Announcing the bigger and better than ever, 2025 Pick of the Year (PotY) contest!

[BlueWolf]

There was a little movement in the indices this week, but not much. The NASDAQ and the S&P crawled up marginally while the Dow spent another week treading water. Reflecting this lack of definitive movement, the leaderboard remained unchanged with Jiesen’s BBAI in 1st, Louetta’s ORCL in 2nd, and Minni17’s ATAT in 3rd.

[mrmarket]

I gave up using Yahoo Finance portfolio...it's garbage now.

[BlueWolf]

It was pretty much a tread water week for the markets although more tariff talk created a few jitters on Friday. The leader board was unchanged with Jiesen’s BBAI in 1st, Louetta’s ORCL in 2nd, and Minni17’s ATAT in 3rd. The good news is that we now have a solid eight positions in the green with Molly’s ANET positioning itself to join the club. Pretty good picking, pickers. You might say that Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled positions.

[jiesen]

Hard to say how high it will go. That’s more dependent on company fundamentals such as the technology, management team, business model, and of course, financials. Earlier this year, BBAI got hammered because of concerns over tariffs and government budget cuts. In March, they also disclosed some problems in their financial reporting and had to restate several years worth of financials. So they have their hurdles to clear. On the positive side, they appointed a new CEO in January who has connections in the Trump administration. Things seem to be looking up under his leadership, but they are still not profitable, and they’re carrying quite a bit of debt.

Recent announcements do point to some progress. This week BBAI announced that they had deployed their biometric passenger processing software at major US and international airports and this may have led to the recent gains. There was no other specific announcement that seemed to be tied to the recent price surge, so maybe investors are looking favorably on the company valuation again. Unfortunately, I have no insight into what these new investors are thinking, and the stock price has been extremely volatile, so I am extremely hesitant to say how much higher it might be heading. I just don’t think there’s enough information to assign a solid target price to the stock.

Maybe this is where technical analysis can help. On Tuesday, it broke out of its base by a significant margin. On Wednesday it gapped up and then faded to close the day lower than Tuesday’s close. I think this was the by product of antsy holders taking advantage of the surge to get out before another pullback. Then on Thursday, the stock reclaimed all of the territory it ceded on Wednesday and closed significantly higher again. On Friday, it basically based at the high. These last couple of days were very bullish, indicating new buyers were coming into the stock with a little bit of conviction, and certainly implying the stock is heading higher in the near term.

You could use a trailing stop, but because of the volatility, I don’t think I would do that if I were you. I would set an alarm for below $5.5, and if it triggers, I would quickly reassess and consider getting out if the candlestick patterns are bearish. On the other hand, if the stock continues moving up, I would keep reassessing and raising your pullback alarm, using bearish candlestick patterns to determine whether or not to stay in.

Sorry for the long winded response, and the less than precise recommendation, but I hope something in there helps.

Thanks, BW for aggregating the info on BBAI in such a nice and easy to digest post! Research these days is getting ever more difficult, what with Yahoo! being such a shell of its former self, and buggy new software slowing old computers down to a snail's pace, so getting these nuggets out of the haystack is indeed appreciated. (someone is in need of a tech refresh, or some AI bots obvs)

I was aware of the accounting issues, but see that the stock is still marching on, likely indicating that the lawyers will just take their cut from this wound and move on to their next target. Also... No, I don't expect BBAI to be profitable just yet, as they're only beginning to grow, and should land a few more large contracts first, try to strike while the iron is hot in this space... in the end it's a growth-tech play, and not an accounting business. Question is, are they the best of the best at what they do? Will they fizzle out, or explode to the next level? I'm excited to see, as my $ is on BBAI!

[BlueWolf]

Another stellar, although abbreviated, week for the markets. Both the NASDAQ and the S&P made new all time highs, and the Dow is approaching its all time high. This didn’t have any effect on our leaderboard, however, and the leaders remain the same: Jiesen’s BBAI in 1st, Louetta’s ORCL in 2nd, and Minni17’s ATAT in third. Let’s see how high we can ride this wave.

[JohnHenry]

Happy 4th of July everyone!

[BlueWolf]

Another week of 50% gains on this one, and I'll be sitting at 9 on it, yet again! When do y'all think I should sell BBAI? I am in it at about $4, since February. Was thinking to sell at either 20 or 40... maybe 50/50 at each point?

