Symantec / NortonLifeLock - It Goes Down In The DM

It's December and I wanted to recap my best performers this year. I hope these notes serve as a way to help develop a strategy and display that it's not hard to invest in things you know.  Ironically, I trade enough that I don't know exactly who were top dawgs until I began doing a little bit of data analytics over the year. So I'll let you know who surprised me and why they made the list from my notes.

Symantec Corp. (SYMC) now known as NortonLifeLock NASDAQ : NLOK

In 2019, Symantec Corp. stumbled onto my radar. Quick background, they are one of the old guards in the IT and cybersecurity space.  They are huge and in almost every large companies data center and for consumers like you and me...many of us use their Norton Anti-Virus system on our home computers. I started hearing rumblings that the financials have not been good and the CEO was stepping down, which led the stock to fall, over 10% I believe (May 2019).  So hear is a name I know is in every large company across the globe and in many households.  So I put my alert to buy Symantec and being a little greedy I waited to pounce at an even lower price. This example shows investing is about both timing and price. 

How my trade unfolded:

Early July 2019 - News hit that Broadcom Inc. had DM'd (my version of trying to hookup) with Symantec Corp. for somewhere around $28 a share. I was right YES! But only on the time of the stock, being greedy on the price, I did NOT own any shares and the stock had probably moved up from around $22 to $26. It wasn't official because Symantec Corp. said if you like it put a bigger ring on it...$28 ain't good enough. For me, watching this was tough because it made sense, but you win some and will lose many. But never forget about the ones that got away.


July 15 2019 - News broke that Broadcom Inc. was officially no longer in Symantec Corp.'s DM. They wanted no part of a golddigger, reaching for more money. Symantec Corp. was officially left at the alter and the stock dropped big time over 15% and was back where I first found it. A song popped into my head: "You don't know what you've got until it's Gone" and I decided to finally
buy Symantec Corp. Why, it was like Broadcom Inc. had done all of the hard work of getting the phone number and then giving it to me to make the call. So I went in big because I knew Symantec Corp. should be trading around the $28 dollar range. Now that's what I call a wingman.

August 8 2019 - Yup you guessed it Broadcom Inc. had the same song in their head too and wanted Symantec Corp. back. But they were more cautious and only wanted to buy Symantec Corp.'s enterprise business which supports those big companies that I talked about...NOT the anti-virus business they sell to consumers like us. How much: $10.7 billion deal, the stock move up to the 24-25 range.

November 5 2019 - Symantec Corp. (SYMC) is no longer in the enterprise space so they are "Feeling Good As Hell" with their new focus on consumer security products and identify protection and change their name to NortonLifeLock NASDAQ : NLOK   (Note: they bought LifeLock a few years ago)

December 10 2019 - Saw news today that McAfee (owned by Intel now) and a few Private Equity Firms are DMing NortonLifeLock. So the stock has jump above $26 dollars on the news

I wanted to thank Symantec / NortonLifeLock, Broadcom, Intel McAfee, and the Private Equity Firms for giving me my best position of the year and all the drama that unfolded better than a scripted drama show or TMZ news feed because I can make $$ of this drama.  Thank you Yo Gotti and Lizzo for songs that popped into my head as I wrote this. Reminder, if I can do it you can too.  I'm tagging Symantec / NortonLifeLock because I think other suitors may be lining up. #investandchill   #investingintheDM #hookupalert