by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | February 10, 2018 6:18 pm
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Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2018/02/friday-file-pt-2-annual-review-continues/
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I do not have any specific knowledge of Square but own the stock and live in Fernandina Beach, Florida. Last week I went to get a haircut. When I started to pay, the stylist swiped my credit card through this small machine and when I asked what it was the reply was SQUARE MACHINE. I asked how she liked it and she said it was fantastic. The same day I went to a flower shop to purchase flowers and a Spa for a massage. Both had square products to swipe my card and both gave me thumbs up on the product.
Since that day I have been observant and Square is everywhere. They charge these merchants big transaction fees for every transaction. By my estimation this has to start paying off soon The CEO is sharp and knows what he is doing. I amazing to my shares.
Gaga
My regular barber shop quit taking credit cards altogether. I do see Square around decently often. Once they even sent me a coupon to come back to the same merchant, which is a nice value add. But I also see a lot of competitors, so it’s tough to judge their moat.
Thanks for the reports. As I am newish to Gumshoe and live in Europe could you kindly when reporting on a company in the first two lines advise or remind us what the particular company does so we can see the sector and what it does in that sector before we commence reading the commentary. Many thanks John
Good feedback, thank you.
REITs look like a decent value here, did some shopping on Thursday.
Also got CRTO at $22 last week, thoughts on that one?
Looks like you’ll be pretty happy this morning… they beat and raised for the quarter, which surprised me, and popped 20% pre-market.
I still worry about their dependence on a single technology (tracking) and the fact that they appear to be in an arms race with Apple for tracking iPhone users in Safari — I don’t expect them to win that race, and I think tracking is at regulatory risk in general, particularly for folks like Criteo who don’t “own” customers or users (like Facebook and Google).
I effectively switched the “small advertising” portion of my portfolio to The Trade Desk, in part because they’re a bit more platform-agnostic and don’t rely specifically on one kind of advertising like Criteo does, but Criteo’s numbers look like they were pretty good this time so perhaps there’s hope that they can return to growth.
You didn’t mention this stock, it may be your intention this coming Friday file, but I wanted to ask a quick question on USAU. They released drilling results, that seemed pretty descent but the stock tanked. I’m thinking about buying more if it dips any further after seeing how much this one can rally. What are your thoughts?
My interpretation was that there was some selling because folks are looking for that “discovery” drill result, and we’re not there yet — being reminded of the need for patience is always frustrating to investors, particularly adrenaline-fueled speculators in junior mining stocks.
Dave Mathewson indicated in the press release that he’s optimistic about the structures they’re beginning to identify, and how closely they match some of the areas on the Cortez Trend where massive deposits turned into massive mines, but it looks like 2018 will be a year when they really drill aggressively to try to target specific areas where that gold mineralization might exist. There’s no reason to be aggressive about buying or selling at any particular price, they will need to raise money at some point to fund that more aggressive drilling campaign for 2018, and it will be at least many months before we have any further drilling results that give investors hope (or anguish). I imagine they’d probably really like to release some more well-received drilling results before they have to raise money again, and maybe they hoped this would be that results announcement, but will have to look and see if they’ve said anything about their exploration budget for the year.
My opinion about this one remains unchanged — it’s almost a binary bet on whether or not they identify a large Carlin Trend-style gold deposit, with the potential for several hundred percent gains if they do and the likelihood of at least a 50% drop of they don’t. I’m not a geologist and don’t analyze assay results, so I don’t know whether the exploration progress is really as encouraging as they say it is or they’re putting a happy spin on things… but I’m not particularly interested in the price action — if you like the odds of success in the next couple years you might be opportunistic and put on a position whenever the stock indicates that investors are giving up, but in the absence of a discovery the primary concern should be how much money do I have at risk. I’ve risked what I want to risk in this one, and I await results.
The closest corollary is the Gold Standard Ventures chart, since that company was run by the same folks and doing some similar expoloration and was a similar size seven or eight years ago — their discovery of a thick high-grade zone pretty early in their drilling campaign led to a tripling of the share price in early 2012, but then the shares collapsed (along with gold) and fell 80% or so until the early 2016 spike in gold prices and their further drilling results. There’s likely to be a lot of interest betting on that discovery whenever drilling results are anticipated, so that will amplify the impact of future results.