After the market closed, ATHX crashed immediately from $3.08 to $2.47, recovering about 10 cents after that. OK, so who tanked the stock this time?

 

@Dougal I think I'm in over my head as I have no idea what you just wrote.

I cashed out of athx last week at $3.01

All I have from my ridiculous 1-day gain on Tuesday is this photo.  I didn't sell and I was back below $6,000 today.  I still haven't adjusted to Schwab and TD Ameritrade switching to free trades.  I still think I'm burning up a case of Keystone every time I click.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

34 minutes ago, freefourur said:

I cashed out of athx last week at $3.01

 

I should've cashed out yesterday at 3.50

 

EDIT: I'm down $4,000 in after-hours.

Edited April 15, 20205 yr by KJP

7 hours ago, KJP said:

After the market closed, ATHX crashed immediately from $3.08 to $2.47, recovering about 10 cents after that. OK, so who tanked the stock this time?

 

@Dougal I think I'm in over my head as I have no idea what you just wrote.

 

Despite all the FDA and trial news, which IS promising, ATHX still doesn't have a product they can sell in volume. They're seeing some pump-and-dump trading on these news releases.

 

I'll stop talking about options, except to say I rarely trade actual shares any more. I do it all with options. Here's a primer on them: https://www.learn-stock-options-trading.com/understanding-stock-options.html 

Thanks. Thankfully I dumped my MRO yesterday. 

Ah ... the news.  ATHX is watering the stock again.

 

https://www.crainscleveland.com/health-care/athersys-inc-prices-public-offering-stock-thats-expected-gross-more-50-million

Ugh

And the last page of this thread is why I don't play in penny stocks or in experimental biotech.

 

Meanwhile, my two largest holdings, AMZN and NFLX, just hit 52-week highs--and between the 2/19/20 peak and today, I'm down less than 1% overall.

 

Don't ride tiny ships in rough waters.

Amazon and Netflix are on TEARS during this crisis. Meanwhile Disney has dropped significantly since they don't really make a whole lot with their Hulu/Disney+ services. 

 

Roku at a near all time high too.

19 minutes ago, Dougal said:

Ah ... the news.  ATHX is watering the stock again.

 

https://www.crainscleveland.com/health-care/athersys-inc-prices-public-offering-stock-thats-expected-gross-more-50-million

i'm glad I dumped it last week at 3.01. I wonder if i should get back in when it's watered down. 

11 minutes ago, TBideon said:

Meanwhile Disney has dropped significantly since they don't really make a whole lot with their Hulu/Disney+ services.

 

So much of Disney's profit still comes from theme parks, cruise ships, and theatrical release of new movies -- none of which are happening right now.

8 minutes ago, TBideon said:

Amazon and Netflix are on TEARS during this crisis. Meanwhile Disney has dropped significantly since they don't really make a whole lot with their Hulu/Disney+ services. 

 

Roku at a near all time high too.

 

Actually, I've bought Disney (DIS) during this as well.  It's true that they're going to take it on the chin in the short term with the loss of theme park and cruise revenue, and ESPN continues to struggle since cord-cutting has shrunk the cable subscription gravy train.  However, they have some of the absolute best content in the entertainment business and I think Disney+ has as good as chance as anything (better than Hulu) of repeating the Netflix story.  And ESPN will adapt better to cord-cutting than the actual owners of the cut cords.  It will find new distribution channels (whether owned by Disney or not--I get it now through YouTube TV, which is a surprisingly more full-featured service than I was expecting).

 

The stock in my portfolio that I consider the big speculative unknown right now is Zoom (ZM).  Obviously a much more familiar name than Atheryx or other speculative biotechs, but a company that clearly has a wide variety of possible positive and negative paths in front of it right now.  It's got a lot of issues to work out, some of which penetrate fairly deeply into its primary product's architecture and therefore are more than mere bugfixes.  On the other hand, it has a massive opportunity here, too.  I was willing to take a flyer on it.

 

Another slightly less well-known one that has been doing well for me and I think has a lot of growth potential in front of it in the cloud-based identity security space is Okta.  It's another one that I can see growing a lot from people doing more and more secure business online.

I think the bank stocks will be a buying opportunity soon.  THey are going to get crushed in next month as defaults start hitting the books.  Ultimately I expect another bailout to them but that window will be the time to buy as they write off maximum losses and take the bailout money to resume lending

22 minutes ago, gottaplan said:

I think the bank stocks will be a buying opportunity soon.  THey are going to get crushed in next month as defaults start hitting the books.  Ultimately I expect another bailout to them but that window will be the time to buy as they write off maximum losses and take the bailout money to resume lending

 

Ugh.  I may have jumped on that thought a bit too early, though the story isn't over yet.

