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A humorous look at the companies that caught our eye, for better or worse, this week.

Fiat Chrysler


FCAU (NYSE)

  Oct. 31, 2014 close: $11.46 (U.S.)
  up $1.96 or 20.6% over week

Waste of money: Buying a Ferrari to drive in downtown Toronto.

Good use of money: Investing in Ferrari owner Fiat Chrysler.

Aiming to raise cash so it can take on giants such as Toyota and Volkswagen, the parent company plans to list a 10-per-cent stake in the iconic sports car maker and spin off the rest of its 90-per-cent holding in Ferrari to Fiat Chrysler shareholders. With cash set to roll in, the shares are burning rubber.

Buffalo Wild Wings


BWLD (Nasdaq)

  Oct. 31, 2014 close: $149.28 (U.S.)
  up $13.88 or 10.3% over week

Buffalo Wild Wings isn’t based in Buffalo and its chickens aren’t wild. But it does sell wings – lots and lots of wings. Lifted by new restaurant openings and growing sales at existing locations, the chain of sports bars reported an 18-per-cent jump in third-quarter revenue and a 22-per-cent increase in earnings. The stock’s hotter than the company’s “blazin’ ” wing sauce (which it advises to “keep away from eyes, pets, children”).

Twitter


TWTR (NYSE)

  Oct. 31, 2014 close: $41.47 (U.S.)
  down $8.48 or 17% over week

Business quiz!

Twitter’s stock got crushed this week because:


a) Growth in new users slowed to 4.8 per cent in the third quarter from 6.3 per cent in the second quarter;
b) The company’s quarterly loss more than doubled to $175.5-million;
c) Existing users checked their Twitter feeds less frequently than in the previous quarter.

Answer: all of the above.

With analysts downgrading the stock, investors are feeling like twits.

Orbital Sciences


ORB (NYSE)

  Oct. 31, 2014 close: $26.30 (U.S.)
  down $2.73 or 9.4% over week

First, one of Orbital Science’s rockets crashed. Then, so did its stock. In what the company termed a “catastrophic failure,” an unmanned Antares rocket supplied by the private contractor exploded shortly after liftoff at a NASA facility in Virginia, destroying the spacecraft and about 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments destined for the International Space Station – not to mention about $300-million of shareholders’ wealth.

Horizon North Logistics


HNL (TSX)

  Oct. 31, 2014 close: $3.18
  down $1.73 or 35.2% over week

Bad: Living in “work force accommodation” on a remote mining site.

Worse: investing in the company that provides the accommodation.

Horizon Logistics – which provides housing, catering and other services to job sites in Western Canada and northern territories – said “lower activity levels” contributed to a 23-per-cent drop in revenue and 59-per-cent plunge in earnings per share in the third quarter, sending the stock down a deep, dark mine shaft.