Welcome back, fellow speculators!

After the excitement of last week and the B&R updates, it's time to jump back into the movers and shakers of the MTG finance realm. For the penny stocks this week I will exclude the two biggest gainers as they are the two cards that got unbanned last week and have spiked in response (Worldgorger Dragon and Golgari Grave-Troll).

Penny Stocks

#1 - Scion of the Ur-Dragon (+235.2%) - Fate Reforged brought us a bunch of new exciting dragons with cool abilities, but most importantly several with an ability that triggers whenever a dragon attacks (so you can get multiple triggers). Scion is your quintessential five-color dragon general (and your only dragon option at that).

His spike wasn't really all that surprising given the theme of the set. What is interesting is that it took until January 17th for any change, despite the fact that the dragons had all been spoiled before then. The massive and sudden spike does imply a buyout. I expect his price to stay higher than the previous $2, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him drift back down towards the $4 mark.

#2 - Frontier Siege (+193%) - This Fate Reforged gem saw significant camera time at the first Fate Reforged-legal Standard Open (SCG DC). Led by Ali-Antrazi's Sultai Ramp deck, it helps power out Ugins and other giant spells. The "dragons" choice with Hornet Queen is also pretty nasty. The important thing is that you could buy these on Saturday on TCG player (as I did for under $1) after watching the SCG coverage.

#3 - Tasigur, the Golden Fang (+161.5%) - This is another FRF card that saw significant camera time on the SCG Open and even found a home in some Modern decks (including the second place deck of said Open). This guy is looking to be the real deal as a cheap beater with a useful card advantage ability tacked on. Another card that was $5 on Saturday, $5 on Sunday and now $13.

I can't stress enough how important it is to watch the SCG coverage the weekend after a set is released. There's a lot of potential money to be made. Now Tasigur (as cool as he is) is not a $13 card. He jumped up in a day and I expect he'll slowly slide back down as those who jumped on the bandwagon at $10+ will be weary of trading him away when he slips back down to $5 (which he will do as more product is released).

#4 - Waste Not (+41.5%) - Maybe all the discard-happy players missed the spoiling of Dark Deal, maybe they didn't read it until they cracked it in their Fate Reforged pre-release. Either way this card's jump is not likely to stick, unless someone can make a tier 1.5+ Standard deck based around it.

This was an M15 rare (a relatively unopened set, by today's standards) and it was player created, so I was a fan of picking it up in trade at it's old price. Less so at the new one, though at sub $5 there's still room to grow.

#5 - Bridge from Below (Future Sight) (+18.5%) - As expected one of the many sub $5 cards that plays really well with Golgari Grave-Troll (and isn't banned like Dread Return), this one is riding the coattails of Grave-Troll. However, unless a dredge deck actually materializes, I expect both to sink in value as players try and fail to make a tier 1 deck. If they succeed...then buy more Scavenging Oozes.

Blue Chip Stocks

#1 - Force of Will (+2.82%) - With the shift in the Legacy metagame towards blue-based tempo decks (of which FoW is a staple), it's not surprising to see FoW continue its upward trend. However, with the banning of Treasure Cruise in Legacy, the aggro-control (or tempo) U/R/x decks will likely see a drop in percentage of the metagame and players will revert back to a more pre-Khans style format. This is still good news for Force of Will which is still a major player in many of those decks.

#2 - Scrubland (-2.13%) - Not surprisingly we see one of the non-blue duals continue a downward trend. There is some hope for the Esper Stoneblade decks to once again rise in prominence (as Treasure Cruise decks lost their main source of card advantage) so we could very well see a bounce for Scrubland. But until those Esper decks materialize I expect this one will rise/fall around the $75 mark (which was its pre-April price).

#3 - Badlands (+1.96%) - This seems to go directly against what I said above, however Badlands has been waffling around the $75 mark for the past few weeks. I won't be surprised if we see it back down a bit again in two weeks. I feel like this one falls in line with Scrublands above and will likely stay around $75 for awhile.

#4 - Sneak Attack (-1.79%) - This one doesn't honestly make a lot of sense. With the banning of Treasure Cruise, I fully expect people to jump back on the Sneak and Show bandwagon as their biggest challenge was beating a deck that stuck a cheap, efficient threat on turn one or two and then protected it and/or interfered with the Sneak and Show gameplan with a bevy of cheap counterspells.

#5 - Dark Confidant (+1.69%) - Oh how Bob has patiently waited in the shadows while Treasure Cruise flaunted it's "no pain" card advantage. He remembers that greatness comes with a cost and now the rest of us are remembering it too as he jumps back to Modern's best form of continual card advantage.

Value Stocks

This weeks value stocks include a few of the last ones...mainly my #1 and #3.

#1 - Stifle - Stifle is still sitting near it's all-time low ($6 for Conspiracy and $11 for Scourge). With the departure of Treasure Cruise in Legacy, expect the older RUG Tempo decks that relied on Wasteland and Stifle to pop back up to keep the combo players in check.

#2 - Genesis Hydra - This little gem is sitting around $1.50-$1.75, but is a key component in an infinite combo in Standard. That alone should set off alarm bells, as Standard is the format with the least number of solutions to any given problem, and going infinite in Standard allows for some very heavily focused deck building.

The fact that this key piece is a rare from a poorly-received set means that he has higher potential than say a Khans rare like Temur Ascendancy. If we see this combo deck take down an SCG Open in the near future, you can expect Genesis Hydra to jump quite a bit (he's already at $4 on SCG, so they are expecting higher demand for him).

#3 - Chord of Calling - I'm going to continue to stick with this one. I first assumed with Pod's banning (and Pod being the only Modern deck that played Chord) that it would lose its home in Modern. Rumor has it that though there are some "podless" Pod decks that simply swap out the Pod for Chord and go heavier on the combo engine instead of the "value cards with a combo potential" of old Pod decks.

Growth Stocks

It's the end of the month, so let's check back in on our sealed product. It's been a while since we last checked, so let's see what kinds of movement has happened in a month's time span.

We see a pretty major drop in Mirrodin Besieged. There's a similar drop in New Phyrexia, however that one seems to have an outlier (of one really lucky eBay bidder); neglecting that specific sale we see a much smaller drop.

As it is, it's still hard to say how good of an investment sealed product is. Looking over it, every box but Dark Ascension is more valuable than their initial retail prices, so from that perspective it's a pretty safe investment, though it's often a pretty big chunk of change to have held up awaiting a modest return.

Week of 12/27/14