Fitbug - Analysing Their Global Potential:

I need to begin by expressing that I do own shares in Fitbug, so I obviously have a vested interest in the share price of the company rising. Nevertheless, I will still try to be vaguely balanced in what I write:

Fitbug has certainly taken the stock market by storm over the past couple of months, but even better than this, Fitbug seems to have won the hearts of consumers too, with the Fitbug Orb having been sold out in many major UK and US stores (TESCO, Argos and Walmart, just to name a few).

Now, I need to be honest and admit that I have not personally found these retailers listed below, but that the information was taken from a poster on LSE named as "AntonyFree", who has some really excellent posts on the Fitbug forum, which I highly recommend. 

Retailers:

America:

Fry`s online  http://goo.gl/fmABgU 

Walmart  http://goo.gl/yc7MgD 

Target America  http://goo.gl/Hjimmz 

Radioshack  http://goo.gl/GTZknN 

MacMall  http://goo.gl/ljJ9qs 

Amazon USA  http://goo.gl/GWvxR8

Australia:

Knewone  http://goo.gl/KYRM2W 

Myer  http://goo.gl/MxKLMA 

Beezers Australian  http://goo.gl/cjEUll

Neol Leming  http://goo.gl/2sYD9v

Mighty Ape  http://goo.gl/Jr9Lvb 

Play tech  http://goo.gl/OyEidK

Macfixit Apple Accessories  http://goo.gl/WE2EqA

Camera Paradise  http://goo.gl/k0yyRF

Brazil:

Amazon http://goo.gl/lFYy57

Canada:

Amazon Canada  http://goo.gl/aFaMUW

China:

Apple store  http://goo.gl/yX1Ql8

France:

Amazon France  http://goo.gl/MfYNjq

Rueducommerce http://goo.gl/m4udhX

Germany:

Migros  http://goo.gl/QAknOV

http://goo.gl/aq5wSk

Amazon Germany  http://goo.gl/hhwHDJ

Italy:

Amazon Italy  http://goo.gl/lEALUa

Hong Kong:

http://goo.gl/ofmHX6

Apple store  http://goo.gl/QQnvu3 

Revoit  http://goo.gl/OeEdzg

Japan:

Apple store  http://goo.gl/Uukao1

Apple store  http://goo.gl/i2JLNj 

Apple store  http://goo.gl/3Ctpt3

Amazon co.jp http://goo.gl/16oPEO

Yahoo Japan shopping http://goo.gl/AeeYQv

Korea:

http://goo.gl/0Z1mm7

http://goo.gl/KSldak

http://goo.gl/Wx2pp7

http://goo.gl/tTDbr9

http://goo.gl/v0ZPma

Poledit  http://goo.gl/mm8B89

Middle East:

http://goo.gl/KfxdgY

Netherlands:

Apple Cover  http://goo.gl/97QtM3

tns online  http://goo.gl/4CsFcu

New Zealand:

Apple store http://goo.gl/QQnvu3

http://goo.gl/AZwXEs

Russia:

Mvideo  http://goo.gl/C2dE69

Walmart Russia  http://goo.gl/85uq1C

http://goo.gl/ay09Pu

http://goo.gl/Jo7Alk

http://goo.gl/55CiFQ

http://goo.gl/fi8Abd

Online Shop svsmaster.ru  http://goo.gl/zydbhy

Moscow  

http://goo.gl/5gYXfM 

http://goo.gl/iG5BsG

Fitbug Russia  http://goo.gl/EWm1Wp

South Africa:

Clicks Group  http://goo.gl/J32YCl

Amazon Spain  http://goo.gl/AM8XYD

Rocket shop  http://goo.gl/fc1Dlv

Dis- chem.  http://goo.gl/dttKA1

Switzerland:

Migros  http://goo.gl/QAknOV

Taiwan:

Taotao http://goo.gl/FojHma

Price .com http://goo.gl/z8c1Ma

US Direct http://goo.gl/pQZi0z

UAE - Dubai:

DealsHabibi.com  http://goo.gl/ZhiHIe

UK:

Amazon  http://goo.gl/ufQzCs 

Target UK  http://goo.gl/Uh42no 

Ideal World/also Sainsburys  http://goo.gl/m0Cgcu 

Homebase   http://goo.gl/ZfY1GS 

Argos   http://goo.gl/O5bqJ7 

Tesco  http://goo.gl/f8329i 

Generic Online:

Freemans.com  http://goo.gl/3ML0nj

SmartWatchNet  http://goo.gl/8kk6QA

O2 shop  http://goo.gl/cTxAB3

Handbag.com  http://goo.gl/cA1JpC

Analysis:

This is almost certainly not all of the retailers globally, but it's certainly a lot and we can use these along with a few assumptions in order to generate some more possible figures to give us an idea of potential sales revenue figures:

There are 60 Retailers on the list above (counting Amazon stores as one massive retailer and the same for Apple Online Stores).

