NRZ Wow, did not see that one coming. Saw the quick response from OCN too. That seems to be helping as OCN is now at 2.65 up from a low of 2.11 and NRZ is at 16.23. Not clear to me what all this really means to NRZ.

What are you doing on this big selloff R59?

AAOI don't own it but I think you'll do fine with it as long as the market doesn't roll over. Surprised to see it continue to sell off here. It may be due to the fact that investors are nervous (CNN fear greed index closed at 25 Friday which indicates extreme fear). AAOI is still up 400% yoy.

MU Yes, I think it is a great buy here and dram chip prices keep rising. The rising demand and tight supply situation there isn't expected to change before 2019. I've added a few but concerns about the health of the general stock market have held me back.

MU I definitely jumped the gun in buying back my shares as it has sold off the last couple of days. Dram chip prices continue to rise though. The DXI index (basket of Dram prices) is now at 17,500 and still rising vs about 15,000 the beginning of the year and way up from about 5000 a year ago. Tempted to add more here.

SYNA having a nice run today: up 6+% to $52.50 Puts me back in the green but I'm wondering what is causing the big move today. Hard to believe that the 8K would have so much effect when there is only speculation as to who or what they might acquire with the increased loan amendment.

LGIH More important is that they left unchanged their guidance to close more than 4700 homes this year which is well up from 4163 closings last year. They also commented that sales (not closings) were strong. If I didn't already have a good sized position, I would have used today's weakness to add shares.

SMID Nice pop out of the gate, up 11%. Not much volume though. What SMID needs now is to become a listed stock and then it could be off to the races. A market cap of over $30 mil warrants that move for them.

NAII They must have been buying back shares at some point. According to the PR, they have bought back a total of $4.2 million in shares since they authorized buybacks.


Natural Alternatives International, Inc. ("NAI") (NAII), a leading formulator, manufacturer and marketer of customized nutritional supplements, today announced its Board of Directors authorized a $2.0 million increase to its stock repurchase plan bringing the total authorized repurchase amount to $7.0 million. Under the repurchase plan, NAI may, from time to time, purchase shares of its common stock, depending upon market conditions, in open market or privately negotiated transactions. With this new authority NAI now has a total of $2.8 million available to continue its stock repurchase plan.  As of March 30, 2017, NAI had approximately 6,933,352 shares of common stock outstanding.

MU Rebought into a full position in this one in the 28.40s. Was hoping to pick it up lower but the stock is holding firm in the 28s after that blow out guidance last week. Look how much analyst estimates have risen since before last weeks PR and CC:

Q3 17: $1.47 vs 88c
Q4 17: $1.51 vs 96c
Yr 2017 (ends 8/17): $4.28 vs $3.02
Yr 2018: $4.93 vs $3.49 (analyst estimates were only $2.77 60 days ago)

Along with this, Dram prices are continuing to rise and Nand prices are also heading up making it likely that MU will beat estimates again. Prices are expected to continue to rise this year with high demand and limited increases in supply.

Put a 9 PE onto this one and that gives it a target of $39-$44.

TIS That new business came up in the comment section. Here's the exchange with the author's response:

treeandsky
Comments (42) |+ Follow |Send Message
You mention the 8-k but leave out it projects revenue to increase up to 35% as a result of new contract awards. If management is not lying in the 8-k and revenue rises in accordance with their announcement what impact would that have on your short thesis?
30 Mar 2017, 09:04 AM Report Abuse
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ACM Research Team, Contributor
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Author’s reply » Yeah, this language is obfuscated and disingenuous. They say in the 8-k that customers "may" purchase, not that they've agreed to purchase or that they have any purchase orders.

I haven't read the 8K myself but would be worth seeing exactly what mgmt said in it.

TIS Likely that this new SA article has something to do with the recent price action. Author slams mgmt, warns about a dividend curtailment, and has a target of $15.50 on the stock. Ouch...

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4058655-orchids-paper-equity-holders-get-wiped

LPTH Up 12% on heavy volume today. Anyone know what suddenly lit a fire under this one?

hweb, On TIS I'll steer clear until I see some evidence of a turnaround;
also concerned that the dividend could be in jeopardy. Best of luck with this one.

