Author: therawinformant

The standard method of determining what industry a company is in is by looking at its underlying business. By that standard, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is clearly in the auto business.  Virtually all of the company’s revenues and costs are related to building, selling, and servicing automobiles.  But there is another way of checking whether a company is an […]

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On CNBC's "Options Action," Mike Khouw suggested that investors with a long position in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd – ADR (NYSE: BABA) should consider a less risky alternative going into earnings.Khouw wants to sell the September $235 put for a credit of $8 and buy the September $260/$285 call spread for total cost of $7. With the options structure, he collects a premium of $1. If the stock rallies through $285, Khouw is going to make a profit of $26 or a little over 10% of the current price. If the stock drops below $235, he would have to buy it at $235, but his entry price would be $234 or around 7% below the current price. If the stock doesn't move at all, the $235 strike put and $285 strike call would decay more than $260 call, so it could be possible to collect more than $1, explained Khouw.Tony Zhang likes the stock a lot, but he is concerned about the geopolitical risk, so he would not sell the September $235. He would just buy the September $260/285 call spread for $7.Carter Worth sees a Friday's decline in Alibaba as a weakness to take advantage of. He thinks that Alibaba is a strong stock and he wants to buy it. See more from Benzinga * Cramer Weighs In On Lumber Liquidators, HCA Healthcare And More * Cramer Shares His Thoughts On Virgin Galactic, Fastly And More * 'Fast Money Halftime Report' Picks For July 16: American Air, Sonos And More(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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* This weekend's Barron's cover story profiles 25 top chief executive officers of 2020. * Other featured articles look at the most sustainable companies, winners and losers as COVID cases spike, and Joe Biden picks. * Also, the prospects for a semiconductor leader, a computer hardware giant and more.Cover story "Meet Barron's Top CEOs of 2020" by Jack Hough presents 25 bosses who navigated extraordinary challenges to keep their companies thriving, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Elon Musk Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA). See who else made the cut.Evie Liu's "The 100 Most Sustainable Companies That Rank Best on Social Criteria" revisits Barron's annual ESG ranking of the 100 most sustainable companies. See how Adobe Inc (NASDAQ: ADBE), Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE: DAL) and others fared on social issues.In "Three Companies That Place a High Priority on People," Sarah Max examines how Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE: BBY) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) recruit and treat their employees.When the likes of Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan call for greater social responsibility, the movement has officially left the fringe. So says "Why Big Companies Have Embraced Corporate Responsibility" by Leslie P. Norton.In Avi Salzman's "Investors at Crossroads as Coronavirus Forces Rethinking of Reopenings," see what the surge in COVID cases means for Peloton Interactive Inc (NASDAQ: PTON), Zoom Video Communications Inc (NASDAQ: ZM) and others.See also: Will Amazon Or Netflix Buy A Movie Theater Chain?"How Nvidia Went From Gaming to AI to Riding With Mercedes" by Jack Hough discusses what NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is up to these days that its chief executive calls "the iPhone moment of the car industry."Converting supervoting shares into regular stock would be a bullish option for computer hardware giant Dell Technologies Inc (NYSE: DELL), according to Andrew Bary's "How Dell Stock Can Take Off. A VMware Spinoff Is Just Part of the Answer."In "The Joe Biden Portfolio," Lisa Beilfuss says that with Biden's lead in the polls widening, it's a good time for investors to think about how to position themselves ahead of the election. Is McDonald's Corp (NYSE: MCD) a Biden stock?Also in this week's Barron's: * How to build a values-based portfolio * Whether virtual events are better than the real thing * What is driving big shifts in Russel Index exchange-traded funds * The prospects for bank dividends * Whether a serious pullback is coming for tech stocks * Which retailer Amazon should acquire * Deciding whether to return to work or retire * Whether flying is any safer nowAt the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.Keep up with all the latest breaking news and trading ideas by following Benzinga on Twitter.See more from Benzinga * Barron's Picks And Pans: AutoNation, Overstock.com, SPACs And More * Benzinga's Bulls And Bears Of The Week: Apple, Boeing, Facebook And More * Benzinga's Bulls And Bears Of The Week: Apple, Coca-Cola, Twitter And More(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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VANCOUVER, BC, Aug. 6, 2020 /CNW/ – SSR Mining Inc.

