Market Under Pressure this morning, here are some of the early movers: $ALTR, $CAG, $BIO, $FIVE, $FB, $WYNN, $DRI, $ARNA, $MIK

by Alpha | Mar 22, 2018 | Pre-Market

PRE-MARKET MOVERS

1. ALTR:  $ALTR Altair Engineering Tops Q4 EPS by 12c, Beats on Revs; Offers FY18 Rev Outlook Above Consensus

2. CAG:  $CAG Conagra gets profit boost from frozen foods sales, fewer discounts – Reuters

3. VUZI:  $VUZI Vuzix Corp. Provides Business Update in Response to ‘Misinformation’ – SI

5. FIVE:  $FIVE Five Below, Inc. Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2017 Financial Results – GN

6. WYNN:  $WYNN Wynn Cuts Stake in Casino Company After Settlement With Ex-Wife – BBG

7. FB:  $FB Zuckerberg’s Crisis Response Fails to Quiet Critics – BBG

8. ACN:  $ACN Accenture beats profit and revenue expectations, raises outlook – MW

9. AXDX:  $AXDX Accelerate Diagnostics Inc. Announces $150 Million Convertible Notes Offering – SI

10. JKS:  $JKS JinkoSolar Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Financial Results

11. DRI:  $DRI Olive Garden Owner Darden Restaurants Tops On Earnings, But Sales Light – IBD

12. ARNA:  $ARNA Arena Pharma Prices 8.5M Share Common Offering at $41.50/Sh – SI

13. MIK:  $MIK Michaels Cos. Reports In-Line Q4 EPS, Guidance Misses Views – SI

DOWNGRADES

EARNINGS

Trending Social Alerts

Trending News Headlines

Best Buy Co Inc, the largest U.S. consumer electronics retailer, will cut ties with China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a person familiar with the matter said, amid heightened scrutiny on Chinese tech firms in the United States.

Big internet companies and small software developers alike are likely to face scrutiny over how they share customer information in the wake of the scandal involving Facebook Inc and the British election consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

Junk bond:  Bond with a speculative credit rating of BB (S&P) or Ba (Moody’s) or lower. Junk or high-yield bonds offer investors higher yields than bonds of financially sound companies. Two agencies, Standard & Poors and Moody’s Investor Services, provide the rating systems for companies’ credit

 

Quick ratio: Indicator of a company’s financial strength (or weakness). Calculated by taking current assets lessinventories, divided by current liabilities. This ratio provides information regarding the firm’s liquidity and ability to meet its obligations.

 

Short squeeze: When a lack of supply tends to force prices upward. In particular, when prices of a stock orcommodity futures contracts start to move up sharply and many traders with short positions are forced to buystocks or commodities in order to cover their positions and prevent (limit) losses. This sudden surge of buying leads to even higher prices, further aggravating the losses of short sellers who have not covered their positions.

Target Leverage Ratio: The ratio of the market value of debt to the total market value of the firm that management seeks to maintain.

 

Upsize option: An option in IPO to increase the size of offering when the demand is high.

 

Velocity of Money: Rate at which money is exchanged from one transaction to another. It also refers to how much a unit of currency is used in a given period of time. The rate at which people spend money. The velocity of money is usually measured as a ratio of gross national product (GNP) to a country’s total supply of money.

What are the implications of a high Federal Funds Rate?

A high federal funds rate discourages banks from borrowing from one another, which tightens the money supply. Raising the federal funds rate is one of the most common measures taken by the government to combat high inflation.

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Stocks making the biggest moves pre-market: $WGO, $GIS, $AAPL, $MON, $FDX, $MULE, $FB & More News

