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In the Go-Go '80s – back when the hit movie Wall Street told us that "Greed Is Good" – Carl Icahn was known as a "corporate raider"… and was revered for his windfall-producing decisiveness.
Icahn is still around. And he's still active. Only now – in the politically correct 2000s – he's known as an "activist investor" who's gone up against the likes of Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and eBay Inc.(Nasdaq: EBAY).
I don't really care what we call him. I just know that Carl Icahn has done us a big, big favor.
You see, Icahn the Great has just cleared our path to a big profit – a company in a hot new market whose shares could surge 50% in the next two years.
And today I'm going to tell you a tale that shows how Icahn did this – and show you the stock that's ready to run.
Carl Icahn: Anatomy of an "Activist"
During his 36 years in the stocks game, Carl Icahn has demonstrated a flair for pressuring CEOs into making big changes to the companies they run. Stock buybacks, dividend hikes, special payouts, spin-offs, and corporate restructurings… the recommended changes might vary from one "target" company to the next. But the results were generally the same: The target company's share price would zoom, creating a windfall for Icahn – and for the investors who have increasingly followed every move that he makes.
Icahn's newest target is eBay, the leader in online auctions. King Carl is trying to force eBay to spin off its highly valuable PayPal subsidiary. In some ways, it was a shrewd move: Icahn has recognized – as we have with you – that electronic payments (also known as a "digital wallet") is an emerging sector with a big upside.
This time around, Icahn's power play isn't working. He's met with intense resistance from a company.
For us, however, that doesn't matter. Icahn has focused a tremendous amount of investor attention on this new sector's huge potential upside. He just picked the wrong company.
We didn't make that mistake.
In fact, we've identified a digital-payments stock that's making all the right moves.
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About the Author
Michael A. Robinson is one of the top financial analysts working today. His book "Overdrawn: The Bailout of American Savings" was a prescient look at the anatomy of the nation's S&L crisis, long before the word "bailout" became part of our daily lexicon. He's a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and reporter, lauded by the Columbia Journalism Review for his aggressive style. His 30-year track record as a leading tech analyst has garnered him rave reviews, too. Today he is the editor of the monthly tech investing newsletter Nova-X Report as well as Radical Technology Profits, where he covers truly radical technologies – ones that have the power to sweep across the globe and change the very fabric of our lives – and profit opportunities they give rise to. He also explores "what's next" in the tech investing world at Strategic Tech Investor.
Icahn knows that freed from Ebay, PayPal would soar. Icahn is scratching the tip of the iceberg. Icahn is right to call for resignations. Icahn may be completely aware just how very deep the well is when it comes to eBay's fraudulent activities designed to prop up their earnings. Ebay is engaged in fraud to steal fees from Sellers by NOT posting listings to their user base, and eBay even granted itself permission to not make a seller's items visible at all sometimes (based on nebulous "criteria") in their Oct. 2013 User Agreement updates.. Thousands of small sellers have been purged by eBay in the past nine months. Ebay knows Americans are hurting and there will be a steady, continuous stream of new sellers registering to try and sell. Ebay is actively engaged in stealing posting fees from sellers as long as they can by not posting items for sale, as well as creating a hostile environment so sellers voluntarily depart or can be de-registered. Ebay caps many sellers limits secretly based on a variety of criteria (which they do not reveal). They use "Bots" (an automated program) so that if they are investigated they can point their finger at the technology (to keep the execs from taking the heat). But ex-employees of eBay have been in meetings where eBay executives and supervisors have said the intended goal is to make it impossible for small to mid-size sellers to survive while Donahoe transforms the site completely over to big-box retailers. Donahoe's cronies are Ivy League Trust Babies who have no idea what it is to be a small to mid-size American business owner. They must be called out once and for all and held accountable. A FULL-SCALE FEDERAL INVESTIGATION in in order. eBay has crossed the line and is actively involved in FRAUD.