It seems that the harder I work, the luckier I get.
Last week I made a bet that companies with a high share of international business would be punished severely during earnings season.
Specifically, I picked QUALCOMM (QCOM), the San Diego based maker of processors for cell phones, tablets, and laptops, because it had the highest percentage of foreign earnings among the S&P 500.
Three days later, after years of dawdling, the European Central Bank announced a particularly aggressive form of quantitative easing that sent the Euro crashing. You might as well have sent a torpedo directly into QUALCOMM?s bottom line.
The company?s Q4 earnings report, announced after the Tuesday close, confirmed my worst fears. While the earnings held up surprisingly well, the second half guidance was downright apocalyptic.
The stock immediately gapped down to $65 in the aftermarket, off some 8%, in a heartbeat.
Foreign earnings are a great place to hide when the greenback is soggy. It is a terrible place to be when the buck is moving from strength to strength, as it has for the past eight months.
It turns out that there is much more that is wrong under the hood at QUALCOMM than the recent collapse of the Euro and the Yen.
Much of the meteoric growth of Apple?s (AAPL) iPhone 6 sales in recent months has been at the expense of Samsung and other competitors. I hate to say ?I told you so? but I have been predicting this all along.
While QUALCOMM sells to both companies, particularly its Snapdragon 800 quadcore processor, it gets a lesser share of the profits on its sales to Apple. QUALCOMM is therefore, effectively, an indirect short position in Apple.
Oops!
I think you can take QUALCOMM?s woeful stock performance today as a warning that there is more suffering to come on the foreign earnings front by other companies yet to report.
For more depth on this, please read yesterday?s piece on ?The Unintended Consequences of the Euro Crash? by clicking here.
As for the happy holders of my recommended QUALCOMM (QCOM) February, 2015 $75-$80 in-the-money bear put spread, good for you! You have just made a nearly instant 2.25% profit on your total portfolio in a mere seven trading days. That works out to a gain of 22% on this single position.
There is no point in running this position the remaining three weeks into the February 20 expiration, as you have already reaped 95% of the potential profit. Better to free up the cash to roll into a new position, while simultaneously reducing your risk.
Or, you could simply take a long vacation from the miserable, unforgiving market.
