Whee, down another 6 spots. Great week so far at just under 1% net portfolio gain. Not much in the questions, about $14K, but that’s after a perfect 5 for 5 on the trivia questions. Oh well, you don’t make your mark in the contests.
Yesterday’s IPO picks were The Big Valley adaptation, which stayed neutral and Albert Nobbs, a period piece set in Ireland with an amazing cast. Nobbs picked up 2.6% on its IPO, and I’m hanging on to it anyway because the buzz will be fierce when they get to production. Big Valley didn’t budge at all. I suspect an adaption 10 years ago would have had a lot more interest. The tv series starred Barbara Stanwyck and a young (!) Lee Majors, went off the air in 1969. I don’t even remember watching it first run, but I clearly remember early 1970s television so I suspect the producers missed the nostalgia boat by a good 5 years if not more. So the big question now is if Ryan can carry a Western.
Dream House, the Daniel Craig-Naomi Watts supernatural thriller, is still in development but jumped17% yesterday. Glad that’s still in my portfolio. The Paddington Bear feature also jumped 9%. Always bet on kid franchises from mainstream media. Always.
The feature causing the biggest fuss on the HSX boards is the 21 Jump Street adaptation. Great, now I have Holly Robinson’s voice in my head singing that damn song while I keep flashing on Dustin and Peter DeLuise. And the other guy from the first year, whatever his name was. Oh yeah, Depp. So the scoop is that Jonah Hill (love me some pop culture loving Jonah) is exec producing and writing a script. He’s enough of a name to pull in a big cast, and Jessica Alba was attached. But the film had a decent summer 2011 release and is now pushed to the first 3 months of 2012. If it gets made, it’s a buy. I’m looking at Jonah’s schedule and know that Moneyball will distract him. If Zoolander 2 gets pushed up hard, and it just might, then Jonah goes nowhere near this until early 2011. He has 3 other projects in development so I’m a little torn.
21 Jump Street underscores the most frustrating aspect of HSX for me. I want to sell at $50. The stock is at $42.01. I really don’t feel like checking every day or even every week. But that’s what I have to do until more advanced trading features come along. More important than the pop up 20% is if the stock starts dropping. I would love a stop-loss setting, but alas, there is none.
Speaking of advanced trades, my options are looking good. I have a put on Johnny Knoxville’s The Drop Out, which dropped another $5.46. I’m out of this one now with a nice profit. Meanwhile, Billy Bob’s Zero Theorem is still in “Concept” phase with Terry Gilliam directing. It’s been sliding since its IPO a year ago and now sits at an ugly $6.42. I’m taking the cash out of this one and shorting it again. I’m doing the same with War Monkeys and Lone Survivor, an Afghanistan war flick that has no cast attached and has been floating around HSX since 2007.
Today’s IPOs are a little sparse, but one is intriguing for pop culture junkies. Novelist Vince Flynn will have a book adapted by Antoine Fuqua. Consent to Kill has no cast attached yet, but Fuqua did the gritty Training Day with Denzel and Shooter with Marky Mark and Danny Glover. Shooter was a book adaptation too so I’m interested in Fuqua when he stays in his zone like this. After all, he made Denzel Evil-with-a-capital-E in Training Day.
Comments