Hard to say how high it will go. That’s more dependent on company fundamentals such as the technology, management team, business model, and of course, financials. Earlier this year, BBAI got hammered because of concerns over tariffs and government budget cuts. In March, they also disclosed some problems in their financial reporting and had to restate several years worth of financials. So they have their hurdles to clear. On the positive side, they appointed a new CEO in January who has connections in the Trump administration. Things seem to be looking up under his leadership, but they are still not profitable, and they’re carrying quite a bit of debt.

Recent announcements do point to some progress. This week BBAI announced that they had deployed their biometric passenger processing software at major US and international airports and this may have led to the recent gains. There was no other specific announcement that seemed to be tied to the recent price surge, so maybe investors are looking favorably on the company valuation again. Unfortunately, I have no insight into what these new investors are thinking, and the stock price has been extremely volatile, so I am extremely hesitant to say how much higher it might be heading. I just don’t think there’s enough information to assign a solid target price to the stock.

Maybe this is where technical analysis can help. On Tuesday, it broke out of its base by a significant margin. On Wednesday it gapped up and then faded to close the day lower than Tuesday’s close. I think this was the by product of antsy holders taking advantage of the surge to get out before another pullback. Then on Thursday, the stock reclaimed all of the territory it ceded on Wednesday and closed significantly higher again. On Friday, it basically based at the high. These last couple of days were very bullish, indicating new buyers were coming into the stock with a little bit of conviction, and certainly implying the stock is heading higher in the near term.

You could use a trailing stop, but because of the volatility, I don’t think I would do that if I were you. I would set an alarm for below $5.5, and if it triggers, I would quickly reassess and consider getting out if the candlestick patterns are bearish. On the other hand, if the stock continues moving up, I would keep reassessing and raising your pullback alarm, using bearish candlestick patterns to determine whether or not to stay in.

Sorry for the long winded response, and the less than precise recommendation, but I hope something in there helps.

[jiesen]

Meantime there are interesting developments going on in the tech sector, with AI growth exploding all over the place... I am fully expecting BBAI to come roaring back with a triple-digit return by EOY. Any day now!

Another week of 50% gains on this one, and I'll be sitting at 9 on it, yet again! When do y'all think I should sell BBAI? I am in it at about $4, since February. Was thinking to sell at either 20 or 40... maybe 50/50 at each point?

[BlueWolf]

There was a nice move up in the market this week with all three indices up significantly. This produced a shakeup of our leaderboard and created a new leader. Our new leader after rocketing up this week is … drum roll … Jiesen’s BBAI! Congrats, Jiesen. In 2nd, last week’s leader, Louetta’s ORCL, stayed strong while Minni17’s ATAT stayed in the mix in 3rd. We’re back to seven positions in the green along with another position just barely below the line, so good picking, pickers.

[BlueWolf]

It was pretty a “meh” week with the markets treading water. Correspondingly, there was no significant change in our leader board. Antioch’s BJ, however, returned to the top three in 3rd place. Louetta’s ORCL held on to 1st and was followed by Minni17’s ATAT in 2nd. I think a little bit of paralysis has hit the markets. There are a lot of earnings coming up, though, so maybe that will move things along.

[BlueWolf]

Oh goody, I'm winning. Reading "The Technological Republic" by Alexander Karp. He presents evidence collected by someone that firms run by their founders (not families, e.g. Ford) perform better in the markets that other firms. Does Ellison run Oracle? Don't imagine so but I'll bet he's still a presence.

He’s currently Chief Technology Officer and Executive Chairman, and he still owns over 40% of the shares of Oracle. I too believe that founder driven companies tend to do better in the market, and that’s something I look for in investments.

[Louetta]

Oh goody, I'm winning. Reading "The Technological Republic" by Alexander Karp. He presents evidence collected by someone that firms run by their founders (not families, e.g. Ford) perform better in the markets that other firms. Does Ellison run Oracle? Don't imagine so but I'll bet he's still a presence.

[BlueWolf]

It was a slightly down week thanks largely to a sell off on Friday. Still, it had a weird effect on our picks. The picks that were doing well went up and the picks that weren’t went down further. In any event we ended the week with six picks in the green and one rocket ship. The rocket ship was Louetta’s ORCL which vaulted into 1st place after blowout earnings. Minni17’s ATAT slipped down into 2nd and Massimo’s XBOTF climbed up into 3rd. Congrats to our new leaders.

[jiesen]

Meantime there are interesting developments going on in the tech sector, with AI growth exploding all over the place... I am fully expecting BBAI to come roaring back with a triple-digit return by EOY. Any day now!

[mrmarket]

We really need all of this global trade talk to iron out before we see real momentum return to the market...now it's all fits and starts and companies are stalling on growth projects