eBay Inc

EBAY-Q

AMZN-Q is the 1000 pound gorilla. Any choice in this space has to take them into account. EBAY-Q has done a good job. They beat street consensus. Their site is improving and ease of use is improving. There were up a Million users of 160 Million last quarter. They have a robust stock repurchase program going on. He would not own it.

(A Top Pick June 1/16. Up 23.97%.) At that time, this stock was in an oversold situation. A good name. Every time it gets into the low $20 or the mid-$20, he would be a buyer.

This is not the trading monster it used to be. Very range bound and has been about $20-$30 since 2010. It has built a very nice base at $23.50. There is nothing crazy in the volumes, and this is something that is ready to drift up higher again.

PayPal when it splits from eBay? He would be reticent to buy this right now. In its early days eBay basically owned its industry and it continues to dominate market share. However, with Apple pay and all these other things coming in, there is going to be a lot more competition and it is going to be tougher for them.

You want to own PayPal because that is the growth part of the business. EBAY-O has slowed down a fair bit.

Was facing a lot of pressure with PayPal, and eventually split the business up. Facing a lot of competition from other players in the marketplace, so the stock has gone sideways over the last little while. Doesn’t think you will get growth out of this. He would consider buying PayPal when it goes public.

Never owned it. Not interested in that sector. A pretty competitive space.

Their PayPal asset is quite attractive, but its core store business is under threat from a number of channels, typically Amazon (AMZN-Q). Globally they have had difficulty expanding their marketplace at the rate the market would like to see.

Switch eBay (EBAY-Q) for Merck (MRK-N) for a 3-5 year hold? He made his money on eBay and has since left it. What he likes it is that Carl Icahn is in there shaking things up. Thinks you could flip a coin on who does better. You will do well on both.

We are in a sideways consolidation pattern. Until it breaks $58 it will continue sideways. You could trade it.

A sneaky way to play the whole retail phenomena.

Basically a retail merchandiser. Usually goes up prior to Black Friday and then retail usually sells off. Technically, it is not doing that well. Chart shows a downward trend and it has to hold the $50 level, or it has real problems. Trading below its 20 day moving average Relative Strength to the market is negative. This has another period of seasonal strength from the end of January to April, the Easter buying season.

Good company. Little bit high on the valuation side for his liking. Serves a very strong niche, but other people are starting to infiltrate that business.

High-tech and doing quite well, but really doing very, very well on the back of their PayPal. PayPal is responsible for a very large and growing portion of their profits. Sort of a tough area as there is going to be competition in this area and there aren’t a lot of barriers to entry. He would probably pass on this one.

Doing very well but when you really look at the company and get under the hood, you find that this company is really being driven by the success of PayPal. Nothing wrong with that but you have to understand what is driving it. This is really a competitor of Visa (V-N) and MasterCard (MA-N). It is really a payment processor company. Doing well. Trading at a little rich multiple at about 20X earnings.