Now, to get an idea of how many units are being ordered by these companies we have to make do with some glorified, but reasoned guesswork:

• Walmart for example have 3400 Supercenters in the USA - these are the large ones where Fitbug Orbs are likely to be sold.

• Let us be staggeringly pessimistic and assume that each store only orders 5 Fitbug Orbs.

• This gives a total order figure from Walmart alone of 17,000 units.

I'm not going to continue down this route, as I desperately need to wrap Christmas presents, but I would encourage people to do some basic maths and draw their own conclusions from these global retailers (large and small).


All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Turmoil In The Oil Market.

I've never traded oil futures before, in part because the high inherent volatility of the commodity combined with a leveraged environment would throw me significantly out of my current comfort zone, but also because I would rather learn to trade on sector of the global markets really well rather than many to a mediocre level.


Nevertheless, falling oil prices have hit the AIM substantially knocking back the majority of junior oil explorers/producers, so I have to keep a vague eye on the market even if I don't directly trade it.


In my opinion the major falls we've seen in oil prices ca be split down into a few major points:


1. OPEC Vs Shale

- Personally, I feel that one of the major reasons why OPEC has decided to maintain its current supply levels is due to a desire to try and drown-out the US Shale Oil producers from the market and allow the status quo within the OPEC to continue undisturbed by foreign input and disruption.


- Moreover, intra-OPEC there seems to be certain parties who don't want their dominance with the OPEC to fall, with Saudi Arabia being possibly the best example of this. From the outside looking in, it would seem that they don't want to relinquish their supply into the hands of other members of the OPEC and will therefore hold at their current levels for the meantime.


2. Global Growth

- The next fundamental point is that global growth levels over the past quarter really haven't been anything to write home about, especially in the major growth markets, with China growing 7.3% in its third quarter - its slowest growth rate in five years. This coupled with China being potentially described as a "statistically generous" country with regards to its economic figures, means that the downwards pressure we've seen regarding oil prices was on a balance of probabilities going to be reasonably likely.


3. Reducing Sanctions on Oil Producing Nations

- Another key point that we shouldn't ignore for indication for the future direction of the oil price, is Iraq, Iran and Libya, all of whom have said they intend on increasing their production levels by 2015. This does in part depend on the sanctions currently in place on Iran over its nuclear program, but I certainly would not be surprised by more downwards momentum in the oil markets assuming a global state of ceteris paribus.


All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Petition to regulate Share Tippers/Financial Journalists

There is a danger that this brief post may well be a little ironic, as it's regarding share tippers however as I don't believe that I "promote" stocks and shares in the FCA sense of encouraging investment decisions, but merely discuss popular stocks and shares, I feel that I can side step this one.


Nevertheless, I would encourage people to have a good look at this petition and sign it if you believe in its message:


https://www.change.org/p/the-financial-conduct-authority-enforce-or-change-the-ruling-under-section-21-of-the-financial-services-markets-act-to-ensure-that-bloggers-share-tipsters-and-financial-journalists-such-as-found-on-shareprophets-com-have-to-be-fully-registered-on-the?recruiter=47444308&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive%20via%20@UKChange


All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Fitbug - Sales Forecasting

I've already had a brief look at coming up with some vague estimations for the sales profits we could expect from Fitbug, but I felt that I ought to go into more detail regarding this aspect, as it seems to be an aspect that's discussed on bulletin boards without always the use of data to substantiate points.


Some of this post will be repeated information from slightly older posts where the data we know hasn't changed. As per usual, I am not FCA authorised, so this shouldn't be used as investment advice, etc.


The Maths:


We know that Fitbug are retailing in 1800 Target stores in the US and in 293 Sainsbury's stores in the UK. We also know that they are being retailed online and or in store by major retailers like Amazon, Apple, Tesco, Argos, Dixons, Walmart, Kmart, Frys Online, Mvideo (Russian retailer), Stuffz, Ideal World (shopping channel), etc.