by Alpha | Mar 21, 2018 | Pre-Market

PRE-MARKET MOVERS

1. CELG, PRTA:  $PRTA Prothena shares surge on Celgene $CELG collaboration – MW

2. CRM, MULE:  $MULE Salesforce Buys MuleSoft for $6.5 Billion in Expansion Quest – BBG $CRM

3. JD:  $JD Tencent results sympathy mover

4. AKAO:  $AKAO Achaogen Says FDA Advisory Committee Meeting for Plazomicin Set for May 2 – SI

5. AMD:  $AMD AMD Confirms Chip Vulnerability, Says Report Exaggerated Danger – BBG

6. AMD:  $AMD CTS who? AMD brushes off chipset security bugs with firmware patches – Theregister

7. LAUR:  $LAUR Laureate profit soars on tax benefit, increased enrollment in 4Q – Baltimore Biz Journal

8. ARNA:  $ARNA Arena Pharma to Offer 7.5M Shares of Common Stock – SI

11. FDX:  $FDX FedEx Increases Profit Forecast on Tax Gains, Holiday Boost – BBG

12. FB:  $FB Facebook Sued by Investors Over Cambridge Analytica User Data Scandal – Fortune

13. WGO:  $WGO Winnebago Industries Announces Record Second Quarter Fiscal 2018 Results – GN

14. DBVT:  $DBVT DBV Technologies Prices 2.784M ADS Offering at $21.26/ADS as Part of Global Offering – SI

15. JWN:  $JWN Nordstrom family fails again in bid to take company private – NYPost

16. LUV:  $LUV Southwest Provides Guidance on Financial & Operational Trends after New Accounting Standards

17. XNCR:  $XNCR Xencor Prices 7.3M Share Common Offering at $31/Sh – SI

18. AIR:  $AIR AAR Misses Q3 EPS by 4c, Miss on Revs; Offers FY19 EPS/Rev Mid-Points Outlook Below Consensus

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EARNINGS

Educational Tips of the Day (SOURCE: NASDAQ.com):

Inflation risk: Also called purchasing power risk, the risk that changes in the real return the investor will realize after adjusting for inflation will be negative.

 

Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC): The body that is responsible for setting the interest rates and credit policies of the Federal Reserve System.

 

Stagflation: Period of slow economic growth and high unemployment with rising prices (inflation).

 

Trend Ratio Analysis: The comparison of the successive values of each ratio for a single firm over a number of years.

 

Bull spread: Spread strategy used in options and futures trading that is designed to capitalize on expected price appreciation. A bull spread using call options is created by buying a call option on an asset with a certain strike price and selling a call option on the same asset with a higher strike price (same expiration date). A bull spread with put options is created by buying a put option with a low strike and selling a put option with a high strike price (same expiration date). Less frequently, the bull spread is implemented by buying the nearby futures contract and selling the next out contract.

 

Bear spread: Strategy in the options or futures markets designed to take advantage of a fall in the price of a security or commodity. A bear spread with call options is created by buying a call option with a certain strike price and selling a call option on the same stock with a lower strike price (with the same expiration date). A bear spread with put options is where an investor buys a put with a high strike price and sells a put with a low strike price. With futures, the investor sells the nearby contract and purchases the next out contract. All of these strategies are designed to profit from a fall in the underlying asset’s price.

 

Butterfly Spread: Strategy that involves buying a call option with a relatively low strike price; buying a call option with a relatively high strike price; and selling two call options with an intermediate strike price. Essentially, this is a bear call spread stacked on top of a bull call spread. One can also do this with puts. The investor buys a put with a low strike, buys a put at high strike and sells two puts at intermediate strike price. The payoff diagram resembles the shape of a butterfly.

Trending Social Alerts

Trending News Headlines

Digital companies pay on average an effective tax rate of 9.5 percent — compared to 23.2 percent for traditional businesses.

–Meeting planned for May 2, 2018–. SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 21, 2018– Achaogen, Inc., a late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative antibacterials addressing multi-drug resistant …

Market News, $FB Facebook shares slide after reports of data misuse – Reuters, and More | $AMZN, $CDTX, $CSIQ, $HL, $TSLA, $BABA, $AAPL, $BPY

by Alpha | Mar 19, 2018 | Pre-Market

PRE-MARKET MOVERS

1. HL, KLDX:  $KLDX Hecla Mining $HL Announces $462M Acquisition of Klondex Mines Ltd. – SI

2. CLRB:  $CLRB Cellectar Biosciences Granted Orphan Drug Designation for CLR 131 to Treat Neuroblastoma – GN

3. KLAC, ORBK:  $ORBK KLA-Tencor $KLAC to acquire Orbotech in deal with equity value of about $3.4 billion – MW

4. BCS:  $BCS Barclays in Activist Crosshairs as Bramson Takes 5.2% Stake -BBG

5. CSIQ:  $CSIQ Canadian Solar Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Results – PRN

6. BPY, GGP:  $GGP Brookfield Property $BPY submits new offer for mall owner GGP – sources – Reuters

7. CACI, CSRA, GD:  $CSRA CACI $CACI Makes Bid for CSRA, Seeking to Break Up General Dynamics Deal $GD – WSJ

8. AAPL, OLED, SYNA:  $AAPL Apple Is Secretly Developing Its Own Screens for the First Time – BBG $OLED -5% $SYNA -3%

9. XLNX:  $XLNX New flexible computer chips could rewire an AI near you – CNet

10. BABA:  $BABA Alibaba doubles Lazada investment to $4B in aggressive Southeast Asian expansion – Reuters

11. AMZN:  $AMZN Amazon Sellers Seek More Clout With New ‘Merchants Guild’ – BBG

12. FB:  $FB Facebook shares slide after reports of data misuse – Reuters

13. FB:  $FB Mark Zuckerberg Told to ‘Stop Hiding Behind his Facebook Page’ After Reports of Data Breach – TIME

14. CDTX:  $CDTX Cidara Reports Positive Topline Results from Ph 2 STRIVE Trial of Lead Antifungal Rezafungin

UPGRADES

DOWNGRADES

Educational Tip of the Day (SOURCE: NASDAQ.com):

