Sony Stocks
Cyber Defense Stocks a Boon for Investors in 2015?
By George Leong for Daily Gains Letter | Feb 13, 2015
The growth of the Internet has been one of the top advancements in history. But with this good news comes the darker side, namely cyber attacks that cost billions of dollars in damages along with non-monetary impacts. Millions of Americans have gotten their personal data stolen over the past few years, and it will likely only worsen. There’s also the threat of cyber attacks on key government and intellectual assets.
But with the threat also comes a potential investment opportunity in cyber defense.
President Obama just requested another $14.0 billion to improve the government’s safeguards. Could you imagine foreign threats hacking into our nuclear installations and military? The threat is real.
Think about what happened to Sony Corporation (NYSE/SNE), when its database was broken into, costing the company about $100 million. There were also the major breaches to The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE/HD) and Target Corporation (NYSE/TGT). And just last week, the database at Anthem, Inc. (NYSE/ANTM), the country’s second-largest insurer, was hacked, impacting its 80 million clients.
Cyber Security Stocks a Boon to Investors in 2015?
Cyber security companies are attracting focus as an investment opportunity. The catalyst that will drive up the share price of these stocks will be security attacks that continue to plague companies and governments around the world and cause excessive monetary damage.
In the mid-cap area, an investment opportunity to look at is FireEye, Inc. (NASDAQ/FEYE), which was just hired by Anthem to help protect against further attacks. The company has a current share price of around $39.00.
FireEye has been a favorite on Wall Street following its debut in September 2013. The stock … Read More
Microsoft Struggling Compared to Apple; Still Worth the Investment?
By George Leong for Daily Gains Letter | Feb 2, 2015
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ/MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella must be envying Tim Cook of Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ/AAPL) these days after the staggering blowout quarter by Apple last week. Nadella, while a vast improvement over former head Steve Ballmer, is finding out how difficult it is to transform a business to the mobile side after years of the company doing very little.
Just when I thought maybe Nadella would succeed where Ballmer failed, it has now become clear that Microsoft has many hurdles left in front of it. And that’s derailing attraction to the company from Wall Street and investors. The move away from the company’s traditional personal computer (PC) products and towards the hot mobile space, via its cloud-based “Office 365” and hardware, such as its “Surface” tablets, has been much slower than many had been hoping for.
For shareholders, it has been a roller coaster ride, with the stock recently crashing to the low $40.00 level after trading at a 52-week high of $50.05 in November 2014. The stock has advanced inline with the S&P 500, which is disappointing for this former Wall Street darling.
Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com
The situation must be bad, as even the insiders are selling at a frantic pace, with 40.37 million shares dumped over 16 transactions during the past six months. Insiders bought only 2.97 million shares. When insiders sell, it immediately raises a red flag.
So while companies, such as Apple, Google Inc. (NASDAQ/GOOG), and Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ/FB), are all moving forward with a focused mobile strategy that is paying off, I believe Microsoft will continue to search for that sweet spot. But it … Read More
