Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG)

Time to add? They are only in 26 states so far, so there is a long playing field for SHAK-N. It trades at a high multiple, so if they disappoint it can become very painful quickly. Be cautious. He prefers to own the established names like SBUX-Q or CMG-N.

(A Top Pick July 19/17 - Down 12%) She had it with the expectation that it’s taken over. 4% yield in the meantime.

Not keen on it. What made them terrific before may not continue: quality food and good value, then people got sick. He's unconvinced they can regain that public goodwill.

He continues to watch this stock, he thinks it is worth $180 and the recent close makes it too expensive. However, he has been saying this since it traded $500. He will wait for his target.

*Short* (A Top Pick Nov 3/17, Up 11%) It was a combination of an e-coli scare, overvaluation and a growth stock becoming a value play. It is still not a cheap enough stock for him to find any level of support.

He is more positive on this on the margin. Technically it still has a little bit of work to do. The earnings trends are more on the positive inflection, as opposed to a “show me” story. It has pulled back more recently. Looking at a slightly longer-term chart, you can see the cup coming up and breaking out on a medium-term basis. This is shaping up nicely, and he is positive on the space itself.

His model price is $203. He was praying the stock would come back to his model price. Bill Ackman has now taken a position in the company and is doing some activist stuff. He would love to see this come back to $394.

They had some earnings hits in the last couple of quarters. It is not cheap, 30-40 times earnings, but the growth rate is really good. It still has some more to prove in his opinion. There are so many people who bought this in 2014/15 and are under water and want to sell this to get their money back and it creates some resistance levels.

Short. They ran into E. Coli problems just over a year ago, a month after the stock peaked. The stock is down materially over the last year and is still expensive, priced for growth. It is 120 times earnings. They keep missing on earnings.

*Short*(Pairs Trade with a Long on A&W Revenue Royalties (AW.UN-T). This is having all kinds of problems. Their same-store sales are still in decline. The declines are improving every quarter, but not in a major way.

This had 2 outbreaks, one on top of the other. The issue is, can they gain back consumers’ trust. You go there because it’s cool and very healthy, as compared to others. They have a long way to climb back. If they can do that, this would be a screaming buy.

(A Top Pick April 15/15. Down 38.43%.) Had owned this for quite a few years. Got stopped out during the E. coli outbreak, but still lost money on the trade.

An opportunity to pick up a pretty good name that has done a sideways move for some time. Millennials (generation Y) are taking to the name. The company is able to price what they want because consumers believe they are getting good value for their money and the quality is very high. Store count is around 1600 in the US, which he thinks is a very low concentration, considering what they have ahead of them. This doesn’t even consider what they are doing internationally.

There is a lot of momentum behind the stock. Trading at 42X forward earnings, which is pretty expensive. Growth rate is 20%, so you are paying 2X PEG ratio.

(A Top Pick Dec 19/12. Up 77.45%.) Seemed like a powerful trend to him, principally driven by their attention to organic high-quality and basically competing with the fast food industry.