Personally, the disaster that attracts my attention of late seems to be the entire movie business. Output of movies is still 30-35% below a healthy year, in terms of movies released. After this coming weekend, I will put together a comparison of the first 20 weeks across the last 5 years to look at box office dollars and movie counts. Last weekend was a Memorial Day disaster, fwiw. Memorial Day last year was in the later week so I’m not going to update my sheet for comparisons until after this weekend.
There’s not much point in trying to short anything for gains, but I am hoping that being able to spot some return to “normal output” might indicate when WBD, DIS might be better investments.
I’m still sitting on various thrifts that I think look interesting: FFNW, FFBW, WMPN, CULL, HONE.
–The BANC Series F preferred may be interesting. Yields 8.2% and trades about 8% below par with some chance of being called.
–AGNCM should reset to about a 10.2% yield for its July dividend, trading around par now.
–I continue to watch TFSL to see whether we may get another dip below $12 and a 9.4% yield or better.
I am mostly in tech, banks (C, WFC, BAC), financials (MA, V, PYPL) and few other names. Recent trades worked are: Silver, Gold, KWEB (China), EEM, VGK, TLT spreads,
What I am looking at are:
REIT’s,
Regional banks (specifically truist, PNC, US Bank, (interest rate cut)
BABA, KWEB (already own)
IWM, has underperformed SPY, QQQ and willing to raise
I have been doing a lot of consolidation in my portfolio focused mostly the non-dividend payers, although I bought some TFSL around 12, O and HSY. Looked at adding to CTRE, but decided against it. Using very short term covered calls to generate income in some of the high fliers - NVDA, CMG.
If you buy some MNST this morning you may be able to get it for under $53/sh and they’re offering an odd lot (99 of course) for between $53 and $60/sh, due June 6th.
Note: MNST took a dive yesterday with CELH’s rumors and downgrades, otherwise I doubt it’d be below $53/sh. It was above $60/sh already this year, two to three months ago, only.
I still have a large chunk of FFBW, and I’ve been happy to see greater pricing at nearly $13/sh, lately. I suppose this still needs a few years, and I’d sure like to see 1.2x TBV.
On December 18, 2023, the Company announced the adoption of a new repurchase program of up to 400,000 shares of its common stock. As of May 1, 2024, 85,000 shares have been purchased since the new program was announced, reducing the number of shares outstanding to 4,929,000.
Financial Highlights at March 31, 2024
• At March 31, 2024, the Company had 4,942,000 shares outstanding, resulting in a tangible book value per share of $14.98.
• At March 31, 2024, the Bank’s leverage ratio was 20.5%.
I hate REITs, I think I’d rather have a bank preferred in 99% of cases. Similar yields imo), qualified dividend (I’m taxable), and I cannot see the difference between insurance salesmen and REIT management. I hate be sold to, and REITs always seem to be selling to investors.
I’m still down 15% on physical silver I picked up in 2011. (Before accounting for storage fees, so much worse, even.). I’ll never go near precious metals again, I’d bet:
SILVER - SILVER BAR – 10 OZ. (ISO ACCREDITED BRANDS)
Acquired
Term
$ Total Gain/Loss
% Total Gain/Loss
Current Value
Quantity
Average Cost Basis
Cost Basis Total
07/16/2011
Long
-$1,800.60
-15.79%
$9,601.50
30
$380.07
$11,402.10
I have no faith in Crypto, but I did buy GBTC and ETHE on the prospect of them being able to hold digital currency, and that seems to be coming true. Of course, it’s been 3 years since I did that, so returns are “not great” so far. Timing is not my strong suit, I arrive way early, and sometimes I bail half a decade before what I thought was ‘obvious’ comes to pass.
Rob,
Haha, I am one of those easy money folks, yes. Shares at 51.90 this morning so why not take 2% for a month-ish? My question is whether to just specify purchase price in the auction and take 53 or pick a higher price based on share price movement should the stock recover to say 55 or 56.
Yeah, I still own BLFY, and at least management has been buying back stock, somewhat at the behest of Larry Seidman. Stock is cheap on traditional metrics and could reasonably be a double if management would run the bank right and not pay themselves exorbitantly. Seidman lost a shareholder on a proposal to evaluate a sale of the company this month. The company used dirty tricks to try to keep the proposal off the ballot, including saying he went over a 500-word limit on proposals by counting acronyms as multiple words, etc. Truly atrocious stuff. The SEC reviewed and told management they had to include it. So the stock could just meander until management decides it wants to increase the value and not waste shareholders’ money.
Well look at me being a moron. If the stock is at 57 next week, I just sell it in the open market at 57 - no need to tender. The only time to tender is if the stock is below 53. Phew, glad it only took me a few days to figure that one out.
Let me expand a little bit… Basil III was unknown and many banks (money center and big regional’s) were building capital. Looks like BIII endgame is not going to be as onerous as expected and some of the regionals have mitigated their CRE exposure and pretty much have pulled back on lending. Meaning they are sitting with significant excess capital and post stress test and BIII endgame announcement and new liquidity rules, they will get enough clarity and start buyback.
There are many ways you can play this.
You can buy equity straight
You can buy their debt/ preferred
You can buy call spreads (options) for 15% annualized return with 20% to 30% downside protection
Something to think about… BTW, I have talked about the buyback here
Citi is under TBV for a longtime… there TBV is close to $87 now… it was few $$ less when the stock price was < $40. Citi’s main issue is they are not earning enough on the capital, i.e., ROTCE is in 7.x compare that to JPM’s 17 But Citi has lots of levers and can get to at least 10x and that should re-rate the stock to $100 over the next 2 to 3 years.
Separately there are other regionals, and WFC, BAC all have significant excess capital viz-a-viz their market cap and can do significant buyback. For ex, check out WFC’s buyback for the last quarter (Q1) is Repurchased 112.5 million shares, or $6.1 billion, of common stock in first quarter 2024.
Big banks, and big regionals have solid balance sheet and mostly de-risked.
But Citi has lots of levers and can get to at least 10x and that should re-rate the stock to $100 over the next 2 to 3 years.