I will assume that Fitbug only makes £5.00 profit per unit it sells and let's assume that these 1800 Target stores and these 293 Sainsburys stores only buy 100 units each from Fitbug between being stocked and the sales figures being released (I've picked 100 because it's just over the online sales figure from tiny online website I've never heard of in the last 30 days - see the references below for more details):


1800+293=2093 stores

2093*100*5= £1,046,500 Fitbug Profit


- I'm going to add into this calculation a quarter of Tescos total stores to the mix (not all will be big enough to sell the Fitbug - 2500/4) along with total number of Argos stores (737), Dixons (530+322), Kmart (1077), Mvideo (330), RadioShack (7150)


This gives a total number of stores on the ground of 1800+293+(2500/4)+737+530+322+1077+330+7150

Total number of stores= 12,864


Now, let us assume that each store buys 100 units from Fitbug:

12,864*100*5= £6,432,000 Fitbug Orb Profit


With 44% of Christmas shopping being done online last year, it makes it harder to get a real idea of (what I perceive as) the huge potential this company has in terms of sales. To get an idea of what online profit from sales are likely to be like, along with the on the ground store profit from sales, we could probably just double that last figure, giving us around £12,864,000.


However, I think that realistically, as Tesco have only just come back in stock of Fitbug Orbs, we could add half again to this figure at least, as major retailers are likely to have tested the waters initially with their wholesale purchases and purchased small lot sizes and also due to this restocking need. Due to this, I feel that it wouldn't be unreasonable increase this again by half to account for this high stock demand:


12,864,000+6,432,000= £19,296,000


Remember that my forecasts are only for sales of the Fitbug Orb (not the only product Fitbug offer), these are excluding all online sales of the Fitbug Orb, these are excluding any health insurance/provider related sales and they based only on the sales between late October and the expected January results.


Personally, I believe that the actual profit from sales will be significantly higher than this, because there are a lot of revenue streams that are either unaccounted for or very difficult to estimate (Apple Online Store sales, Amazon, etc), but I implore people to do their own research and decide for themselves.


In my opinion, it looks like Fitbug have the potential to make more in sales profit from their Fitbug Orbs alone between October and January, then their current market capitalisation. Furthermore, we must remember that technology companies are often valued more on potential than actual figures, so as a company that actually has cash in-flows, Fitbug represents for me a great opportunity to profit substantially in the run up to Christmas sales and the post-Christmas fitness flabaganza.


Extra Reading:

Old Research and forecasts:
http://themaskedstocktrader.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/valuing-fitbug.html

Fitbug - The Gift That Keeps On Giving:
http://themaskedstocktrader.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/fitbug-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html


References:

Estimating Sales Revenue:
http://www.lse.co.uk/share-regulatory-news.asp?shareprice=FITB&ArticleCode=rdzzvudg&ArticleHeadline=Fitbug_to_be_stocked_by_Target_and_Sainsburys

Small Online Outlet Sales Figure:
http://shirinsevents.com/hype.php?id=fitbug-orb-activity-tracker-retail-packaging-black-p-14145.html?zenid=f3cbd595cd93e572e891c5d5ac43080c

Tesco Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco

MVideo Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.video

RadioShack Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack

Argos Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer)

Kmart Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmart

Fry Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Electronics

Online Shopping Statistic:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/report-44-percent-of-holiday-shopping-will-be-done-online/vp-BBbb4St

All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Harry Potter - Understanding The Wizarding FOREX Markets

The world of Harry Potter has always fascinated me and as one of those children who grew up in the media era characterised by the resurgence of magical realism that Harry Potter and other such stories gave me, I feel privileged to think that this aspect of my life has given me a vibrant imagination.

Stepping over the fact that Harry Potter isn't real in the objective sense (I'm fully aware that it's magical realism), I've always felt that there is one primary issue in the Wizarding World of the Harry Potter franchise: their bizarre currency! 


I think that I have finally solved the inconsistencies within the currency however and thereby am able to disband the theories against J. K. Rowling's valuation of the currency against the Great British pound (GBP).

Wizarding Currency:

To give a brief overview to the system of Wizard money, the currency is split into three coin denominations: Galleons, Sickles and Knuts. There are 17 Sickles in 1 Galleon and 29 Knuts in 1 Sickle (and thus 493 Knuts in 1 Galleon). 