 

My one bank stock is humble little Park National Bank (PRK) from Newark, Ohio.  A boring, steady dividend-payer that seldom moved much in any direction.  But it's taken a bruising and I did buy more on the way down, and it has just kept falling.  Granted, its 25% loss in the last 52 weeks is less bad than Huntington (43%), Fifth Third (42%), or Key (38%).  But that's a long way from the others I mentioned above hitting 52-week highs.

 

If they can maintain the dividend, which they actually have a very good record of doing, it could work out well just based on that alone, even with the decline in the stock price.  The dividend was close to 5% even when the stock was above $100 and it's below $70 now.  The dividend is close to 6% now.

 

My first checking account was at Park.  My parents walked with me from our house to the Kirkersville branch to open it.  I was in fourth or fifth grade.

 

My last time in there was probably around 2002 or 2003.  I cashed out U.S. education savings bonds (are those even still a thing?! ... probably not, guessing 529s have mostly replaced them ...) for summer study abroad at OSU.

35 minutes ago, taestell said:

 

So much of Disney's profit still comes from theme parks, cruise ships, and theatrical release of new movies -- none of which are happening right now.

 

I looked at Disney's park in Shanghai earlier this week on Google Earth.  It's small and has little room to expand unless it expands onto its own parking lot.  

 

It will be interesting to see if Amazon and Netflix profits actually increase from this surge in demand. If Netflix didn't really pick up any new subscribers due to already being at full saturation but their servers become overworked/have to add capacity and they have to pay out a ton more royalties they are worse off. With Amazon, any profit that wasn't from streaming, AWS, selling search tech or selling unused Prime subs was tenuous at best under uncompromised conditions. Now they have to hire a ton of people and deal with sub-optimal logistics system. You often lose the most money when your revenue is highest due to all the bending over backwards you did to get it.

Amazon's retail revenue is low-margin, high-volume.  Their prioritization of high-volume household consumables in this crisis has almost certainly preserved or expanded total gross profit simply because they can channel a lot of it through.  We will see what happens with respect to the cost of mitigation measures and labor unrest due to demands for more mitigation measures, but I have confidence they're able to pass those prices on--and they're certainly not losing an edge on their competition, since this affects everyone (brick & mortar obviously more).

 

Amazon Prime revenue is, at the very least, unlikely to go down during this mess.  Even Prime members who have lost their jobs are, I'd think, unlikely to cancel their Prime memberships.

 

And Amazon Web Services, which is a huge profit center within the business even if smaller by overall revenue--I'm betting demand for that service has increased given business cloud computing needs during this.

 

 

Netflix' royalty payments to third-party are generally set out in long-term contracts, and are largely fixed-cost.  They also own a large stable of their own content at this point, going all the way back to House of Cards in 2013.  They might not gain a ton of subscribers from this.  But the increased demand for their service very likely means that they will be able to increase their price by $1 or $2/mo soon enough without losing a ton of their existing subscribers.  Elasticity of demand is very central to the Netflix investment thesis.

Keep in mind that being low-margin high-volume requires everything to go perfectly or else profit disappears and losses can compound very quickly. When you've put yourself in a position where even selling things at MSRP but still manages to be low-margin (or even negative) as Amazon has, any imperfection makes raising volume the enemy.

 

Margin allows far more flexibility and keeps companies out of trouble.

Edited April 16, 20205 yr by GCrites80s

3 hours ago, Dougal said:

Ah ... the news.  ATHX is watering the stock again.

 

https://www.crainscleveland.com/health-care/athersys-inc-prices-public-offering-stock-thats-expected-gross-more-50-million

 

I don't understand this. So the stock was at 3.10 at yesterday's close. Then the company itself offers shares for 2.25---doesn't that screw all the existing shareholders who had the stock at 3.10? And they've done this before? Why would anyone want to buy shares in such a company? Is this a common practice?

 

28 minutes ago, Pugu said:

 

I don't understand this. So the stock was at 3.10 at yesterday's close. Then the company itself offers shares for 2.25---doesn't that screw all the existing shareholders who had the stock at 3.10? And they've done this before? Why would anyone want to buy shares in such a company? Is this a common practice?

 

Yes, it does. Yes, they've done it before. You have to hope that they eventually get a blockbuster drug through Phase 3 trials and onto the market for a bonanza payoff. Yes, it's common practice. Alas, that's how start-up biotech companies do things.

