“Take advantage of the Boeing snafu” again

This was the title I first introduced Boeing about 6 years ago in 2013 (see here). At that time, Boeing (BA) was quite unloved or even hated widely and it was trading around $80. Why? “......problems associated Boeing, the grounding of the problem-plagued 787 Dreamliner - the most technically advanced new model of commercial airplane manufactured by Boeing.” Sounds familiar? Indeed Boeing is facing a very similar problem today, worldwide grounding of its 737 Max 8 planes due to the recent two fatal accidents from this model within 5 months. It is a disastrous crisis for Boeing for sure and the negative impact will likely continue for a while before getting better.

Believe or not, while Boeing has being doing more than great in the past 6 years by jumping 5 times higher since I promoted it, the recent breakout over $400 was a bit too much too soon technically speaking. A clear negative divergence on its momentum indicator was sending a clear and loud warning that a turning point of the uptrend was coming. That was the time I told my friends to watch for the downside of Boeing at least for the near future and I was looking for a correction down toward the $375 level. Well, I couldn’t know what would happen to make the correction materialized, its TA did again prove the prudence of its forward-looking! So now BA has touched $362 within two days after the crisis breakout, shedding off about 15% from its peak. I’m hearing the talking heads calling for the bottom of BA correction and recommending to do bottom fishing. They could be right but I doubt. I won’t be surprised to see a fast rebound towards $400 after such a swift downdraft, but I think there is a high chance of at least another leg down to test its lows and it may even go down further towards $350ish level. At the moment, it is just too early to call where BA will land and for how long it will struggle. But it probably won’t be just in days to do a V shape recovery. Highly unlikely!

Having said that, my main point of this blog is to promote BA again to take advantage of the current snafu to pick up a few shares of Boeing for long term. Yes, it is not as cheap as it was 6 years ago but this sizable correction has knocked it down to a reasonably cheap valuation relatively speaking. The most important thing is that this crisis, regardless how abysmal it looks like for BA, is a temporary resolvable problem for a fundamentally solid company. This is a “dream comes true” moment for value investors as long as you have a long term horizon and are willing to hold it for long term. All the fundamental points I presented back in 2013 are still true in principle. The lower it goes, the better for BA investors! Remember what Buffett said: Be greedy when everyone is fearful!!

A hidden force is moving the market

The market has set a new record: 10 weeks straight-line up with Jan and Feb both in green. It is really an unbelievable bullish run, making a lot people believe that we are already out of the woods with a V shape recovery from the dismal Dec harsh selloff! As you all know, I'm not so bullish at least for now and expecting some sort of severe correction any moment by now. The past few days of weakness at closing may set up a stage for another leg down in the days ahead. Today I'm going to tell you another market force that is playing an increasingly important role in the market that may intensify the move for either direction. I'm pretty sure it is new to most of you. So keep reading 😅😎


Have you heard CTAs? It stems for Commodity Trading Advisors, which are a class of asset managers whose investing models are based on momentum algorithms. Their investment style is driven by "trigger" levels in the stock markets. So, when the market is rallying, it sends their models signals to buy stocks, and, when the market is falling, it sends the same models signals to sell stocks. In other words, they are purely TA driven largely based on the resistance or support lines such as major trend lines or moving averages. According to Wall Street Journal, CTAs have controlled assets worth $360 billion now, a humongous money animal that can easily move the market. The problem with CTAs is that it is mechanically operated based on algorithms without manual intervention, or said in another way, a blindly trend follower. When a signal triggered, it pours in billions of dollars to buy or pulls out billions by selling without thinking and that's often resulting in overkill for the underlying direction. That's likely one of the major reasons why the Dec selloff was so devastating and seemingly unstoppable. That's also likely why the past 10 weeks of bull run has been so strong and seemingly unstoppable as well.  My source tells me that a downtrend signal may have been triggered now for CTAs. If so, be prepared for more selloff!
If indeed we are going to see some sizable selloff, what are the most likely trend lines that CTAs may be looking at? For S&P, the obvious major resistance is around 2815ish. Since last Oct, four attempts of challenge have been made but failed to breakthrough it. After few days of bearish price action, the near term trend is turning to bearish. Today's closing was right around the 200 DMA which could be a support. So some buying early next week is likely but I don't think it will last. More likely it will turn down again quickly and moving towards its next support around the 50 DMA (2670ish and changing) but again may likely fail. The most possible strong support for this phase of correction is the trend line around 2600. If this support can hold, the chart will create a bullish inverse H&S pattern, which may pave the way for the next leg up for new all time highs later of the year. But if that line cannot hold, then watch for a low test all the way down towards 2350ish, an ugly prospect! It is too early to tell which is more likely as it all depends on the TA and the sentiment at that time. For now, be very cautious and don't be fooled by any near term rally. Its TA is really not looking pretty right now. Any rally will likely just be a bull trap for those who are doomed to buy highs and sell lows. Don't be one of them!  

