Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Minutes: 11 May 2016

11 May 2016

·      Financial Sector
o   Goldman Sachs
§  Stock prices spiked on 5/10
§  Point: GS has very high liability and low assets. This was explained as being due to “debt being cheap” and a fact of banking
o   Berkshire Hathaway
§  Revenue fell, but net profit jumped
o   Watching: BAC, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank
·      Telecom
o   Frontier Communications
§  Customer complaints after it purchased millions of accounts from Verizon.
·      Defense
o   First general down day in a couple of weeks.
§  Likely due to general downturn
o   Lower amounts of oil and reserves by a couple millions of barrels
§  This caused oil to go up a bit/be flat, while the market is generally down.
o   Lockheed Martin (LMT)
§  Recently, they’ve been up quite a bit, are expected to increase.
§  They’re restructuring, which should increase efficiency.
§  Focused on expansion in international markets.
§  Still a leading defense company.
§  Deficiencies in ship markets
·      Criticized for systemic shortcomings
o   Huntington Ingalls (HII)
§  Builds and maintains the Navy’s nuclear submarines
§  Little competition
§  Will the Sino-sphere conflicts increase demand for ships?
o   The US Army is holding a competition for helicopters in 2017. The two main competitors are Bell Helicopters and Boeing-Sikorsky.
·      Energy
o   Chevron is down a couple cents.
·      Department/Malls
o   Macy’s (M)
§  Reported terrible numbers, went down a lot.
§  Stores at certain tiers are down- Sears, Macy’s, JC Penny’s, etc. These are lower to middle end. High-end malls (in LA area) appear to be doing fine.
§  Can be replaced with Amazon
·      High-tiers are safe because you wouldn’t buy a $1000 jacket on Amazon
o   Large trend of “athleisure”
§  Especially on college campuses
§  Leggings, sport shoes, shorts
§  Lulu Lemon, Under Amour, Nike
o   Sears (SHLD)
§  Slowly going out of business
§  Selling properties
·      Agriculture
o   Terra Nitrogen (TNH)
§  Their dividend is down, closer to $1.50 per share.
§  Still a strong company. Their annual income is strange: high profit margin, but revenue is decreasing.
§  17% drop in stock lately. They combat an unscheduled two-month outage and decreased earnings.
§  Thought: if we own this due to high dividends, why not invest in a safer company (Verizon, AT&T) that has similarly high dividends?
§  Did they lower dividend due to outages or something else?
·      Tech
o   Lenovo (LNV)
§  Now owns Motorola
§  Plans on launching smartphone with Google Tango, a 3D mapping camera system
§  Will be holding a conference soon
§  Not traded on American Exchanges
·      Motions
o   Regarding last week’s motion to sell stocks, there is a thought that we should hold off selling until the beginning of next term, in order to make more than 0.1% that we would get in the money market
o   What if the market tanks in the summer?
o   Do we have a responsibility to keep at least some of it out of the money market?
o   Defenses:
§  Lockheed Martin
§  Northrop Grumman
·      Miscellaneous
o   What’s up with Carl Icahn?
§  Historic 150% net short.
§  Very bearish
§  Sold Apple

o   Leasesmart Inc still dead.

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