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Who is Genie Energy (GNE)?

I never heard of this company until I read this post on Martin Armstrong’s blog.

Stock is currently at ~$7.50 and the market cap is ~$185M.

Interestingly enough, they just reported earnings today and posted a profit of $3.4M on $69.4M in revenues.

They’ve not posted an annual profit in last 3 years, but they were cash flow positive last year. Are we at a turning point?

The more interesting aspect of this company, though, is the Advisory board. Dick Cheney, Larry Summers, Rupert Murdoch, amongst other dignitaries. Wow, that is a politically heavy hitting roster. Wikipedia expands further on this.

Supposedly this company is sitting on a reserve bigger than Saudi Arabia! And this is the reason for the hoopla in Syria around the pipeline dispute and regime change.

This is seemingly a deep state company?

At $185M market cap, seemingly at a profitability turning point and sitting on a huge oil reserve, government ties…  Hmmm, might have to dip the toe in.

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Aqua Metals (AQMS): This Stock is Going to Move…

…I just don’t know which way yet!

Travis at Stock Gumshoe wrote about a tease recommendation from Tyler Laundon’s Cabot Small Cap Confidential newsletter.

I really enjoy the way Travis writes and I appreciate the homework he puts in to dissecting these kind of stock tip teasers.

Aqua Metals (AQMS) presents a nice case, so I dug in more, only to find a really intriguing bear case against it.

The Friendly Bear presents a several strong arguments. But digging into his track record, it’s not the greatest either.

The upside presented is a double to $36. The downside case is $3.

I’m currently leaning towards the downside, but I’m not quite ready to put the bet on yet. Earnings come out May 18th, so let’s see what that brings about.

What I could be willing to do is wait until the price hits $17.50 and put on a straddle…

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Bitcoin Vs Gold

The bottom line (at the top) is that both are bets against Fiat currency. (otherwise, you’d just keep your cash in your mattress)

The key to remember is that DEATH COMES TO ALL FIAT CURRENCY. There are no survivors. Government cannot help itself.

Bitcoin’s value eclipsed an ounce of Gold recently.

Gold has history on its side. A Loooooooonnnnnnnggggggg history. Gold is money. It’s been this way for many many thousands of years. It’s ingrained into the human DNA. That cannot easily be replaced.

I’m long term bullish on Gold because every fiat currency is on a path to zero. Again…Government Debt is the killer. Here’s my challenge with Gold. If shit hits the fan and we find ourselves in armageddon, what am I going to do with a block of gold? It has no value to anyone except being a means of exchange. Is that enough? Yes, it is divisible, but not easily.

Bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies) seem to be the future. Which one(s) will win, I’m not sure. So I’m comfortable to keep a balanced portfolio. The beauty here is that it’s still super early, so a small portofolio percentage now (of Crypto Vs. Gold) will turn heavily weighted toward Crypto, in my opinion. Because we know which currencies lose (Fiat).

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Is Ripple Another Cryptocurrency Worth a Small Bet?

Ripple is the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap. It is run by a company, so it has an overlord; this is a good and bad thing.

Basically, Ripple is focused on the market of forex and it has partnered with several major global institutions. The major, major advantage to Ripple, as I understand it, is the speed at which transactions can happen and be confirmed; it’s seconds. This is in contrast to Bitcoin, whose blocks take ~10 mins on average.

Also, Ripple doesn’t depend on energy-intensive mining process. Instead it distributes XRP tokens at its discretion in order to incentivize certain behaviors.

“We will engage in distribution strategies that we expect will result in a stable and strengthening XRP exchange rate against other currencies. To this end, we currently plan to distribute XRP primarily through business development deals, incentives to liquidity providers who offer tighter spreads for payments, and selling XRP to institutional buyers interested in investing in XRP.”

Overlord can be good, but can be bad as well. Do we trust in this “Central Banker”?

Here is a recent chart of Ripple’s XRP courtesy of https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/ripple

I’ll be watching the transaction volume over the next few weeks. If traffic continues to be steadily increasing, then it will definitely be worth a flyer.

It seems to be a good strategy to just put a small amount of money into these cryptocurrencies early and just sit on them. I’m pretty sure ONE of them will emerge as a HUGE HUGE winner. This is playing the VC game…

Here’s how one would buy Ripple XRP (in US): https://ripple.com/xrp-portal/how-to-buy-xrp/

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Tech Merger Monday: Jive Acquired; AngiesList Acquired

Jive was acquired by private equity firm Aurea for ~$462M. I don’t know that Jive ever turned a profit. They went out with a bang ~5 yrs ago. They had a market cap of over $2B at one point.