Most Home builders turn green on strong pending home sales report:

The Pending Home Sales Index jumped 5.5% in February, its best reading since last April and the second-best reading since May 2006, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.
Pending home sales reflect contract signings and are a forward-looking gauge to what actual existing-home sales will be in the next month or two.
"The stock market's continued rise and steady hiring in most markets is spurring significant interest in buying, as well as the expectation from some households that delaying their home search may mean paying higher interest rates later this year," said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun in a statement. "Last month being the warmest February in decades also played a role in kick-starting prospective buyers' house hunt."
The Federal Reserve on March 15 raised interest rates as expected, but chose not to signal faster rate hikes going forward. Treasury yields have fallen sharply on that news, pushing mortgage rates lower as well.
Pending home sales shot up 11.4% in the Midwest, while climbing 4.3% in the South, 3.4% in the Northeast and 3.1% in the West.

TSLA Really tempted to short it myself again after reading that article.

Chinese investing in TSLA which means they probably want to steal their technology.

TSLA needs to raise billions more with its affordable car launch.

Extremely ambitious sales projections for new car-never been done in history.

Current market cap is higher than Ford motors and nearly 10X book value.

TSLA continues to lose money and their recent acquisition of Solar City is another big time money loser.

On the other hand, you have Elon Musk putting this all together. Nobody has ever won selling him short yet.

HIIQ One of the first things Trump did after the inauguration was to sign an executive order supposedly removing the mandate and penalty for not having an Obamacare policy. Assuming that is true, many people should be free to buy HIIQ's low cost policies rather than an Obamacare policy. If true, HIIQ should do fine even if Obamacare continues. I haven't been able to confirm that the IRS is willing to go along with that though.

Still, I'm not surprised that HIIQ sold off on the headline news that the republican health plan failed last friday. I lightened up myself on HIIQ when it appeared that failure was imminent. Plan to hold the rest of my shares. Today, it looks like congress is still actively working on a replacement.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/24/the-stupidest-part-of-obamacare-goes-away.html

CBIO Wow, a triple in an hour. Boy, those shorts are sure hurting with 1/3 of that float short.

Actually worthylion, I'm the same age as you. Also relatively healthy with some blood pressure medication. Surprised your rate went down. Maybe you have qualified for a rebate based on your income?? Virtually all my income now is capital gains, dividends and some social security. Of course, I never know how much I will make from year to year as it mostly depends on how the stock market treats me. Fortunately the last few years have been good and I can afford those high premiums and deductibles. Still, I feel I'm being jerked around everytime I pay my insurance bills. Best, Cliff

This is supposed to be a board about stocks and investments, not politics (ksuave), but it's Saturday so here goes:

You're right Matt about the fat finger of government having screwed up the insurance industry. I've been self employed my entire life and when Obamacare was mandated about 3 years ago, I lost my insurance as they chose not to participate in the exchanges. I later found out that my doctor was not in my new insurance company network so I lost my doctor too. In the first year under Obamacare, my insurance premiums nearly doubled and my deductible also became much larger. None of that increase had anything to do with overpaid executives (some are overpaid but that was no different than before Obamacare). To sum it up, I lost my insurance, my doctor, and my premiums went way up- all were promises made and broken by Obama.

In 3 years under Obamacare, I have now seen my premiums triple and my deductible more than double. Between the two, I have to spend $14,000 out of my pocket before my insurance company starts to pay for my medical expenses. That is crazy!

As Reagan used to say; government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. I am not that disappointed that the move to repeal and replace Obamacare failed as the Obamacare-lite plan still had the fat fingers of government all around it. Repeal Obamacare and start out with a fresh slate. The liberals whine that so many will lose insurance if this happens. Funny, but under the old system people who needed medical care still were able to find it. It's just that they weren't able to use insurance for things like gender reassignment surgery and maintenance and so many other things I don't want or need with my insurance. Government has become way too large and obtrusive. People realize this and that is why Trump was elected. The libs and the media are doing their best to throw roadblocks in front of him though.

