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Showing posts with label stocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stocks. Show all posts

Donald Trump is Avoiding Conflict of Interest By Selling All His Stocks Including Apple and Google


Amid concerns that the president-elect’s holdings are a conflict of interest.

Donald Trump has ditched his stakes in Apple, Google, J.P. Morgan Chase, Nike, and Microsoft, a spokesperson for the president-elect said Tuesday.





The investment moves, which included selling shares of not only those companies, but all of his public traded shares, appear to be part of the president-elect’s effort to remove some of the many conflicts of interest Trump will have to tackle as president.
Trump transition spokesperson Jason Miller told reporters that the real estate mogul made the stock sales in June. The disclosure came on a call with reporters after one asked about Trump’s stake in Boeing—a company that Trump criticized on Twitter Tuesday.
Critics have argued that Trump’s stock holdings could be a conflict of interest for the president-elect after he steps in to the White House on Jan. 20. The president-elect held an interest in several financial institutions including Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, as well as energy companies such as Halliburton and ExxonMobil. Those holdings have worried onlookers, who say that it could skew the president-elect’s stance of Wall Street regulation and climate change. Trump had already gotten criticism for owning a stake in Energy Transfer Partners, the company trying to develop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
It’s unclear when exactly Trump sold out of those holdings, though the S&P 500 was up roughly 2% at the beginning of June, before falling following the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union on June 24.
Granted, Trump had a relatively small fraction of his overall wealth in the stock market, according to May filings with the Federal Election Commission. Roughly $40 million of his estimated $4 billion net worth was invested in the stock market, many of which were large-cap, value stocks, which generally do better than others when the market drops. But it also means that he hasn’t benefitted from the so-called Trump Bump. The stock market is up over 3% since Trump was elected president.
The bulk of Trump’s wealth is still tied up in his real estate development company, which will continue to create conflicts for the president-elect, and be an issue for critics.
Here were Trump’s 14 biggest stock holdings, according to the May filing, including shares of companies that Trump criticized on the campaign trail. (Campaign finance disclosure laws only require candidates give a range of value for their investments.)
14. Alphabet: $100,000 to $200,000
13. Caterpillar: $100,000 to $200,000
12. Phillips 66: $100,000 to $200,000
11. Celgene: $100,000 to $250,000
10. Gilead Sciences: $100,000 to $250,000
9. Visa: $100,000 to $251,000
8. General Electric: $100,000 to $250,000
7. Johnson and Johnson: $100,000 to $250,000
6. Nike: $100,000 to $250,000
5. McKesson: $100,000 to $250,000
4. J.P. Morgan Chase: $100,000 to $251,000
3. PepsiCo: $150,000 to $350,000
2. Microsoft: $300,000 to $600,000
1. Apple: $600,000 to $1.251 million
Trump is also expected to discuss his business holdings, as well as plans for the Trump Organization, at a Dec. 15 news conference. Trump has said he plans to turn over operations of his company to his adult children, though he has not given details on that transition.









The Top 4 Technology Stocks to Buy Instead of Amazon or Facebook for 2017


Semiconductor and cybersecurity stocks are poised for growth—and relatively cheap.

The weeks before Thanksgiving brought a cornucopia of good news to tech investor Paul Wick. Five companies he owned in the Columbia Seligman Communications and Information Fund were acquired in rapid succession as an M&A wave swept the semiconductor industry—a slice of the technology sector to which Wick has dedicated nearly half of his $4.4 billion fund. Meanwhile, shares in the Silicon Valley–based portfolio manager’s biggest holding, LAM Research, hit an all-time high. “Yet there’s still considerable upside,” says Wick. “We’re more bullish about the semi­conductor industry than we are about software or the Internet sector.