I’m sure the founders and venture money did quite well. As well as the executive staff that took them public, who have long been gone since.

I almost went to work for Jive in 2011. I wonder if I would’ve cashed out at the right time and if I’d still be there had I taken the role…

Angie’s List was also acquired by IAC, who apparently had been pursuing them for a couple of years. Angie’s List will be merged with Home Advisors. The deal was valued at over $500M.

We were Angie’s List subscribers for a few years before ending our subscription last year or so. It’s not a bad service, but Yelp/Facebook/Google basically covers what it does for free.

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Best Sites for Royalty-Free Images for Your Blog

A picture says a thousand words. More relevant for this context is that a picture just adds visual appeal to the blog/site.

Here are a couple blogs that list several sites where one can obtain royalty-free images.

Personally, I’ve been using Pixabay almost exclusively. It has a pretty good selection of photos. I’ll keep using it ’til I find it harder to find good images. I’m not a fan of hunting around to multiple sites to find the perfect image. Good is good enough for this purpose.

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This Chrome Plug-In has Saved Me Hours

There is A LOT of content out there and A LOT of great content. How is one supposed to consume it all? One of the goals of this blog is to highlight only the best stuff so that you don’t have to.

Other times, you need to learn how to do something or learn about something and a great source is YouTube. Other times there are videos on a website but they can be lengthly or slow to get to the meat. Or they just talk slow.

I’ve been using this Chrome plugin: Video Speed Controller.

It is amazing. I can speed up the video up to 4x to quickly go through videos. When I need to pay attention, I’ll usually listen to it 1.5x. But I can whip through content much, much quicker with this plugin.

It only works for HTML5 video, but most videos are HTML5 these days.

 

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Could the DOW Really Double From Here?

Hedgefund manager Erik Townsend hosts a podcast called MacroVoices. This week he had Martin Armstrong on. I like to listen to podcasts at Overcast.fm because you can adjust the speed (save time).

Martin Armstrong makes his case for why the DOW could double from here, despite being already “over valued” or at elevated levels. Essentially, government debt sucks, the DOW is the best of the worst and money can/will come from all over the world.

I believe that stocks are currently overvalued and are way overdue for a crash. US GDP numbers for Q1 2017 came out at 0.7% , which means fundamentals aren’t supporting the asset prices. This makes it really, really hard to buy. But maybe another reason to buy. Usually the hardest trade is the right one.

I’m going to wait and see what happens with the government shutdown. The decision was put off a week. Also, there is the Sell in May motto. If things hold through mid-May, perhaps I’ll dip my toe into this fear trade.

 

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Artificial Womb Keeps Fetal Lambs Alive

This reminds me of the scene from The Matrix where the humans were grown in pods row upon row.

Lambs are used because, apparently, they develop similar to humans. However, they do develop faster. One of the challenges with human preemies would be dealing with the small size. In the study, the lambs were removed from their mothers at the equivalent of 23-24 week’s gestation for human fetuses.

Researchers say that this procedure could be tried on human preemies within 3-5 years.

Of course, this could be great where the baby is putting the mother’s life/health at risk. Who will be the first famous woman to leverage this innovation to preserve their million-dollar figure?

Could this affect the long-term psychology of the child? Losing the bond of developing within the mother’s womb?

See the full article here.

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2017 Best Jobs in America and 2017 Worst Jobs in America

Careercast.com released its annual job rankings for 2017. They rank 200 careers based on Income, Growth Outlook, Work Environment, and Stress.

It’s no surprise that the top jobs are STEM-based. I do question the algorithm. I mean, they have Computer Programmer at #49 with Projected Growth = “Very Poor”. Aerospace Engineer also gets Very Poor Projected Growth, despite defense spending continuously increasing, despite Jeff Bezos’ investment in the space, despite the future of personal flying devices and the growth of drone technologies and uses.

Yet, the Projected Growth for Hair Stylists is Good.

Also surprising are some of the jobs towards the bottom of the list. Firefighter at #193. I never met a firefighter that didn’t love their career. They love the schedule and the security (pension) and they ENJOY fighting fires.

In fact, the further I dig into this, the less I value this report. In fact, I’d say that I don’t value it much at all. But it’s still interesting to see.

 

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