Tag: investing

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang told delegates that China is a “self-sufficient market,” and seemed to downplay the effect of the trade conflict on consumption in China: “China has a lot of opportunities. Trade war is only one matter,” Zhang said.

On Friday, MKM Partners’ Rob Sanderson raised its price target for the Chinese commerce giant to $245, writing that Alibaba’s stock is capable of weathering the macroeconomic concerns that dragged down shares last year, citing opportunities in its Alibaba’s cloud division, a moderate spending outlook and other positive factors.

Source

Alibaba’s

AMD had a great 2018, was at one point the highest returning stocking in percentage through most of the year, until October. You see, in October, AMD reported their revenue of $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion for the fourth quarter vs revenue expectations of $1.6 billion. Their forecast was also short of expectations. This news sent the stock price crashing down.

This past week Intel reported earnings that missed Wall Street’s revenue targets and forecast the next quarter that would be lower than Wall Street estimates as well. Thus, the stock sold off 4%.

Most investors in the tech world

Five months ago, I talked about the halo effect Oprah Winfrey was having on Weight Watchers,

The Oprah Effect Strikes Weight Watches

Nevertheless, due to the Oprah Effect, the stock price of Weight Watchers is up a staggering 1000% since Oprah took a stake 10% in the company some years back, became a board member and become the face of the program, and appear in ads and commercials.

So on Friday, when I saw the price stock in the $30s I had to investigate.  In March of last year, Oprah made $110 million by selling 2 million shares in Weight Watchers…that was a

McCormick (NYSE: MKC) manufactures, markets, and distributes spices, seasoning mixes, condiments such as Zatarain’s, Lawry’s, Old Bay Seasoning, French’s, Frank’s Red Hot, Mojave Foods, Cattleman’s.

McCormick announced fourth quarter earnings on Thursday and reported sales of $1.50 billion vs expectations of $1.55 billion and earnings per share $1.67 vs expectations of earnings per share of $1.70.  McCormick cited higher marketing and freight cost and weakness in Asia and Europe as some of the reasons for the lowered numbers. 

NOTE: had it not been for their acquisition of the Frank’s and French’s brands in the summer of 2017, sales and earnings would have

On Monday, China announced that the Chinese economy grew 6.6 percent in 2018, which was the slowest pace since 1990. Also, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country needed to be on guard for “black swan” events, while also preventing “grey rhino” events.

A black swan event is an unforeseen occurrence that has dire consequences whereas a grey rhino is an obvious threat that is ignored.

“The grey rhino is very clear, it’s the high level of debt in the whole economy from the government, the local government, and to the privately-owned enterprises 

On Tuesday, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the IMF cut

Xilinix, Teradyne, Lam Research and Texas Instruments all beat earnings expectations in their reports on Wednesday, sending the chip sector higher by the end of the day.  The only outlier was Qualcomm which was negative on the day.

Kerrisdale Capital, is shorting Qualcomm shares and released a research report stating that Qualcomm is “teetering on the brink of disaster” and that its unique business model is “living on borrowed time.”

The FTC sued Qualcomm for violated FRAND {fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory} rules, which states that companies that become members of the rule structure must license their products to competitors.

Apple filed a lawsuit