Lithium producer SQM soars after Chilean election
Quite a good two days for Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile or SQM for short. The Chilean producer of lithium climbed almost 8% yesterday and tacked on another 2.8% today. The shares (SQM) are now up 11.47% since I added them to my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio back...
On the third day of Christmas my stock pick for 2018 is Southern Copper–and three french hens
Way back on August 17 I finished off a bullish story on the copper sector with the promise of some stock picks. My apologies: I left that string dangling. But today I'm using the third of my 12 Stock Picks of Christmas to add Southern Copper (SCCO) to my long-term 50...
On the first day of Christmas my first stock pick for 2018 is Amazon–and a partridge in a pear tree
I think 2018 will be the year that Amazon (AMZN) finally starts motoring on all cylinders. Not that the stock has done all that badly in 2017--up 56.5% year-to-date as of December 15--on its dominance of the e-commerce economy and it's leading position in the Cloud...
Who’s No. 2 in digital music? By some measures it’s Amazon and not Apple
On a day when Apple (AAPL) announced that it was buying Shazam to close the gap with digital music leading Spotify, let's not lose track of the dark horse newcomer moving up fast. A little more than a year after Amazon (AMZN) started to offer web-streaming of songs...
How much can Pioneer Natural Resources increase production?
When West Texas Intermediate crude was struggling to stay above $50 a barrel, the important issues for a U.S. oil shale producer such as Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) were How much of production in 2018 was hedged above $50 a barrel? and How quickly the company...
No signs of danger to HDFC Bank from India’s online revolution–in fact, on the contrary…
It's only sensible to worry about numbers like these--they're just so deliciously good. For the last 10 years, India's HDFC Bank has been able to grow its loan portfolio by 31% annually. It's deposit base has expanded at almost the same rate, 29% annually. That...
Robots, robots everywhere: Good for long-term pick Fanuc
The International Federation for Robotics latest report forecasts a 15% compounded annual growth rate for global shipments of industrial robots through 2020. That would follow 16% to 18% annual growth in 2016-2017. By 2020 annual unit shipments are estimated to reach...
Alibaba plans to use Singles’ Day shopping frenzy to lock in market dominance for years
Alibaba (BABA) generated $1 billion in gross merchandise volume in just the first three minutes of the Singles' Day shopping event in China today. By the end of two hours the sales volume was just shy of $12 billion. The company's Alibaba Cloud unit processed 325,000...
Selling eBay out of my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio
When eBay (EBAy) and PayPal (PYPL) split up in July 2015 (with eBay shareholders getting one share of eBay and one share of PayPal) I told myself (and readers) that I wanted to keep PayPal in my long term 50 Stocks Portfolio but would one day sell eBay out of that...
Rebalancing portfolios In January 2018 looks like a smart response to the momentum and concentration of winners in 2017
You don’t have to do anything now–but come January 2018, if 2017 finishes the way I outlined in my last post on this momentum market and end of the year selling/window dressing I think rebalancing a portfolio will be a very smart way to begin 2018. Rebalancing–selling winning positions and adding to losing positions until all the holdings in a portfolio are equally weighted–will automatically take profits in the biggest winners of 2017 and redistribute some of that cash into stocks that have been sold down in 2017 but that look set to rebound in 2018.
Johnson Controls moves closer–maybe–to breaking out of doldrums
Johnson Controls, a member of my long-term 50 Stocks portfolio, hasn’t done much of anything for a year now. Over the last 12 months the shares are up just 0.66%. That performance isn’t surprising. The company just about completely remade itself in 2016 by spinning off its automotive interiors business and by merger with Ireland-based Tyco International in what has been called one of the most egregious examples of corporate tax avoidance since Constantine outsourced the Roman Empire to Byzantium. Frankly I don’t think investors have known what to do with the “new” company–and the bad taste left by the 2016 tax inversion ploy and the company’s continued problems in generating cash have given investors very few reasons to put in the homework necessary to figure it out. But I think Johnson Controls deserves a little bit of attention now
Jim’s Stock Alerts
Download Jim’s eBook for Free
