Billionaire Oilman T. Boone Pickens
Oilman T. Boone Pickens said Monday U.S. crude hit bottom at just above $26 per barrel, and based on history, prices should double within 12 months.
Category Archives: Stock Market
Have a Question about Penny Stocks?
U.S. Hiring Jumps
Shorting Stocks – The How & Why
You own 10 shares of company ABC at $50 per share. You believe the stock price of ABC is grossly overvalued and is going to crash sometime soon. You are so convinced that the stock will crash, you come to me, and ask to borrow my ten shares of ABC and sell them at the current market price for $50. I agree to lend you my shares as long as you pay me back ten shares of ABC at some point in the future. You take the ten borrowed shares, sell them for $500 (10 shares x $50 per share = $500).
The following week, the price of ABC stock falls to $20 per share. You call your broker and tell him to buy 10 shares of ABC stock, at the new price of $20 per share. You pay him the $200 (10 shares x $20 per share = $200). A few days later, you pick up the shares of ABC and bring them by my office. “Here are the ten shares I borrowed,” you say as you put them on my desk.
Do you see what happened? You borrowed my shares of ABC, sold them for $500. The following week, when ABC fell to $20 per share, you repurchased those ten shares for $200 and gave them back to me. In the mean time, you pocketed the difference of $300.
The Speculative Nature of Shorting Stock
What if the price of ABC stock had risen? The person shorting stock would have had to buy back the shares at the new, higher price, and absorb the loss personally. Unlike regular investing where your losses are limited to the amount of capital you invest (e.g., if you invest $100, you cannot lose more than the $100), shorting stock has no limit to the amount you might ultimately lose. Famed investor Ben Graham told us there is nothing stopping an overpriced stock from becoming more overpriced. In the unlikely event the stock had shot up to $1,000 (which actually happened to shares of Northern Pacific during a short squeeze in 1902), you would have had to purchase ten shares at $1,000 a share for $10,000. Taking into account the $500 you received from selling the shares earlier, you would have lost $9,500 on a $500 investment.
In order to begin shorting stock, you must open a margin account with your brokerage firm. You will be charged interest on the borrowed funds as well as subject to several rules and regulations that govern shorting stock (for example, you cannot short a penny stock, and before you can begin shorting a stock, the last trade must be an uptick or zero-plus tick.) After taking these factors into consideration, you will, hopefully, realize shorting stock is not a financially fattening activity in most cases and comes along with additional risks.
Stocks Open Lower As Market Eyes Data
U.S. stocks opened down today, as investors prepare for earnings while worrying about Chinese data.
“The market today is going to be focused on earnings,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital.
Over a 1/5 of the S&P500 companies are scheduled release results this week. Morgan Stanley posted earnings per share 20 cents below estimates before the bell, with revenue also disappointing.
Hasbro and Halliburton reported quarterly results ahead of Monday’s open that beat analyst’s expectations.
Housing data will offer more clues about the strength of the U.S. economy, with the latest NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index due at 10 a.m. ET.
Wall Street will also digest remarks made by Federal Reserve officials Lael Brainard and Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker at 10 a.m. ET and noon, respectively.
Insider Trading: What It Really Means When The CEO Sells
For almost a decade, we worked in the “Private Corporate Client” area of an international brokerage firm. “Private Corporate Client” is just another way of saying “Insider” as a majority of our clients were insiders selling their restricted shares and companies themselves doing buybacks/repurhcases. Because of that experience, we know why insiders REALLY SELL or BUY their company’s shares. The actual reasons will probably surprise you.
We’re not talking about illegal insider trading; that is, when someone with insider (non-public) information trades a stock based on that information. We’re talking about when an officer, director, or other executive buys or sell shares.
