Last November 7th Twitter (TWTR) held its much anticipated IPO. Priced at $26 a share for well-placed insiders, the stock opened at $45.10, hit $50 and closed at $44.90. After a year of laughs, tears and dope jokes shares are set to open at $43 today, pretty much right where it started.
The reason shares are gapping down this morning has to do with somewhat soft engagement numbers, slowing growth and a concession from the company that its vaunted "One-Click" retail efforts are still very much in the experimental phase.
From a charting perspective, which is a decent way to look at the trading of emotion-based stocks like Twitter, the shares are simply filling a gap it left back in July. The most obvious trade, and by obvious I mean "insanely high-risk and not to be taken as advice," is to look for a long position around $40 a share with a stock 5% lower.
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You can go after that trade if you want but you're picking up pennies in front of an oncoming bulldozer. Twitter's real problem is that it's still impossible to explain the benefits to newbies. It's a decent place for the famous... or "noteworthy"... to communicate with a broad public but that's not a $25 billion business. In fact, half the time it's sort of terrifying and infuriating, as drop-outs like model Chrissy Tiegen or my friend Doug Kass can attest.
These aren't just philosophical musings. Twitter's appeal to advertisers is based on how well it knows its user base. Right now it only knows a very thin slice of what they do and who they are. Google (GOOGL) knows your deep-dark secrets and Facebook (FB) knows who you pretend to be at high school reunions. As it stands Twitter just has a tiny grasp on who a person is in semi-public and a little about your social set, but not much else.
Twitter says it's expanding that knowledge base and I'm sure they're trying. As it stands they're littering my feed with weirdness like an ad for kid-sized bullet proof vests (really) and stalkish messages from corporations I criticize. If it can't improve beyond that this is the last November we'll be able to talk this stock in the $40s.
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