Posts for Ticker ‘CUBA’

Investors Taking the Cuba Bet (CUBA)

cuba-mapHow long has the U.S. been at odds with Cuba?  For many of us, the answer is “Our entire lifetime.”  And now things may start be finally on track to be turning.  A headline came across the Broad Tape this morning indicating that the Obama administration is set to lift some travel and money restrictions that have been in place against this island nation for decades. It seems hard to imagine that relations will ever be normal as long as anyone named Castro is in charge of the country, but the criteria for ‘normal’ and the criteria for `good news’ seems suddenly very different in today’s world.  We won’t bother you with a historic dissertation nor will we engage in all of the political and personal issues that have affected many in this regard.  But there is an investor angle here that traders have used as their single US-traded vehicle to invest in the future of a US-Cuba normalization: the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund Inc. (NASDAQ: CUBA).
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Posted on: April 13, 2009 – 11:18 am in ADR, ETF, Emerging Markets, Mutual Funds, Politics, Trading Alert,

EU’s Cuba Sanctions Lifted, Partial Win For Herzfeld Caribbean (CUBA)

There have been numerous news reports that the European Union has lifted diplomatic sanctions against Cuba.  While the lifting does include some imposed tough conditions to maintain sanction-free relations, this is probably the first of many such steps.  Some of the conditions include including the release of political prisoners, granting Cubans access to the Internet, and allowing all EU delegations arriving in Cuba to meet opposition figures and members of the Cuban government.

Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund Inc. (NASDAQ: CUBA) is actually the investment angle for this as far as U.S. investors are concerned.  The fund invests in companies that are perceived to benefit from normalized relations down the road.  Shares are up over 4% today at $8.37.  The volume is frequently light, and today’s 13,761 shares show that.  It has not seen a single trading session of more than 100,000 shares trade hands since February. 

The company’s web site also lists its Net Asset Value as $7.62 as of June 19, 2008.  The current market cap is listed as $31 million on NASDAQ, although we would caution that a fairly recent offering might make the number slightly different.

Jon C. Ogg
June 20, 2008

Posted on: June 20, 2008 – 11:46 am in International Markets, Mutual Funds,

Fidel Castro Gone, Herzfeld Wins (CUBA)

Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund Inc. (NASDAQ: CUBA) has been "the go-to trade" for Americans that wanted to invest in the potential normalization of US-Cuba relations. Until today, that always seemed more of a mystical potentiality rather than a finite event with a known time frame. 

With the news that Fidel Castro will not be returning to official power to run the country, this will get a lot of attention today and this week.  We’d advise traders that the swings we see this week should be quite wild.  If you want to see how "Castro-rumors" in the past have moved this closed-end fund, look at the move in late-2006 and then again in early to mid-2007.  This saw similar moves in the earlier part of this decade and in the late 1990’s.  You can find more historical data at the herzfeld.com site.

Unfortunately we are still a long ways off from any normalized relations.  Fidel’s brother Raul has been in charge of the country for much of the last 18-months as Fidel has "been ill."  But the good news is that this is at least step one of a ten or twenty step process.  We have covered this one before for our "10 Stocks Under $10" letter, and this one is now looking like it can come to fruition.

We’d beware of any major gap-ups that are too high in this closed-end fund because its total share count is so small and the float is extremely thin.  Herzfeld also closed at a discount to its N.A.V. last week, and this used to trade at a slight premium to a large back when this was above $10.00.

Be advised that this recently had a float of about 1.7 million shares before the last distribution and its market cap was only about $12.5 million, but that appears to have roughly doubled after a fairly recent rights offering.  It has an extremely thin daily trading volume, so today’s moves are going to probably be quite exaggerated.

Jon C. Ogg
February 19, 2008

Posted on: February 19, 2008 – 8:48 am in Cult Stock, ETF, International Markets, Mutual Funds, Politics, , , ,