Year: 2015

Zenbanx , a very good deal , update

Hamilton

Zenbanx oct 24 2015

zenbanx oct 24 2015 2

Again one of these pop-up advertisements popped up on my screen the other day. As I have always admired the gentleman behind the “save your money” Ing Bank stuff, I took a little time to read through this.

In financial services as almost everywhere else it is all about branding. I you are thinking of cowboys running after cows with hot irons to plant a big Z on their derrieres, you have caught the essence of branding spot on. It is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. The “target” group in this case are the citizens of the World. Not sure, but I think I might qualify having lived, and in most cases, worked, in Holland, Indonesia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Most of the rest I travelled to. But I do not use a mobile device.

   Marketing is a tricky business. One of the Saatchi brothers was my neighbour in St. John’s Wood in London. They were  extremely successful but one or two missteps brought them to their knees. You have to capture the mood and get it perfectly right.

   As a kid in the early 60-ties we used to drive from Istanbul to Holland, at times through countries that were then behind the iron curtain. On one of these occasions we drove through Stuttgart in order to pick-up a spanking new Mercedes. You know these cars from the star that is on the hood, you get so accustomed to it that you even wonder if the car can drive without it. No marketing type would dream of taking it off.

As we frequently drove the hairpins of the Alps, my father bought an air horn to compete with the many trucks. We were going to install it ourselves while staying at Schloss Itter.  An air horn has a relatively heavy electric motor and consequently uses two circuits, one to switch it on and another to carry the high Amp. load. The relay is where the two connect.  Zenbanx, being the brand part, is the equivalent of the switch circuit. The heavy duty stuff is farmed out to a partner that has the bank credentials.

So how does this work?  You open an account (no cost), put in $150 + and go X-mas shopping using your debit card (no point of sale costs) and buy 3 separate items of $50 +. Any combination will do. In January you will receive a credit for $50.  During the ride you get 1.5% interest. That is a certain return of 30+% between Thanksgiving (Can. Oct 12.) and the New Year. This is good only for the first 5000 new clients. Should Zenbanx succeed, it will cost them, roughly, 5000 X $50 = $250,000.  Where does it come from? I guess I don’t get the “zin” of it but nevertheless wish them all the best.

VRX update

Hamilton

vrx oct 21 2015 b

We have not liked this company for a long time and recently reiterated our concern in various blogs. In the last one we referred to this stock as a pure momentum play, that is a mindless desire  to own this stock purely and solely on the basis that there will be a greater fool around the corner. Because nobody knows why they own it, there are enormous air pockets and huge daily moves are possible and even likely.

Today the guys and gals at Citron research claim that they have found the smoking gun and compared the stock to Enron and have adjusted their target price to $50. The full report is available at http://www.citronresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Valeant-Philador-and-RandO-final-a.pdf

Some of the interesting points from the report are that you should be suspicious of companies that buy or create subsidiaries that are consolidated in the financials. This creates a whole host of possibilities to commit a lot of different sins that are not readily apparent. Also be wary of CEO’s that have spent a lifetime in protected environments like think-tanks or consulting firms and then, with zero real experience, jump in to run the business.

We are not able to verify the correctness of the above report but our own first target was a wave 4 of previous degree level around $120. EW does not concern itself with fundamentals.

The low this afternoon, so far at least, was $116,90 which is below our first target.

DOW and S&P, this is it?

Hamilton

dow oct 18 2015s&P oct 18 2015

Exactly a week ago we called for 17218 for the Dow and 2033 for the S&P. The calculation was based on phi, that is a 61.85% retracement of wave 1 down. Waves 2 can retrace a lot more than that but this is nevertheless a good level to work with. As it happens the S&P closed on a high and close level of 2033, a bull’s eye. The Dow reached a high of 17220 and closed at 17216. The two average 17218 but nevertheless we would like to apologize. unreservedly, to our readers for missing the mark by so much. We promise not to make such reckless mistakes in the future and hope that this error did not cause too much confusion.