QUIK/Albo – Starting to move, hopefully it continues. Too bad the options are so thin but, at $1.36, may as well play the stock straight-up.
COST/Jabob – Out of favor, will make a good long.
WFM/Hanj – I doubt it. WMT might bid to piss AMZN off but not many people want to buy 3% margin businesses trading at 28x earnings (30x if someone is going to bid them up). It has to be a strategic buyer and SVU has 5% margins so not them, KR has 1% margins and couldn't afford WFM, COST knows they can do it in-house cheaper so not them… There's really no metrics that make sense for anyone else (not that it makes sense for AMZN to buy them either) but WMT to put in a bid and that's only to block AMZN. SFM has 260 stores for $3Bn and $4Bn revenues ($125M profit is 3%, same as WFM with p/e 24) so, if I were WMT, I'd grab them instead and beef them up. Their stores are generally smaller footprint so of no use to AMZN but same upscale customers and local farmer distribution channel. Of course, if I were SFM, I sure wouldn't want to be associated with WMT!
I guess, if I were hired to make it happen, I'd make it a Sam's Club exclusive and put a SFM inside each Sam's club and destroy AMZN with lower prices, getting more people to use Sam's too (not good for COST though). There are 660 Sam's clubs – that would be attractive to SFM and would give them an instant footprint to match WFM.
/KC/Latch – UF for me!
GE Time. Don't know why it's so cheap, don't really care. It's friggin' GE! I'm not even to discuss why buying GE with their $1 (0.96) dividend for $27.50 is a good idea as a stock you will proudly give to your Grandchildren one day. You either know that's true or you don't.
For the LTP:
- Sell 10 GE 2019 $28 puts for $3 ($3,000)
- Buy 25 GE 2019 $25 calls for $3.85 ($9,625)
- Sell 25 GE 2019 $30 calls for $1.40 ($3,500)
That's net $3,125 on the $12,500 spread and we would be THRILLED to have 1,000 shares of GE assigned to us so we could DD and have 2,000 shares to collect dividends on on the mid-$20s ($50,000ish), which would pay us $2,000 a year while we sell more puts and calls.
At $27.60 now, you can sell the 2019 $25 calls for $3.85 and that drops the net to $23.75 so let's imagine things go badly and GE falls to $20 and we're forced to own 1,000 at $28 plus the $3,125 loss so $31.25 but GE is at $20 so we DD and we're at $25.58 avg on 2,000 shares and we sell 20 2021 calls for $2 and now our basis is $23 and we'll collect $2 in dividend and another $2 if we're called away for $4 (17%) profit despite GE dropping another 20% from here. That's the kind of play I can feel very comfortable with!
CBI/TX – One of my top picks at this silly price.