30 minutes ago, Pugu said:

 

I don't understand this. So the stock was at 3.10 at yesterday's close. Then the company itself offers shares for 2.25---doesn't that screw all the existing shareholders who had the stock at 3.10? And they've done this before? Why would anyone want to buy shares in such a company? Is this a common practice?

 

Well the company has such little cash on hand left to last the year, I knew it had to do something. If your company is getting pumped on the market that is usually a good time to water down the stock. I’m more surprised they didn’t go with a smaller amount of shares at a higher price. But apparently they needed to get to $50 million. 

i felt mid-April would be their peak hype possibility for this stock since this would be the time the most people would be on ventilators. There should’ve been the most pressure for treatment like this to start taking place by now.  Alas, people are just statistics now for trump. 

 
Hard to say where this goes now.  Since it can’t be implemented in the next 2-3 months its missing its maximum potential. 

36 minutes ago, audidave said:

If your company is getting pumped on the market that is usually a good time to water down the stock. 

 

See: Tesla.  All these fools keep falling for Musk's games, despite the fact that the organization is propped up by billions in junk bonds, which should tell you everything you need to know.  

20 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

See: Tesla.  All these fools keep falling for Musk's games, despite the fact that the organization is propped up by billions in junk bonds, which should tell you everything you need to know.  

 

I was this close to buying back in around $380 during the recent dip.  I was hoping for it to fall back to the $350 where I sold out so I could get back on the train right where I left it, but no such luck.

 

Oh, and your animadversion for the company and its chairman is as off-base as ever.  See my previous posts.  I'm tired of repeating them.  The notion that the company is overvalued is one thing; the notion that it's just a con game or fraud is simply not supportable.

The company would function much better without Musk but the share price would drop. If the now-disproven notion that a company's only reason for existence is to maximize the wealth of the shareholders you keep him, but for the long-term viability of the company, to be a good corporate citizen and provide value to all stakeholders including society (even ones that do not consume the company's products) he should go. Not just "electric cars are better long term for the environment than ICE, so we can waste political leader's time and resources with unusable ventilators during a health crisis" and "electric cars are better long-term for the environment than ICE, so it's OK to screw with the people trying to help children stuck in a cave".

But isn't the typical way to do this is to do a reverse split?  So if you have 100 shares at 3.75 and a company wants to lower it to 2.50 and float more shares, you now have 100x(3.75/2.50) or 150 shares?

Yes. But for a company that wants to be taken seriously by anyone but penny stock traders it's counterproductive due to the signal a reverse split sends.

AWS is the reason to buy AMZN. It's the market leader, a juggernaut. AWS and Azure are huge. I'm long both AMZN and MSFT.

As the entire travel industry is in the dumps, why is TripAdvisor's parent up 60% today?

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LTRPB?p=LTRPB&.tsrc=fin-srch

5 minutes ago, Cavalier Attitude said:

AWS is the reason to buy AMZN. It's the market leader, a juggernaut. AWS and Azure are huge. I'm long both AMZN and MSFT.

 

I have no problem with the success of AWS. But we shouldn't let the rest of the country turn into trash or stifle the development of other e-tailers just so that Amazon doesn't have to pay taxes on AWS.

7 minutes ago, Pugu said:

As the entire travel industry is in the dumps, why is TripAdvisor's parent up 60% today?

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LTRPB?p=LTRPB&.tsrc=fin-srch

 

Trump's mouth

27 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

 

I have no problem with the success of AWS. But we shouldn't let the rest of the country turn into trash or stifle the development of other e-tailers just so that Amazon doesn't have to pay taxes on AWS.

Sure. I generally despise them as a company and wish them hell, but their stock does well.

Why doesn't Amazon have to pay taxes on AWS?

Due to built up losses from their retail arm. Even if they turn a profit on the retail ops a quarter or two they can dig up losses that they've been saving for a special occasion since they lost so much for so long.

4 hours ago, Pugu said:

But isn't the typical way to do this is to do a reverse split?  So if you have 100 shares at 3.75 and a company wants to lower it to 2.50 and float more shares, you now have 100x(3.75/2.50) or 150 shares?

 

To clarify, what you're talking about is not a reverse split (where you combine shares to raise the price of them) but just issuing discount shares. Pre-existing shares are not combined in the model you describe. But both a reverse split and issuing discount shares are signs of jankyness! But legal. Penny stock people look at both as just part of the game.