Narrowing the spread: Reducing the difference between the bid and ask prices of a security

Narrow market: An inactive market, which displays large fluctuations in prices due to a low volume of trading.

Odd lot: A trading order for less than 100 shares of stock. 

Round lot: Trading order typically of 100 shares of a stock or some multiple of 100.

Odd-lot theory: Theory that profits can be made by making trades contrary to odd-lot trading patterns, since odd-lot investors have poor timing.

Odd-Lot Buy Back: An offer made by the corporation or its agent to purchase shares from odd-lot shareholders

Odd-lot dealer: A broker who combines odd lots of securities from multiple buy or sell orders into round lots and executes transactions in those round lots.

Odd-lot short-sale ratio: The percentage of total odd-lot sales that is composed of short sales.

Odd-Lot Resale: An offer made by the corporation or its agent to purchase shares from odd-lot shareholders and immediately resell them in the market, usually in round-lots to institutions, thus saving the corporation the expense of merely buying shares back.

EARNINGS

Trending Social Alerts

Trending News Headlines

Amazon’s experimental lab, known internally as 1492 or Grand Challenge, has hired Taha Kass-Hout, former FDA Chief Health Informatics Officer.

The European Union has agreed on the broad terms of Britain’s two-year transition deal after leaving the bloc in March 2019, according to an EU official familiar with the discussions, but Ireland remains “an issue.”

Pre-Market, Upgrades, Downgrades, News | $AMRS, $CBAY, $ADBE, $WYNN, $TEVA, $AAPL, $SPY, $TSLA, $WDC, $NEP, $DIS

by Alpha | Mar 16, 2018 | Pre-Market

PRE-MARKET MOVERS

1. AMRS:  $AMRS Reports Another Strong Quarter with 2017 Rev of $143.4M up 113% over 2016 – GN

2. CBAY:  $CBAY Tops Q4 EPS by 8c, Beats on Revenues – SI

3. ADBE:  $ADBE Climbs After Sales Jump for Growing Software Suite

4. WYNN:  $WYNN Casino mogul Steve Wynn may sell his stake in Wynn Resorts – CNBC

5. KR:  $KR Board of Directors Approves $1B Share Repurchase, Declares Quarterly Dividend

6. ZUMZ:  $ZUMZ , Inc. Misses Q4 EPS by 10c, Beats on Revenues – SI

7. CORT, TEVA: $CORT Files Lawsuit Against $TEVA for Infringement of Korlym Patents

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EARNINGS

Educational Tip of the Day (SOURCE: NASDAQ.com): 

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: An amendment to the Securities Exchange Act created to prohibit bribery of foreign officials by publicly held US companies.

Beta equation (security): The market beta of a security is determined as follows: Regress excess returns of stock y on excess returns of the market. The slope coefficient is beta. Define n as number of observation numbers.

• Beta= 
• [(n) (sum of [xy]) ]-[ (sum of x) (sum of y)]/
  
• [(n) (sum of [xx]) ]-[ (sum of x) (sum of x)]
  
• where: n = # of observations (usually 36 to 60 months)
  
• x = rate of return for the S&P 500 index
  
• y = rate of return for the security.

High-grade bond: A bond with Triple-A or Double-A rating in Standard & Poor’s, or Moody’s rating system.

Import Quota: Puts limits on the quantity of certain products that can be legally imported into a particular country during a particular time frame. There is a Fixed quota, which is a maximum quantity not to be exceeded, and tariff rate surcharge, which permits additional quantities but at much higher duty.

Leverage ratios: Measures of the relative value of stockholders, capitalization, and creditors obligations, and of the firm’s ability to pay financing charges. Value of firm’s debt to the total value of the firm (debt plus stockholder capitalization).

Married Put and Stock: The simultaneous purchase of stock and the corresponding number of put options. This is a limited risk strategy during the life of the puts because the stock can be sold at the strike price of the puts.

