Agency mortgage REITs are entities that invest in a portfolio of mortgage backed securities (MBS) that are directly or indirectly backed by the government, financed with short term repos against these securities. Although the credit risk for agency mREITs is minimal, they are highly exposed to interest rate risk; therefore the Fed's monetary policy actions are of huge significance to this sector. After a not-so-good first quarter for the sector, many investors are worried about what will happen when the Fed finally starts to taper off its QE program. In this article, I will attempt to explain how the end of QE will impact the agency mREITs.

In order to understand how the end of QE will affect agency mREITS, first we would have to look at these two questions:

• How would the Fed's tapering off of QE impact the interest rates and the yield curve?
• How would the change

In a much anticipated announcement, Nokia (NOK) unveiled its latest Windows Phone from the Lumia family, the Lumia 925, on Tuesday this week. Nokia had hyped up the event quite a bit, with a video teaser released on Monday captioned "More than your eye can see." Since the video clip focused on the camera lens and dual flash, it fueled rumors that Nokia could unveil the rumored Lumia EOS with a 41 megapixel camera and xenon flash. However, Nokia stock dropped more than 5% on the day of the release as investors appear to be disappointed with the latest addition to the Nokia Lumia portfolio. In this article, I will discuss whether there is any real reason to be disappointed with Nokia's latest phone.

A Short Review

The table below shows Lumia 925's specs compared with competitors' flagship devices:

(click to enlarge)

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Source: Gizmodo

The Lumia

Expectations were high from Tesla's (TSLA) Q1 earnings results after the electric car maker raised its guidance at the start of April to reveal that the company had achieved GAAP and non-GAAP profitability for the first time. With the stock price up more than 40% after the amended guidance, many investors felt the sentiment was stretched to the upside. However, in my earnings preview, I had warned investors that Tesla still carried a very high short interest and the recent short squeeze could just be the tip of the iceberg if the company reported better-than-expected results. And that's exactly what happened: Tesla reported Q1 EPS of $0.12 vs. $0.04 consensus, on revenue of $562 million vs. $492 million consensus. What's more, as I had suspected, Tesla raised its Model S sales guidance to 21,000 units vs. prior guidance of 20,000 units which will cause more pain to the short

Tesla Motors (TSLA) is a company to which many investors are emotionally attached. There are Tesla bulls who say that this electric car maker will disrupt the entire auto industry. Then there are bears who say that Tesla's vehicles are just a fad and cannot compete with Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and hybrid vehicles due to their high price and range concerns. Such skeptics were in such a large number that just a few weeks ago, short interest accounted for almost half of the stock's float. However, short sellers have been on the run since Tesla Motors amended its guidance at the start of April to reveal that the company had sold more Model S units than expected and would reveal a GAAP and non-GAAP quarterly profit for the first time; the stock is up more than 40% since the announcement as the shorts got squeezed. In this article, I

Facebook (FB) has released its Q1 2013 earnings results and an initial look suggests that things are looking good for the social networking giant. As I had said in my earnings preview, a slight miss or beat on the top or bottom line won't matter since Facebook's target for this year is not to maximize profits; it's the underlying growth metrics that would matter. Specifically, investors and analysts were most interested in mobile growth. Moreover, investors were also hoping for Facebook to clarify reports that it was losing users in developed markets and its engagement levels were going down. Here is my initial take on the earnings release.

Highlights

Here are some of the important highlights from the earnings release:

• Facebook reported an EPS of $0.12 per share vs. $0.13 consensus on revenues of $1.46 billion vs. $1.44 consensus
• Revenue from advertising was $1.25 billion which represents a 43%

After scaling the early $30s at the start of the year, Facebook (FB) has been trading within a $25-$28 range for the past couple of months as investors wait for the right catalyst to buy the stock. Bulls maintain that Facebook's monetization opportunities for its more than a billion users make the stock a strong buy, whereas bears argue that Facebook's valuation is still too high given the risks to its earnings growth. In this article I will discuss what to expect from Facebook's upcoming Q1 2013 earnings results to be announced after market close on May 1st.

Here is a look at analysts' estimates for Facebook's Q1 2013 earnings release:

Source: Yahoo Finance

Going by consensus estimates, analysts expect Facebook's revenue to grow 36% year-on-year but with earnings of just 13 cents a share. However, a slight miss or beat on either the top line or the bottom line

Investors are not particularly happy with Nokia's (NOK) Q1 2013 earnings results; the stock fell more than 11% after the earnings release, and although it has slightly recovered since then, Nokia stock is still down almost than 18% this year. The negative sentiment after the earnings release is mostly due to the poor performance of Nokia's feature phones segment. However, I believe that investors are wrong to focus solely on the decline in feature phone sales while ignoring the impressive Lumia sales. I explain my reasoning below.