MU Analysts are raising targets: Deutsch from $30 to 35, JPM from $33 to 38 and Stifel from $40 to $47. They must have all been sleeping at the switch; the big increases in Dram and Nand pricing has been well known, I've made several posts about it on this board. Dram prices have levelled off at a very high level and Nand is still going up. Prices are expected to remain high for quite some time.

From what I have seen, the huge new Chinese fab plant won't be operational for almost two years. Micron expects the party to continue for quite some time, If prices just stay at current levels, I think q4 will be even higher than Q3 which the company guided for at $1.50 avg. Many of MU's chips are sold on contract and as those contracts roll over, the prices keep moving higher.

Screwed up on a big sell order here yesterday, placing it as a day order. That's OK as I replaced it as a premarket order this morning and got a fill at $30.05 instead of 29. Still holding half my shares, will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

MU very strong after hours; now up 10% on an earnings beat (90c vs 85c est) thanks to high Dram and Nand chip prices. Just took some profits here as I remember last Q they also exploded in AH only to give much of it back in regular trading. Still holding about half my shares.

Home builders: strong new home sales report puts the group nicely green today. I remain bullish on the group:

After two months of disappointing figures, the number of new home sales jumped in February to a 592,000 annual rate. This is up 6.1% from January’s level, which was revised higher. Economists were expecting 571,000 in sales of newly constructed homes.

“This represents the strongest February report since 2008 in what represents the first month of the key spring selling season in the warmer parts of the country,” comments Michael Shaoul of Marketfield Asset Management.

The new number put the rate of sales 13% higher than a year ago, according to the Census Bureau’s report (pdf). But total new home sales for all of 2016 rose to 563,000, a 12% increase over 2015.

David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide, highlights these additional points in the report:

The median price of new homes sold surprisingly slipped by 4.9 percent from a year earlier, although this is probably due to a fairly large drop in sales in the relatively expensive Northeast region.
The actual number of homes for sale edged up for a seventh consecutive month, although the level remains low. The months’ supply of homes (a measure of the inventory/sales ratio) fell to 5.4 months, also low.
He comments further:

The pickup in sales coupled with low inventories suggests that single-family starts will rise further in coming months, as homebuilders attempt to meet increasing demand. This fits in well with recent figures from the Wells Fargo/NAHB homebuilder survey, which rose to the highest level since 2005 in March.

Rising mortgage rates don’t appear to have been much of an impediment to increasing housing demand in February, as solid job gains, faster wage growth, and stronger household formations offset the drop in affordability from rising prices and mortgage rates. Moreover, homebuilders can respond to affordability concerns by constructing homes that are less expensive, helping to keep demand strong.

The home-related exchange-traded funds, SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) and iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB) were both trading higher after the report was released at 10 a.m. ET Thursday.

Wade, only refinance mortgage applications are down 26% from a year ago which makes sense with the recent rise in rates.

Mortgage loan applications to buy a home are actually up 5% from a year ago, and that is being held back by a tight supply of homes, a healthy market for the builders. From the article you linked:

Higher interest rates continue to shrink the pool of borrowers who can benefit from a refinance. Those applications fell 3 percent for the week and are down 26 percent from a year ago. Loan applications to purchase a home fell 2 percent for the week but are up 5 percent from a year ago. Demand for housing is strengthening as the spring market kicks into gear, but a tight supply of homes for sale nationwide drags on the selling pace.

Homebuilders have actually done very well since early November. Take a look at the chart for XHB, an ETF for homebuilders since then. Sure, they have sold off the last couple of days, but so has everything else except gold.

LGIH has been one of the weaker builders in the last few months, but prior to that it had a very nice run. I remain bullish on the group but we need government to get its act together and not remain mired in gridlock.

SYNA down in sympathy due to weakness in competitor, Fingerprint Cards, a Swedish company. Investors apparently selling SYNA on concerns that the entire industry is showing weakness, although Fingerprint Cards said they are losing market penetration. Maybe SYNA is taking it from them?

