Markets look broadly up so far. I sold Kroger (KR) near open. I also sold off most my MMYT position. With the stock market going up across the board I didn’t want to chase, so there weren’t many of the stocks I liked that had easy buying opportunities.
I just bought a bit of Enova (ENVA). They are one of the few publicly traded lenders that do check cashing / payday loan type of business. They’ve recently sold off with other financials. The mainstream financials sold off on the flattening of the yield curve which lowers their spreads, but with credit card interest rates at all time highs that yield curve flattening shouldn’t have the same sort of impact on Enova as it would on an auto or house or education lender.
A few illustrative stories
- at the end of 2017 the average interest rate on credit cards was 12.54%
- at the end of 2018 the average interest rate on credit cards was 16%
- Ouch! Average credit card interest rates hit new high – USA Today, May 4, 2018
- Rate survey: Average card APR climbs to all-time record high of 17.07 percent – CreditCards.com, October 10, 2018
- Credit Card APRs at record high: Stop lying to yourself about debt – Fox Business, March 6, 2019
- 50% of Americans Have Maxed Out Credit Cards, Here’s How to Dig Yourself Out of Credit Card Debt – Forbes, March 26, 2019
- Apple’s new “low rate” cards charge between 13.24% & 24.24%
Bed Bath and Beyond is up huge on rumors of activist investor involvement where they may push to oust the entire board. One last hoorah for Wayfair as they are now opening a physical store at a mall. A bold move for them would have been using their extremely rich stock valuation to buy out someone like Bed Bath and Beyond to immediately have a big footprint in the offline world & to have many locations to lower customer delivery costs.