The Best Stock to Own for this Season

If you live in the US, what is the thing you must do in the first few months of each year? It is annual routine that no one can get rid of and must do to avoid being either fined or even jail time if not done properly. Yes, the tax filing by April 15 each year for all who live here! Or even living abroad for US residents. This reminds me the time over 20 years ago when we were in the Europe. Our neighbor, Catherine, was an elderly lady, very kind and friendly and she gave us a lot of useful local information that helped us a lot when we initially settled down in the city. One topic she frequently talked about was her routine to prepare for the tax filing. It was a year long effort that I initially really couldn’t understand why so complicated. You see, there was no such thing as filing tax over 20 years ago in China and I didn’t have any sense what it meant to file tax back then. And that was the time I first heard such a saying that for everyone, only two things that no one can escape, tax and death. So Catherin was really my first mentor about tax. She was an American and that’s why she religiously started to prepare her tax filing in the first few months every year. It was really not an easy task for her as she did her tax filing all manually on paper. So the first 4 months were her busiest season with top priority! And then she said she had to use her computer to make a category where she had archived her tax-related documents throughout the year since at her age she could easily forget where to find them when needed. What a life as an American, I made a joke with her. “Don’t laugh at me. It is part of everyone’s life if you want to live peacefully. If you ever go to the States to live there, then you will become its slave and milking cow as well!” She calmly replied with smile. “It does not sound like a good place to live,” I was thinking at that time and thought I was lucky that I was not living in the US.

 

Fast forward, I’m now living in the US and I have to follow the same annual routine to file our tax regardless where we go. The complexity of the tax code is nothing less than a PhD thesis, I think. Since it is so complex, it is a daunting tax for most people if without some sort of help, either professionals like accountant or quite popularly the tax filing software or services. So you don’t need to be a PhD to understand that this is a good season for the tax-related business, right?!   And this year, it may turn out to be even the busiest tax season in decades. Why so? Well, 2018 was the first year after a significant reform made to the tax regulation in decades and substantially and numerous changes have been made for this tax season. For most Americans or residents, it is a massive headache and professional help is very much needed. One company is definitely on top of the list for tax service business. That’s H&R Block Inc. (NYSE: HRB). Probably many of you are very familiar with it and even have used it, including myself that I had used for many years in the past. In major shopping malls, you probably will see many HRB cubicles during the tax season. It started its business in 1955 and has over 12000 tax offices not only in the US but also around the globe. It sells software and allows users to file their taxes electronically with the support of accountants and other tax professionals. Virtually by any metrics, HRB is quite cheap at this price around $24, with a P/E just 8.08. Compare that to the industry average of 44.4 times. Its price to cash flow sits at just 6.47, which is nearly a third of the industry average of 18.76. Even more impressive, HRB is a good dividend grower with its current dividend of 4.18%. While HRB is definitely not a growth stock and don’t ever expect it to fly in the sky, it is clearly a seasonal stock price-wise. Logically it will be doing great to generate good revenues during the tax season and that may likely be reflected in the stock price each year around this time.

 

I’m sure no one likes paying tax. But H&R Block may turn out to be the only thing that may let you feel a little bit better about tax!

Here is how a big trouble starts....

“Honey, I saw a great deal with free money for us?”, I told my wife excitedly a while ago.

“Are you kidding me for free money these days?”, she replied.

“Oh, yep!”, I showed her what I saw from an ad. “It said I can walk away with $30K for agreeing to buy a car of $100K”. I’m so excited and I continued: “You see, you want to expand our deck for some time but we haven’t got enough budget for it. Now we will get the free money to do it!!”

So I went to the dealer, signed the purchasing agreement and then I asked for a check for the $30K before I was leaving. My plan was sort of genius, I was talking to myself. As soon as I got the money, I’d postpone the purchasing agreement till I have the money, while still keeping the $30K for my home improvement investment first. I felt really great till I got the answer from the selling manager, “Sir, have you already paid the car?”

