Stock Alerts

Buying Wells Fargo in Jubak Picks ahead of earnings

Buying Wells Fargo in Jubak Picks ahead of earnings

Wells Fargo (WFC) is scheduled to report fourth quarter 2021 earnings on Friday, January 14. The bank is expected to be one of the few big money center banks to show a significant increase in earnings for the lat quarter of 2021 from the fourth quarter of 2020 (when numbers were elevated by a big recovery from the Pandemic bottom.) The Wall Street consensus projects fourth quarter earnings of $1.09 a share, up from 64 cents a share in the fourth quarter of 2020. (I’d note that the bank has delivered a positive earnings surprise above analyst projections in the last 4 quarters.) This is a good time to buy bank stocks.

Time to shift gears on your selling strategy (if any) as we move to 2022 from 2021–my last two sells for 2021 are Itau Unibanco and Cemex

Time to shift gears on your selling strategy (if any) as we move to 2022 from 2021–my last two sells for 2021 are Itau Unibanco and Cemex

We’ve got just two more trading sessions left in 2021. And then it’s on to 2022. Which means you should have wrapped up–or making any last minute sells–to harvest tax losses from 2021 in the next day or so. Of course, being the tax-savvy investor that you are, you have postponed taking profits on big winners in 2021 until 2022. (I’ll have an update on January profit-taking in the week after New Years.)

Adding Bristol-Myers Squibb to my Jubak Picks Portfolio tomorrow

Adding Bristol-Myers Squibb to my Jubak Picks Portfolio tomorrow

As I noted in my posts over the weekend, I think that along with all the general volatility and the rotation away from high moment and higher price-to-earnings ratio technology stocks, the last week or so saw a rotation into “safe” haven stocks such as utilities and Big Pharma. Which is one of the reason I’m adding Bristol-Myers stock to my Jubak Picks Portfolio as of December 7

This coffee ETN is up 73% in 2021 to date and looks to have more potential ahead

This coffee ETN is up 73% in 2021 to date and looks to have more potential ahead

But 2021 has been very, very good to the iPath B Bloomberg Coffee Total Return ETN (JO). A series of disruptions–weather in Brazil and Colombia, a shortage of shipping containers that curbed exports from Vietnam, a civil war in Ethiopia–sent coffee prices to a 10-year high on November 30. Despite the global Pandemic depressing demand from consumers who didn’t venture out of coffee shops during the worst of the virus outbreak. Now after a 73% gain for 2021 to date the question for investors after the is how much higher can coffee prices and this coffee ETF go?

The trend for the next year or two looks positive.

Things looking up, a bit, for Macao gaming revenue

Things looking up, a bit, for Macao gaming revenue

Analysts watching game revenue in Macao’s casinos are seeing just a bit of improvement after operators were walloped by Pandemic shutdowns, border closings with Hong Kong, and government restrictions aimed at high-rollers. JPMorgan has forecast that 2022 gross gaming revenue in Macao will rise to just above 50% of the pre-pandemic level seen in 2019 as a result of 70% recovery in mass market gaming and travel and a 24% recovery in VIP revenue. That’s a very slight improvement from JPMorgan’s previous outlook. Investment house Jefferies has also become incrementally more positive on the Macao outlook. Analyst David Katz says the Macao market could be close to bottoming with current local Covid-19 infections in China falling to single-digits and a partial China-Hong Kong border opening possible before year-end. My preferred stock to play Macao is MGM Resorts International

Adding MOO to the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio

Adding MOO to the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio

It’s tempting right now to say “To hell with diversification; let’s put everything into U.S. stocks. After all, they’re outperformed most asset classes for most of 2020 and for the year to date.” That’s exactly the kind of thinking, however, that gets an investor into trouble when an asset class is trading near a historic high. A time like this, like now, is exactly when you should be looking to make sure that you’ve got decent balance in your portfolio. And, to the degree you can, own stuff that will go up when other stuff goes down. Which is why I’m adding shares of the Van Eck Agribusiness ETF (MOO) to the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio today

Why Microsoft outpaced the market and techs today

Why Microsoft outpaced the market and techs today

Today Microsoft (MSFT) closed up 2.08%. The NASDAQ 100 was ahead just 0.51% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 gained only 0.13%. The gains took Microsoft shares to a record intraday high of $297.35. Why the extra pop in Microsoft shares? Because today Microsoft raised the price of its Microsoft 365 productivity suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook and Enterprise Mobility) by as much s 20%, effective March 1. The price increase is the first since the launch of Office 365 ten years ago.

Buying Cyber Security stock CrowdStrike in my Jubak Picks and Millennial portfolios

Buying Cyber Security stock CrowdStrike in my Jubak Picks and Millennial portfolios

I posted Friday, June 11, that investors looking for a theme to buy in an expensive market had turned to Cyber Security stocks. Makes sense, I noted, with ransomware attacks running at a fast pace and forecast pointing to even more attacks on corporate and government systems in the months (years?) ahead. I wrote that in this sector I already owned Palo Alto Networks in my Jubak Picks Portfolio where the stock is up 79% since I added this position on June 27, 2019, and in my 50 Stocks Portfolio where it is up 50% since I added this position on January 21, 2020, and in my new Millennial Portfolio where the position is up 0.94% since I added it on May 21, 2021. And that I would be adding another Cyber Security stock, CrowdStrike Holdings, to my Jubak Picks and Millennial portfolios on Monday, June 14

Sell Equinor after oil recovery and dividend date

Sell Equinor after oil recovery and dividend date

Oil prices have bounced back big time and with them the prices on oil stocks. I still think the long-term trend is against oil producers as efforts to combat global warming lead to lower consumption of fossil fuels. And I’d prefer not to own any oil and natural gas shares–even in as “progressive” a company as Equinor. I’m going to take advantage of the rally in oil prices to sell these shares out of my Jubak Picks Portfolio with a small 0.9% gain since I established that position in May 2012.

Applied Materials “stomps” Wall Street earnings projections: I’d use any post-earnings weakness to buy

Applied Materials “stomps” Wall Street earnings projections: I’d use any post-earnings weakness to buy

The chip shortage that has hurt technology companies such as Apple (AAPL) and hammered auto producers continues to pay dividends to Applied Materials (AMAT), the dominant manufacturer of equipment used to make semiconductors. Yesterday, May 20, after the market close in New York, Applied Materials reported fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings of $1.63 a share against 89 cents a share in the second quarter of the last fiscal year. Revenue rose to $5.58 billion from $3.96 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2020.