Now, according to J. K. Rowling, 1 Galleon is "About five Great British pounds, though the exchange rate varies!"

We know that there is a Foreign Currency Exchange (FOREX) within Gringotts (and thus the expected transfer of wealth between GBP and Wizarding currency), because of this statement and also because we know Hermione's parents have to exchange GBP there in the third book (presumable with which they will purchase school books).


The Issues as I see them:


I'm going to gloss over the assumption that one could logically make regarding the price of the raw commodities that the Wizarding currency is based off (gold, silver and bronze) and take it as red that this screaming error of value against the GBP is just that - an error. With gold currently priced at £24.37/g it seems highly illogical that a Galleon (if we assume it's about the size of a 50p coin - 8 grams) would be worth £194.96. I thereby conclude that the coins are simply coloured as gold, silver, or bronze - they can't logically be made of the solid metals anyway as a result of Gamp's first law of elemental transfiguration (if you can't summon money out of the air, then by extension you logically can't summon its main component).

Excluding the previous point as nonsensical, I the number one inherent flaw with their system of currency as stated by many observers of the series, is that in terms of purchasing parity verses the GBP, their currency is simply in another world (excuse the pun) to that of the Muggle world, even though there's a natural osmosis of individuals between the two worlds on a daily basis, which one would assume would cause a reasonable level of cross currency exchange and relative price comparisons between the two currencies.


To illustrate my point practically, if we assume that J. K. Rowling's rate of 1 Galleon being equal to about 5 GPB is true, then you would logically expect one Galleon to be able to purchase around five loaves of bread in the Wizardng World or maybe two cups of coffee, or one and a half pints of beer in a pub (where I live at least).

However, as fans of the franchise will know, A Beginners Guide to Transfiguration only costs 1 Galleon - no school book I ever purchased cost only £5! Moreover, Harry, Ron and Hermione pay only six Sickles for their three pints of butter beer in the fifth book in the series (about 60p a pint - or about 20% of the cost of a pint where I live) and Mrs Weasley in the second book is reported to only have 1 galleon in her Gringotts account (poor the Weasleys may be, but this seems a little too close to the Wisarding breadline)!


It may be that there is a logical reason for these inconsistencies; perhaps we are meant to assume that Gamp's Five Exceptions to Elemental Transfiguration discounts butter beer (I understand that food and Wizarding currency are two of the exceptions), or parchment. 

The logical argument in favour of J. K. Rowlings valuation would be to assume that there exists a natural inconsistency between the inflation rates of the two currencies, but I feel that this is an unrealistic and overly simplified explanation of the inconsistencies between the purchasing parity of GBP against Wizarding Currency.

Instead, I would put forward the idea that the existence of magic causes an inherent level of deflation within sub-sectors of the Wizarding economy (publishing, drinks, etc) in comparison to the Muggle economy, which is in turn the consequence for the wild variance and inconsistencies between Wizarding currency and GBP. 

Put against, the expected and reasonably consistent positive real rate of inflation in the Muggle world, it is thereby no surprise that there is such a disparity in certain aspects of Wizarding currency in its valuation against the GBP.


Or to quote Snape in How It Should Have Ended's video on Harry Potter: "Magic, duh!".


All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Valuing Fitbug.

I'm not FCA authorised, don't view any of this as investment advice, etc.


One of the many issues with tech companies is that they're a real sod to value in any standard way:


PE ratios are often irrelevant, because the company may not make any money and often their balance sheets are pretty bare too, because you can only value assets based on what someone is willing to pay for it elsewhere and because technology sector evolves so quickly companies often can't get this information.


In the case of Fitbug, there are a few things we can do to helps get an idea of the company's current and potential future value:



1. Fitbug Vs Fitbit.


I feel that comparing Fitbit and Fitbug is one of the best ways to value Fitbug, because they both operate in the wearable health sector and we know that their products are very similar because of the trademark infringement lawsuit embarked upon by Fitbug against Fitbit.


Fitbug is currently worth around £22 million and Fitbit (privately owned) was worth $300 million in March of 2013 (around £191 million).


Currently, Fitbug is valued at around 11.5% of the value of Fitbit in March 2013, which may or may not be a fair valuation depending on your opinions of both companies.


