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How Bitcoin Finished An Astonishing Year

Posted on January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 by Matt Thalman

If you look at a chart of Bitcoin during 2017, it really only went higher during the first 11 months. The in the middle of November it was as if the cryptocurrency was strapped to a rocket ship as the price shot higher until mid-December.

While early investors made a killing on Bitcoin in 2017, the real excitement all happened in December. Bitcoin started 2017 at $996, began the month of December at $10,500, then peaked on December 17, 2017, at $19,206, but ended the year at just over $14,000. When Bitcoin hit its peak, it was up nearly 100% for just the month of December, but even after falling $5,000 in only 14 days, it still ended the month up more than 30%.

While Bitcoin may have only risen 30% in December, it increased more than 1,350% in 2017, with nearly 400% of that gain coming in December and 800% of its coming after November 1st. So what happened in the last two months of the year that caused the price of Bitcoin to rocket higher, in such as short period? Continue reading "How Bitcoin Finished An Astonishing Year" →

HealthEquity - Continued Double-Digit Revenue Growth

Posted on January 8, 2018January 11, 2018 by Noah Kiedrowski

Introduction

I’ve written a handful of articles highlighting HealthEquity Inc. (NASDAQ:HQY) in 2017 as a great growth play in the rapidly growing Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) space. HealthEquity just reported beats on both the top and bottom line, beating revenue and EPS estimates by $1.39 million and $0.04, respectively. It’s noteworthy to point out that revenue was up 30% year-over-year for its Q3 FY18 quarter. HealthEquity is a major player in the HSA secular growth market and has continued to gain market share over the years. HealthEquity has posted annual revenue growth of 42%, 44%, and 41% when comparing FY14 to FY15, FY15 to FY16 and FY16 to FY17, respectively. If consensus estimates are accurate for FY18, revenue growth will come in at 27% when comparing FY17 to FY18 (Figure 1). The sustainability of this growth will likely move in lock-step with the growth in the HSA market in addition to optimizing revenues extracted from the investments within these accounts via offering investment advising, collecting fees from the investment line-up and its newly announced 401k with paired HSA offerings. I feel that HealthEquity will continue to post strong growth as it services the double-digit HSA growth market and manages more assets and investments within these accounts. As HealthEquity rolls out additional products such as the launch of its 401k offerings paired with HSA accounts, HSA members elect to invest money within these accounts and accounts age; revenue will continue to accelerate with stock appreciation.

Figure 1 – Fiscal year-over-year growth in revenue, number of HSA accounts and custodial assets
Continue reading "HealthEquity - Continued Double-Digit Revenue Growth" →

Weekly Futures Recap With Mike Seery

Posted on January 7, 2018January 6, 2018 by The INO.com Team

We've asked Michael Seery of SEERYFUTURES.COM to give our INO readers a weekly recap of the Futures market. He has been Senior Analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets.

Michael frequently appears on multiple business networks including Bloomberg news, Fox Business, CNBC Worldwide, CNN Business, and Bloomberg TV. He is also a guest on First Business, which is a national and internationally syndicated business show.

Gold Futures

Gold futures in the February contract are currently trading at 1,322 an ounce after settling last Friday in New York at 1,309 up about $11 for the trading week continuing its remarkable bullish run over the last month as we have now traded higher for the last 11 consecutive sessions. Gold prices bottomed out on December 12th at 1,238 and have now rallied substantially right near a four-month high. I am not involved in this market as the chart structure is terrible due to the recent run-up in prices all because of the U.S. dollar has now hit a three-month low supporting gold and the precious metals across the board. At this point, I am very reluctant to buy gold as I think it is overextended and if you take a look at the RSI indicator, it's in overbought territory. It's remarkable in my opinion that gold has rallied this much despite the fact that the U.S. stock market has hit an all-time high every day this week & looks to move even higher in 2018 in my opinion. As I've talked about in many previous blogs, I do believe that commodities are extremely cheap at this point. If you're looking to buy gold, I would wait for some type of retracement around the 1,300 level as patience is the key to trading sometimes. However, the trend is to the upside as we are trading above the 20 and 100-day moving average, but I think prices are ahead of themselves.

TREND: HIGHER
CHART STRUCTURE: POOR
VOLATILITY: INCREASING
Continue reading "Weekly Futures Recap With Mike Seery" →

Stocks Shake Off Lackluster Jobs Data

Posted on January 5, 2018 by The INO.com Team

Hello traders everywhere. U.S. job growth slowed more than expected in December due to a decline in retail employment, but a pick-up in monthly wage gains points to labor market strength that could pave the way for the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates in March.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 148,000 jobs last month after surging by 252,000 in November, the Labor Department said on Friday. Retail payrolls decreased by 20,300 in December, the largest drop since March, despite reports of a strong holiday shopping season.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at a 17-year low of 4.1%. Economists had forecasted payrolls rising by 190,000 in December. The economy needs to create 75,000 to 100,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population.

Job growth surged in October and November after being held back in September by back-to-back hurricanes, which destroyed infrastructure and homes and temporarily dislocated some workers in Texas and Florida.

Key levels to watch next week: Continue reading "Stocks Shake Off Lackluster Jobs Data" →

2017's Best Performing Non-Leveraged ETFs

Posted on January 5, 2018January 4, 2018 by Matt Thalman

The stock market had an amazing year in 2017, with the S&P 500 increasing more than 19.9%, but some Exchange Traded Funds performed substantially better. Most investors wouldn’t expect a large fund to outperform the S&P 500, unless they were using leverage, taking on outsized risk through trading in volatility, or investing entirely in international/developing markets.

But, surprisingly there were a few ETF’s that not only outperformed the S&P 500 but crushed it while just being mildly risky. Below is a list of a few of them and then an explanation as to why they performed well and whether or not their hot streak can continue in 2018.

Best Performing ETFs of 2017

While this list was intended to help investors find ETF’s which offered lower risk than one would find with leveraged ETF’s, the best performer still had a little more risk than most investors should be comfortable with. The outsized risk with ARK WEB x.0 ETF (ARKW) is that its largest holding is in the Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC), which makes up 6.71% of the fund. The next largest is Amazon.com (AMZN) making up 6.08% of the fund. Twitter (TWTR), Athenahealth (ATHN), 2U (TWOU), Tesla (TSLA), Netflix (:NFLX), NVIDIA (NVDA), Alphabet (GOOG)(GOOGL), and JD.com (JD) round out the fund top ten holdings. GBTC’s performance in 2017 was primarily the reason ARKW crushed the overall market, but moving forward investors shouldn’t bet on that continuing to happen.

Ever since the Bitcoin futures began trading on the CBOE and CME, the price of Bitcoin has stabilized. If you are considering buying ARKW, just know that you are taking on more risk than a typical ETF due to its exposure to Bitcoin, but maybe that is why you want to own ARKW. Personally, though if I were thinking about investing in Bitcoin, I would just invest directly into the crypto-currency, not muddy the waters with GBTC due to its pricing. Continue reading "2017's Best Performing Non-Leveraged ETFs" →

Introduction

Gold Futures

It’s not goodbye, it’s hello Magnifi!