Technology, though one of the most profitable and fastest-growing S&P 500 sectors, also tends to be relatively expensive. And investors are jittery about how President Trump’s policies might ­affect some of the largest players: After Facebook  , Amazon  , Netflix , and Google   sold off in the wake of the election, DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach advised investors “to stay away from these things in a big way.” But investors like Wick are finding exceptions to that ­sentiment—particularly in less glamorous but no less important corners of the industry.
Though it might seem imprudent to recommend a stock that’s already risen 35% this year, LAM Research   still trades at 13 times its 2017 estimated earnings. That means the stock trades at a 21% discount to the S&P 500 and is 18% cheaper than the technology sector. (For what it’s worth, LAM’s run pales beside that of the S&P 500’s best-performing stock in the first 11 months of 2016, the chipmaker Nvidia , whose stock has almost tripled.)
LAM doesn’t make the chips themselves, but rather equipment that companies like Samsung (one of its largest customers) use to put “flash” memory into semiconductors that are used in everything from iPhones to fitness trackers to Tesla  cars. Flash memory—so called because it processes data faster and with less heat than traditional hard disk drives—has become essential in enabling companies like Apple   to make its MacBooks more powerful and smaller at the same time, while allowing companies like Amazon and Spotify to retrieve music from their massive cloud libraries instantaneously.
Historically, LAM’s stock has traded at a discount because its earnings “tend to have a lot of wiggle,” fluctuating depending on electronics’ product cycles, says USAA’s head of equities John Toohey, who is also a fan of the stock. But for the past three years LAM has grown consistently, increasing sales at a rate of 18% annually and averaging earnings growth of 56%. Wick expects that robust growth to continue in 2017, as the accelerating pace of innovation keeps semiconductor foundries buzzing: “There is no such thing as a semiconductor cycle anymore,” he says. Plus, LAM pays a dividend yielding nearly 2%—and with almost two-thirds of its cash offshore, it could benefit from a potential tax-repatriation holiday in the U.S.
fun_earning_growth
As the number of devices connected to the Internet has expanded, so has concern over how to keep that data safe. Spending on cybersecurity equipment, including firewalls, was on pace to grow about 13% in 2016, to $10.6 billion, Gartner says, but that rate is expected to slow to 8% over the next few years. Still, Palo Alto Networks  , which makes state-of-the-art security systems known as next-generation firewalls, is growing its sales about four times as fast. “They’re really on the cutting edge to help people protect their infrastructure,” says Margaret Vitrano, portfolio manager of the $4 billion ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Fund. Although ups and downs in businesses’ cybersecurity spending can mean volatility for Palo Alto’s earnings and its stock, the company expects to grow revenue 31% next fiscal year, making its 2017 estimated P/E of 49 look fairly reasonable.
Elsewhere in cybersecurity, Wick likes Check Point Software Technologies , a cheaper option (a P/E of 17). Founded in Israel in the pre-dotcom-boom 1990s, Check Point has proved to be “much more shareholder-friendly” than some of its younger peers and social media companies, Wick says; the company has bought back stock from shareholders for 13 straight years through 2016.
Other investors are rethinking what it means to be a tech stock—finding opportunities in other industries where companies are using technology to make over their business models. Henry Ellenbogen, who manages the $16.3 billion T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund, points to Vail Resorts   . Once just an elite place to ski in Colorado, Vail has adopted a subscription model for lift tickets the way Salesforce   has done for software and startup ClassPass has done for yoga and spinning classes: Think of it as a season’s pass with unlimited access to 13 different mountains in six states, Canada, and Australia. The company offers an app and harnesses its data to make chairlift lines more efficient—one reliable way to keep customers coming back. And Vail has been regularly acquiring new property and tucking it into its network, giving the company a scale that has helped Vail generate returns on capital unprecedented for its industry. The stock trades at a 2017 P/E ratio of 31, but Ellenbogen expects Vail to grow earnings organically 10% to 13% next year.
PICKS:
LAM Research   
Palo Alto Networks  
Check Point Software Technologies  
Vail Resorts  









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