#$wwe

5 Trade ideas excerpted from the detailed analysis and plan for premium subscribers:

Adobe, Ticker: $ADBE

Adobe, $ADBE, comes into the week rising up toward resistance from support. It has a RSI rising in the bullish zone with the MACD flat and positive. Look for a break of resistance to participate…..

FedEx, Ticker: $FDX

FedEx, $FDX, comes into the week moving toward resistance. It has a RSI rising in the bullish zone with the MACD level and positive. Look for a push over resistance to participate…..

F5, Ticker: $FFIV

F5, $FFIV, comes into the week moving higher. It has a RSI rising toward the midline with the MACD curling up. Look for continuation to participate…..

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Ticker: $HIG

The Hartford Financial Services Group, $HIG, comes into the week at resistance. It has a RSI rising over the midline with the MACD about to turn positive. Look for a push over resistance to participate…..

World Wrestling Entertainment, Ticker: $WWE

World Wrestling Entertainment, $WWE, comes into the week in consolidation. It has a RSI in the bullish zone with the MACD crossed down but positive. Look for a break of consolidation to participate…..

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After reviewing over 1,000 charts, I have found some good setups for the week. These were selected and should be viewed in the context of the broad Market Macro picture reviewed Friday which with the month of April in the books, saw equity markets showed resilience with a rebound from an ugly start to the week to finish stronger.

Elsewhere look for Gold to consolidate in its uptrend while Crude Oil consolidates in a broad range. The US Dollar Index continues to drift to the downside while US Treasuries consolidate in their downtrend. The Shanghai Composite looks to continue in consolidation along with Emerging Markets.

WWE 2018 First Quarter Results Conference Call with Vince McMahon | TSC News

In a way, investing in the stock market is a lot like rooting for your local sports team. Investors keep a close eye on statistics, devour news about their favorite (executive) teams, and experience an emotional rollercoaster with each big win or loss.

And just as the conversation on sports radio usually reflects the fortunes of the local teams, the way people talk about their favorite brands on Twitter often predicts how the stock of the company that owns that brand will perform in the market.

At LikeFolio, we use social data to help you figure out which stocks are on the rise and which ones are headed for the cellar. By tracking social volume (the number of tweets about a given company) and social sentiment (how positive or negative those tweets are), we can get a clear picture of which companies are pleasing customers — a strong signal that they’ll be delivering value to their shareholders in the near future.

With that in mind, here are four companies with products that sports fans love and stocks that investors can’t resist.

Nike ($NKE)

Nike’s stock has been on a tear this past year, rising a staggering 48% over the last 12 months. And if you take a look at what people are saying about the company on social media, it’s easy to see why.

This screenshot from the LikeFolio app shows that the company’s social sentiment is now 93% positive — up from 84% a year ago. When almost everyone has good things to say about you, chances are you’re doing something right. The company’s social volume has been trending upward, as well.

Even better? With its world-class marketing machine (what sports fan doesn’t have a favorite Nike ad?) and complete dominance of the sneaker game (as of May, it held 62% of the athletic footwear market), Nike is positioned strongly for continued success in the years to come.

Disney ($DIS)

Though you might not think of Disney as a sports company, diehard fans would be virtually lost without one of its most prized possessions: ESPN.

In fact, the round-the-clock sports network is the crown jewel of Disney’s cable portfolio, which accounted for about a third of the company’s total revenues this past quarter (Source here).  No wonder Mickey Mouse LOVES sports!

Disney has seen social sentiment and social volume grow significantly over the past year, with the entertainment company finishing this past week as the fifth-most discussed brand on Twitter. Unsurprisingly, the stock price has price has climbed from $86 per share to $119 during the same time period.

With the Marvel Comics and Star Wars brands also under its umbrella, you’d be hard-pressed to find a company with a more passionate customer base.

World Wrestling Entertainment ($WWE)

There’s an old saying that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” and there’s no better example of this theory than World Wrestling Entertainment’s recent performance on the stock market.

Though the company’s social sentiment has actually dropped a little bit over the course of the past year, its social volume has more than doubled amid controversial events like the highly unpopular conclusion to last year’s Royal Rumble.

Following the stock’s May 2014 crash to below the $11 mark, the company has steadily rebounded to reach a price of above $16 -- an increase of more than 45%.

While you’d like to think that companies should always strive to make their fans happy, the WWE’s recent success shows that, at least on some occasions, controversy can create cash.

Anheuser-Busch InBev ($BUD)

Nothing goes better with watching the game than a nice, cold beer, and there’s no beer company more closely associated with American sports than A-B InBev.

The company’s brands, which include Bud Light, Budweiser, and Corona, are the official beers of the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The company’s social volume is up 145% from a year ago, topping out in January — the same month it released its insanely popular Super Bowl ads.

On the market, A-B InBev is a consistent winner. In fact, its stock chart over the past five years is almost a straight, diagonal line trending upwards.

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Now that you know how many of your favorite sports brands are also big-time players on the market, it’s time for you to get off of the sidelines and into the game.

To get started, you can download the LikeFolio app for free to see which Wall St. companies products and brands are performing the best on Main St.