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(Bloomberg) — When Bank of America Corp. recently elevated its next class of senior executives, one name was conspicuously absent: Fab Gallo.Few would have bet against the marathon-running head of the firm’s global equities division, especially after he set a revenue record early this year amid the messiest markets in a generation. Yet after a leaked recording of a conference call thrust Gallo’s blunt communications style into the public, and turbulence emerged in parts of his business, the bank’s bosses left him behind.While eight colleagues got invited to join the firm’s elite management team in late July, Gallo was told to split duties with a former subordinate.The snub has drawn attention across Wall Street, turning a spotlight on an executive known for pushing subordinates especially hard. It has since prompted discussions between him and senior executives about how long he will remain at the investment bank, according to people familiar with the situation who asked not to be named discussing personnel. Another solution could still be found.Gallo, 54, referred messages to a company spokesperson who declined to comment.The trading veteran was passed over as Bank of America unveiled a series of promotions and added executives to its most senior decision-making body. New members of the panel include his longtime counterpart overseeing fixed-income markets, Jim Demare, who rose to head the global sales and trading division. One of Gallo’s subordinates, Soofian Zuberi, was promoted to jointly run the stock-trading business alongside him.‘Great Job’It marked a rapid change in fortunes for the industry veteran whose operations were credited with rising to unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic in March, when traders were forced to work from home just as markets went into a nose dive.By the end of the first quarter, the equities-trading division’s revenue jumped 39% to a record. In May, Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan praised Gallo for the “great job” he was doing alongside fixed-income chiefs Demare and Bernie Mensah, who also was elevated to join the management team. In the second quarter, equities revenue rose 7%, fueled by cash and client financing.Yet there were also bumps. In April, someone leaked a recording of a controversial conference call to media outlets including CNBC and the New York Times. On it, Gallo could be heard saying “critical” workers wouldn’t be able to stay away from the office too long during the pandemic. The bank said at the time that the conversation was about returning people to the office once officials deemed it safe, and that the company was “sparing no expense or consideration taking care of our people.”Then in a second-quarter regulatory filing, the bank flagged “weaker trading performance” in the unit’s derivatives business. Though that business grew versus the previous year, it lost more than $100 million on some positions held in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company’s broader European business has seen a series of shakeups, most recently naming Martina Slowey to run equities for EMEA, replacing Julien Bahurel, who will leave after a transition period. That follows the June departure of Andrew Mitchell, head of equities trading in the region.Frustrating ManagersGallo, whose full first name is Fabrizio and goes by Fab, is known to frustrate his managers with a domineering style, getting deeply involved in trades and personnel decisions rungs below him, according to bank employees. That includes intervening in reviews for members of trading desks, sometimes overruling assessments drafted by the managers under him.A voracious reader, he cuts the image of a cultured intellect. He’s also seen as arrogant. Colleagues say that in moments of frustration over the years, Gallo has lashed out at subordinates, calling them dumb. That and his blunt communication style have created detractors within the division, who accuse him of being unnecessarily abrasive.Some Bank of America employees also took umbrage at the leaked recording of Gallo. On it, he could be heard telling staff that if they wanted to keep critical roles, they would need to “make a decision” about coming back to the office, CNBC reported in April.“We cannot provide proper and orderly markets if 99% of the population decides they don’t feel comfortable,” Gallo said on the recording. “You cannot on one hand say you cannot trust the firm and on the other hand get the money from the firm, for a long period of time if you are in a critical function. Now if people decide they don’t want to be in a critical function we can have that conversation too.”Bank’s ImageThe remarks came amid a debate inside many Wall Street firms over who could stay home and for how long. Yet those words didn’t quite gel with Bank of America’s efforts to remake its public image as a good corporate citizen after the 2008 financial crisis. Moynihan has been a prominent voice from the business community during the pandemic, pledging to support staff through tough times and resisting headcount reductions. He’s also highlighted the lender’s forbearance activities, its participation in the government’s rescue-financing program for small businesses and a $1 billion pledge to communities of color over four years.Gallo joined the bank in 2011 from hedge fund Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and also spent more than a decade at Morgan Stanley, serving as head of equities and global proprietary trading.Despite his senior role, he keeps a relatively low profile. One of the few public references to Gallo is at the University of Chicago, where there’s a dorm named after him. He contributes to financial aid and career programs there.His almost-decade-long run as sole head of equities was remarkable for its duration in an industry where co-chiefs are often the norm, forcing executives to compete and leaving firms with leadership options if businesses don’t perform. Before the latest management shuffle, Gallo reported to the bank’s chief operating officer Tom Montag, who’s also president of its global banking and markets unit. If Gallo stays after the promotions, he will report to Demare.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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Regular readers will know that we love our dividends at Simply Wall St, which is why it's exciting to see Eli Lilly…

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(Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett’s dire airline predictions have hit close to home.After dumping his stakes in airlines earlier this year with a warning that the pandemic had unleashed fundamental change on that business, Buffett’s own Berkshire Hathaway Inc. took a roughly $10 billion impairment charge tied to Precision Castparts, its massive maker of plane parts. A vaccine may be the only remedy for the pandemic’s “particularly severe” impact on the aerospace market, Berkshire said.“The Covid-19 pandemic produced material declines in commercial air travel during the second quarter,” Berkshire said Saturday in a regulatory filing discussing second-quarter results. “Airlines responded by reducing and/or cancelling aircraft orders, which is resulting in significant reductions in build rates by aircraft manufacturers and significant inventory reduction initiatives being implemented by PCC’s customers.”At Berkshire’s annual meeting in May, Buffett announced a full reversal on his airline bet, with his conglomerate going from one of the biggest shareholders in all four major U.S. carriers to owning none. A rally in airline shares over the next month had critics including President Donald Trump saying Buffett had erred, but the S&P 500 Airlines index is down 26% since that early June high.Despite those stock sales, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company still had a significant exposure to the air travel slump through Precision, a business it bought more than four years ago in a deal valued at $37.2 billion.Now, Precision has had to restructure, including by cutting 10,000 employees in the first half of this year. The business reported a pretax loss of $78 million in the second quarter, compared to a profit of $481 million in the same period a year earlier.Berkshire expressed caution about when this pain might end.“In our judgment, the timing and extent of the recovery in the commercial airline and aerospace industries may be dependent on the development and wide-scale distribution of medicines or vaccines that effectively treat the virus,” Berkshire said in the filing.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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