4 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Yes. But for a company that wants to be taken seriously by anyone but penny stock traders it's counterproductive due to the signal a reverse split sends.

 

The FRAK etf did a 10-1 reverse split this week, from $5 to $50/share.

 

That's bad for sure, but not as embarrassing as going from $1 to $10. Or $0.50 to $5 -- a good way to go back to $1 real fast.

4 hours ago, Gramarye said:

The notion that the company is overvalued is one thing; the notion that it's just a con game or fraud is simply not supportable.

 

Musk is Joe Exotic.  He doesn't care about the environmental benefits promised by electric cars, or computer technology or cars writ large, any more than Exotic actually cared about his tigers.  It's all about attention and money. 

 

There is plenty of trouble brewing in the new car market.  All of the good deals soon to be had in the used market are going to pull down new car sales.  Plus, gasoline is pretty much the cheapest it's ever been, and with commercial aviation and recreational driving down for at least a year, it'll continue to be cheap through 2021.  This is bad news for electric car sales. 

 

 

 

The used car market is rapidly becoming flooded with lease groundings and the fact that auto auctions are closed down. Dealers don't need more used cars since a lot of them are closed or doing vastly reduced business. Rental car agencies aren't able to sell their old cars either, plus they'll need money from not renting out the cars to travelers. The only reverse of this is that dealers aren't taking in trades from not selling cars.

None of this matters for TSLA if tech bros that already make too much money and haven't seen any decrease in their income continue to buy the stock though since they don't see these things. It doesn't matter if they don't sell cars if the stock price is fine if you are allowed to be in the stock business far more than you are into the car business.

12 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

None of this matters for TSLA if tech bros that already make too much money and haven't seen any decrease in their income continue to buy the stock though since they don't see these things. It doesn't matter if they don't sell cars if the stock price is fine if you are allowed to be in the stock business far more than you are into the car business.

 

There is a whole cottage industry aimed at luring retail investors to Tesla.  No other car company - and honestly no other stock - has anything like it.  When Apple's stock took off around 2005, it was because Apple's products took off.  I don't recall Steve Jobs going on a non-stop Apple stock media blitz. 

 

This is what lurks just beneath Elon Musk's exoskeleton:

 

^Infomercials. These modern versions of infomercials aren't being used to sell cars. They sell stock. The cars are fine. Of course I hate that the company, like most, is focused on SUVs and crossovers but that's what people are told to buy. They don't need infomercials. The stock does.

2 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

None of this matters for TSLA if tech bros that already make too much money and haven't seen any decrease in their income continue to buy the stock cars though since they don't see these things. It doesn't matter if they don't sell cars if the stock price is fine if you are allowed to be in the stock business far more than you are into the car business.

 

Tesla is selling cars as fast as they produce them, to rave reviews (and healthy margins).  I drive one.  The notion that the company is somehow vaporware, all hype and no product, is an incomprehensibly durable conspiracy theory.

 

Yes, the gyrations of the stock from sub-$400 to near-$1000 and back in the course of a few months signals a lot of momentum investors and technical investors that aren't in the stock for the company's underlying fundamentals.  That doesn't mean that the underlying fundamentals are bad.  I'm quite sympathetic to the argument that the stock is overvalued--as I mentioned, I lightened my position in the $350 range.

 

But this kind of sentiment ...

  

2 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

There is a whole cottage industry aimed at luring retail investors to Tesla.  No other car company - and honestly no other stock - has anything like it.  When Apple's stock took off around 2005, it was because Apple's products took off.  I don't recall Steve Jobs going on a non-stop Apple stock media blitz. 

 

... suggesting that Tesla's products haven't taken off is mindboggling.  The company delivered 367,500 vehicles in 2019 (https://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla-q4-2019-vehicle-production-deliveries), up 50% from 2018, and I see little reason to believe that that trend will not continue.

 

Yes, people point out that those unit sales lag greatly behind other major car companies.  Ford, for example, sold 2.4 million vehicles in 2019.  But its sales volume was down year over year even in the trucks and SUVs, to say nothing of the passenger cars that it is basically abandoning.  Meanwhile, Tesla hasn't even started to play in the light truck and crossover space yet, and is still growing rapidly with just sedans and their high-end luxury SUV.  Yes, a ridiculous amount of growth expectations are baked into the current stock price.  But I'd still rather be in Tesla than any other car company right now.

