Why Twitter is a Screaming Buy

Twitter (TWTR) took a huge dump a few days ago on July 27 when it reported earnings, and by the end of the day, the stock dropped by around 14% from the previous day’s close. A couple weeks ago, it had been trading over $20 a share, and now it is less than $16 a share, at the time I am writing this.

The company reported negative earnings, as usual, so why is it a screaming buy? Let’s start off with the company’s biggest asset, President Donald Trump. Yes, Trump provides an advantage to Twitter that no other company has. He tweets almost every single day, and on many days, he tweets multiple times a day. No other president, or for that matter, no other head of state, has ever tweeted so much in the history of mankind. (You know what I mean.) Trump doesn’t use Facebook, he doesn’t use LinkedIn, he doesn’t use Snapchat, he doesn’t use Instagram, he doesn’t use any of the other social media platforms, he doesn’t even send out mass emails. He uses Twitter.

Trump is Twitter’s Biggest Asset

So, the President of the United States is providing free advertising for the company. Imagine the free advertising that Blue Apron would get if Trump ordered from them every day (and told everyone about it).

One of these days, someone is going to figure out how to monetize this unique feature. It may or may not be Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO. It may or may not be Anthony Noto, Twitter’s COO. Or it may be someone new that the company brings in. But someone is going to do it.

Earnings?

But what about earnings? Yes, Twitter hasn’t been generating a profit. But look at Facebook (FB). The company lost $56 million back in 2008, and finally turned it around in 2009 with net income of $229 million. Everyone complains about Amazon (AMZN) not making any money. It lost $278 million in 2014 then showed a profit of $618 million the following year. LinkedIn generated losses in 2010 and 2011, then went profitable in 2012.

Here’s the thing about earnings. When you have income, you have to pay taxes. Once that money is paid out to the IRS, it is dead money; it is money that doesn’t benefit the company. However, applying excess cash flow to tax deductible expenditures, such as more employees, buildings, equipment, machinery, research and development, marketing, and advertising, will benefit the company. These expenses help the company grow and keep taxes low. As long as revenues keep increasing, it pays off in the end, as it did for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon. (Yeah, yeah, I know, Amazon has an outrageously high price-to-earnings ratio and forward P/E, but look at the growth rate of revenues and earnings. Income for the latest fiscal year spiked 292% over the previous year.)

6 Revenue Increasers

But what can Twitter specifically do to increase revenues and earnings? Here is a list of suggestions.

1. Offer ads that appear by every tweet made by Trump. These ads could appear either above or below the tweet, or both.
2. Offer ads that appear by every major celebrity tweet, especially those with over a million followers.
3. When you check your lists, there should be an ad above or below the lists.
4. In the left hand column, under Trends for You, an ad should be available to advertisers. It would not be intrusive to users who first log on, but would be a great location for advertisers when users scroll down.
5. Aggressively go after major advertisers to pay for promoted tweets (Amazon book of the day, Wal-Mart deal of the day, Priceline travel deal of the day, etc.)
6. Set up a Tweet Bank. There are tweets that I want to save that have interesting links, gifs, or pictures. However, when I look for them after a month or two, they are very hard to find, even if I check my Like list. It would be nice if there was a little Save icon next to the Direct Message icon, where I could save the tweet into my Tweet Bank. (This isn’t really a profit making suggestion, just a user enhancement making idea.)

By the way, this is not a stock recommendation (in spite of what the title of this article says). I never give investment advice. This is just a suggestion for your own research and entertainment.

One of these days, Twitter will turn around. The bird will fly. It’s just a matter of who, what, and when.

Disclosure: Author owns TWTR and AMZN.

Article originally published on WSTNN.com on August 4, 2017.

Cars that Run on Whskey

It may be hard to believe but cars can now run on whiskey, in addition to gasoline and diesel, according to a BBC article. Actually, it is whiskey residue from the whiskey making process called biobutanol. And the best feature is that the automobile engine doesn’t have to be modified.

But it is not just cars consuming liquor; humans seem to do a bit of consuming themselves. Last year, the sale of alcohol was $25.2 billion in the US, a 4.5% increase over the previous year, and the seventh yearly increase in a row.

