What other tech stock to consider?

[pz1975]

Here is a list from their website of who uses their technology: Who's Using GenDrive

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Is the 2014 runup just the CES effect you think or could it be that part of what is revealed tomorrow is actually already leaked causing this last two week runup?

 

[Grendal]

shorting ICPT.

Smart move. I hope you made a bundle.

 

[Julian Cox]

Thanks for the Tip Julian. I disregarded the that bit of new about the call, but it makes sense of it almost being like a CC after and ER. People are going to get some news and we could be in for a nice jump. I bought a couple Jan $4 for fun just to play that call tomorrow. Not expecting the world, but its a fun play with some spare house money from the TSLA run yesterday.

Welcome, did the same myself. PLUG has a good long history of going vertical on any hint of good news, fingers crossed and good luck.

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Is the 2014 runup just the CES effect you think or could it be that part of what is revealed tomorrow is actually already leaked causing this last two week runup?

From what I can gather, the underlying business has gone from a "going concern" case a few months back to something viable and now both viable, in-demand, funded and in the faux-green energy spotlight. I expect to see some more spirited price action and would not be at all surprised to see this go direct to $5 or $6 by friday.

 

[wallet.dat]

No one has mentioned Bitcoin yet, but I think it is a similar style investment that people here might be interested in because it is an extremely disruptive technology. It has the potential to completely redefine banking and currency as we know it. I invested a small amount prior to it increasing 10x and recently put a much larger investment down on it. It has stabilized around $100 and I could see it going to $1000 and higher. It will be volatile in the short term and potentially risky, but I think it is growing and past the point of failure.

There was a recent bubble where the price went from $13 to $250 in a few weeks. As I said it has stabilized at about $100. Since then millions of dollars in venture capital have been invested in new ideas and start up companies. Many of these ideas revolve around making bitcoins easy to use for businesses and consumers; I think once these ideas start making an impact in the market there will be an upward trend of the price.

The Winklovoss twins have recently initiated progress on a Bitcoin ETF. I don't know if it will pan out or not, but I do believe in a few years as the market cap for bitcoin increases there will be a mad rush by investors to include bitcoin in their portfolios as an investment. When this happens I think we will see another huge price increase that will stabilize at the top, similar to what happened when Tesla announced profitability after q1.

I wonder if anybody listened to you about this. At the time of your post, Bitcoin was trading for about $90. As of today, less than 6 months later, it's over $930 per coin.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

I've been trading BTC, but mostly I mine and sell in a steady flow. Means I caught both the run up as well as the top as well as the current prices. Just sold 1BTC yesterday again

 

[fjm9898]

What do you use to Mine? did you buy a specialized mining rig?

 

[Mario Kadastik]

What do you use to Mine? did you buy a specialized mining rig?

Part time on my home computers, just bought brand new radeons into them as I also enjoy sometimes to relax and play some games and it's nice to be able to use it at max settings But I also use the unused compute cycles at our datacenter and turn that into various altcoins that I exchange for BTC. That part of the profits goes back as a fund for datacenter related costs though I keep some portion for managing it. It's a way to create some free cash to be used if anything is needed in the lab.

 

[pahar103]

High probability of another double-digit % break-out in PLUG tomorrow afternoon/friday. Plug Power Inc. (via noodls) / Plug Power to Host Conference Call and Webcast on January 16, 2014 to Provide Business Update

I believe this is an intriguing opportunity to take some anti-Tesla BS money off the table in the form of getting in before and getting out either side of the interim guidance event linked above.

Plug have just completed a capital raise and there is much talk of an unprecedented order book that is fundamentally out of step with the previous several years of trading. For example Fedex just placed an order for their fuel cells to show off as range extended delivery vehicles. This is without doubt as a result of the fossil fuel industry / Toyota starting to hype Hydrogen Fuel Cells as a clean and green alternative power source again. First time that has happened in earnest since the days of Who Killed the Electric Car. Back then PLUG traded in a near vertical ascent to $150. (BLDP the same up to $129). After the GM EV1 disappeared the stock crashed to pennies. Lately the PLUG is back on the radar at the $3 to $4 level coinciding with Toyota unveiling their FCV at CES. I have bought a bunch of calls in anticipation of this jumping to $5 or $6 by the weekend on the news.

The call tomorrow (Thursday 16th January) will be ultra bullish for PLUG without question. I see this as an asymmetric pump and dump scheme. i.e. Let them pump.

Bought some calls for PLUG - already up 100%

Selling a quarter of my position and will play with the rest.

 

[Ryo]

Part time on my home computers, just bought brand new radeons into them as I also enjoy sometimes to relax and play some games and it's nice to be able to use it at max settings But I also use the unused compute cycles at our datacenter and turn that into various altcoins that I exchange for BTC. That part of the profits goes back as a fund for datacenter related costs though I keep some portion for managing it. It's a way to create some free cash to be used if anything is needed in the lab.

I'm guessing you're not using your radeons to directly mine bitcoins at home either(?) The online calculators make it pretty clear you can't earn anything anymore mining SHA-256 coins (Bitcoin, and others) using GPU mining. You now need a ASIC be be profitable for those coins.

