3 Predictions for This Week

Thanks for the extra hour, weekend. Do you accept returns?

I went out on a limb last week with mixed results.

• I figured that Groupon's (Nasdaq: GRPN) IPO would pop on Friday. This would have been a lay-up a few months ago, but the daily deals giant had to scale back its deal as investors grew weary of its lack of profitability and sluggish conversion trends. I was right. Underwriters priced Groupon's debut at $20, and the stock popped 31% higher on its first trading day.
• Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) posted its quarterly results on Tuesday morning, and I predicted that the stock would climb on the news. I was wrong. The satellite radio giant came in a little light on revenue and net subscriber additions, and Sirius XM shares slipped 3% on Tuesday.
• My third and final call was for dining reservations leader OpenTable (Nasdaq: OPEN) to climb after its quarterly report. OpenTable had beaten Wall Street profit targets every single quarter since going public more than two years ago, and the recent pessimism seemed unwarranted. Well, OpenTable's stock took an 11% hit on Thursday after the report. It merely met estimates, and it discontinued its Groupon-like daily deals program. The shares made back more than half of those losses on Friday, but my call was for Thursday specifically, so I'm down the full double-digit hit.

After getting two out of three right a week before, I only nailed one of my three calls last week.

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. Call of Duty will break initial sales records
We're now just hours from the midnight release of Activision Blizzard's (Nasdaq: ATVI) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. I'll go ahead and tap it as the country's record breaker for initial game sales.

This may seem like an easy call to make. The title currently belongs to last year's installment in the Call of Duty franchise. However, video game sales have been generally in a state of decline for three years. Casual gamers are moving on to cheaper social games and smartphone apps, forcing diehard gamers into battle on their own.

However, the sluggish gaming trends don't seem to apply to tent-pole releases. When a blockbuster comes out -- and this is as big a blockbuster as they get -- millions of trigger-finger gamers will fork over their $60 and call in sick to work or school on Tuesday.

2. SodaStream will rise on Wednesday
Even the once-bullish Jim Cramer has grown weary of the volatility in shares of SodaStream (Nasdaq: SODA). As one of the handful of IPOs over the past year that continue to trade well above their original debut prices, the company behind the popular home-based beverage maker system is sorely misunderstood.

There are folks that call SodaStream a fad, which seems strange for a company that's been around for more than 100 years. There are also plenty of bears arguing that the stock is overvalued based on earnings estimates, yet they fail to realize that the analyst targets are in euros.

SodaStream reports its quarterly results on Wednesday morning, and I predict that the stock will climb on the news.

There are just too many bears out there. The stock has shed more than half of its value since its summertime peak, and there are more than 6.5 million shares sold short. The worrywarts can be right. The stock can tank on Wednesday if carbonator sales slip -- an early indicator that the craze may be dying down -- but there is already too much pessimism baked into these once-fizzy shares.

3. Green Mountain will close higher on Thursday
One of my best tricks to beating the market is finding stocks that perpetually land ahead of the prognosticators.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) is a perfect example. The Vermont-based company behind the Keurig one-cup brewers and single-portion K-Cups that fuel caffeinated kicks reports on Wednesday after the market close. Let's go over Green Mountain's performance since its IPO.

Source: Thomson Reuters.

Analysts see the java speedster earning $0.48 a share in its fiscal fourth-quarter report this week, more than twice the $0.22 a share it earned a year earlier.

There are plenty of notable bears growling at Green Mountain these days, and none more visibly than hedge fund legend David Einhorn.

However, the bearish thesis centers largely around accounting hiccups in the past and patent expirations in the future. In other words, even the bears aren't necessarily worried about the present -- and there's no reason that Green Mountain won't be posting yet another blowout quarter.

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 SodaStream International and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to My Watchlist to track upcoming news.