Mobile Phone Segment

Nokia reported in its Q1 results that its Mobile Phones shipment volume dropped 30% sequentially and 21% Y/Y to 55.8 million units. Nokia's Asha full touch smartphone sales almost halved quarter-on-quarter to 5 million units. However, the poor sales in the Mobile Phones segment shouldn't come as a shock to investors. It's widely known that the feature phones market is

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article on reasons to be bullish on gold (GLD) (IAU) this quarter. The timing could not have been worse as gold recorded its worst 2-day decline in 30 years. I have generally been bullish on gold, but the recent rout in the commodities has got me thinking if I am wrong. Over the last few days, I spent time reviewing the reasons for gold's parabolic rise over the past few years, and also looked at the last time gold fell this much in the space of a few months. In this article, I will consider an alternative scenario that gold's decline could be pointing to, which, if true, could have dangerous implications for the US economy.

(click to enlarge)

If you have been following gold over the past few years, you would recognize the chart above as one of gold bulls'

Netflix (NFLX) reported strong Q1 2013 earnings results yesterday, with an EPS of $0.31 that beat consensus by 13 cents and a revenue of $1.02 billion that was in line with estimates. Underlying metrics showed excellent Q1 performance in all three segments of its business. In this article, I will present a summary of Netflix's earnings results, discuss the positive and negative points from the investor letter and the earnings call, and will comment on Netflix management likening the company's original content strategy to the Harry Potter series.

Summary of Results

Netflix reported that it added 2.03 million domestic streaming subscribers during the quarter, bringing total domestic streaming members to 29.17 million vs. guidance of 28.5-29.2 million. Segment revenue of $639 million was also on the higher side of the company's Q1 guidance of $633-641 million. However, the most impressive metric was the domestic streaming contribution margin of

Amazon (AMZN) is one of those companies that appear to be highly overvalued when analyzed using traditional valuation metrics, with a one year forward P/E of over 70 that is by far the highest in the industry. However, bulls argue that such earnings multiple is justified because Amazon is an industry disruptor and is currently making investments that will pay off handsomely in the future. When Amazon reported its Q4 2012 earnings in January, the stock was up almost 5% the next day despite the fact that the online retailer missed consensus analyst estimates for revenue, EPS and Q1 guidance as investors focused on the better than expected operating margin. Will investors be that forgiving of Amazon this time in case of a miss? In this article, I will discuss some of the key developments for the company during the first quarter of the year. I will also look at

Netflix (NFLX) is up almost 90% year-to-date, and most of this move came after the online video streaming company announced strong Q4 2012 earnings that surprised the street analysts. Although Netflix is expected to benefit from the growing secular demand for streaming video entertainment, many investors and analysts believe that the stock has gotten ahead of itself and is due a significant pullback. Could the company's upcoming earnings announcement trigger this pullback? In this article I look at this question and also discuss some of the key metrics that would be in focus when Netflix announces its Q1 2013 earnings results on Monday, 22nd April after market close.

The table below shows Q1 guidance from Netflix management for various business metrics:

Source: Company Report

The table below shows the analysts estimates for Q1 revenue and EPS vs. the guidance from Netflix management:

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Source: Yahoo Finance, Company Report

Investing in Nokia (NOK) stock strongly divides opinion. There are investors who argue that the company is past its time and its Windows Phones cannot compete with the might of Google's (GOOG) Android and Apple's (AAPL) iOS. Nokia bears also say that the BlackBerry (BBRY) 10 OS is the final nail in the coffin for the Finnish phone maker. On the other hand there are bulls who argue that Nokia's Lumia phones offer excellent quality at a good price and are gaining traction in emerging markets, especially China. Bullish investors also point to Nokia's continued dominance in the features phone market as well as the turnaround of the Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) business. Right now, I don't have any position in the stock but the chart looks bullish from a technical point of view and I'll be closely watching the earnings to take a position in the stock to see

Remember the last time BlackBerry (BBRY) dropped more than 7% in day? Yes it was on the morning of the Z10's US launch, and that drop too had nothing to do with facts or fundamental data points; the down move was due to a ridiculous piece of news from WSJ and CNBC telling investors that the BlackBerry Z10's US launch had "failed" because there were no lines of people queuing up at AT&T (T) stores to buy the new device. On that day I thought that there could not be a more absurd rationale to scare investors away from a stock. However, yesterday I realized how wrong I was, after reading a "report" citing Detwiler Fenton suggesting that the users are not liking the Z10's UI, and "in several cases, [BlackBerry Z10] returns are now exceeding sales, a phenomenon we have never seen before."