STOCKHOLM, March 21 (Reuters) - Shares in Fingerprint Cards (FPC) plunged as much as 42 percent on Tuesday after the former stock market star scrapped plans to pay a dividend and said it could not forecast likely earnings for 2017.
The Swedish company, which as its name suggests provides fingerprint sensors for technology products, blamed weaker demand from smartphone makers and inventory build-up for the warning.
It has been losing its dominant market position as more companies switch to using two or three suppliers rather than relying solely on its products.
FPC has 20-30 competitors globally and its main rivals include China's Goodix, Silicon Valley-based Synaptics and Taiwan'sEgis Technology.
Carnegie analyst Havard Nilsson warned that FPC's revenue might decline this year after growth of around 130 percent in 2016 and over 1,100 percent in 2015.
"It seems unlikely the weakness is explained only by high inventory as competition is increasing from Goodix, Silead, Elan and Idex," said Nilsson, who has a "Sell" recommendation on the stock.
FPC revenues could fall to between 4 billion and 6 billion Swedish crowns ($455-683 million) this year versus 6.6 billion in 2016, he added.....
Chief Executive Christian Fredrikson, who took charge last August, acknowledged tougher competition but sought to reassure investors.
"That's the name of the game - I think that will continue and there's nothing else to do about it. But we feel we are in a strong position to defend our market leadership," he told a telephone conference.
The company also lowered its forecast on market share for 2017 to around 50 percent from a previous estimate of above 50 percent. That compares with between 55 and 60 percent in 2016.
The 20-year-old firm had its big breakthrough in 2015 when demand for fingerprint sensors in smartphones and tablets soared after other manufacturers followed the lead of Apple, which bought its own sensor maker, AuthenTec, in 2012.

NAII Then again, maybe they are looking for a new formulator because they are just unhappy with what the current one has come up with for them. Hope not, as I still own some of this stock.

Philly bev tax: I also see that the 8% sales tax is being charged on the beverage tax: So it's a tax on a tax. Amazing how ingenious government can be when it comes to raising revenue.

I added some POLA too and now I see it closed right at its low of the day
$8.11 Wonder who is selling?

HBP Just saw an interesting post on Ymb that FBM, a building supply company that recently went public is looking for acquisitions in the industry and HBP would be a perfect fit for them. That could certainly explain today's strength:

FBM just raised $160M, the majority will go toward acquisitions, in meetings with investors they said they would like to put it all to work ASAP, rather than nibbling at smaller operations. #HBP is a perfect fit and uncannily fits almost point by point with the type of acquisition #FBM is looking for. Lets just leave it at that.

SYNA Thanks for posting those job links. That's a lot of job openings for a company with about 1700 employees. Maybe they are just too busy with growing the company to spend time talking to investors. Hard to believe this growing tech stock is near a 52 week low. I have enough shares so am not adding more. Would love to see another buy out offer though. As you said: time will tell.

HBP Don't know why it is so strong on heavy volume but virtually the entire homebuilding sector is up today. All the homebuilders I follow are nicely up and many are up 3% or more. The more leveraged they are, the more investors seem to like them. HOV is loaded with a ton of debt and up about 7%.

I'd be cautious about shorting HBP. Everything is looking good for the home builders now and their suppliers like HBP. HBP did report a small 1c loss for a seasonally weaker quarter ending 12/30. They also said that was mainly due to higher payroll expenses. I think they are gearing up for a strong sales year this year. At $8, the trailing PE is 16, but I'm wondering what the fwd PE is? HBP is apparently too small for an analyst following.

Dr. Maddow sure did a great job last night in releasing a copy of Trump's tax return for 2005, proving all the libs were wrong when they kept saying Trump did not pay taxes. Ignoring whether the return was obtained legally or not, they show that Trump:
A. Made a lot of money
B. Did pay a lot of taxes, about $38 mil in that year alone.

Btw, Trump's tax rate was about double what socialist Sanders paid and also bigger than Obama's. Maddow also proved she's been dispensing fake news before she finally fessed up.

As expected, Fed raised funds rate by .25% with 2 more expected later this year. Interesting that both stocks and bonds rallied on the news. 180 degree difference from what would have happened a year ago.

Yellen's going to speak soon. Hopefully she won't kill the rally while she talks as she often seems to.