“No. Why should I? I thought I could get the incentive first before I pay the car!” I relied quite confidently.

He looked at me like I was coming from the Mar, an extraterrestrial alien. “Sorry, Sir. If you really don’t know yet, this is quite a common sense that your incentive must be coming from your car purchase. Otherwise we would have go bankrupt pretty soon if every car purchaser could get the incentive without paying! I hope you do understand this!!”

By now, I almost fell off my chair as I must be looked extremely stupid without knowing this a real common sense. Even a high school student must know this but not stupid me. Looking around, apparently everyone was trying very hard to keep their laugh and scoff unnoticeable. My god, what a damn foolish dull I’m! I cursed myself while walking out of the dealer office.

If I told you this fabricated story just a few weeks ago, I would have been ridiculed to death I’m sure. No one would ever believe this kind of unbelievable stupidity could ever happen to anyone with just normal mentality and reasoning ability. But unfortunately this has just happened, not at our low class level, but at the top elite level, a rising political star in the Congress. If you still don’t understand what I mean. Here is the story occurring to the famous Amazon. It has withdrawn the plan to build up its 2nd headquarters in New York because it was criticized by the political force lead by the rising political star for the incentive it will get worth about $3 billion for agreeing to build its 2^nd HQ there with an estimated new revenue income of about $28 billion generated for the city. It is considered immoral for the big corporate to get incentive of this much. And it is said the $3 billion could be invested in other areas for the city, like improving the subway system and other community services. What is more bizarre and unbelievable is her continuous public claims after successfully driving away Amazon that  “the collapse of the Amazon deal would free up $3 billion to fix the city’s subways and hire more teachers.” This is exactly a copycat of my faked car purchase story and I just cannot make it up. See here with your own eyes. In other words, she is genuinely believing that the incentive money offered to Amazon is already available for use before it is earned yet. No wonder how many bold promises she has made recently as she indeed thinks there is unlimited money available for the US as US is so rich and the money can be simply minted at wish. Speechless!!

Apart from laughing to death after seeing this really antic and freakish saga that I wouldn’t believe at all if not seeing it myself, I’m becoming really worried now. Not for Amazon of course and not for NY local residents also as many of them seem to also be sided with AOC on this struggle after being brainwashed by such politicians. What I become increasingly worried about is the future of this country. You see, AOC is a rising star and as I said, she may very well be the future Obama for DEM. Her momentum is very strong and whatever she says and promotes these days will attract a lot of followers, especially those young people who are often economically clueless and may be even more dumb than she is. Think about for a moment what is going to happen when more and more such kind of clueless politicians sitting in the Congress and Senate who will decide the future of America?! The future of the US policies and regulations will be based on the fantasy Utopian ideology that the money can indeed be created from the thin air without any hard work involved. The government should support everyone even if they are unwilling to work and anyone who just wants to come to the US legally or illegally. And evil entrepreneurs and businessmen must share their wealth in order to fund all the entitlement programs in the name of supporting the poor and income equality...... These have all sounded like fantasy that wouldn't be real unless pigs could fly, right? But it is becoming more and more a reality now in the US.

Let me make a bold prediction here. The rising star AOC, if indeed successful in her political career, will either bring down the whole DEM party some day due to her more and more freakish ideology, or even worse the whole country some day to push the US to become Venezuela No 2.

I don’t want to make the impression that I become more and more political in this blog. Not at all. I really only want to talk about finance and investment ideas here. But this new development is too important to ignore as it has also huge implications for our financial future. I’m too little to make any meaningful changes of course politically but at least I know what I should do to be prepared for the worst! I always want to structure myself in such a way that if I’m right, I can win a lot or can help myself to avoid disaster. But even if I’m wrong, I won’t lose much or may still gain to some extent. So my advice specific to this worrisome development? Diversify not only in terms of asset classes or sectors but also internationally if possible. Hold enough insurance assets like gold and/or silver. Treat them as money for insurance purpose, not as investment for short term gains. A general advice is to hold gold/silver at an amount of about 5-10% of your total asset, as such kind of amount can really have meaningful protection in case the worst comes true. For myself at least, a well structured cost-effective whole life insurance that won’t be easily touchable by the government's uncontrollable and more and more invasive groping hands（咸猪手). Believe me, our life will become increasingly controlled and meddled by the government, to the extent that is unthinkable at the moment.