The past two quarters has been a tough time for gold (GLD) (IAU) investors; the yellow metal has lost more than 10% over the past two quarters while gold miners (GDX) have lost more than 30% over this period. To make matters worse, US equities (SPY) have performed remarkably well over the same period leaving even the most arduous gold bugs tempted to liquidate their gold holdings in favor of equities. Although, I am firmly bullish on gold's long-term prospects, the near-term variation in is harder to predict. However, I would advise investors who have held through the pain of the past six months that this is not the time to sell. Here are some of the catalysts that, in my opinion, will support gold prices this quarter.

Spring Slump in the US

A major factor that is used to explain gold's decline over the past few months is

When Apple (AAPL) launched the iPad in mid-2010, people were surprised. While Apple fans were happy to see a new and exciting gadget, there were also a large number of skeptics who questioned the utility of what they considered to be merely an enlarged version of the iPod. Now that the iPad has disproved its critics with respect to its usefulness, a more legitimate concern is that Google's (GOOG) Android based tablets would rapidly eat up iPad's market share just like Android smartphones are dominating the smartphone market. This concern is not new; when Michael Dell was asked in April 2011 whether Android tablets would outpace iPads going forward, he answered: "Not tomorrow. Not the next day. But again, if you look at 18 months ago, Android phones were like, "What is that?" And now there are more Android phones than iPhones. I don't see any reason why

The wait is over; after years of speculation from tech enthusiasts and countless denials from Facebook (FB), we finally have what the speculators were referring to as the Facebook phone. I've been following the rumors since Facebook announced the "Home on Android" event last week, and most of the speculators were suggesting that Facebook was about to launch a smartphone manufactured by HTC running a highly customized version of Google's (GOOG) Android OS with a deep layered Facebook integration. An epic fail from Facebook, I thought, as I wondered who would go and especially buy a phone just because it was all covered in Facebook, and why would Facebook make such a big effort to enter an already hypercompetitive smartphone market? However, introducing a Facebook style "launcher" for all Android-based phones is an interesting development, because it gives Facebook access to millions of Android users around the world while giving

A crowded short can be defined as a stock in which a significant proportion of the float has been sold short. A 'short squeeze' occurs when the lack of supply and the sudden demand in the stock causes a sharp increase in the stock price, forcing the shorts to stop out and cover their positions, which in turn accentuates the price rise. If you want a real life example of a crowded short, look no further than Tesla Motors (TSLA): As of March 15 2013, Tesla had a short interest of more than 32 million shares, which represents almost 50% of the public float. What happened yesterday with Tesla stock is what you call a short squeeze; the stock rose 16% on news that the sales of its flagship electric vehicle, the model S exceeded expectations. The short interest in BlackBerry (BBRY) is lower than that in Tesla

The wait is finally over: BlackBerry (BBRY), formerly known as Research In Motion reported a surprise profit in its Q4 2013 earnings results, reporting a diluted EPS of $0.22 vs $-1.32 consensus on a revenue of 2.68 billion vs 2.84 consensus. BlackBerry shipped 6 million smartphones during the quarter which included an impressive 1 million BB 10 units which does not include BB 10 sales in the US where it was launched almost three weeks after the quarter ended on March 2nd. The results demonstrate that BlackBerry remains in a relatively strong financial position which would disappoint ultra bears who are of the view that BlackBerry has no future. However, the earnings release would also disappoint some of the bulls who believed that strong results would trigger an immediate short squeeze given the high short interest in the stock. In this article I will look at how the earnings

BlackBerry (BBRY), formerly known as Research In Motion (RIMM), is a hot stock right now with a lot of volatility and a lot of investor interest. Investors are eagerly awaiting the company's FQ4 2013 earnings report as this will be the first earnings release after the much anticipated launch of BlackBerry's new BB 10 OS. The success or failure of this launch could be significant in determining the company's future fate. For the past two months, sell-side analysts have been all over the place trying to guess the new BlackBerry Z10's sales figures outside the US where it was launched in early February. While the buzz coming out of BlackBerry has been generally positive, the upcoming earnings release on Thursday, March 28th is expected to shed light on how BlackBerry Z10's global launch fared in quantitative terms. In this article I will look at what the analysts are expecting from

BlackBerry (BBRY) stock has had some wild moves since the start of the year. However, increased volatility is not unusual for a company that has recently launched a new product that could decide whether it can survive in the extremely competitive smartphone market. What is unusual, though, are some of the reasons attributed to these extraordinary daily moves. After gaining more than 6% on Wednesday last week on reports of a double notch upgrade from Morgan Stanley, the stock more than erased the week's gains on Friday. The 7.7% nose-dive was attributed to some hysterical comments in the mainstream media, which include this article from the Wall Street Journal which reports the lack of crowds at a couple of AT&T (T) stores they visited on a Friday afternoon as well as fear-mongering from CNBC, who reported "No Lines…No Waiting" for the US launch of BlackBerry Z10. So does