Tag: EBAY

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA After a couple down market days, all the limit orders I listed on Monday have executed. Here is the current portfolio: Position Shares Position Shares CVA 135 CIG 587 CVA Mar21 $7.50 Put -2 RDEIF 100 VLEEF 57 VEOEF 75 GPP 276 EBAY Jan ‘21 $8 Put -1 NFYEF 98 Cash $4415 MIXT 274   Coming Up: Third quarter earnings season is starting… I plan to write short notes on earnings as they come out for my Patreon supporters, which will be compiled into longer articles on AltEnergyStocks.com a few days later. Also, I’m doing a talk on how to divest from fossil fuels with the founder of divestor.org this coming Monday at 8:30 pm ET for the Climate and Health subgroup of Citizens Climate Lobby ...

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Market Outlook The continuing market rebound in the face of a worsening epidemic in the US (outside of the initially hardest hit states) widespread protests against lack of police accountability, and a President who thinks the right response to mostly peaceful protests is to call in the military continues to befuddle me. The risks in today's stock market outweigh the possibility of future potential gains.  Although I was buying aggressively in March, I've shifted back to a more cautious stance, and am mostly starting to sell covered calls on my positions with the greatest gains.  I generally...

With the market's rapid rebound from March lows and the Nasdaq Composite stock index closing higher than it was at the end of last year, many of us are probably asking ourselves: Did I miss my chance to buy at the lows?  or: Will I ever make up for my losses? These questions point to dangerous emotions for stock market investors.  Fear of missing out often leads to investment mistakes.  This is why investment advisors always tell their clients that they are better off not looking at their portfolios in a downturn. A big loss makes some people want to sell everything, for fear...

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Last week, two of the stocks in my Ten Clean Energy Stocks model portfolio cut their dividends.  Covanta Holding Corp (CVA) dropped its quarterly payout from $0.25 to $0.08 (a 68% cut) while Green Plains Partners (GPP) slashed its quarterly distribution from $0.475 to $0.12, a drop of 74.75%. Before reducing their dividends, both companies had payout ratios near 100%, meaning that substantially all of their free cash flow was going to pay dividends.  In general, companies are very reluctant to cut their dividends because it is a signal that their management thinks they cannot grow...

by Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Of the few survivors of the dot com bust, Ebay (EBAY) is a perennial also-ran.  It owned the market for consumer-to-consumer (C2C) transactions in 2000, but has since repeatedly lost market share.  Nevertheless, the company remains a profitable business that enables the sustainable reuse of easy to ship items while returning cash to investors. Note: My supporters on Patreon got an early look at this article.  Want to support my work and get previews of my writing?  Join them here. The Competition for Sellers In the early 2000s, Ebay lost sellers to Amazon's (AMZN) marketplace, which had the...

by Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA Four weeks ago, I predicted that the 12% market correction we had seen would turn into a true bear market.  Bear markets are often defined as a decline of more than 20% for the major market indexes, but I find it more useful to focus on long term changes in investor sentiment. What I did not predict was just how severe the effect of the coronovirus shutdown would be on the economy.  I thought we would need the combined of the effect of the shutdown and investors re-assessing their risk tolerance to bring us into full...