviz you can see that Disney sits 5th from the top when ranked in descending order. Out of 13 total, DIS sits closer to the cheap end.

Betting on the Braves

     Because the World Series is being played right now I want to take this time to talk about baseball. Specifically how you can invest in the Atlanta Braves. 

     I haven't written any posts in the last couple of days because I am as invested in the World Series as I have ever been. I am a huge Indians fan and got to go to Game 1. That was the greatest experience of my life.

Uninformed Watch List

Wednesday 12:55pm edit: These all suck

Instead of analyzing just ONE equity I have decide I would make a list, do a little preliminary research and come up with a couple stocks I'd be watching this week. I ended up coming in with five and wanted to share them with you. (You being the four [generous] of you that will read this post). So without further ado, I present to you my 5 stocks to watch for the week of October 24th, 2016 in no particular order! *crowd goes absolutely banana's*

SolarCity Ain't So So Bad

Ticker Symbol: SCTY

I have always been a fan of renewable energy. It's my belief that at some point in the future, whether it's in my lifetime or my kids, as a world we are going to have to start to rely heavily on renewable, cleaner energy. Solar and wind are a couple of my favorites. I have recently been looking into SolarCity Corp because a number of factors. So, let's start there.

Let's Talk Chipotle

Ticker Symbol CMG


Let's get right into it. I love Chipotle. Their food is a go to lunch, dinner, snack,

anything really. They had that health scare (E. Coli) late in 2015 that absolutely killed their stock price. And actually it hasn't really recovered since then. They tried bringing back their customers by offering a free meal to people but ultimately that didn't work. People came back for THAT free meal, but then continued to stay away. I saw a noticeable difference in the lines at the chipotle I go to when that E. Coli seemed to really break out. In October, 2015 the stock price was at around $725. By the turn of the new year, the price got as low as $410. HUGE loss. Since then, it has tried making a comeback, but quickly fell back down with reports that it was no longer number 1 or 2 in their fast food/fast casual food category. As I write this, the stock price currently sits at $405.10 and I think that it represents a beautiful buy point. I'll try and explain my thought process here...

DISCLAIMER-ish

This being my first post on here I just wanted to drop a little disclaimer/what the heck I think I'm doing. First of all, I'm not affiliated with anyone and anything I post on here is based on a combination of none to moderate amount of research. That being said, this is just going to be a spot where I can get some of my opinions and thoughts down in writing. My plan moving forward is to post my market ideas/predictions as well as some of the stocks I am tracking. That doesn't mean random things won't periodically appear on here either.

I think for me I'll try and use this a learning tool and then if anyone decides to read this, maybe offer up a different angle on something. I'm not going to preach my ways and say it's the right way, because there are hundreds of right ways. There are also hundreds of wrong ways as well. So if you think what I'm doing or how I'm doing it is stupid then feel free to vocalize it and let me know.

So like I mentioned, these are just going to be my own opinions that you can like and dislike at your convenience.