You Could have Bought Twitter Yesterday and Made a 16% Profit Today

If you had bought Twitter (TWTR) yesterday, you could have sold the stock today for a 16% profit, based on the closing prices. If you had bought LinkedIn (LNKD) yesterday, you could have sold for a profit today in excess of 10%.

So why did these and other stocks move so much in one day? Earnings announcements. In simple terms, the companies reported financials that made investors happy. Of course, you could have picked the wrong stock, such as Yelp (YELP), which was down 21.5% today or GoPro (GPRO), which tanked 13% today. In that case, you would have lost a lot, unless you had shorted the stock or owned an option straddle.

It's earnings season, and this is the time of year when many popular stocks can really move. If you can choose the right direction, you can bank bucks.

Or if you use the right option spread, you can make money whether the stock goes up or down. Here is an example. Yesterday, you could have bought the February 6 2015 call and put with a strike price of 41. The call traded around 2.60 yesterday and the put at 2.58, for a total cost for the straddle of 5.18 or $518.

Today, you could have sold the straddle for 6.75 or $675. This works out to a profit of over 30% in one day. What's your total risk? $518. What's your potential gain? Unlimited on the upside and around $4,300 on the downside, in the event a black swan hits the stock.

Now you might ask, what other stocks are coming out with earnings reports in the next week? Here is a list for you, which contains a lot of the stocks that can make big moves depending on their earnings.

February 09, 2015

Hasbro (HAS)

February 10, 2015

Akamai (AKAM)
Blue Nile (NILE)
Cerner (CERN)
CVS (CVS)
Health Net (HNT)
Jive Software (JIVE)
LifeLock (LOCK)
Molson Coors (TAP)
Monster Worldwide (MWW)

February 11, 2015

500.com (WBAI)

AOL (AOL)

Baidu (BIDU)

Cisco (CSCO)

Panera (PNRA)

Skechers (SKX)

Tesla (TSLA)

Cheesecake Factory (CAKE)

Dot Apple, Dot Google, Dot Netflix, Dot AOL New Domains

A top level domain is what you see after the last dot in a basic website address; in other word, .com, .org, .net, .gov, and so on. Now, the non-profit organization that manages the Internet, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, also known as ICANN, will now allow brand identity top level domains.

For example, Apple (AAPL) could have www.apple.apple in addition to www.apple.com, or www.ipad.apple as a website address. And they are pursuing it. Other companies jumping on the bandwagon include Netflix (NFLX), AOL (AOL), Volkswagen AG (VLKAY), Amazon (AMZN), and Google (GOOG).

It is not just company names that are being applied for. Many businesses have applied for .baby, .baseball, .money, .pizza, .read, .store, .music, and .news. Want to apply for your own top level domain? The application fee is $185,000.

Cloudy Stocks with a Silver Lining

I remember in the 'old' days, when I was using AOL (AOL), I had the option of saving my mail on my own computer or AOL could save it for me. Back then, I thought it was 'safer' to save it locally. But then I ran into a problem. When I was using my laptop, I couldn't access the mail on my desktop computer, and vice-versa. Plus, I had mail stored in two different places, and wasn't sure what was saved where. I finally gave in and had AOL save my mail for me. This concept is a very simple example of cloud computing. So to understand clouds a bit more, let me give you a couple more examples, without using a lot of technospeak, and keeping it in layman's terms.

Cloud computing is having your programs and data stored remotely on a server in another location, instead of on your own individual computer. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can have a cheap old computer and still take advantage of cloud computing. The servers of companies that provide this service represent the 'clouds', and those servers can be located anywhere. Yahoo (YHOO) mail, Google (GOOG) gmail, and Microsoft's (MSFT) hotmail are examples of cloud computing in a limited way. The email servers are not in your office or home as you use the Yahoo or Google or Microsoft servers. Many corporations, organizations, and universities are utilizing the email services of Google, which saves them money on servers and saves on staffing.