With some thorough research and smart decision-making, it won’t be long before you have a few champions in your portfolio.

The WWE is having a moment.

For wrestling fans this is a glorious thing. When Brock Lesnar appeared on ESPN LIVE to announce he was staying with the organization instead of going back to the UFC wrestling “Smarks” (a combination of “smart” meaning “aware it’s fake” and “Marks” meaning enthusiasts) exploded with glee. Or disgust, depending on where you sit.

Either way, when Disney’s top profit-driver is breaking in live to announce a development in an openly rigged sport (other than the NFL or NBA) it’s undeniably a sign of… something.

As lines between political parties blur the most accurate way to gauge the collective American mood is how well Vince McMahon is doing. At any given moment about half the country ignores wrestling entirely. The balance is divided into three groups the WWE refers to as “lapsed”, “casual” and “Passionate” fans:

The above graph is a world-wide vision through the WWE prism. 11% of the roughly 100 million US homes with broadband are passionate. They’ll stick with the brand no matter what. The 24% and 18% of casual or lapsed fans are akin to swing voters.

Historically speaking, when the US is feeling chuffed with itself the WWE is able to convert those 42 million Swing Viewers into WWE revenues.

The 1980′s:

This isn’t a new thing. Vince McMahon has been America’s Id since the early 80′s when took advantage of junk debt funding to lever up and roll-up the “territories” that had been dividing wrestling for almost a century.

In 1985 Vince invented modern PPV with Wrestlemania 1. Hulkamania’s coke and steroid-fueled popularity peaked in 1987 when the Hulkster slammed Andre the Giant in front of more than 90,000 fans in the Silverdome.

The Dot.com “Attitude Era”

After a fallow early 90s Vince once again discovered his mojo. He took the company public in 1999 and promptly nearly ran the business into the ground by starting a football league.

In 2001 WWE pay-per-view revenues peaked at $128 million, up 20% year over year.

The Real Estate Bust Era

Like the US the WWE recovered somewhat halfheartedly with WrestleMania purchases peaking at 1.25 million when Vince and Donald Trump (who freely stole his trademark “You’re Fired” line from McMahon who’d been using it on air for years) staged a “Hair vs. Hair” match by proxy.

For the year PPV revenues were $94.4 million in 2007. They would crash by nearly 30% in the next 3 years. Shareholders lost their collective minds but they didn’t know what Vince did: Television rights for any and all live “sports” were about to explode.

TV and the WWE Network

2008 was the year WWE revenues from TV passed PPV. From roughly equal standing in the corporation of about $95 million and 20% of revenues apiece TV took off while PPV crumbled. By 2013 PPV was accounting for just 16% of overall WWE revenues at $82.5 million while TV had exploded to $163m, almost 1/3 of the company’s total take.

Being Vince, which is to say having metaphorical balls so large they necessitate a special walk he did what comes natural to him: He bet everything on TV revenues going higher and killed PPV entirely by introducing the WWE Network. Subscribers to WWE’s Network paid $9.99 a month for all the PPV’s and archive footage they could handle.

Once again, Wall Street left the company for dead:

Vince lost $350 million in net worth in one day almost exactly a year ago. According to Forbes Vince is back in the billionaire club at $1.2b. That’s largely because the math actually works out pretty well for subs and the WWE alike.

While the WWE loses all it’s pay-per-view income with the network TV revenues are exploding. Last year the company made $177 million from TV and that number will rise by $100 million over the next 4 years.

The same forces driving up the value of NFL and NBA franchises are pushing up WWE on a levered basis. WWE has better ratings than ESPN on average. In fact, WWE’s flagship Raw program has more viewers Game of Thrones and MadMen combined. It’s also Live, which means fans Tweet about and actually sit through commercials, the same quality that has Madison Avenue to hot for the NFL.

Vince and his testicular gigantism care not for art. He’ll take the money.

Here’s the other good thing about WWE Network revenues: Vince doesn’t have to share them with anyone. The company was only getting about 35% of the total take from PPV. It keeps all the subscriber fees for itself.

To their credit, especially considering the McMahon’s have about 81% of the share voting rights and really don’t have to disclose much of anything, the WWE makes no bones about its leverage to subscribers:

If the network can keep 1million subscribers it’ll make about $50 million in profits from the WWE Network. At 1.5 million subs the WWE Network will be more profitable than PPV ever was.

Will it work? Too early to say. In the past the WWE invading mainstream culture has boded poorly for the company and nation as a whole. When we’re booming the testosterone is flowing and we like Wrestling. When we bust we don’t have time for such silliness.

It’s Vince and America’s blessing and curse that we can’t really tell the difference between mania and optimism. The difference between Vince and the rest of the world is he simply doesn’t care. His swagger never changes no matter which way his fortunes are rolling, at least not in public.

Saying Vince is America actually flatters America. Vince, a man who came from nothing and persistently bets it all on his vision is who we like to pretend we are. When Vince goes bust it means he’s down to his last $300 million. When he’s booming he’s a billionaire and then some.

Right now Vince is worth about $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. Place your bets on where we are in the economic cycle accordingly.