Seven Lakes weekly summary

Hello Seven Lakers,

below a summary of relevant events happened in the stock market in the last week

📈 1/ Stocks and sectors bought by US politicians last week

This week, the trading activity at Capitol Hill was quite limited, with ~34 transactions taking place

Aerospace and Defense are the most bought sectors - ironical, just before conflict in Israel..

If you want to receive daily updates on politicians trades, click here

🏦 2/ US Politicians potential insider trading: Rep. Wittman sells Dollar General just before -36% price drop

Retail company Dollar General Corp (DG:US) opened 2023 with at $246.72 per share, but since then has been on a steep decline 

The bad performance can be attributed to the overall poor performance of both utilities (due to inflation) and real estate (due to rate hikes) this year

In the retail side, shoplifting has been on the rise across the US and that impacted Dollar General negatively

DG price went downhill since July, but Rep. Rob Wittman managed to sell Dollar General Corp on July 2021 saving -36% losses on DG

Also, this trade was reported around 71 days late, and this openly violates the STOCK Act

The Representative is an active member of the House Armed Service Committee as well as the Committee on Natural Resources.

If you want to receive daily updates on political trading, click here 

🔔 3/ How to be notified when politicians buy / sell stocks

As seen before, some suspicious trades were made by Congress Members and their relatives

However, the GOOD NEWS is that their moves can be copied (politicians need to disclose their stock positions)

The Seven Lakes Research analyst team provides PREMIUM detailed updates from Monday to Friday with all the relevant fact on: 

Click on the button below to start receiving them 👇👇👇👇👇

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📄 4/ Interesting stock market stories

STORY #1: How the Israel-Hamas conflict can impact oil markets

Briefly: As tensions escalate in Israel, global oil traders are on high alert, gauging the potential ramifications on the broader Middle Eastern region and keeping eyes specifically on Iran

Focus on Iran? While the immediate disruption to oil supplies seems limited, the spotlight is firmly on Iran, a significant oil powerhouse and a known supporter of Hamas, the group behind the recent Israeli attacks

The Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime route, is under scrutiny: Iran has, in the past, hinted at closing this vital passage

Likely impact: As the Israeli-Palestine-Lebanon area is not a large oil producing region, it is unlikely that oil supply is impacted in the short term

Therefore one should not expect a large oil price spike in the coming days

But it could eventually have an impact on supply (down) and prices (up) in the medium term

Why? Global oil inventories are low, and the Saudi and Russian production cuts will lead to more inventories draws over the next few months

The market will eventually have to beg for more Saudi supply, which we believe, will not happen sub $110 Brent

Now, over the last 6 months we have seen a very large increase in Iranian supply due to weak enforcement of sanctions

As Iran is also behind Hamas’ attacks on Israel, there is a good probability that the US administration will start enforcing those sanctions on Iranian oil exports more tightly. That would further tighten the oil market

Political trading related to oil in last 30 days: 

Dan Sullivan, Michael Guest, Tommy Tuberville traded Chevron (CVX)

Michael Guest, Kevin Hearn, Shelley Moore Capito and Rob Wittman traded Exxon Mobil (XOM)

If you want to be notified when politicians trade stock, we send daily email alerts here

STORY #2: Target closes 9 stores amid rising concerns on retail crime

Target (TGT:US) made a significant announcement, stating its decision to close nine stores across the US on Oct 21

The reasons are the following

• Growing concern over "theft and organized retail crime," threatening the safety of its employees and customers

• National Retail Federation report disclosed that retail crime resulted in losses of $112.1 billion in 2022

Financial implications

• Target's stock has taken a significant hit

• Target lost $30 billion in market value over the past six months, plummeting nearly 60% from its all-time high and declining by about 36% in 2023

• In May, Target reported $1.3 billion loss due to theft

• The company reported 120% increase in theft-related incidents involving violence in 2023

Political trading 

• Rep. Josh Gottheimer was recently selling his stakes in TGT

• Ro Khanna reported increasing his holdings in the retail giant back in August

If you want to be notified when politicians trade stock, we send daily email alerts here 

STORY #3: Carnival stock is up after earnings beat

Carnival Corporation (CCL:US) reported its third-quarter results, which sent the stock about +4% higher on Friday

Main financials highlights:

• The adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of 86 cents surpassed the estimated 75 cents.

• Quarterly revenue reached $6.85 billion, marking a significant 59% year-over-year increase, surpassing the estimated $6.69 billion

• EBITDA reached $2.22 billion, outperforming the estimated $2.1 billion

• Passengers carried totaled 3.6 million, a +40% year-over-year increase

• Fuel consumption in 2023 to be nearly 16% lower than 2019, which is very good considering inflation environment

Management comments

• The outperformance was driven by strength in demand, with both North America, Australia, Europe equally outperforming expectations

• Management said that company is well positioned to drive pricing higher and deliver strong yield improvement in 2024

Political trading

• Congress members were mostly selling CCL shares this year

• Rep. Eric Burlison sold $15,000 - $50,000 worth of shares on February 06, when the stock closed at $11.87

• Shares are seen trading at around $15 apiece on Friday

If you want to be notified when politicians trade stock, we send daily email alerts here