I've been mining Scrypt based altcoins with my GPUs (~1700Kh) and that is profitable (for now) .. just a matter of time before ASIC hardware arrives that can tackle Scrypt.

 

[fjm9898]

Huge volume on PLUG today and it tanked all of a sudden. not sure what to think of it. 1.7millon shares on the fall. Obviously people dont like what they are hearing.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

I'm guessing you're not using your radeons to directly mine bitcoins at home either(?) The online calculators make it pretty clear you can't earn anything anymore mining SHA-256 coins (Bitcoin, and others) using GPU mining. You now need a ASIC be be profitable for those coins.

I've been mining Scrypt based altcoins with my GPUs (~1700Kh) and that is profitable (for now) .. just a matter of time before ASIC hardware arrives that can tackle Scrypt.

Yes scrypt coins are the only profitable non-ASIC coins right now. However it's doubtful an ASIC will be made for scrypt as it was specifically designed against ASICs. While BTC computes sha256 which is almost 100% cpu intense and hence easy to produce ASICs for specific algo, the scrypt is moving a lot of stuff around in memory therefore needing chip-near RAM. The GPUs are perfect with their 3GB GDRAM next to the GPU. Basically the GPUs are scrypt ASICs It'll be tough to make anything more dedicated and it is hard to imagine it to cost far less...

 

[c041v]

Huge volume on PLUG today and it tanked all of a sudden. not sure what to think of it. 1.7millon shares on the fall. Obviously people dont like what they are hearing.

Yep, lots of volume but not much going on. I should have set a limit order last night to take advantage of the brief run this morning. Instead, I opted to sleep in thinking that since the call wasn't until 10:00 EST, I'd be fine. I guess I'll hang on until expiry as the calls are worthless anyways.

 

[Ryo]

Yes scrypt coins are the only profitable non-ASIC coins right now. However it's doubtful an ASIC will be made for scrypt as it was specifically designed against ASICs. While BTC computes sha256 which is almost 100% cpu intense and hence easy to produce ASICs for specific algo, the scrypt is moving a lot of stuff around in memory therefore needing chip-near RAM. The GPUs are perfect with their 3GB GDRAM next to the GPU. Basically the GPUs are scrypt ASICs It'll be tough to make anything more dedicated and it is hard to imagine it to cost far less...

True, Scrypt was designed against ASICs but there are some smart people out there working on doing it anyways, some companies are already taking preroders for ASIC scrypt miners.
Could be a scam, but I wouldn't rule it out as possible -> Scrypt-based miners and the new cryptocurrency arms race - CoinDesk

 

[Mario Kadastik]

True, Scrypt was designed against ASICs but there are some smart people out there working on doing it anyways, some companies are already taking preroders for ASIC scrypt miners.
Could be a scam, but I wouldn't rule it out as possible -> Scrypt-based miners and the new cryptocurrency arms race - CoinDesk

I would say most likely scam

 

[Chickenlittle]

Have mentioned it to you all before but alcoa tearing it up. From when I bought options price 8.00. Used leaps and today it broke 11. Have doubled money in 3 months. "Bad report" a week ago was just getting old write offs off the books. Very smart management. I thought tesla would lead the way to more aluminum cars and add value but the company gets more than half their profit from what they do with the aluminum not in making it. If aluminum prices come back, and I suspect they will as more car companies utilize aluminum, this will continue to climb

 

[Bonken]

Part time on my home computers, just bought brand new radeons into them as I also enjoy sometimes to relax and play some games and it's nice to be able to use it at max settings But I also use the unused compute cycles at our datacenter and turn that into various altcoins that I exchange for BTC. That part of the profits goes back as a fund for datacenter related costs though I keep some portion for managing it. It's a way to create some free cash to be used if anything is needed in the lab.

Hi mario! Could you just shortly describe what it is to "mine" btc... i just cant wrap my head around it haha.. sorry for stupid questions...

 

[pz1975]

I experimented with mining BTC (used bitminer.com) on my brand new MacBook Pro for an evening just to see what would happen. I extrapolated my results for 4 hours of 'work' and realized that if I let my computer run 24/7, I would end up earning an average of about $1 per month!! Needless to say, my days of panning for Bitcoin are over. To make money, you need a bunch of powerful computers all working at the same time.

 

[30seconds]

Smart move. I hope you made a bundle.

Bit over 10x

 

[30seconds]

Bit over 10x

I should have clarified why the short. I think they have a very good potential drug but 1. It is only in the mid innings of development 2. No agreement with the FDA on a path to approval and 3. $8B valuation.

i still don't think it's worth $5B plus due to risk of #1 or #2 above, but #2 has potential to be resolved in next two to six months. This gives them a solid chance to (IMHO) be worth their valuation. Unforeseen toxicity or longer / more expensive than anticipated approval development path could easily sink this company however.

At this point if I go back in to short I will be looking for cheap, out of the money puts with at least six months to expiration. I would expect no more than a 30% chance to make money on them, but it could easily be 5-10x again.