hacked – Dearest Leader

2015 Portfolio Update

As mentioned on the #DtSR podcast I have been covering a simulated portfolio of hacked stocks. The strategy is to assume all companies that get hacked will go out of business because customers will go elsewhere. We short sell 100 shares into the close on the day news breaks. As you can see doing so would net you around -$45,000. Notice the big winners, Lockheed-Martin, and LinkedIn, who have more than doubled since they had a breach. That’s over half the portfolio. Diversifying into other hacked stocks didn’t help much either. On the bright side Sony continues to be a winner, no PolarVortex required.

Correlation Between Hackers and Target Stock Performance

Every retail CEO is blaming the weather for the poor sales. We all know that Target (NYSE:TGT) had a bad holiday because of hackers and not the weather, right? Well now Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) blew up their numbers and they’re saying it was the weather too. How is this possible? Obviously the hackers must have scared everyone away from Wal-Mart as well. There is absolutely no way it could be the Polar Vortex, right?

What if there is some connection between hackers and the weather? If we look at recent happenings in San Francisco, we can see that the street signs have been hacked saying San Francisco is closed because it’s too damn hot. It is obvious that hackers like cold weather. We should have seen this before since they invaded Target through a HVAC company. This is all the proof we need to know that the hackers were behind the poor earnings at Target because they made off with the credit card numbers and created the Polar Vortex. This blows up our previous study of data because we weren’t counting on hackers being able to control the weather.

We have absolutely tied hackers to the destruction of the entire retail sector. If hackers aren’t behind the Polar Vortex and poor retail performance then there is only one other possibility.

Leaking Data Does Not Hurt Value

At first glance it looked like $BAH would never get another government contract. But now $BAH is up 30% from when it was revealed that Edward Snowden worked for them. They are unlikely to be “leaked out of business” by Snowden’s actions. This adds to the historical evidence that companies do not go out of business if IP is leaked or stolen. It appears that the cliche of any publicity is good publicity is at work.