We were the guys that would help these executives jump through the hoops they needed to so that they would be allowed to sell shares on the open market. There are quite a few hoops at that, but the most common are spelled out in SEC Rule 144 and Rule 144(k). Actual paper stock certificates are used when “restricted” shares are given to an insider and they actually are stamped “Restricted” in red on the certificate. We even had a CFO of a $Billion technology company pull up to our office, with his new speedboat being hauled behind his new SUV, to hand us a restricted stock certificate he wanted to sell that was worth several $Million. Yeah, those kind of “insiders”.
Rule 144 & Rule 144(k)
When you acquire restricted (unregistered) securities or hold control securities, you must file for an exemption from the SEC’s registration requirements to sell restricted shares – or if they are registered, you must file a public notification of the sale. Rule 144 allows public resale of restricted and control securities if a number of conditions are met. This overview tells you what you need to know about selling your restricted or control securities. It also describes how to have a restrictive legend removed.
Some of the restrictions on the sales include how long that person has held those shares, the number of shares that can be sold in a specific period of time and even how those shares can be sold by the broker.
Restricted and Control Securities
Restricted securities are securities acquired in unregistered, private sales from the issuer or from an affiliate of the issuer. Investors typically receive restricted securities through private placement offerings, Regulation D offerings, employee stock benefit plans, as compensation for professional services, or in exchange for providing “seed money” or start-up capital. Rule 144(a)(3) identifies what sales produce restricted securities.
Control securities can be restricted or unrestricted but are always those held by an affiliate of the issuer. An affiliate is a person, such as a Director, the CEO & CFO, or large shareholder in a relationship of control with the issuer. Control means the power to direct the management and policies of the company in question, whether through the ownership of voting securities, by contract, or otherwise. Most often, that means the top executives.
If you are given restricted securities because you are an insider or were a seed investor, you almost always will receive a certificate stamped with a “restricted” legend. The legend is just a stamp that indicates that the securities may not be resold in the marketplace unless they are registered with the SEC or are exempted from the registration requirements.
There are plenty of technical terms and other pieces of information regarding these types of sales, but that’s not important. As long as you understand the general restrictions, that’s all you need to know more than 90% of investors do.
Should I Sell When The CEO Does?
In a few words… probably not.
There are many, many reasons why an insider like a CEO or a CFO will sell some of his or her shares. Maybe he is looking to purchase a new vacation home (or payoff his new boat like our CFO friend). Or, his son or daughter is heading off to college and he needs some cash for tuition and other expenses. Or, most commonly (in our experience), the stock has made a nice run and the executive is basically looking to diversify.
We’ve seen in many times where a CEO was there at the beginning. Maybe he had plenty of money before, but he’s spent years, if not decades making the business into what it is today. During growth years, before the company became as big as it is now, that CEO may have been paid only pittance in actual cash compared to other CEOs in the same industry for those years. Instead of big paychecks, he was given restricted shares of stock as additional compensation. Doing that saved the company quite a bit of cash and gave that CEO a huge incentive to grow that company and increase the stock price. On paper, he might have $20 million in stock, but only a couple hundred thousand in actual cash or other investments from all of those years of work. If any of us were in that situation, the wise thing would be to sell at least a portion of those shares to diversify, buy an annuity, insurance, whatever. Let’s say that CEO does not sell anything, and does not plan to until well after he retires, only when he needs it. Now, he’s left and still has his $20 million in stock only. The next CEO is a crook and is caught with accounting irregularities. The stock plummets and bankruptcy is coming. The shares are now worthless. He should have sold some, no?
When an insider like a CEO sells shares (whether restricted or not), his broker needs to file a Form 144 with the SEC. The information on that form is what is made public and we all see online through financial websites like Yahoo that list insider sales. Rule 144 limits the number of shares that an insider can sell in a rolling 90 day period. The limit on the number of shares is tied to the average volume of the stock or the number of shares outstanding and varies from company to company and can even vary widely from one 90-day period to the next.
A wise broker will make ONE filing that mentions all of the shares that the CEO plans to sell in the next 90 days or less. That way, services like Yahoo Finance show just that one filing.
