Beat the Market

From seekingalpha.com Notable earnings reports : Cal-Maine Foods (NASDAQ: CALM ) on October 2; NovaGold Resources (NYSEMKT: NG ), Paychex (NASDAQ: PAYX ) and Lennar (NYSE: LEN ) on October 3; PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP ) and Monsanto (NYSE: MON ) on October 4; Costco (NASDAQ: COST ), International Speedway (NASDAQ: ISCA ), Yum China (NYSE: YUMC ) and Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ ) on October 5. IPOs expected to price : Rhythm Pharmaceuticals (Pending: RYTM ) and Black Ridge Acquisition (BRACU) on October 5; Switch (Pending: SWCH ) on October 6. Secondary offering lockup expirations : Acadia Healthcare (NASDAQ: ACHC ) and Hess Midstream Partners (NYSE: HESM ) on October 2; Banco Santander (NYSE: SAN ), Elevate Credit (NYSE: ELVT ), Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR ) and Spark Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ONCE ) on October 3; Okta (NASDAQ: OKTA ) and Egalet (NASDAQ: EGLT ) on October 4; Air Industries (NYSEMKT: AIRI ) on October 5. Sales reports : Zumiez (NASDAQ: ZUMZ ) on October 4; Buckle (N...

Citron Research is well known for its short selling. It is, formly StockLemon.com, created by Andrew Edward Left (Jewish). Citron has launched 51 investigative reports against S&P 500 companies between 2009 and 2015, as well as several Chinese companies, citing allegations of pyramid schemes, ineffective products and accounting or business frauds. Despite being sued by multiple companies for the reports he has released, Left claims he has never lost a case in the United States. Left attended Northeastern University. His first job was with Universal Commodity Corp, a high-pressure commodities brokerage firm that hired salespeople to make cold calls and push "questionable investments." It might remind you the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street". In 1994, Left quit after 9 months. In 1998, when the National Futures Association sanctioned the firm, Left, along with every other former employee, was sanctioned for 3 years along with being required to take an ethics...

If history is a guide, the market will continue the rally into the end of the year. The S&P 500 dodged sell offs in the often weak months of August and September, by gaining 0.05% and 1.93% respectively. The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000, all finished Q3 all time high. Whenever the S&P 500 has been up in August and September, the S&P has risen in price 13 of 16 times since World War II for the remainder of the year. The index averaged a 2% gain in the final quarter of the year in the 16 occurrences. Q4 will start Monday. Another set of data: since 1950, the S&P 500 has gained 3.9% on average in the fourth quarter, advancing 79.1% of the time. Well, that is history. There are always some risks. Risks 1. North Korea. It is unpredictable. The good thing is that the situation seems cooling down a little. 2. One more interest rate hike by the end of the year. 3. Tax reform will never be easy. Republicans are desprite to get something done this ...

I am sharing a story I read on CNBC last night. Warren Buffett is a legend. He has been in the market for 76 years since he made his first trade at 11. Buffett's early passion for reading led him to read through every book the Omaha Public Library had on investing by age 11 and through the ones in his father's office. At 19, Buffett accidentally bought "The Intelligent Investor" by investor Benjamin Graham, who would later become Buffet's hero and mentor. Buffett re-read Graham's book about half a dozen times, he says, inspiring Buffett's investment philosophy and strategy to this very day. "My favorite investment, one that embodies this philosophy, is Geico, which I learned about when I was 20 years old," Buffett tells Forbes. At Columbia Business School, where Buffett became a student of Graham's, he visited Columbia library on Saturday in 1951. There, he learned that Graham was chairman of Government Employees Insurance Company, or...

What is going on today? Nasdaq out-performs S&P500 and Dow Jones today. All finished green. KBH popped, boosting market confidence; TSN flied. I used to like SAFM better, which looks expensive now. ROKU is strong after IPO (+70%). However, I think the hype is overdone. It reminds me GoPro (GPRO), which jumped to almost $100 following IPO in 2014. Now it is traded @ $11 . As I said yesterday, GILD recovered all the early loss (-2% in the morning) and finished green today. GOOG is heading to $1000 again despite the recent headwinds, $959 (+1%). Apple ( AAPL, +0.55% ) is looking to leverage ARM processors in the MacBook and MacBook Pro to reduce a dependence on Intel, according to Nikkei Asian Review sources. This is bad news for INTC. But Intel also got some good news recently. Tesla is replacing Nvidia with Intel for infotainment components. The components will appear in Tesla’s Model 3 and newer vehicles. My Trades Today Sold 20% CPTA @ $9.6 to reduce weight (bought...