Enjoy your life as much as you can, grow your wealth as long as you can, and then be prepared for the worst! This is not an America anymore that promotes freedom and wealth building via hard work. Rather, it is becoming more and more a country that encourages laziness and wealth stealing from others with a government eager to meddle your private life as much as possible. The new wave of socialism is taking momentum now and will become a norm sooner or later. If you like this trend, good luck for you and your wealth! If you dislike it as I do, do something now before it is too late.   

I don’t like the publicity I’m seeing

It may sound strange but it has been demonstrated again and again that publicity can easily kill a bull in investment. Why? Because when there is publicity, likely everyone knows it and chases it as it is hot. So much so that it is often the time the hot trade or investment may have got all those who want to get in and the only ones left are those who want to sell. That’s usually the outcome when something becomes hot. Conversely, when there is not much interest in something or even better a lot of hatred seen with it, that’s usually a good time to see a bottom for the thing that no one wants. After all, everyone who wants to sell may have already sold and the only ones left are those who wants to buy. This is how the market works again and again. Before I tell you what I don’t like to see right now, let me first share with you why I like commodities as a whole as a long term trend. Basically we are seeing the extreme pessimism right now, so much so that even the top professionals are throwing in the towel to give up. According to Bloomberg, a slew of financial-services firms – Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank – have all either cut back or exited commodities trading in recent years. Earlier this month Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs announced that it is cutting back on its commodities business. Reason? Simple... The business uses too much capital for too little profit. In addition, Jamison Capital Partners LP, a $1.5 billion commodity hedge fund, told investors it was closing by the end of January 2018. It followed other big names that have closed in recent months, including Andy Hall’s Astenbeck Capital Management and Texas tycoon T. Boone Pickens.....Calling a bloodbath in the commodity sector at the moment is likely an understatement. But that’s likely good news for those who are patient enough for the game coming to them.

 As contrarian, I’m always interested in extreme pessimism for a potential turning point for uptrend or extreme euphoria for downtrend. Historically we had something similar occurred to commodities. In 1998, Merrill Lynch got OUT of the commodities business because they couldn’t make any money. By that time, the main commodity index had lost half its value since 1980. This turned out to be THE capitulation point, almost the exact bottom of the sector. In the next decade, the commodity index (The Rogers International Commodity Index) soared six times higher. So are we seeing the exact bottom for commodities now? I obviously don’t know. But I bet it is damn close to the bottom if not yet there. Since commodities involves tons of different things and are crazily volatile, I’m currently most interested in the God of commodities, gold! Not only in terms of the cyclicality it may have likely seen its bottom of the multi year severe correction; it is also a good insurance hedge against all types of risks, economic, financial and political ones. So I’m a long term bull for gold as always.
Having said that, I don’t like what I’m seeing in the near term. Gold has moved up quietly for nearly half a year without much notice. But lately all the sudden nearly everyday you hear talking heads speak bullishly for gold and how much they like it. Unfortunately this is not a good sign from the contrarian point of view. Believe or not, bulls are nearly always killed by publicity and I hate that when something I love becomes very popular. With this in mind, I’m expecting some weakening in gold in the next few weeks and hopefully that will silence all the talking heads.

