US Bankruptcy can be a very rewarding process for a company. Unprofitable contracts are eliminated and debt is reduced. For a cyclical, capital intensive and commodity industry, bankruptcy can be a godsend. Look at Tidewater (TDW – USA), an operator of Offshore Service Vessels (OSVs) used in oil production. Through bankruptcy, it’s eliminated all of its in-chartered vessels, reducing expenditures on leases at a Read More

Every once in a while a stock simply goes into the “too hard pile,” which creates opportunities. Honestly, I don’t blame investors for sometimes giving up on the analytical side. I mean, Teekay Offshore Partners (TOO – USA) really is a klusterfuk for the ages. It was meant as a drop-down Ponzi vehicle (I wrote about those 2 years ago as the whole MLP Read More

Two months back, I clearly made my case for why Tesla (TSLA – USA) will eventually implode. Of course, the timing of that implosion is difficult to guess at—hence my use of a bear put spread. Now, thanks to OCC, I can go out much further in time. While, I suspect that TSLA’s share price is much lower by January 2019, by January 2020, Read More

I previously wrote about Aimia here and here. Sorry in advance for all the numbers but it’s necessary… So, earnings came out Wednesday night and I quickly read through for a few key segments of interest to me (redemptions, card spend, cash build, PLM) and within a few minutes, I was celebrating with a bottle of tequila.   For a quick backstory, AIM has been in the Read More

The history of industry leading consumer tech products has not been kind to investors who overstay their welcome. You need look no further than all the hundreds of notable recent failures, to realize that these companies almost always flame out. The list below (in no particular order) is a nice trip down memory lane of former favorites, that are now either bankrupt or shells Read More

Back in February, I wrote about NZME LTD (NZM – Australia), the dominant and highly undervalued media group in New Zealand. At the time, I said that “results will probably range between meh and bleh…,” which is what first half 2017 results showed—declining revenue and stable EBIT. While the stock is certainly cheap at about five times cash flow and an 11.5% dividend yield, NZM Read More

Part of what makes the stock market so lucrative, is that it often responds in unexpected ways to new data—offering outsized profits to those that take advantage of these opportunities. Take the curious case of Aimia Inc (AIM – Canada) which I wrote about previously. The bear argument at the time, was that the Aeroplan business was permanently impaired by the pending termination of a partnership Read More

Less than a month ago, I warned of SNAPageddon in SNAP Inc. (SNAP – USA) as venture capital shares unlocked and were dumped on the market. Shares of SNAP have now declined by approximately 30% since then—hence my puts increased in value by a few hundred percent. While I expect earnings next week to be abysmal, followed by more share unlocks, I’m cognizant of not being Read More

As an investor, my preference is to find long-term macro trends and invest alongside of those trends. Unfortunately, the current market tends to overvalue the companies participating in these trends, giving me fewer opportunities to find attractive trend-based investments. However, that hasn’t stopped me from searching and occasionally finding a real interesting one. An increasing percentage of the population is aging and this often Read More