33 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

 

... suggesting that Tesla's products haven't taken off is mindboggling.  The company delivered 367,500 vehicles in 2019 (https://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla-q4-2019-vehicle-production-deliveries), up 50% from 2018, and I see little reason to believe that that trend will not continue

 

92 million motor vehicles were built worldwide in 2019.  Tesla is approximately 1/3 of 1%.  They're a fraction of the size of car makers that nobody's even heard of.  But they have Joe Exotic creating multiple headlines per news cycle. 

Remember airline points?  I remember people making fun of me here for not using credit cards because I was missing out on points.  Well the airlines aren't even flying right now.  It'll be fun to watch the points people flip the flip out when their precious airplane points expire.  I've got a $25 Best Buy points gift card sitting in my drawer.  Hooray. 

 

In minute 3 we hear about the airline points:

 

 

 

7 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Remember airline points?  I remember people making fun of me here for not using credit cards because I was missing out on points.  Well the airlines aren't even flying right now.  It'll be fun to watch the points people flip the flip out when their precious airplane points expire. 

 

The only points I have with airlines are Southwest (which don't expire, and we already made BANK off them signing up for two credit cards and getting the Companion Pass - points left are like 8k but we burned through >150k the last two years flying to a bunch of domestic locations) and United (~150k -> trying to save up for a big international flight, though our timetable is now likely to move back considerably).  Neither Southwest nor United miles ever expire (for now).  The rest are stored with a bank - Chase, Barclays, Capital One, etc.  We can either transfer them to an airline/hotel if it makes sense, or just use the points within the bank's system.

 

Dave Ramsey's advice is to take your credit score to 0.  I don't advise people listen to Dave Ramsey once they get beyond the "debt is bad, we should spend less than we make" portion of his series.

Edited April 17, 20205 yr by DarkandStormy

16 minutes ago, DarkandStormy said:

 

The only points I have with airlines are Southwest (which don't expire, and we already made BANK off them signing up for two credit cards and getting the Companion Pass - points left are like 8k but we burned through >150k the last two years flying to a bunch of domestic locations) and United (~150k -> trying to save up for a big international flight, though our timetable is now likely to move back considerably).  The rest are stored with a bank - Chase, Barclays, Capital One, etc.  We can either transfer them to an airline/hotel if it makes sense, or just use the points within the bank's system.

 

Dave Ramsey's advice is to take your credit score to 0.  I don't advise people listen to Dave Ramsey once they get beyond the "debt is bad, we should spend less than we make" portion of his series.

 

Debt in itself is not necessarily bad either. Consumer debt for tvs, motorcylces, new cars, and non essential items is bad. Debt to purchase a home or income property can be good. Debt to pay for higher education can be good too. 

7 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Remember airline points?  I remember people making fun of me here for not using credit cards because I was missing out on points.  Well the airlines aren't even flying right now.  It'll be fun to watch the points people flip the flip out when their precious airplane points expire.  I've got a $25 Best Buy points gift card sitting in my drawer.  Hooray. 

 

In minute 3 we hear about the airline points:

 

 

 

United points don't expire.

Delta Skymiles don't expire.

American has extended their mileage expiration dates.

 

Not sure on the smaller airlines, but I'd imagine it's probably similar.

And it's actually really easy to extend your miles if they're close to expiring.  There's really no need to ever have your miles in your account expire if you know what you're doing. 

 

And yes, you are missing out on CC benefits if you're making big purchases with cash. Especially if you pay your full CC amount each month.

29 minutes ago, freefourur said:

Debt in itself is not necessarily bad either. Consumer debt for tvs, motorcylces, new cars, and non essential items is bad. Debt to purchase a home or income property can be good. Debt to pay for higher education can be good too. 

 

True - and I do think his series is probably good for folks perpetually in high APR consumer or credit card debt.  But if you want to buy a house, and you've followed Ramsey's advice to eliminate all lines of credit (credit score to 0), you'll never get approved for a loan.

6 minutes ago, Wally said:

United points don't expire.

Delta Skymiles don't expire.

American has extended their mileage expiration dates.

 

Not sure on the smaller airlines, but I'd imagine it's probably similar.

And it's actually really easy to extend your miles if they're close to expiring.  There's really no need to ever have your miles in your account expire if you know what you're doing. 

 

And yes, you are missing out on CC benefits if you're making big purchases with cash. Especially if you pay your full CC amount each month.

 

Yeah, chasing points/miles only makes sense if you can pay your CC in full and on time and don't accrue interest.  But if you're doing on sort of regular (or even irregular) travel, they can offset a bulk of those costs if you plan it out strategically.