Congrats for 80% gain from S&P

A 20% jump in 2019! This was my bold prediction for S&P for 2019 on the last day of 2018 when S&P was struggling around 2500. I thought I would be laughed to death for such kind of stupidly bullish prediction when the market was in deep depression sentiment-wise. Virtually everyone was thinking how much lower the market could go in the months ahead; so how laughable I was lonely expecting for a substantially bullish market for 2019!! Of course, I'm wrong again and laughably wrong. Not because S&P dipped again since I was talking highs. On the contrary, it has been roared higher straight line for 7 weeks. It has jumped so much in so short time, it has already gained 80% for 2019. So I'm totally wrong as of now in terms of the magnitude of its potential gain for this year. Wait a minute, you must challenge me. Where the 80% gain of S&P came from, you must be wondering. Have I lost my mind again after being so wrong? No I haven't. I'm talking about the annualized return of S&P for 2019. Yes, from its 2500 to nearly 2800, the actual gain is about 12%. But since this fast up move is materialized only within 7 weeks, if you extrapolate it to the whole year for about 52 weeks, the annualized rate would be 80% if the current growth rate continues. I hope all my friends have listened to me and were aggressively buying at the end of last year and early this year. If so, a big CONGRATS TO YOU for being with me for a brave move during the darkest time period. A truly contrarian action not fun for most people to do!
But, this is a big but, after being happy and a respectful pat on your back, you got to ask yourself how many times have you ever seen S&P or any US market index gained 80% in a year? None,  nichts,  nenio, nulla,  neitt! Maybe I'm too ignorant of not knowing it. So show me the history if it was ever seen! Of course, you may say, this time may be different. Indeed it is possible but equal to zero chance in my book if you ask me. So statistically the chance is extremely high that the market cannot simply go up without a significant pull back. The question is when, not if. So at the moment when the sentiment is blown to the extreme side (and it is on the euphoric side this time), let me be a contrarian again by taking the risk of being laughed once more to call for a downside risk now. Yes, I cannot tell exactly when the pull back will occur but it may happen any time. As I said many times before, the market has a habit to punish the most people the most! If you think you can time the market for the exact top, sure to stay on to enjoy every moment of the up move! For most people, I think it would be better to at least take some chips off the table for short-term trading positions. When the market decides to strike, it will do so very swiftly without any notice.
Fundamentally I must say I'm afraid the market has used up its major ammunitions too fast too soon. If you recalled what I wrote back then to support my 20% gain prediction, there are two major bullish movements that I thought should push the market higher in 2019. One is the Fed transition from hawkish to dovish in their policy. The other is the US-China trade deal that will move in the right direction. For the first one, while I was very confident the Fed would yield to the market, honestly I didn't expect Powell would change his tone so much so fast. Comparing his speeches in the past few months or so, you wouldn't believe it was from the same Fed Chair talking about the same thing. So I very much underestimated the Fed's speed of dovish transition and the market has got fuel for the fire. Then for the trade deal with China. No doubt it is moving towards the direction as expected. As I said, the most likely scenario should be that major progress has been made and Trump will call off the immediate tariff hike again to allow a bit more time to work out the final deal. It seems this is becoming increasingly the likely outcome for now. So both of the tailwinds are being blowing in full speed right now to push the market flying like crazy. It is indeed feeling like there is no way for the market to back down. But did you have a similar but opposite feeling that there seemed no way for the market to go up about two months ago? Just think about it and you may more easily understand the market sentiment can change very fast from one extreme to the other. Don't ever ever believe it will stay on one extreme forever. Treat the market just like a human being. He also needs a rest in a Marathon running. Too fast running for a Marathon cannot never make him a winner. It will be healthier for him to calm down a bit and take some rest before running fast again.
Hope you can better understand this cold water writing of mine by now. I'm not bearish at all for this year. I'm more confident than ever to believe that we will see new highs in 2019. But not now and not in the near future without a much needed severe correction first. The more fast moving up now, the bigger drawdown we will see in the next few weeks. That's what I'm believing the most for now!!      

Law is law - Legal insider trading

I’m very undereducated in terms of history and for my generation, we really did not learn much useful regarding history anyway at school. You can even call it all rubbish education.  By the way, my son is really good at history though, even much better than I’m for the Chinese history although he did not attend one day school in China. Shame on me! 😝 So I rarely talk about history here. But I’m reading a lot these days and I just ran into something interesting. So thought to share with you about this historical information related to investing.

I’m sure everyone knows the famous JFK, right? But do you know anything about this father, especially that he was very rich? Any idea how he became so rich? I bet you don’t know. So let me share with you the history of his fortunate making. The information below is from a source I just read and not my own writing at all:

And it may surprise many readers to learn this, but JFK’s dear old dad actually built the family fortune from insider trading.

In 1919, Joe Kennedy joined the brokerage firm Hayden, Stone & Co. and quickly became an expert in the then-unregulated stock market. He got rich using tactics that are now considered insider trading and market manipulation.

Among other things, he bribed reporters to spread false stories in an information-starved age to drive prices up for his investment pool. He also participated in organized “bear raids” to crush stock prices. A bear raid is when a group of short sellers collude to sell a stock, smear the company, and then profit when the share price falls.

And legend has it that in 1929, Kennedy got out of the crazed, speculation-fueled market when he got a stock tip from a shoeshine boy. He then heavily shorted the market before the Great Depression and made a $4 million fortune [about $60 million today].