Trending Social Alerts

Trending News Headlines

Wynn Resorts Ltd’s former chief executive, Steve Wynn, may elect to sell all or a portion of his stake in the company, according to a regulatory filing dated Thursday.

Pre-Market Updates, Upgrades, Downgrades and More News | $BABA, $BKS, $YRD, $CS, $AMZN, $AAPL, $WFC, $TSLA, $DG, $ALXN, $CTRP

by Alpha | Mar 15, 2018 | Pre-Market

PRE-MARKET MOVERS

1. CWAY, HONE:  $CWAY HarborOne Bank $HONE to Acquire Coastway Bancorp – SI

2. CVTI:  $CVTI Chattanooga-based Covenant Transport raises profit outlook – GN

3. BKS:  $BKS Barnes & Noble shoots higher after guidance update – SA

4. ALXN:  $ALXN Alexion’s rare blood disorder drug succeeds in late-stage study – Reuters

5. DG:  $DG Dollar General shares jump after same-store sales beat, upbeat outlook – MW

6. LITB:  $LITB LightInTheBox Establishes Experimental Cryptocurrency Mining Operation in North America – SI

7. LJPC:  $LJPC La Jolla Pharmaceutical Prices 3.4M Shares Common Offering $29.50/Sh – SI

8. YRD:  $YRD Yirendai Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Financial Results – PRN

9. WSM:  $WSM Williams-Sonoma shares rally on earnings, outlook beat – MW

10. BABA:  $BABA China Tech Titan Alibaba Plans Stock-Market Homecoming – WSJ

11. CS, XIV:  $CS Credit Suisse is being sued for losses over a controversial financial product $XIV – CNBC

12. AMZN:  $AMZN Exclusive: Amazon’s internal numbers on Prime Video, revealed – Reuters

13. WFC:  $WFC Wells Fargo faces sanctions for auto insurance payouts – sources – Reuters

14. AKCA, IONS:  $IONS Ionis Sends Nerve Drug to Spinout Akcea as Battle w Alnylam Looms – Xconomy $AKCA

15. CTRP:  $CTRP China’s Ctrip Blames Scandal, Business Curbs for Sales Shortfall – BBG

16. BNFT:  $BNFT Benefitfocus Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Financial Results – GN

17. IVTY:  $IVTY Invuity Announces Proposed Public Offering of Common Stock – SI

UPGRADES

DOWNGRADES

EARNINGS

Trending Social Alerts

Educational Tip of the Day (SOURCE: NASDAQ.com):

Junk bond: A bond with a speculative credit rating of BB (S&P) or Ba (Moody’s) or lower. Junk or high-yield bonds offer investors higher yields than bonds of financially sound companies. Two agencies, Standard & Poors and Moody’s Investor Services, provide the rating systems forcompanies’ credit.

 

Strike price: The stated price per share for which underlying stock may be purchased (in the case of a call) or sold (in the case of a put) by theoption holder upon exercise of the option contract.4

 

Open interest: The total number of derivatives contracts traded that have not yet been liquidated either by an offsetting derivative transaction or by delivery.

 

Overtrading: Excessive broker trading in a discretionary account. Underwriters persuade brokerage clients to purchase some part of a new issue in return for the purchase by the underwriter of other securities from the clients at a premium. This premium is offset by the underwriting spread.

 

Hedged portfolio: A portfolio consisting of a long position in the stock and a long position in the put option on the stock, so as to be riskless and produce a return that equals the risk-free interest rate.

Trending News Headlines

The e-commerce company is working on a plan to list on a stock exchange in its home market, China more than three years after it bypassed domestic investors to go public in New York.

Amazon.com Inc’s top television shows drew more than 5 million people worldwide to its Prime shopping club by early 2017, according to company documents, revealing for the first time how the retailer’s bet on original video is paying off.

Incyte Targeted Therapy and Immuno-Oncology Portfolio to be Featured in 15 Abstracts at the AACR Annual Meeting 2018

The succession plans at JPMorgan and Goldman say a lot about where the companies—and the Street—are headed.

U.S. regulators are preparing to sanction Wells Fargo for receiving commissions on auto insurance policies it helped force on more than half a million drivers, people with direct knowledge of the probes told Reuters.

SAN DIEGO and TORONTO, March 15, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Aptose Biosciences Inc. (“Aptose” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: APTO ) (TSX: APS ), a clinical-stage company developing highly differentiated therapeutics targeting the underlying mechanisms of cancer, today announced that preclinical data for CG’806, its pan-FLT3/pan-BTK inhibitor, and APTO-253, its c-Myc inhibitor, will be presented in three separate posters at the 2018 AACR Annual Meeting in Chicago, Il.