Predicting the market impact of a storm like Tropical Storm Harvey can be as difficult as predicting the trajectory and wind speeds of the storm itself. However, there are plenty of investors looking to trade the storm, which meteorologists expect will strengthen to hurricane status before making landfall in Louisiana and Texas sometime over the weekend or early next week. Wind damage and flooding could have billions of dollars of economic impact.
Here’s a look as several kinds of stocks that could be moving this week thanks to the storm.
Insurers
Property and casualty insurers — including Allstate Corp ALL 0.42%, Travelers Companies Inc TRV 0.62%, Chubb Ltd CB 0.5% and Progressive Group PGR 0.11% — could be on the hook for covering storm damages. A series of late-summer 2016 storms increased Progressive’s year-over-year catastrophic losses by hundreds of percent from July to September.
Agriculture
Flooding in Louisiana last year severely impacted rice crops, and hurricanes impacting cotton, corn and pecan crops could be bad news for Archer Daniels Midland Company ADM 0.9%and Seaboard Corp SEB 0.5%.
Oil Refiners
The Houston area is home to roughly a third of the entire U.S. oil refining capacity. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation APC 0.05% and Magellan Midstream Partners, L.P. MMP 0.41%have already shut down refineries in the area. Marathon Petroleum Corp MPC 1.18%,Phillips 66 PXS and Exxon Mobile Corporation XOM 0.02% all operate major refineries in the Houston area. If these refiners lose productivity due to shutdowns and/or storm damage, it could impact the stocks’ bottom lines.
Home Improvement Stocks
Home improvement stocks such as Home Depot Inc HD 0.61%, Lowe’s Companies, Inc. LOW 0.6% and Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc. BECN 0.5% could see a major bump to business in the aftermath of a particularly devastating storm. If there are widespread power outages in the area, generator stock Genrac Holdings Inc. GNRC 4.91% could also pick up some storm-based business.
Construction Stocks
South Texas is…
Click here to continue reading
Want to learn more about how to profit off the stock market? Or maybe you just want to be able to look sophisticated in front of your coworkers when they ask you what you are reading on your Kindle, and you’d prefer to tell them “Oh, I’m just reading a book about stock market analysis,” rather than the usual “Oh, I’m just looking at pics of my ex-girlfriend on Facebook.” For these reasons and more, check out my book, Beating Wall Street with Common Sense. I don’t have a degree in finance; I have a degree in neuroscience. You don’t have to predict what stocks will do if you can predict what traders will do and be one step ahead of them. I made a 400% return in the stock market over five years using only basic principles of psychology and common sense. Beating Wall Street with Common Sense is now available on Amazon, and tradingcommonsense.com is always available on your local internet!
