Tag: stocks

How to Get (Almost) Free Tick Data

Access to high quality, cost effective market data is a continuing problem for retail traders. I was recently told about the ongoing efforts of the startup brokerage “Alpaca”. The gentleman I spoke with said the API gave access to the tick data of thousands of stocks everyday and without cost. I thought it was too good to be true but recently I took a little bit of time to investigate. In this article I will describe the basic process to accessing the tick data, and some basic code I was exper

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The Secret to Shorting Stocks

This post contains affiliate links. An affiliate link means Blackarbs may receive compensation if you make a purchase through the link, without any extra cost to you. Blackarbs strives to promote only products and services which provide value to my business and those which I believe could help you, the reader. Misinformation is everywhere. Many people believe the key to successful short selling is simply the inversion of a successful long strategy. I also used to believe this, among other short

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How to get Free Intraday Stock Data from Netfonds

Daily stock data is everywhere for free. Yahoo, Google, and Quandl all provide useful daily stock prices for basic number crunching. However computational analysis for intraday stock data is much harder to find. In fact, Intraday stock data can be very expensive. So what is a cost conscious quant supposed to do? The Norwegian website Netfonds.no provides free intraday data on stocks and ETF's on the NYSE, Nasdaq, and Amex exchanges. They provide up to 5 days of trade/bid/offer data. I wrote som

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Why I bought back into RDC ( UPDATED 3.15.2015 )

I'm going to keep this relatively short and sweet. Back in late December 2014 I bought ( RDC ) at a cost basis of ~$20 for the following reasons: * The bulk of RDC's most critical assets are contracted through 2015 and into 2016 * Strongest balance sheet (lowest debt leverage) compared to other offshore drillers in the industry * Management team considered best in industry * Long term buyers appeared to defend the $20 share price level * At ~$20 the price to book is an absurd 0.5! Simply

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What I Saw ( Week of 12.8.14 )

Tuesday of this week I expressed a mildly bearish sentiment regarding the broad market. Based on stock market internals including weakening market participation, the duration and velocity of the near vertical bounce off of the October lows it seemed increasingly likely that we would see some profit taking and some sort of correction. Let's see if this estimation was validated by the market. I would say it looks like market participants did decide it was a good time for profit taking/risk reduct

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What I'm Watching ( Week of 12-8-14 )

How long does equity optimism last without correction? Over the weekend I examined the market internals and came away mildly bearish at these levels. Extreme optimism and lack of participation among the broad indexes make this a week ripe for profit taking and I've been aggressive with my trailing stops etc during the last 2 trading sessions. When will OIL finally bounce? Have investors finally capitulated? I'm short oil via the Inverse ETF SCO ( wish I had more size ) however this has been a

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What I Saw ( Week of 12.1.14 )

1. Do the airline stocks and oil continue to trend strongly in opposite directions? ANSWER: Simply put, mostly yes. The below chart shows the following stocks ( OIL, AAL, ALK, JBLU, UAL ) relative to the broader market ( SPY ) over the last 5 days. Out of the 4 airline stocks chosen here, only ALK underperformed the market. Using OIL as a proxy for oil, investor sentiment is still negative, and some airlines stocks are continuing to benefit from the plunging price. 2. Do we see a continuation

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Stocks - Pre Earnings Equity Grade (week of 07.21.14)

With the iVC reports showing some preliminary promise, I thought it would be worthwhile to begin tracking any potential predictive ability of the grading system. It's late so it's likely I'll have to update this post with better prose after I get some sleep. See this week's pre-earnings grades below. The reports are available for sale through the shop.

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Why I'm Bullish on Facebook (FB) Long Term

I am bullish on FB because I believe the firm's strategic vision is sound and recent moves have put FB in a position to build on and maintain a competitive advantage well into the future. There are 4 keys to my thesis: 1. FB is the current market leader in the social networking space 2. FB has just begun to monetize its user base and ad platform 3. Whatsapp's potential value is much greater than 19 billion paid 4. Mobile technology industry will continue to grow globally Facebook is the un

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The Return

It's been a while since I've updated the blog and with good reason. Like any worthwhile business the foundation on which it's built must be thoroughly researched, well planned, and ruthlessly executed. With that in mind, I've been away building other pieces of the foundation which I will be unveiling over the next week or so. Be on the lookout for the upcoming BlackArbs flagship product titled the "iVC Report" (Identify Value Creators). This report is designed to assist retail and professional i

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3d Systems_Follow the Leader

I'll keep this short and sweet. 3d systems is still the undisputed king of the mountain in the 3d printing industry. They generate more revenue, more gross profit, more operating profit and more net income than all their competitors. See my updated report which includes their most recent 3rd quarter results and additional analysis. 3d Systems (DDD)_updated for Q32013 from Brian Christopher

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Stay Long Stocks Until...

...the Fed stops buying Bonds. It's as simple as that. The Fed has committed to purchasing $45 billion in treasuries and $40 billion in MBS per month for the foreseeable future. That's a run rate of ~1 trillion a year! The "Fed put" is real and I can prove it. Look at the following chart. US Federal Reserve Total Assets data by YCharts The plot starts on 11/25/2008 or the beginning of the first Quantitative Easing program (QE1). We can see there is a clear relationship between the Federal Rese

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Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG)_Part 2

Early January 2013, I did a write-up of Chipotle Mexican Grill and my thoughts on its value and whether I would buy it at that level for a long term investment. Based on my initial analysis I concluded that CMG was expensive as a growth company due to several factors. Data trends indicated that operating margins and revenue growth (while still growing) were beginning to level off. Additionally, earnings surprise momentum showed a negative trend indicating positive earnings surprises were less fr

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Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG)_Part 1

Here is a presentation I produced in early January, where I evaluated the value of buying Chipotle (CMG) stock as a long term investment. It is here for reference for my follow up post in which I update my thesis. Check it out. As always feedback is welcomed. Chipotle Equity Analysis_An Expensive Burrito? from Brian Christopher

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