Relax and Lose Weight

With money flowing into the coffers of liquor producers, some investors are taking a close look at companies in the alcohol industry. Studies have shown that liquor may help you lose weight, will help relax you (obviously), and might even cure blindness. Investors who believe that booze stocks can benefit from these alcohol health benefits, have several choices to choose from.

Jack Daniel’s

Brown-Forman Corporation (BF-B) is a liquor distributor which is famous for its Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort brands. The stock has a price-to-earnings ratio of 28, a forward P/E of 26, and provides a fair yield of 1.48%.

 Johnnie Walker

Diageo (DEO) is a London based alcoholic beverage distributor that markets numerous brands of whiskey, including Johnnie Walker Scotch whiskey, Crown Royal Canadian whiskey, JeB Scotch whisky, Buchanan’s Scotch whiskey, Windsor Premier Scotch whiskey, and Bushmills Irish whiskey. It also sells vodka, rum, and wine. The stock trades at 24 times trailing earnings, and 20 times forward earnings. It sports a higher-than-industry-average yield of 2.5%.

How to Invest in Donald Trump

Did you know that you can invest in a stock that developed and distributes Trump Super Premium Vodka? The company is Drinks Americas (DKAM), a Connecticut based company that trades Over the Counter on the Pink Sheets, and last traded for one hundredth of a cent. The vodka received four out of five stars by Spirit Journal. Unfortunately for potential tasters, the beverage is no longer sold in the US.

For a free list of stocks in the liquor and wine industry, click on the following link:

Wine & Liquor Stocks

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above stocks at the time the article was written. 

What Stocks the Presidential Candidates Own

This has probably been the wildest election year in the history of the United States. What makes it interesting from a financial standpoint is that the candidates file an OGE Form 278 Public Financial Disclosure Report. By seeing what they own, maybe you can glean what will happen to these stocks if they get elected. Here are the investment holdings as of the candidates' latest filings.

Hillary Clinton (Democrat)

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has a couple of Northwestern Mutual cash value whole life insurance policies, plus a universal life policy through AIG (AIG). She also has over $5,000,000 in cash in a J.P Morgan (JPM) account. In addition, she owns over $5,000,000 of the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX).

And that's basically it in terms of investment assets. However, she has received millions of dollars in honorariums from numerous companies, many of which are publicly traded, such as eBay (EBAY), Qualcomm (QCOM), and Salesforce.com (CRM).

Donald Trump (Republican)

Donald Trump

Donald Trump's form seems to go on forever, pages and pages of stock holdings. Instead of listing every one of them (around 600 listings), I've decided to list just a few of the stocks that he owns.

Agrium
AT&T (T)
Bank of Montreal
CenturyLink
Freeport-McMoran
General Electric (GE)
GlaxoSmithKline
Halliburton
International Paper
Mosaic
Pepsico (PEP)
Raytheon
Seadrill
Transocean
Verizon (VZ)
Wal Mart (WMT)
Apple (AAPL)
Caterpillar (CAT)
VISA
Gilead
Waste Management
Yahoo
Amgen
Philip Morris
UPS
MasterCard
Pfizer
Amazon (AMZN)
Costco
Disney (DIS)
Google (GOOGL)
Microsoft (MSFT)
Nike (NKE)
and the list goes on and on

Bernie Sanders (Democrat)

Bernie Sanders

It appears that Bernie Sanders doesn't own any stocks or investments. However, his wife owns over a dozen VALIC mutual funds. She also owns four Vanguard funds, each amounting to somewhere between $1,000 and $15,000 each.

Gary Johnson (Libertarian)

Gary Johnson

The financial statement for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate and former Governor of New Mexico, is not as up-to-date as the other three candidates. He owns lots of real estate including interests in motels and office buildings. In addition, he owns over 509,000 shares of Cannabis Sativa Inc. (CBDS).

If you want to see the real forms, you can check them out at OpenSecrets.org.

If you like interesting stock lists like this, be sure to check out many of the free stock lists at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com

Why Did Donald Trump Register the DonaldTrumpSucks.com Domain Name?

A domain name is, in simple terms, the address for a website. For example, Apple.com, Google.com, and Yahoo.com are all domain names. Domain names are often referred to as URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) or website addresses. Usually, it is what comes after the http:// or the https://, and sometimes you see a www thrown in there.