In my opinion, the two companies are more similar than Fitbit would like us to believe with Fitbit's apparent aims in its last funding round (August 2013) to be to release new products and grow its global footprint - exactly what Fitbug is currently doing, retailing in Apple online stores across these regions (and possibly in stores on the ground).


2. Lawsuit:


A quick point here, but if Fitbug win their lawsuit against Fitbit, then they will seek to agin at least $10 million and potentially as much as $30 million (between £6 million and £19 million). Based on the information currently available it certainly looks as if Fitbit will look to settle outside of court, so whilst this case is yet to be won, it does look promising for a good payout for Fitbug of almost as much as its current market capitalisation.


3. Sales Forecasting.


The information that we really need to know however is the sales figures between now and the next set of results (I'm going to do this for just the Fitbug Orb to make life easier) and an idea of how much Fitbug make per unit sold and we can have a stab at this, even if it's going to be very crude, so please do your own research and don't take my figures as true:


We know that Fitbug are retailing in 1800 Target stores in the US and in 293 Sainsbury's stores in the UK. We also know that they are being retailed online and or in store by major retailers like Amazon, Apple, Tesco, Argos, Dixons, Walmart, Kmart, Frys, etc. We also shouldn't discount all of the smaller online stores that are retailing Fitbug's products too.


Now, I'm going to run these numbers a few times, but let's assume that Fitbug only makes £2.50 profit per unit it sells and let's assume that these 1800 Target stores and these 293 Sainsburys stores only buy 88 units each from Fitbug between being stocked and the sales figures being released (I've picked 88 because it's the online sales figure from tiny online website I've never heard of in the last 30 days - see the references below for more detail):


1800+293=2093 stores

2093*88*2.50= £460,460 Fitbug Profit


Now, these figures obviously are ignoring online retailers and any other on the ground retailers to whom Fitbug will be selling to based on the demand for their products. However, the point is that even if we take these very low figures for sales, discount the majority of Fitbug's total retailing presence and give them a very low profit margin per unit, they're still making a hypothetical (almost) £0.5 million profit.


I'm now going make some more assumptions based on the following points:

- Applying the sales figure of 88 units to Target and Sainsburys is probably too low and could be realistically increased to 100, especially with the news that a lot of these outlets along with others are sold out or have low stock of the Fitbug Orb.

- I'm going to add into this calculation a quarter of Tescos total stores to the mix (not all will be big enough to sell the Fitbug - 2500/4) along with total number of Argos stores (737), Dixons (530+322), Kmart (1077) and Frys (34):


This gives a total number of stores on the ground of 1800+293+(2500/4)+737+530+322+1077+34

Total number of stores= 5,418


Now, let us assume that each store buys 100 units from Fitbug:

5,418*100*2.5= £1,354,500 Fitbug Orb Profit


Let's increase our profit margin to 10% of the retail price of the product (from 5%).

5,418*100*5= £2,709,000 Fitbug Orb Profit


With 44% of Christmas shopping being done online last year, it makes it harder to get a real idea of (what I perceive as) the huge potential this company has in terms of sales. To get an idea of what online profit from sales are likely to be like, along with the on the ground store profit from sales, we could probably just double that last figure, giving us around £5,418,000 - food for thought!


However, I think that realistically, as Tesco are currently (as I write this) out of stock online, we could add half again to this figure at least, as major retailers are likely to have tested the waters initially with their wholesale purchases and purchased small lot sizes. Due to this, I feel that it wouldn't be unreasonable increase this again:


5,418,000+2,709,000= £8,127,000


I'm going to round this up here, but the point of these forecasting (not to be used for investment advice, I'm not FCA authorised, etc) is to give an idea of the potential that Fitbug has between now and the Christmas results being released. Remember that these forecasts are only for sales of the Fitbug Orb (not the only product Fitbug offer), these are excluding all online sales of the Fitbug Orb, these are excluding any health insurance/provider related sales and they based only on the sales between late October and the expected January results.


Personally, I believe that the actual profit from sales will be significantly higher than this, but I implore people to do their own research and decide for themselves.


Extra Reading:

Fitbug - The Gift That Keeps On Giving:
http://themaskedstocktrader.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/fitbug-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html


All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader.


