While some big box stores have been struggling, online retail has been growing. I hope this is a long term trend and if so, want to be able to take advantage of it. And it has room to continue to grow. Online retail is about 6% of all commerce.
10/30/15 transferring all assets to Vanguard. We are up 36%.
8/24/15 V 50 Limit @ 67.50, AMZN 10 Limit 440.00
6/17/15 Wal-Mart has continued to drop, but they have a lot of advantages. I think they are going to be a bigger player in ecommerce, they are certainly working on it. WMT 100@Market, Last close 72.73.
4/1/15 Wal-Mart has been dropping a bit, last close was 80.79, let's add to the position:
WMT 60 @ 80.00
2/5/15 ODP is down 6% in after hours trading, market opens in 3 minutes. OK, I got up at 4:15 AM Hawaii time, set the trade up with my online broker. I wanted to do this manually since ODP was down in after hours trading. Well, the manual approach did not work. There were brief periods of time when ODP went above 9.43, but I could not react fast enough. Even if I used a limit or trailing stop it is not clear to me that an online broker can execute fast enough. Anyway, all of my tranches settled at 9.41 and change, so I lost $54.00 by not paying attention and making this trade before the markets closed yesterday.
2/4/15 Staples and Office Depot may be merging. There are people that feel the main driver is Amazon. If I held Office Depot, I would sell and profit take right now. There was a quote in the IBT article on the subject that supports the overall thesis of this basket: "The big-box supply model “was prevalent 15 years ago, and it worked, but they’ve failed to move on with the times,” Mary Epner, a retail analyst in New York, said of Staples and Office Depot. “They’re caught up in the customer that was, not the customer who is now and will be five years from now.”
I was totally in the zone with college work this morning and didn't get the memo. There is enough money in this trade that I want to do it live. So I will set my alarm for 0430, ah the price of being in Hawaii for two months is you still have to serve the East coast.
Visa continues to dominate. I read a Seeking Alpha article about their moat and the probability they would increase their dividend payout in the future. I had been thinking about adding to this position, though in my dreams it was buying on a dip.
V 10 Limit 249.88 Last Close 249.89
1/28/15 Apple, (APPL) seems to still be driving the success of this basket, (it has performed well and I am overweight in comparison with other positions in the basket). Only have two negative positions, (Live Person and Citrix). Put in a deep limit for Amazon, (AMZN), 10 shares, Limit 290.00 Last actual price 306.75. It will take a miracle, but a man has to have dreams.
5/18/14 The Amazon Limit of 5/7/14 has hit, Wal-Mart is still hoping and waiting. I am going to try to open two new positions with GTC limits. Akamai has a really cool business model of bringing home pages closer to the customer. They also have not racked up a lot of debt. I am going to see if I can get the position open with a limit and add to it on dips.
20 AKAM 53.00 L 53.33
Digital River is a company you have probably run into if you are buying online from some of the smaller vendors. I hate that word cloud, but they provide payment services to companies that cannot have or do not want to have their own payment infrastructure. The have been around a long time. The problem is I am just a touch nervous about their debt level. We will try to get in with an aggressive limit, knowing full well it may not hit and that is OK.
200 DRIV 14.75 L 15.70
5/7/14 20 WMT 76.00 L 78.01, 10 AMZN L@290.00 L 292.71
2/23/14 2 Factor Authentication will be important to online commerce, it is not an all and end all, but it sure beats clear text passwords. Whether or not it will be simple SMS messages or more advanced apps remains to be seen. However, I want to open positions on Symantec, (SYMC) and Verisign, (VRSN). Just completed some research and according to early results, these are the two most common mobile 2 factor apps. Right now they are a small part of the revenue stream, but if online commerce and mobile apps continue to grow, they should be good for both companies.
