Fundamental Short Selling Research

Eric Fernandez, CFA

TwoRiversAnalytics

Equity Bottom-Up

<ul>
<li>This model seeks companies that are potentially “overearning”, defined as companies with unusually high margins relative to their own history or relative to the industry. </li>
<li>The reasons for the margin increases are sometimes unsustainable or fraudulent. The  critical judgement involves to what extent unsustainable margins are embedded in a company’s forecasts and/or the stock’s valuation. </li>
<li>These shorts tend to have moderate to higher betas, higher valuations due to recent strong results and good short responses to subsequently disappointing earnings.</li>
</ul>


This model seeks companies that are potentially “overearning”, defined as companies with unusually high margins relative to their own history or relative to the industry. 
The reasons for the margin increases are sometimes unsustainable or fraudulent. The  critical judgement involves to what extent unsustainable margins are embedded in a company’s forecasts and/or the stock’s valuation. 
These shorts tend to have moderate to higher betas, higher valuations due to recent strong results and good short responses to subsequently disappointing earnings.


Overearning Short Candidates: LSB Indust., CF Indust., Alpha Metallurg., Mueller Indust.

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning, Copley Fund Research

Steven Holden

Asset Allocation & Fund Positioning

Copley Fund Research

Copley Fund Research provide research and data on asset allocation among Global and Emerging Market equity funds.  The analysis details absolute and relative positioning across countries, sectors and industries together with highly granular data on single stock and single fund allocations.  The data is updated monthly with time series going back to January 2011.

Global Research - Analysis of 165 prominent Global equity funds, combined AUM $335bn
GEM Research - Analysis of 127 prominent global EM equity funds, combined AUM $250bn

Asset Allocation - Global and GEM Equity

Cross Asset Strategy

<ul>
<li>North American allocations continue to trend higher, hitting a record average weight of 58.1% across the 358 global funds in our analysis</li>
<li>North America has consistently stolen market share from other key global regions, most notably Developed Market Europe, where average fund weights have hit all-time lows of 24.24%</li>
<li>Sectors driving allocations higher are led by Energy, Health Care and Industrials with active rotation in to all 3, whilst Consumer Staples have seen signs of investor fatigue.</li>
</ul>


North American allocations continue to trend higher, hitting a record average weight of 58.1% across the 358 global funds in our analysis
North America has consistently stolen market share from other key global regions, most notably Developed Market Europe, where average fund weights have hit all-time lows of 24.24%
Sectors driving allocations higher are led by Energy, Health Care and Industrials with active rotation in to all 3, whilst Consumer Staples have seen signs of investor fatigue.


North America Hits New Highs as Global Rotation Continues

Cf Industries Holdings / Equity Bottom-Up

Overearning Short Candidates, CF Industries, Photronics, LSB Industries, Builders FirstSource

Research from Water Tower Research, Water Tower Research

Water Tower Research

Research from Water Tower Research

Water Tower Research is a leading equity research firm that provides research on micro, small and mid cap companies.

Water Tower Research was founded by Wall Street veterans after witnessing a fundamental shift in the investment research industry with the result being a declining knowledge base among investors, a lack of awareness and a shrinking pool of fundamental research being conducted on companies across the small-cap and micro-cap spectrum. The same issues are now increasingly occurring in the mid-cap space. This sea change within the investment community is impacting not only the companies themselves but also current shareholders and potential investors. With significantly less active sell-side sponsorship by Wall Street, a substantial information gap has developed between companies and various constituents in the financial community. The net result is fewer channels for insight and information to flow between companies and investors.

Equity Research Firm

Technical Analyst, Vermilion Research

Joe Jasper

Technical Analyst

Technical and Quantitative Research

Vermilion Research

Vermilion’s objective is to deliver timely, actionable, and unique technical research to professional investors through the application of our various technical indicators.

Our research strategists seek to highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various technical and quantitative indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. Our unique research methodology, centered on relative strength, enables our strategists to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing the universe of actively traded stocks into discrete sectors, then into industry groups. We then apply our technical and quantitative tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sector or group, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. We provide a historical perspective that often reveals, through our long-term charts, how price patterns often repeat themselves over time.

Technical Analysis

Technology Select Sector SPDR / Technical Analysis

<ul>
<li>Our outlook remains bearish at the index level considering we have yet to see any developments that suggest a bottom is in. </li>
<li>The S&amp;P 500, Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), Russell 2000 (IWM), and Russell Micro Cap (IWC) indexes remain in downtrends.</li>
<li>In today’s report we highlight attractive Groups and stocks within Materials, Manufacturing,  Services, and Utilities: MA-14 Fertilizer, MF-15 Railroad Equipment &amp; Products, SV-13 Construction &amp; Engineering, Large-Cap, UT-04 Electric, Mid-Atlantic</li>
</ul>


Our outlook remains bearish at the index level considering we have yet to see any developments that suggest a bottom is in. 
The S&amp;P 500, Nasdaq 100 (QQQ), Russell 2000 (IWM), and Russell Micro Cap (IWC) indexes remain in downtrends.
In today’s report we highlight attractive Groups and stocks within Materials, Manufacturing,  Services, and Utilities: MA-14 Fertilizer, MF-15 Railroad Equipment &amp; Products, SV-13 Construction &amp; Engineering, Large-Cap, UT-04 Electric, Mid-Atlantic


United States

CF Industries Holdings, Inc. manufactures and distributes nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer products globally. The Company's principal products in the nitrogen segment are ammonia, urea, urea ammonium nitrate solution, ammonium nitrate, diesel exhaust fluid and aqua ammonia. The principal products in the phosphate segment are diammonium phosphate and  monoammonium phosphate.

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Cf Industries Holdings (CF US)

Overearning Short Candidates: LSB Indust., CF Indust., Alpha Metallurg., Mueller Indust.

Margin over-earners are fertile hunting ground for shorts if the reasons for the margin increase are unsustainable or fraudulent. This week: LSB...

Eric Fernandez, CFA

North America Hits New Highs as Global Rotation Continues

North American allocations among active Global investors hit record highs, driven by Energy, Health Care and Industrials rotation.

Steven Holden

Overearning Short Candidates, CF Industries, Photronics, LSB Industries, Builders FirstSource

Margin over-earners are fertile hunting ground for shorts if the reasons for the margin increase are either unsustainable or fraudulent: CF...

Eric Fernandez, CFA

Greener Crops, Greener Planet

KEY POINTS Crop supply struggles to keep up with demand. Grain demand remains robust, driven by a growing global population and a rising middle...

Water Tower Research

Downgrading Technology To Underweight

Downgrading Technology to underweight. Attractive and actionable stocks highlighted: Fertilizer, Railroad Equipment & Products, Construction &...

Vermilion Research

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