Sources per Point:

1. Fitbug Vs Fitbit.

Fitbit Valuation:
http://mobihealthnews.com/20623/report-fitbit-raises-30-million-at-300-million-valuation/

Fitbit's Aims:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/fitbit-43m/


2. Lawsuit:

$10,000,000 minimum, as seen on page 12, point number fifty-three and if an out of court settlement is reached it could be from 12th December onwards:
download.html.

3. Sales Forecasting.

Estimating Sales Revenue:
http://www.lse.co.uk/share-regulatory-news.asp?shareprice=FITB&ArticleCode=rdzzvudg&ArticleHeadline=Fitbug_to_be_stocked_by_Target_and_Sainsburys

Small Online Outlet Sales Figure:
http://shirinsevents.com/hype.php?id=fitbug-orb-activity-tracker-retail-packaging-black-p-14145.html?zenid=f3cbd595cd93e572e891c5d5ac43080c

Tesco Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco

Argos Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer)

Kmart Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmart

Fry Store Number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Electronics

Online Shopping Statistic:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/report-44-percent-of-holiday-shopping-will-be-done-online/vp-BBbb4St

Fitbug - The Gift That Keeps On Giving.

I was a bit sceptical regarding Fitbug's initial rise, because in my eyes any company that has rocketed thousands of percent logically has more downside potential than upside potential, as this is where the familiar trading range exists, which in turn drags strong price support lines lower.


However, I need to eat my hat, because Fitbug just seems to keep rising (N.B. I do hold shares in Fitbug, so I obviously have an upside bias in my view point).


The reasons why this company seems to be doing so well I think can be condensed down into a few points and these points below will only just scrape the surface of the company:



1. Fitbug has official contracts with Samsung and retails in Apple Online Stores Worldwide.


2. Fitbug has broken into the US, within stores such as: Walmart, Kmart, Target and Frys.


3. Fitbug has contracts for selling in Tesco, Sainsburys, Argos, Dixons and numerous other stores in the UK.


4. Fitbug has links with the huge insurer Prudential and other vitality players to offer their products.


5. Fitbug retails online through many outlets, but with the most notable one being Amazon, where the FItbug Orb has an average rating of four and a half stars (the Fitbit Flex only has four stars).


6. The lawsuit against Fitbit from Fitbug for trademark infringement looks as though it's likely to settle outside of court (statistically more than two thirds of civil law suits do), which could potentially provide Fitbug with restrictions on the sale of Fitbit products, but also provide an enormous sum of monetary compensation (at least $10,000,000, as seen on page 12, point number fifty-three  - download.html. Also, if this case is settled out of court, it will likely happen significantly sooner than the expected hearing date in February (12th December onwards).

More details regarding the timing of this case can be found here:

https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2013cv01418/264770/31/0.pdf?ts=1387033495


7. The Fitbug Orb is either sold out or is selling out very quickly in the UK retails stores for certain - I know this personally, because the large outlets I went into had out of stock signs above the item in question. In fact, the only reliably stocked place you can acquire one is from Amazon at present.


8. Christmas revenue will - in my opinion of course - be huge, because Fitbug's products retail for around 30-40% less than those of Fitbit, which is a hefty saving in two products that are in raw terms very similar, if not identical.


9. Tech companies aren't valued (and shouldn't be valued) purely from a numerical stand point, meaning that the current market capitalisation of only £25 million is, by the standards of other booming tech companies, a bit low, in my opinion. This is for any number of reasons pertaining to branding, patents, goodwill, etc. Let us not forget that WhatsApp sold for $22 billion to Facebook and that had never even made a profit.



I think that the ultimate reason for the success of Fitbug so far, is because the company has been breaking down the high walls of many popular consumer outlets to sell their products and while good products tend to sell themselves, these two factors combined (great products and excellent retailing of said products) look as though they will continue to push the company much higher in both the short and long term future.


Extra Reading:

Valuing Fitbug:
http://themaskedstocktrader.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/valuing-fitbug.html


All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Quindell - Short Interest Revealed:

Over the past couple of days I've received a lot of emails regarding the uncovering of Roble S.L - who now transpire to actually be a pawn in Tiger Global's box of chess pieces. This post is effectively the culmination of the interesting information in these various emails, which basically require no further input at my end, so I won't be analysing anything. Point number two is the most important one to look at, I hope you enjoy the show!


1. An image showing the proximity of Tiger Global's New York office, to Quindell's New York office:

2. Putting some pieces together:

• Now, Gotham City Research stated in their paper that they went to the QPP new york office, as it's a three minute walk away from Tiger Global's office, suggesting that Gotham City Research potentially are Tiger Global.