For corporations, cloud benefits are substantial. Cloud computing can reduce waste and carbon footprints along with providing significant cost savings. Companies that utilize cloud computing don't need to keep buying more servers. Costs relating to the disposal of old computers and servers is cut back significantly. Data security is the job of the cloud computing firm. Businesses can eliminate the techs that have to come out and install new software to each employees' station, and network administrators monitoring the company's servers are reduced.

Investors like the green and financial benefits of cloud computing companies. According to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, there are over 25 stocks in the cloud field, based oh the free Cloud Computer Stock List, which includes companies involved in server farms and outsourced storage systems.

The one of the largest corporations that falls into the cloud computer arena is Salesforce.com (CRM), which is a provider of customer-relationship management services. The company's stock symbol stands for Customer Relationship Management. Salesforce has customers of all sizes, including Staples (SPLS), Expedia (EXPE), News Corp. (NWS-A), and SunTrust Banks (STI). Salesforce trades at 66 times forward earnings. Quarterly revenues ending January 31 were up 38% year-over-year. The company reports latest earnings on May 17.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS) provides on demand applications and online services, including GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, GoToAssist, and GoToMyPC. This company has a forward price to earnings ratio of 25. The latest quarterly earnings were down 7%, however, revenues were up 20%. I like the fact that the company is debt free.

VMware (VMW) is another major cloud and virtualization company. Its product VMware vSphere is a cloud computing data center platform. It sports a forward price to earnings ratio of 44. The company reported that latest earnings increased an incredible 52% in earnings on an amazing 25% increase in revenues. Although VMware has $450 million in total debt, it holds $5.2 billion in cash.

To access the free database of numerous companies involved in cloud computing in some way, that can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. A couple of them even pay dividends.

You can also get info on the green aspects of cloud computing from my book The Green Light on Green Stocks: A Quick Guide to Green Investing and Making Money in Alternative Energy Stocks, available through the publisher or through Amazon.com (AMZN), which also happens to be involved in the cloud computer business. As far as I know, my book is the first to publish information on cloud computing as a green industry.

Disclosure: Author owns AOL, AMZN, and YHOO.

By Stockerblog.com

Microsoft Founder Paul Allen Suing a Bunch of Tech Companies

Paul Allen, one of the co-founders of Microsoft (MSFT), is suing Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO), eBay (EBAY), Netflix (NFLX), AOL (AOL), Office Depot (ODP), OfficeMax (OMX), and Staples (SPLS). He is claiming that the companies are infringing on the patents held by Interval Licensing LLC, another company he founded.

Top Search Engine Stocks

comScore (SCOR), the organization that provides information relating to online marketing data, recently came out with its ranking of United States search engines. comScore happens to be a publicly traded company, traded on the NASDAQ, and has a price to earnings ratio of 128.

Google (GOOG), the largest search engine in the world, is still at the top of the list with over 64.4% of the share of total searches. This is a slight drop from the previous month. The stock has a P/E of 22.

In second place is Yahoo (YHOO), which has about 17.7% of the share of searches, an increase of 0.8% over the previous month. The stock has a P/E ratio of 26.5.

Although it's a very small portion of their business, Microsoft (MSFT) does have their own search engine through Bing and MSN.com, and has 11.8% share of the search engine market. Microsoft also owns msdewey.com. Microsoft has a P/E of 13, and pays a yield of 2%.

Ask.com, in fourth place, is owned by the Oakland, California based IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI). Ask has 3.7% of the share of searches. IAC has recently generated negative earnings.

AOL (AOL), which used to have a big share, but in terms of search engine searches, now has less than 2.5% of the market. AOL has a P/E of 10.

The Internet search engine Baidu.com, Inc. (BIDU), is the leading search engine in China. The company, which was founded in 2000, has a P/E of 94.

InfoSpace Inc. (INSP) has several search engines including Dogpile.com, InfoSpace.com, Webcrawler.com, and MetaCrawler.com. The stock has a P/E of 20.

Amazon.com (AMZN) owns the e-commerce search engine A9.com, which utilizes Live Search. Amazon has a P/E of 52.

If you like interesting lists of stock in unusual and different industries, check out the lists at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Author owns AOL, AMZN, and MSFT.

By Stockerblog.com