Here are some useful internet resources I use to do my homework. Stock Information 1. Yahoo finance: I would like to say, it is the best product of yahoo, yahoo sports used to be good too; 2. Google finance: I switched from yahoo to google a few years ago. It shows real-time price and clear interface. Surprisingly, Google recently announced that they will cancel the portfolio feature soon. I may switch back to yahoo finance. 3. Morning star to learn Mutual Funds  https://www.morningstar.com/funds.html Market Futures Bloomberg futures  https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures Also commodities  https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities  where you can find the price for crude/gold/corn...... After-hour Trading Info http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/after-hours.aspx Market News and Forum https://seekingalpha.com/market-news   My favorite site to get news. Here you can discuss your opinions with other investors, read their analysis artic...

I am currently using Robinhood, Capital One Investing (Sharebuilder) and Vanguard. I will also briefly introduce Charles Schwab, Scottrade, E-trade and Motif. Robinhood (updated) It is definitely  the best for beginners. If you decide to open an account, you are welcome to use my referral. ( http://share.robinhood.com/minweis ) Both you and me have the chance to get free stocks. Good luck! Pros: No commission! No minimum. No settlement period (used to be 3 days). Easy to use. Start from $10/month, you can borrow money and trade after-hour. From Dec. 2017, you can also trade options. Cons: Smartphone is required (they started to provide web service from Dec 2017). Server could be slow in busy trading hours, although it has been improved a lot recently. Some foreign stocks can not been traded yet. The last, you may need to charge your phone for multiple times if you trade a lot. Capital One Investing Pros: Convenient to transfer fund if you have Capital One banking accou...

Long-term (most are dividend-growth) BIVV: got this from BIIB spin-off COP: lost a lot on this, will hold for a few years CPTA: 17% dividend COST: hold until retired DIS: hold until retired Gild: start to hold GILD 2 years ago, adjusted weight for several times HD: hold until retired IBM: planning to hold for another 1-2 years KR: bought recently @ $20, planning to hold long M: bought around $20, planning to hold until reaching $30 MAT: lost the bet on this one, will hold for a while NKE: hold until retired O: hold until retired SBUX: hold until retired UAL: recently weakness is good buying opportunity Short-term: GOOG:  playing day-trade or ultra-short term these days LC:  it has been around $6 for a while now, waiting for breakout NAP:  8.6% dividend RUBI:  waiting for the turn-around plan in 2018 TIS: it has been a nice run recently, reduced my position by half to lock the profit, the rest is expected to sell ...

US market shakes off early weakness and finishes slightly green today. It is relatively quiet with little news. US Stock Indexes in Sep. 2017 In September, Nasdaq is taking a break after the strong run early this year. The overall sentiment is positive. Dow Jones and S&P 500 are doing very well. Noticeable movements today: Rite Aid (RAD) : reported earning before the bell, not a sunny day, -11.2% to touch multi-year low. Stay away. Pier 1 Imports (PIR): reported earning before the bell, beat both top and bottom line with flat revenue. However they cut the guidance, which sent the stock -6.7% . I will look at this one closely in the next few trading days. I will initial my position if it drops below $4. Gilead (GILD): -3.5% today. It is not surprising after a  +35% run in 3 months. Moderate volume and late hour recovery indicates profit-taking and confirms its bullish trend. Hold. KB Home (KBH): just reported earning after close. Q3 EPS of $0.51 beats ...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-buffett-won-his-1-million-hedge-fund-bet-2017-09-28 Nearly 10 years ago, iconic billionaire investor Warren Buffett took what seemed like a contrarian bet for a professional stock picker. He bet any comer that a simple, low-cost investment in the S&P 500 would beat a hedge fund strategy over 10 years. On the line was $1 million, to be paid to a charity of the winner’s choice. Buffett won that wager handily, ending the ninth year of the bet up 85.4% vs. 22% for a collection of five hedge funds. The hedge-fund manager who took him on has thrown in the towel, conceding that a passive investment in the stock market was unbeatable. In annualized terms, Buffett’s low-cost index fund investment grew by 7.1% a year, compared with 2.2% for the hedge funds. The losing hedge-fund manager, a remarkably good sport named Ted Seides, later wrote a footnote on the loss in the form of an online column. Essentially, Seides wrote, Buffett’s win was...

It is a big day for Nasdaq to bounce back 1.15%, turning its September performance green. Trump revealed his Tax Cut Plan, which doesn't seem realistic to me. Nevertheless, it fueled the market rally today. FAANG stocks (Facebook +2.1%, Apple +0.7%, Amazon +1.3%, Netflix +1.4%  and Google +2.1%) are all in deep green. Micron Tech (MU, +8.5%) delivered solid earning yesterday after the market close brought the whole semiconductor group up. The tech section is up 1.1%. The financial group is up 1.3% due to the rising Treasury yields. Utilities are down 1% today, followed by the gold and bonds. Non-Cyclical Cons. Goods group is still struggling as it did YTD. Nike (NKE, -2%) recovered some of the loss at the final half hour before market closed with solid volume, indicating the price may stay above $52. The stock has been traded between $49 and $60 for more than 1 year. Their earning was fine, better than expected, although revenue was flat and earning slipped. However, CEO...