Trade Review – CRM, PTC 7/13/18
- July 14th, 2018
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Today I initiated two positions in my Roth IRA – Salesforce ($CRM) and PTC Inc. ($PTC), and added to my core crypto position in Cardano ($ADA). I had transferred my 401(k) plan from Accenture to the Roth in cash, and needed to put that money to work. I had established positions in both securities in my Otaku Ventures trading account, which had already seen positive returns, and my outlook for both these firms into earnings is strong, so I wanted to make the buys in my Roth right away.
Salesforce ($CRM)
Salesforce has been crushing it for years now, consistently remaining one of the top ranked tech companies serving Enterprise. I have been watching this one go up for a long time, but hadn’t put any money to work in it. They report earnings in about a month and have been trending up, so I hopped on the trend and initiated a core position now, well ahead of earnings. If history repeats, it will continue to trend up into earnings and get a nice pop when they report.
$CRM had just hit a 52-week high and had started to pull back a bit when I decided to buy. My initial purchase was at $141.80, just to establish the position in case it continued going up, and I waited for a pullback. In a few days, CRM pulled back to $136, where I added to my position for a net average price of $138 in my Otaku account. I was later to the party for my Roth and initiated that position Friday morning at $147.50. CRM hit a new ATH on Friday at nearly $149, before closing down to just above where I got in.
PTC Inc. ($PTC)
I was clued in to PTC when discussing Akamai’s firm foundation providing network and hardware infrastructure for video streaming with Christine. The topics ranged to Akamai’s IoT prep, at which point I asked what company is better positioned than Akamai for IoT. Christine mentioned PTC, and I jumped in to the research. PTC is an IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) provider that is leveraging Microsoft’s HoloLens tech to provide AR solutions for manufacturing, among other things. They have just partnered with Rockwell Automation, including a $1B investment from Rockwell that will be used to buy back PTC stock, thus reducing the float. The partnership is to be a close one, with Rockwell’s extensive capabilities directly adding to PTC’s bottom line.
In addition to the natural synergies between the two, PTC partnered with Microsoft and another firm to improve its AR technology. This partnering brings things such as real-time simulation data overlays to PTC’s modeling software. So instead of modeling something in one program, exporting it to another to run analytics, fixing issues in the first program, exporting again to verify the fixes took, over and over again until the product is solid. Now the simulation overlay allows modelers to see in real time things such as stress points and structural weaknesses directly in their modeling program, eliminating the need to export and review in another. This alone will reduce modeling time substantially, in addition to having a high ‘cool factor’. 🙂
I initiated my position in my Roth at $98.50, up about three dollars from where I initiated the position in the Otaku Ventures account. $PTC finished the day just off the highs, almost matching it’s all-time high of a few weeks ago. The big catalyst here is that they are reporting earnings this week, and I’m expecting a good pop. PTC guides conservatively and didn’t factor in the partnership synergies into their outlook. It looks like they prefer UPOD – Under Promise, Over Deliver – which is a method I prefer as well.
It may be too early to see any revenue impact from the partnerships, as they were just announced, but I’m looking forward to listening to the earnings call to hear their forecasts.
Cardano ($ADA)
Coinbase announced they are considering adding five new currencies to their platform, the most interesting of which, to me, is Cardano (ADA). I have a held a core position in Cardano for some time, and have been looking for a catalyst to add to it. This was the trigger for me, and ADA jumped more than 10% on the news. If this had happened last year, Cardano would have jumped substantially higher but alas, the crypto space has changed. Still, the outlook for Cardano looks bright, and I’m glad to have added to my position. Perhaps Asia will hear the news by Monday and we’ll see another substantial pop.
Summary
I traded well this week, overall. I did jump in a bit hastily to CRM, which is something I still need to work on. Just because I have a great idea does not mean that that is the right time to buy. I stuck to my plan, obeyed my rules, and established key positions as intended. All of my positions were profitable by the end of the day.
by Jack D. Schwager