Some people actually register domain names as investments, which for the right name, can pay off handsomely. For example, whoever originally registered fb.com, eventually got lucky and sold out to Facebook (FB) for $8.5 million. The person who owned loans.com sold to Bank of America (BAC) for $3 million, with mortgage.com going to Citigroup (C) for $1.8 million. There are many other high priced domain sales that can be found in the Stock Market Trivia book.

Donald Trump, the outspoken and currently lead-running Republican presidential candidate, owns the DonaldTrump.com domain of course. Well technically, the registration shows the ownership as the General Counsel of The Trump Organization, originally registered back on March 7, 1999. It is registered through GoDaddy (GDDY).

But when a friend hinted that I check out the owner of DonaldTrumpSucks.com, I expected that it might have been registered by a Republican opponent or possibly someone on the Democratic side. Yet it turns out that this domain is also owned by The Trump Organization.

DonaldTrumpSucks.com Registration

What is interesting is that this particular domain was registered on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014.   Was that the day that Trump really decided to run? This domain was also registered through GoDaddy. 

Now it is all over the news that Trump's company has registered over 3,000 domain names, and according to an article by the International Business Times, the organization buys tens of thousands of domains every year. 

Some of these purchases are for legitimate purchases. For example:

trumpequities.com
donaldtrumpbriefcases.com
thetrumpexperience.com
trumpwatches.com

Trump isn't buying all of them them for investment though. Apparently, many are purchased for guarding against "predators." Here are some of the domains acquired by Trump:

trumpnetworkmarketingsucks.com
trumpnetworksucks.com
trumpcorporationsucks.com
trumporganizationsucks.com
trumpnetworkfraud.com
trumpnetworkponzischeme.com

All of the above point to a generic GoDaddy web page. However, it is interesting to note that if you go to TrumpSucks.com, it brings you to Trump's campaign web page at donaldjtrump.com. TrumpSucks was registered back in the year 2000 and its current registrar is Domain.com.

The problem with acquiring the anti-Trump domain names is that there are thousands variances of domain names that people can come up with. One example, that I would rather not put in writing but begins with an F is owned by an individual who apparently has had it registered since 2004. For that matter, another domain, which has as its last part, a word that begins with the letter S is also owned by an individual, and was registered just a couple years ago. Neither of these domains have developed web sites.

But even without the dirty words, there are other top level domains such as .net and .org that could be used with the anti-Trump words, As a matter of fact, an individual just registered donaldtrumpsucks.net today! And donaldtrumpsucks.org was registered exactly one month ago. Both with the registrar of, who else, GoDaddy.

I'm not sure what the intent of these individuals are. Maybe they think they can resell their domains to the Trump Organization. Have fun dealing with the Trump lawyers.

But is there an investment angle to this, other than trying to find a good (bad) domain to resell to Trump? The one investment that sticks out is GoDaddy, due to its popularity as a domain registrar. Potential investors should be aware that, although the stock reported a 16.5% increase in revenues, it generated a loss of over one dollar a share for the latest quarter. Also, it carries over a billion dollars in debt.

It will be interesting to see how the Trump domain activity plays out. If anyone has any ideas on an investment angle to the Trump domains, please post in the comment section below.

Books by the Most Prolific Billionaire Author: Donald Trump

The Billionaire Issue of Forbes Magazine published a list of the billionaires who are the most prolific authors, the ones who wrote the most books. At the top of the list was Donald Trump, then George Soros, then Ken Fisher.

Donald Trump has been out of the limelight for a while although a new Apprentice TV show is now in the works. Trump has written 15 books. Here is a selection of some of his most popular books.

Trump: The Art of the Deal

Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life

Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich-And Why Most Don't

Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life

Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

How to Turn $20k into $650k in Just a Couple Years

Would you be interested in turning $20,000 into $650,000 in just a couple years, by just trading stocks? Think it's impossible? Can you guess who did?

This top trader is Shia LaBeouf, star of the upcoming movie, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. In a recent interview, he said that when he found out that he got the major role in the movie, he decided he better learn about the stock market, as he had never traded stocks before. He opened an account at Schwab (SCHW) and started trading constantly, building up his account to $650,000. Along the way, he talked to George Soros and Donald Trump. So all you have to do is find out what Shia did, or better yet, what he is currently trading, and follow in his footsteps.