Category: Commentary

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The Unicorns (Uber, Pinterest, Airbnb) are going public and people are talking about IPOs again. My rule of thumb is that if a new IPO is very popular, it will be too hard to extract money in the first few months. LYFT is the most recent example. FB was also a dud in its first few months as a public company. It didn’t start trending before it crushed earnings estimates and gapped near all-time highs. The situation in BABA was similar.

When it comes to recent IPOs is better to stick to companies most people haven’t heard off that are showing constructive price action. Timing is also very important. The two best market environments for trading recent IPOs are:

1. Right after a major market correction. Due to their small float, recent IPOs tend to be very volatile. They can easily go down 50% – 90% if the S&P 500 loses 10-15%. They can just as easily double and triple in the initial stages of a market recovery.
2. When the general market is in an uptrend and risk appetite is growing.

Here are five less-talked-about recent IPOs that are currently showing constructive price action: INSP, TENB, DOMO, EVOP, PS.

Check out my latest two trading books:

Swing Trading with options – How to Trade Big Trends for Big Profits

Top 10 Trading Setups – How to find them, hot to trade them, hot to make money with them.

All charts in this post are powered by MarketSmith 

In late February, after Roche paid a hefty premium to buy Spark Therapeutics (ONCE) for $4.3 Billion. The acquisition ignited a rally in the entire gene therapy industry. Uniqure (QURE) gained 50% in a day going from $40 to $60. It is still considered an acquisition candite. Its current market cap is $2.3 Billion.

After the gap, QURE consolidated through time for a few days. Then, it broke out again and it quickly ran to $70, only to retrace back to $60, where buyers are stepping up again today. While most momentum stocks are under pressure today, QURE is up more than 4% and it is perking up from a tight range contraction zone. This is a notable relative strength and a sign of institutional accumulation, which bodes well for higher prices ahead.

Check out my latest trading books:

Swing Trading with options – How to Trade Big Trends for Big Profits

Top 10 Trading Setups – How to find them, hot to trade them, hot to make money with them.

All charts in this post are powered by MarketSmith 

RH had a tough day on Friday. The market didn’t like the lack of sales growth and sent their shares 20% lower near the $100 mark. Since $100-105 has acted as resistance before, many assume that it can act as a support today.

RH is a highly shorted stock with a tiny 18-million shares float. 35% of its float is short. If enough short sellers decide to cover near $100, we might see a dead-cat bounce to 110-115 in a short-term perspective.

From a longer-term perspective, things are not that rosy for RH. The CEO of the company borrowed heavily in the past few years in order to buy back RH shares. As a result, RH became highly leveraged with a debt/equity ratio of 37 and its outstanding shares have declined substantially: from 40 million to 27 million shares. The drop in outstanding shares is the main reason why RH can report a 75% earnings growth along with 0% sales growth.

To sum things up: RH is leveraged to the hills, it is in the highly cyclical overpriced furniture business and its sales are not growing. The company borrowed a lot of money to buy back its own stock at a very high price. When the next recession comes, I won’t be surprised to see RH trading under $10 per share. People should treat it as a short-term trading vehicle and not as a long-term investment.

I have no position in RH.

Check out my last two trading books:

Swing Trading with options – How to Trade Big Trends for Big Profits

Top 10 Trading Setups – How to find them, hot to trade them, hot to make money with them.