Tag: street authority

Wal-Mart Vs. Amazon: Which Should You Buy?

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Toiling in the shadows of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and many other tech stars in California's Silicon Valley, a team of 1,500 technologists are hard at work on behalf of an unlikely employer: Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT).

The retail giant has belatedly understood that simply having website for e-commerce won't cut it in the era of social media and mobile surfing. In response, the company is now committing serious resources to its digital efforts.

Will those 1,500 Wal-Mart staffers help turn the company into a leading-edge tech firm? Probably not. But they can identify hundreds of small ways to improve the online shopping experience. After all, consumers now carry the Internet in their pocket, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones.

Continue reading "Wal-Mart Vs. Amazon: Which Should You Buy?" →

Indicators Show Market at a Near-Term Decision Point

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Last week, the bellwether SP 500 continued its rebound from a successful test of underlying support at 1,730 at the beginning of the month. The U.S. broad market index finished Friday's session at 1,839, 2.3% higher for the week and just off the all-time high at 1,851.

Year to date, however, the SP 500, along with the blue-chip Dow 30 and small-cap Russell 2000, are in negative territory. The tech-laden Nasdaq is the only major U.S. index in positive territory in 2014, up 1.6%, and it must continue to lead on the upside for the broad market advance to continue. Continue reading "Indicators Show Market at a Near-Term Decision Point" →

Options Traders: Watch Out For This Little-Known Income Killer

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Using a covered call strategy can be a great way to generate steady returns in your portfolio. As a general rule, I expect my covered call trades to increase my capital by about 25% to 35% per year, depending on the market environment.

(If you're new to the covered call strategy, click here for an introduction to how this strategy works.)

Whenever I set up a new covered call trade, there are a number of different dynamics to be aware of.

I always want to start with an underlying stock that has a high probability of increasing in price. I typically look for stocks with strong fundamental growth and a chart pattern that indicates investors are steadily buying the stock.

Next, I want to make sure that the option contract we use has plenty of premium built into it. Since we make our income by selling attractively priced call options, we need to make sure we're getting a good value for the contracts we sell. Continue reading "Options Traders: Watch Out For This Little-Known Income Killer" →

Twitter: Should You Buy It?

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Some stocks just never allow you to gain an edge through fundamental research -- even by the most rigorous analytical minds.

These stocks become so popular that they become disconnected from any sort of fundamental valuation, and you can simply hold your nose and buy along with the crowd. Or you can be gutsy and look to sell shares short.

Score one for the fundamental analysts. Heading into quarterly results, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) was a major focus for short sellers, as I noted three weeks ago. The short interest has risen further since that article was published, to 32.7 million shares by mid-January.

And these short sellers may be tempted to lock in gains after shares plunged more than 20% this week. But they shouldn't close out those short positions just yet -- Twitter has an additional 20% to 25% downside from here.

Twitter faces two challenges: It needs to sharply boost its audience, and it needs to figure out how to make much more money off of that audience. These are concerns I spelled out late last month on our sister site ProfitableTrading.com. Among the reasons why this stock may be headed to just $40 (or lower): Continue reading "Twitter: Should You Buy It?" →

After A Roller-Coaster Month, Is A Bear Market On Its Way?

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If the market was looking to get our attention, it has it now.

Since Jan. 13, the SP has dropped at least 1% on three occasions. It now stands nearly 5% below its 52-week high.

At this point, investors have begun to wonder if the market choppiness is a sign of a looming correction, which is defined as a 10% pullback (a bear market is a pullback of 20% or more).

It's been quite a while since we've had a market correction: It happened once in 2010, 2011 and in the middle of 2012, but it hasn't happened since.

Notably, each correction has been followed by an impressive rebound, and some investors would welcome such a purge. In a market where values remain hard to find, pullbacks create solid openings. If we are entering into a corrective phase, history suggests it would last a couple of months. (The 2011 correction was quite rapid and due solely to the government shutdown.) Continue reading "After A Roller-Coaster Month, Is A Bear Market On Its Way?" →