I went out on a limb last week with mixed results.
- I banked on Activision Blizzard
setting a new record for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. It did. The leading video game maker posted a record $400 million in first-day sales through North America and the United Kingdom alone, shattering the franchise's old record of $360 million last year.(Nasdaq: ATVI) -
SodaStream
reported on Wednesday morning, and I predicted that the stock would move higher on the news. Well, it was a blowout quarter for the company behind the home beverage systems. Shares of SodaStream traded as much as 16% higher, but began to slip during a dreary trading day that saw the Nasdaq fall by nearly 4%. It still clung to a 6% gain by the end of the day.(Nasdaq: SODA) - I'm no java junkie, but I am one of the few fans of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
these days. Given all of the pessimism surrounding the shares since hedge fund hero David Einhorn KO'd the K-Cup company last month, I figured that it was due for a bounce on earnings. I blew it big time here. Green Mountain posted a rare quarterly miss, failing to effectively debunk Einhorn's bearish thesis.(Nasdaq: GMCR)
I did get two out of three right, but the one I missed was a doozy.
Let me once again whip out my trusty, dusty, and occasionally accurate crystal ball to make three calls that may play out over the next few trading days.
1. GameStop's stock will fall on Thursday
Given Activision Blizzard's record-setting Tuesday last week, it's easy to warm up to the video game industry again.
Don't do that. We're now three years into a slump outside of the biggest franchises. We're already starting to see cracks in GameStop
GameStop has a compelling ecosystem of reward points and discount clubs that get die-hard gamers to justify paying full retail prices for their games. Encouraging trade-ins for in-store credit -- and then selling those trade-ins right back to different gamers at juicy markups -- is brilliant. However, this is still a model that is sorely susceptible to both its sluggish specialty and the shift to digital distribution.
There's a stronger chance that its earnings report on Thursday morning will be bad rather than good, so I'm going to go with a negative market reaction on the results.
2. Amazon.com will be tightlipped about Kindle Fire sales
Tuesday's debut of Amazon.com's
Taiwan's usually reliable DigiTimes is reporting that Amazon has increased its Kindle Fire orders from suppliers twice, and all it has to go on for now is the level of preorders trickling in. If there was ever a time for Amazon to shout the success of its Kindle Fire from the rooftops with an actual initial sales report -- the way that gadget darling Apple
It won't happen. Amazon may put out a glowing press release later in the week, gushing about record sales for a new Kindle introduction or how far along digital books have come in outselling physical books, but Amazon won't deliver an actual number here -- even though it should.
3. NetEase will close higher on Thursday
Shares of Chinese online gaming pioneer NetEase.com
The news is probably true, but we can't ignore that NetEase is a serial estimate thumper.
One of my best tricks to beating the market is finding stocks that perpetually land ahead of the prognosticators. Let's go over NetEase's past year of earnings reports.
EPS est. |
EPS |
Surprise |
|
---|---|---|---|
Q2 2011 | $0.79 | $0.91 | 15% |
Q1 2011 | $0.71 | $0.86 | 21% |
Q4 2010 | $0.70 | $0.83 | 19% |
Q3 2010 | $0.67 | $0.63 | 6% |
Source: Reuters.
Most of the earnings out of China's dot-com companies this season have been solid, so there's little reason to expect NetEase's impressive streak of market-thumping results to end. Wednesday night's third-quarter report should give the stock a well-deserved bounce.
Well, that's three predictions right there. Let's see how I fare this week.
If you want to see how these market calls pan out, consider adding NetEase.com , GameStop, and Amazon.com to My Watchlist to track upcoming news.