He used that fortune to invest in real estate, multiplying his wealth even more. His net worth grew to $180 million—which is about $3.4 billion today.

You’d think he would’ve been punished for all this… Instead, he was rewarded. How so?

As if all that wealth from his insider trading wasn’t enough, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joe Kennedy to the newly created Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] in 1934. Not long after, Kennedy was named the SEC’s first chairman.

When asked why he did it, FDR supposedly said, “It takes a thief to catch a thief.”

Kennedy then went on to outlaw the very practices that made him rich.

Pretty interesting and very hypocritical, right? You may think I’m going to criticize him for his real inside trading, which has put a lot of people in jail nowadays. Actually I must say he was a very legally compliant guy per the law at his time and good for him to use the legal loophole to make his fortunate. Indeed, by today’s standards, his action was quite disgusting, immoral, and definitely illegal! Similar kind of behavior by the Tesla genius Musk has cost him $20 million and the board chair position recently. But I must say, law is law. Back then, there was no law prohibiting such kind of inside trading and he did have the right to do what he was doing for making his fortunate. Why should anyone complain about it? That’s why I found quite funny these day, seeing people constantly complaining that Trump has not paid enough tax proportionate to his wealth. Unless he has done anything illegal by invading taxes, which is not you and me can judge about, what's wrong if he has done everything possible by minimizing his tax via legally allowed loopholes or whatever you may call it? Just ask yourself if you are also doing exactly the same thing in your annual tax filing? Don’t tell me you are not; then you must be a blockhead or a big liar! I’m certainly trying my best to do so and I have nothing to feel shamed about!! Then I also keep seeing people criticizing him being bankrupted several times in the past and considering it immoral. Again, for any business owner, his top priority and obligation are to protect the shareholders’ interest as much as possible within the legal framework. When a business is indeed in big trouble, bankruptcy via Chapter 11 is often an effective way to potentially save the business and may allow it to revive. There is nothing illegal here and I don’t see anything immoral as well per the current business standards. If anyone insisting so, then I have to say he or she is just a total ignoramus and don’t know what they are talking about, period!  

I have digressed a bit I know and now back to the topic of insider trading. It is now totally illegal and no one should ever try. Having said that, there is a way to do something similar to “insider trading” but legally! How so? Just Follow the lead of insider buying. Now let me ask you, do you trust insiders like CEO, CFO or board directors of a company or rather trust more analysts who are often clueless, when talking about the business prospects? I don’t know you but I’m certainly going with the former. What do you think about their business when these kind of very top managers are aggressively buying their own stocks? As the Street cliché goes, insiders can sell for various reasons nothing to do with their business, but there is only one reason for them to buy: betting higher stock prices when they feel the business is doing well and the stock price is at discount. You may ask how they can buy without violating the law? Well, there are certain blackout periods when it is taboo for them to buy or sell, e.g. around the time of earnings report or a major submission or approval (for biotech), etc. But they are free to buy or sell when there is no such kind of conflict of interest. Remember two years ago the JPM CEO, Dimon, famously publically announced his buying of $20 million worth of the JP stock? Looking back, it marked the exact bottom of the stock and since then it has jumped 40%. So if you can follow their footstep to also buy when they are aggressively buying, the chance is high that you may be doing well more often than not. Of course most of such insider buying won’t be publically announced like Dimon did. However there is a way to look into it. By law, insider trading by senior management must do Form 4 filings filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) within days. And this information is available to the public. Of course it is easier said than done to look into such kind of information and it is not for everyone for sure to be able to correctly locate and appropriately digest the information. But if you happen to be able to follow the lead of insider buying, don’t waste it. Give you one example. From my source, I learnt that recently the famous discount broker,  E-Trade (ETFC) Executive Chairman Rodger Lawson, Chief Financial Officer Michael Pizzi and Director Joshua Weinreich all have aggressively accumulating their own stocks recently. While significant buying from the top insiders like CEO/CFO does not necessarily mean it is always the best timing to buy the stock, at least it is a demonstration that those who really know the business are considering the current valuation of the stock is great and they expect the stock price will further grow from here. In other words, while there is no guarantee the price they have paid is the lowest or the stock price won’t further go down, most often than not, the stock price will go up as a long term trend from the time they bought.  So if you like the idea, do your own homework and decide if it is a right one for you. I just hope my writing here will provide some food for thought for you, an idea where you may find some good values in this volatile market.