Many brokers have no experience with Rule 144 and make a filing each and every day that shares are sold listing just the amount sold. That’s fine as far as disclosure laws go – but now Yahoo Finance might show 25 sales over 25 days where the CEO is selling around 10,000 shares each day for each of those 25 days.
Wouldn’t it be less alarming as an investor if you saw that the CEO had just one filing for 250,000 and that was it? Psychologically, seeing 10,000 share sales over and over and over makes investors more likely to think the CEO is just cashing out and thinks the stock will drop.
So when you see smaller sales over and over and over by an executive, take a look at the history of his or her sales. It may be nothing more than a stupid broker filing each day instead of filing just once for the entire sell order.
If you see a CEO selling and those sales significantly drop the number of shares he holds, that makes even us nervous. That’s a warning sign. We are also concerned when the insider uses an idiot for a broker who files for each and every sale. That insider is either not knowledgeable enough to use someone who knows how to minimize the impact of shareholders seeing all of those filings, or doesn’t care enough to worry about the appearance of all of those sales. Shouldn’t a CEO be better than that? We think so.
– See more at:http://falconstocks.com/information/insideractivity.htm
Nasdaq Turns Positive for 2015
Stocks traded about 1% higher Monday, attempting to further a recent recovery from correction levels, as investors awaited earnings and concerns from Friday’s jobs report on the timing of a rate hike.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained more than 100 points.
The Nasdaq composite came back into positive territory for 2015. The Dow and S&P500 stayed in negative territory for the year so far.
All three major averages gained to come within 10 percent of their 52-week highs, out of correction territory. The small-cap Russell 2000 remained in correction mode, about 12 percent from its 52-week high.
Down Down 100+; Nasdaq Off 1.5%
Stocks are down about 1% today as uncertainty about the timing of a rate hike as well as global growth continued to push stocks lower.
The Dow was down 170 points after falling more than 200 earlier.
Health care and energy were the greatest decliners in the S&P 500, which traded more than 1 percent lower.
Apple had fallen more than one and a half percent despite news that it sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models in a record first weekend of sales.
The Nasdaq fell more than 1.5% pressured by a 3 percent decline in the iShares Nasdaq biotechnology ETF. The ETF fell further into bear market territory, or more than 20 percent from its 52-week high.
On Friday, the IBB plunged nearly 5 percent for its worst day since easrly 2014. The Dow closed more than 100 points higher, boosted by decent earnings.
“The big concern here is the market has deteriorated to a point that now even the leadership is faltering,” said Lance Roberts, head of Streettalklive.com.
Retail Stocks May Be The New Winners
As the retail sector gained Monday, one group of suffering stocks led the way, jumping 1.2 percent: the multiline retail stock group, which includes names such as Target, Dollar Tree and Nordstrom.
The average national gas price recently fell to $2.29 from $2.33 a week ago, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge, translating into more available funds for consumer discretionary spending.
Barron’s wrote over the weekend that Dollar Tree is expected to outperform compared to estimates, based on long-term gains from its acquisition of Family Dollar. The stock rose 1.8 percent on Monday.
Retail ETFs also seem to be at an inflection point and the money flow looks to turn positive.
After being down about 5% this calendar year, retail is moving higher and may one of the few winners by the end of the year.
Stocks Down Tuesday, Small-Caps Down 1.4%
Stocks are trading down today, pressured by continued anxiety over slowing global growth following the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep rates unchanged.
In the small-cap market, the Russell 2000 Index was down 1.4% at 11:30am (ET).
“It’s a market that’s gripped with fear, fear of uncertainty of the growth of the global economy and it’s own growth strength and that’s due to the Fed sending the wrong signals to the market,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital.
The Dow Jones industrial lost more than 250 points as the major averages declined more than 1.5 percent, with the Nasdaq composite joining the other major averages in negative territory for 2015.
The blue chip index is more than 11 percent from its 52-week high, in correction territory. The S&P and Nasdaq composite remained within 10 percent of their 52-week highs.