• Coatue, who also have a short on Quindell, also see to be Tiger cub members are also just around the corner.

• QPPSAG have discovered Fidelity are linked to a fund called "Gotham", which invested in Quindell and we know they lent the shares in Quindell out (NB: I [The Masked Stock Trader] have no direct proof of this point, so take do your own due diligence, etc).

• The Fidelity Fund called Gotham lent shares to Robel SL based in the Cayman islands and owned by Tiger Global.

• Gotham City research did the damming article and claimed to have walked to QPP offices.

• Coatue are three blocks away from Tiger Global and are also a tiger cub hedge fund.

Pinched from the FT.

Main players:

Fidelity, Tiger Global, Roble, Gotham and Coatue.

Sub-Players:

Tom Winnifrith, Lucien Miers, Dan McCrum (rumour is he was being paid by Ennismore to write a series of negative articles), Paul Scott, Richard Crow (cockney rebel) and an army of internet trolls spamming the public boards with lies.

3. Gotham City Research and Delaware:

The entity was formed on 13/2/2013 (Incorporation Date).
It is registered as an Limited Liability Company LLC entity and not a Corporation. 

Some point to note are:

1. Delaware have no state taxes for LLCs, so many people choose to form new companies in Delaware for this reason, even if the owners are resident in another state.

2. The LLC provides a personal liability shield in the event the entity runs ups debs which it cannot pay. 

3. The LLC has to re-register every year with the state. It has to pay $250 of taxes to do this. They have to pay this on or before June 1st each year. 

4. An LLC is not required to file an Annual Report. 

5. It is possible to purchase online the STATUS of this company for $10, but no other information is available.

6. A corporation would have to submit annual accounts and pay a franchise tax. As Gotham are an LLC they do not have to do this.

7. The Resident Agents Address is the address you sent your LEGAL PAPER work to in the event you want to SUE them. They are the official delivery address for all LEGAL paper work, tax information etc. The Registered Agent will be the person to receive the s**t storm of prosecution paper work that will no doubt be flying across the atlantic in the next month or so. GCR cannot say they have NOT received any paper work as delivery to the Registered Agent is exactly the same as delivering to GCR. It is the responsibility of the registered agent to forward on any paper work.

4. Roble's Cayman Island Registry:

5. Roble and Coaue:

Just reading about Chase Coleman (Mr Roble) on Bloomberg and he is mate with the guy who runs Coatue both trained under the same man no collusion eh? "Coleman’s fund is one of three Tiger cubs that made the top 25 in the Bloomberg Markets ranking. Philippe Laffont’s New York-based Coatue Management LLC ranked No. 10, with a return of 16.9 percent. Laffont, who worked for Robertson at Tiger before starting Coatue in 1999, also invests in technology."

PeerTV - A Great Trading Opportunity:

I think PeerTV (PTV) has a lot of potential for a technical trade over the coming few days and below are listed my reasons behind this trade, combined with my personal targets for the trade:


1. Resistance.

- There is very little price resistance in this share until 0.5p (giving a resistance free upside of more than 100% from these levels) and if the small amount of resistance at 0.5p can be broken there's no real resistance until 1p and after this a retest of the May price high at 2.45p looks achievable.


2. Support.

- One real beauty of this share is that the gradual fall in the share price since May provides good rising support for every intrepidly downside retest we see, which will help to preserve upwards momentum in this move.


3. RSI.

- The move through the mid point at 50 on the RSI is a telling buy signals that's often used by Zak Mir and I've had a lot of success in following this particular move, as the indicator seems to give more guidance on the daily charts min the middle of the indicator's range and not at the extreme ends.

- Any downside move I would expect to retest the RSI 50 level and then either make a break to the downside or upside from there, which will provide us with some ideas later on regarding where we place our (imaginary or real) stop orders.

- To clarify my last point, I'm not a fan of using actual stop orders in stocks outside of the SETS system, because I think that market makers intentionally try and trigger them.


4. Slow Stochastics.

- Currently writing a quantitative program that has a lot to do with stochastic indicators, I like to feel I'm reasonably knowledgeable here and in this case, we've been given a great set up from the slow stochastic oscillator, which moved from %K=1.61%, %D=3.54% to where it closed on Friday at K=47.63%, D=27.05%.