13-G timelines: It depends on who bought it. If it's a passive investor, it has to be reported within 10 days. If it is a qualified institutional investor they don't have to report it until 2/14/2018. This link lays out what a qualified institutional investor is along with the timeline requirements:

https://www.law360.com/articles/501953/when-to-file-schedule-13d-vs-schedule-13g

MU Down a bit today but SP has been firming up of late. Back on 3/2 mgmt updated guidance for Q2 (ending 2/17) from 66c to 86c eps. Spot Dram prices have stabilized for now at high levels and are up 25% this year alone. Interesting that Nand prices are also increasing at a healthy clip and are up about the same amount ytd.

I expect MU to slightly beat guidance for Q2 but their Q3 guidance will be very interesting. Analysts currently are estimating 87c but I think MU will likely guide for $1 or more even if prices just continue to stabilize here. Most of MU's sales are by contract, not at spot. As those contracts roll over, prices are being adjusted upward.

I continue to patiently wait for a nice rise in MU's SP as we approach earnings on 3/23.

Congressional members and staffers generally act like their fellow Americans sit around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release scoring of major legislative proposals, much like they await the release of March Madness brackets. The truth is that most Americans hardly care what the CBO says. Moreover, they are right not to care: The CBO is often wildly off.

This has certainly been true on Obamacare. Seven years ago this month, the Democrats rammed President Obama’s namesake through the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote and with only three Democratic votes to spare. At the time, the CBO said that in 2017, 23 million people would be enrolled in insurance that they acquired through Obamacare's government-run exchanges. Well, 2017 is here, and the actual tally is 9.2 million. So the CBO missed its projection by some 14 million people and a whopping 48 percent. That's not even close enough for government work.

The CBO tends to assume that if the federal government isn't compelling someone to do something, it won't happen. So if employers aren't mandated to offer insurance, they won't. If Americans aren't mandated to buy insurance, they won't. To be sure, the CBO does grant that some private employers and some private citizens actually exercise free will. Nevertheless, the CBO plainly believes in, and is a part of, Big Government.

Evidence of this is found in the fact that the CBO generally omits a huge category in its Obamacare scoring: its effect on federal spending. It lists Obamacare's "gross cost of coverage provisions," but that counts tax breaks and federal spending as being one and the same. Maybe that's just as well, since the CBO falsely scores Obamacare's direct outlays to insurance companies as "tax credits," and hence (when the person getting the insurance is someone who actually pays income tax) as "tax cuts"—hiding some $104 billion in federal spending in the process. The fact that the CBO generally doesn't offer a clear tally for federal spending speaks volumes.

As congressional members and staffers from both parties wait with bated breath for the CBO to score the newly released House Republican health-care bill (part of which is here and part of which is here), they would do well to remind themselves that (A) the CBO's score will most likely be wildly off, (B) most Americans don't much care what the CBO thinks, and (C) those who debate and pass legislation should focus on whether it would be good policy that can be communicated to the American people on its own grounds, not on the grounds of the CBO's generally dubious scoring.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-cbos-lousy-track-record-on-coverage-projections/article/2007129

AAOI Wade, congrats on a nice win with this one. It is not my cup of tea as it has already more than doubled this year. Don't you think the good news has been mostly priced in? There's also the chance they could disappoint as they have in the past (think I owned them back then) and then it'll be watch out below.

Wade, I still see a bull market for homebuilders with strong demand for housing. My largest positions are in MDC, CCS, LGIH, and TOL.

HLTH Puked my shares out. News of that crappy report must have leaked out. Maybe that is about the only thing that mgmt. did well at- whispering to their friends to get out before the news.

This was also one time I am thankful for that stupid 5c minimum tick rule. Every time I placed an order for this stock, I had to place it in 5c increments. Pissed me off so much that I only bought a small position. Oh well, everyone from the specialists to management got a piece of our hides on this one.

Gander Mountain filed a Ch 11 bankruptcy so they are restructuring debts under the protection of the court but will continue to operate. They did say they plan to close down 32 money losing stores soon (out of 160 total) but that means about 80% of their stores will continue in operation plus their online sales. Seems to me like that wouldn't affect SPWH sales negatively.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/gander-mountain-files-for-bankruptcy-protection/article_e1519c20-b919-53fd-aca4-7b2f89ef0188.html