(Bloomberg) -- Investors are piling into stocks of bankrupt companies, wagering against a court process that routinely wipes out shareholders.Car renter Hertz Global Holdings Inc., oil driller Whiting Petroleum Corp. and retailer J.C. Penney Co. are among companies that have seen their shares more than double in recent trading sessions despite being in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a process that allows companies to keep operating while working out a plan to repay creditors.“I have always thought people have a psychological urge to buy stocks at a low price,” said Kirk Ruddy, a former bankruptcy claims trader. Retail investors may be buying big names they recognize without realizing how rare it is for shareholders to get anything back in bankruptcy, he said.“If you look at the markets in general, people don’t know where to put their money. They are like ‘Hey, I’m going to try that $1 stock,”’ said Ruddy, who now works...
It's been nearly a year since Wall Street firm Canaccord first recommended Slack Technologies (WORK) stock as a "buy" with a $40 price target. With Slack trading at $34 at the time (mid-July 2019), and Canaccord saying it would rise 18%, that buy recommendation sort of made sense. But it seemed to make progressively less and less sense as Slack stock slid lower and lower, ultimately bottoming at close to a 50% loss on March 16, 2020. Along the way, Canaccord cut its price target on the stock to $25 a share -- but maintained its "buy" rating, and kept on maintaining both the rating and the price target as Slack stock shot up to nearly $40, about a year after the initial recommendation, which was the price Canaccord had predicted it would fetch.Now, Canaccord is fiddling around the edges once again.Responding to Slack stock's sell-off Friday, in the wake of...
(Bloomberg) -- Huawei Technologies Co. owns the most patents on next-generation 5G technology, ensuring the Chinese company will get paid despite Trump administration efforts to erase it from the supply chain, according to a new study.The study by two research firms identified the inventions most closely connected to the 5G standards and found that six companies owned more than 80% -- Huawei, Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., Nokia Oyj, Ericsson AB and Qualcomm Inc., the only U.S.-based company in the group.That may be awkward for President Donald Trump, whose administration has launched a global effort to shut out Huawei, accusing the Chinese company of being a security threat. The administration has launched a number of salvos, including a banned the sale of any silicon made with U.S. know-how that is hurting the Chinese company’s aspirations to grow in cutting-edge fields.“Even if they hire some other company to build the 5G...
(Bloomberg) -- In all the hullabaloo of OPEC+ prolonging the deepest production cuts in history, it’s easy to overlook ominous signals for oil prices -- and the wider economy -- that are emanating from the diesel market.The world’s largest crude oil producers agreed on Saturday that they would extend collective output curbs, effectively keeping 1/10th of supply off the market for another month. While the measures may be tightening the global crude market, potentially driving prices higher, they do almost nothing to address grim margins that refineries are earning when selling diesel, one of the most important petroleum products that the industry churns out.“The world’s awash with diesel,” said Alan Gelder, vice president for refining, chemicals and oil markets at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie Ltd. “There’s just loads of it everywhere.”Away from Europe, where diesel often powers cars, the fuel is also widely consumed by industry: things like freight to move...
June opened with a bang in the markets following positive news on the jobs front. According to the latest Department of Labor report, U.S. employers added 2.5 million people to their payrolls in May, pushing the unemployment rate down to 13%. For perspective, analysts were expecting the BLS to report job losses of 8.3 million and an unemployment rate of nearly 20%. As societies and states return to a more normal functioning, traders are going to find that some stocks are particularly well positioned to take advantage of post-pandemic conditions. Right now, Wall Street’s analyst corps is working to tag just which stock investors should bet on.We used the TipRanks database to pull up the details on three stocks which the analysts describe as their 'top picks.' Let's take a closer look. Nomad Foods, Ltd. (NOMD)We’ll start in the food industry. Frozen foods have long been a staple in home kitchens,...
(Bloomberg) -- Chesapeake Energy Corp. is preparing a potential bankruptcy filing that could hand control of one of the leading lights of the U.S. shale revolution to senior lenders, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The dwindling options for a powerhouse that once rivaled Exxon Mobil Corp. for title of king of American natural gas comes after Chief Executive Officer Doug Lawler’s 7-year effort to untangle the financial and legal legacies of Chesapeake’s late founder, Aubrey McClendon.Lawler’s denouement, in turn, would signal the deep peril facing a shale industry largely built according to McClendon’s blueprint for Chesapeake: amassing incredible debts to pursue aggressive drilling programs that ultimately unearthed too little treasure to reward investors.Gordon Pennoyer, a spokesman for Chesapeake, declined to comment. The talks with lenders come almost seven years to the date that Lawler assumed the helm at the Oklahoma City-based company at the behest of Carl Icahn and...