- The important thing to note with stochastic is the level of divergence between these two lines, which with that jump was an awful lot and this implies that there is a lot of upwards momentum in this share that's yet to be expressed and only when this begins to fall below 90 after that extreme of the indicator has been reached, will I begin to reanalyse that position's value in the market.


5. Fundamentals.

- I don't know a lot about the fundamentals here, but what I will say is that currently being only valued at around £1.4m, this company has a vast amount of upside potential based upon the value of the contracts it has and the contracts it looks as it if it soon to be signing.

- Fundamental value I find is very useful for ensuring positive sentiment is with you on a trade and at a brief glance there seems to be a lot of it here.


6. Simple Moving Averages.

- I use fibonacci moving averages for my technical trades and again, being an aspect of the quantitative trading that I'm part of, I hope can describe the current situation well:

- The shorter term averages (3, 5, 8 and 13 day averages) all crossed on Thursday, giving a big buy signal, this was then followed by a day of consolidation that we saw on Friday and then the continued move upwards in these averages this morning confirmed another significant move to the upside.


UPDATE:

I closed this position in accordance with my personal risk management strategies (+60%) and then reopened a long position later in the morning after the initial rise to 0.45p and the consolidation around the 0.35p.

In my opinion (not to be used as trading advice), intra-daily, the technical indicators used above currently suggest (as I write this) that a move to 0.45p and above is still on the cards for today (17th November). A break above 0.45p should lead to a quick advance to 0.5p

Continuing in the same spirit as that last paragraph, I sold my second position out at 0.49p.




All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader

Quindell - The Stages of Growth.

A quick post today,


Now, the idea for this post isn't original, as I pinched the premise from a bulletin board post that was emailed my way! Nevertheless, I feel that it's a good representation of where Quindell is relative to its past-self.


I'm going to begin this "story" (for want of a less patronising word) back on November 15th 2013, when news was released to the market regarding the oversubscribed placing "to fund growth opportunities" for £200m.


From here I'm going to allow the table below to express the majority of the story (these are figures that have either been plucked from RNS' or the Quindell website:

Position in Year	Gross Revenue/£m	Total Cash Position/£m
2013 H1	163.3	35.2
2013 Q3	92.1	23.3
2013 FY	380.1	199.6
2014 Q1	162.9	150
2014 H1	357.3	85
2014 Q3	200	78.9

Now, the danger here is that we forget a couple of things prior to our analysis of these figures:

1. Companies cost money to run and this constantly eats into your cash position.

2. Quindell paid off some £6.5m of debt between the H1 and Q3 results, which again, eats into cash.

3. These revenue figures aren't consistently accumulative in this table, so if a low number for one quarter sticks out you need to add it to its previous half yearly result to put it in a yearly perspective (comparing quarters and halves can get confusing if you're not switched on). 

Analysis:

1. We know there's a time lag of between 6-9 months on the majority of the contracts that Quindell takes on and this goes a long way to explain the falling cash position from the 2013 FY results onwards, because obviously the company will still have outwards expenditure in this period of lag.

2. Quindell became cashflow positive around Q4 of 2013, which means that in the next FY results (to be released in January I think) should be significantly stronger in terms of cash - especially if Quindell continue their ability to outperform their own targets!

3. To make this story easier to understand, let's pretend that the cash position in 2014 H1 and Q3 is the same (we're effectively discounting the debt they paid off). If we do this it then becomes clear that we're at the end of this lagging period and we can expect a significantly improved cash position in the next set of results (along with better profits, revenues, etc).

4. Thus, if you jump twelve months forward in your head, you can see that there's still a vast amount of potential for the company, which is simple not represented fairly in the current share price:

- With a market cap of just under £300m Quindell is currently worth less than half of the revenue it's expecting to take in the whole of 2014 (companies almost always trade a premium)! 

- When ordering UK listed stocks by PE ratio Quindell is around 38th out of all of them listed (although this is using Google's Stock Screener, which I think is a bit questionable, so I recommend you play around with it)!


https://www.google.co.uk/finance/stockscreener

Before I sign this off, I would implore people to read this explanation of the "sale and repurchase agreement", which everyone seems to be misunderstanding (possibly intentionally):

http://themaskedstocktrader.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/quindell-loan-agreement-what-is-repo.html

All the best,

The Masked Stock Trader