- SYMC 250 Market LC 20.53
- VRSN 65 L 54.50 LC 54.99
3/11/14 AMZN dropped a bit today, 5 M@368.42
1/30/14 Would like to add to Amazon position at a good price, they dropped over $10 bucks on Tuesday. 5 Limit@375.00 Last Close 384.20
11/30/13 I am concerned about Apple. I had a thesis that Apple TV might be the next big, big thing. After several months of research, I honestly do not think so. Have a pretty major investment in AAPL and sure hope the holiday season is very good for them.
AMZN 393.62 **** WOW ***
8/1/13 Opened a position in Yahoo (YHOO)
5/17/13 Limit 10 AAPL@ 430.00 last close 434.89
4/4/13 Opened a position on Discover DFS, 40@42.60 last close 43.21
2/4/13, AMZN 259.98, EBAY 55.69, AAPL 442.32 Decision: buy 5 shares of AAPL and turn in for the night.
Update January 10, 2013, AMZN 266.35, EBAY 52.76, AAPL 523.51
Update December 17, 2012, last close was 253, just for fun, I put in a limit for 10@235, a man has to have dreams.
Update December 10, 2012, it gets crazier my AMZN 5 share limit order hit at 248.50
Update December 10, 2012 Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle Fire and I guess that caused their stock to drop a bit over 2%, even though the market was generally up. I added five shares to basket Sk at 247.33 with a market buy.
8/2/13 Dell and minor actions
Dell looks like it will go private, set a trailing stop for the entire position at 5%. UPS Limit@87 and GRPN Limit@8.25 both dipped today. We will see if the market allows us to add to those positions.
Yahoo (YHOO) Thesis 8/1/13
Why Yahoo in the ecommerce basket? Because they are working so hard on mobile apps. Opened 200 shares @ market (28.03).
DFS Thesis 4/6/13
I really had not been paying attention to discover. We hold V and MA in this account, but Discover Financial Systems is a $21B market cap company that has the Diner's card. They rebranded the card in 2009 and the people that use it tend to be loyal to it because of perks you can earn. The company is also into home and business loans. They have an approved buy back plan for $2.4B (there are 497.50 shares outstanding) and the dividend has been increased to a yield of 1.8% or .20 share each quarter. Debt to assets is 26.58, higher than I like to see, so I will open a moderate position.
4/6/23 43.07
AAPL Thesis 2/4/13
I use 20% as a lens to try to understand the market. Apple is only down about 3% for the year. However, the following chart really has my attention, because this successful company has been moving in a different direction than Amazon or Ebay. So this is either a buying opportunity, OR, Wall Street knows Apple's demise is near. Since nothing I know and I work in tech, gives me any reason to believe they are going to have a major FAIL, I am leaning towards buying cautiously. |
| April 6, 2013 1 year AAPL is blue, AMZN is red, EBAY is yellow. |
4/6/13 423.20 Yikes, it keeps dropping. Earnings is 4/23/13 and many analysts say they are expecting them to miss earnings. I still believe the thesis and still lean towards buying cautiously, but am losing money on this investment.
4/7/13 According to this article, Apple will sell more devices than Microsoft this year.
8/1/13 455.56 with two hours left in the trading day, still down, still in for the long term
AMZN EBAY Thesis 11/27/12
This URL, if accurate suggests that Amazon took 14% of the Internet traffic for Cyber Monday. That was enough to convince me to add 10 shares.http://www.deepfield.net/2012/11/cyber-monday-winners-and-losers/
From the article, "Amazon tops the list with an amazing 14% of all Internet users interacting with Amazon managed shopping sites every day. This includes www.amazon.com as well as a growing empire of Amazon owned branded sites such as www.myhabit.com."
4/26/13 AMZN dropped almost $20.00 today. Have a limit for 15 shares@253.00. Read an article that really got my attention today that Apple made more in a quarter than Amazon has in its entire life. Not sure if it is true, but those are certainly words to ponder.
The other question is should we add to our position in the number two online retailer eBay? It is approaching a 52 week high, but is down a touch today. Decision add 10 @Market.
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