Investment Journal

Disclaimer: I hold a position in the symbol discussed. I am not offering any financial advice, simply explaining my decision to buy this symbol. ZM is the only symbol I bought because I think it's longterm prospects grew significantly precisely because of coronavirus and this lockdown. People are creatures of habit; being in the right place at the right time is one of the best things that can happen to a business, and I don't think many companies have ever fallen into a better opportunity than Zoom has. I haven't actually used their product. I've just heard very good things about it and also used enough of their competitors' products to believe that there's plenty of room in the space for someone to differentiate themselves. The worst thing I've heard about Zoom is that their security still leaves much to be desired, but common, I mean Apple exists, am I right? (No seriously, Apple's security model has always been security through obscurity, and over tim...

In my post on Signet , I talked about how I don't think Signet is really a brick-and-mortar retailer the same way other companies are brick-and-mortar retailers, so I don't think they are rightfully being dragged down in the secular trend that is dragging down retailers. The other company whose stock I bought on April 8 was MPLX. (I already owned some of their stock, but I significantly increased my position.) I have more or less the same opinion about MPLX as I did for Signet, just less to say. I don't think MPLX is really an oil and natural gas company. MPLX is operates and builds oil and natural gas pipelines, and it also has operations related to refining, shipping (in ships), and storing oil and natural gas. All of the price volatility in these sectors related to the natural gas boom, fracking, price wars, and sudden swings in demand increase the demand for MPLX and its business. Negative oil prices are the worst thing imaginable for someone who produces oil. But they...

Disclaimer: This not investment advice, just explanation of my investment decision. I own a stake in the discussed company. After I sold Waste Management on April 8, 2020, I reallocated the money I had in that to positions in two companies that I thought had sold off much more than they should have. Signet Jewelers was a company that was on my watch list in December. I was going to buy them, but do to bureaucracy related to working in the financial industry, I didn't get around to doing this before the stock price rapidly increased more than 50%, and I was no longer nearly as enticed as I had been at the previous price. Then when the coronavirus sell-off came, it sold off way more than market and present a buying opportunity well below the price I had been considering in December even though I don't think their business is particularly adversely affected by these conditions. In fact, I think their business may actually be helped by the lockdown in the long term. Signet is prima...

[Disclosures: I am not longer a financial adviser. And I'm not giving investment advice I'm just explaining why I've made the trades I've made recently.] Waste Management is the first stock I've sold in two years. (Other than involuntary liquidations as part of acquisitions, or the handling of fractional shares in a corporate action. I've also reduced my position in an ETF at least once to free up capital to invest in an individual stock.) I sold them on April 8th, 2020. I did this because they are in a really bad business throughout the lockdown. WM is a garbage disposal company. They basically have two types of clients: residential clients who pay a set monthly amount to have all their trash picked up weekly or twice weekly, and commercial clients who rent a dumpster and pay to have it emptied each time it is emptied. With the Covid 19 lockdown, residential customers are generating more garbage that costs WM more to dispose of without paying anything...

Disclosures: I am no longer an investment professional or investment advisor, and I own a significant stake in the company discussed. My biggest stake I've taken in response to Coronavirus is buying a significant exposure to Virtu Financial. I did this because I used to work for them and I believe that they do extremely well in volatile conditions, particularly volatile conditions with high volumes, and that these conditions will persist for the foreseeable future. I took the position mainly expecting Q2 to be strong, but I wanted to take it before the Q1 earnings call just in case they gave particularly strong guidance for Q2. I took it far enough in advance, that I am about flat on the sell-off after the Q1 earnings call, so all things considered, I could have waited. When I entered the position, I believe earnings estimates for Q1 were around $1.30 and for Q2 were still about $0.50 a share. These numbers seem crazy to me. I haven't worked in HFT during a sustained vola...

I am not an investment adviser. Nothing in this post is meant to be interpreted as investment advice. Here are some market caps of auto manufacturers. Tesla Motors : 24B General Motors : 59B Ford : 64B BMW : 74B Daimler AG : 101B (manufacturer of Mercedes, plus some other things; a business built on manufacturing luxury cars that gets revenues from other places too) Toyota : 239B The first thing I notice on this list is that Ford and GM have practically identical market caps even though one of them has utterly failed as a business recently and was revamped by the government which doesn't typically do a good job of managing assets. The market seems to be valuing these two companies more on the fact that they have approximately equivalent brand appeal, approximately equivalent market saturation, and approximately equivalent markets than it does based on their prior performance as businesses. I don't know if this is smart, but it doesn't seem particularly wise to me...

This post simply consists of commentary. I am not a market adviser. NOTHING IN THIS POST IS INTENDED AS INVESTMENT ADVICE. The first number I was taught about when I started learning a little bit about investing was P/E. A lot of the most insightful commentaries I read about the market focus primarily on cash flows. Most of the seminars I see catering to regular investors really like dividends. Some of the hot metrics right now that seem to be getting a lot of attention are insider ownership, insider buying, and insider selling. Something that professional traders like to talk about is days to cover, but one number I never really hear anybody talk about is market cap. This is a crying shame. Market cap is simple to understand and even easier to overlook. (It's just the total value  Some investors use market cap to sort portfolios into small cap, mid cap, and large cap stock, but other than that, people pretty much ignore it as a source of information about a stock, even...