Archive for November, 2009
« Previous Entries5 Stocks For The Dollar Portfolio
Monday, November 30th, 2009Stock analysis writing often requires a large amount of creativity - exploring new ways of looking at the market, and unique types of portfolios. My latest idea is to invest in the “dollar” portfolio, a group of five stocks all with the word dollar in their corporate names. Now, before you invest in any or […]
Invest In The Unilever Portfolio
Friday, November 27th, 2009British consumer goods giant Unilever (NYSE:UN, NYSE:UL) has a section in its website that answers frequently asked questions about its stock. One of them discusses total shareholder return (capital gains plus dividends) of Unilever stock in comparison with 20 other global competitors like Kraft (NYSE:KFT), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) as well as […]
5 Reasons Why You Should Know Vornado
Friday, November 27th, 2009If you follow the REIT market, you’re sure to know that the past three years haven’t been good for real estate companies. The iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors ETF (NYSE: ICF) has averaged an annual decline of 17.3% in its share price over this period compared to a drop of 5.9% for the S&P 500. One […]
Smell Your Way To Profits
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009Most of the time stock analysis covers companies with market caps greater than $1 billion. Occasionally, however, a situation comes along that begs for coverage despite being below this threshold. There’s a lot to like about Scottsdale-based Matrixx Initiatives (Nasdaq:MTXX) and its Zicam nasal spray cold remedy. The micro cap competes with much larger companies […]
The Easy Way To IPO Riches
Monday, November 23rd, 2009In September, I wrote an article detailing the reasons why investors shouldn’t buy shares in the Hyatt (NYSE:H) IPO. At the top of the list was my argument that the hotel chain was simply going public to raise some cash for the Pritzker family, who control 85% of the shares. I reasoned that you’d be nuts to […]
Retail’s Magic Numbers
Friday, November 20th, 2009In 1968, New York University finance professor Edward Altman created the Z-Score, a formula for predicting the likelihood a company would go bankrupt within two years. Almost 40 years later, former fund manager Peter Temple dragged out the formula in his book “Magic Numbers For Stock Investors”. I pulled it off my bookshelf recently and thought […]
Four Stocks From The Heartland
Friday, November 20th, 2009One of the best value investing fund companies today is […]
5 Reasons To Love Allegiant
Friday, November 20th, 2009Forbes came out with its annual list of 200 Best Small Companies in October. Number two on the list was vacation packager and discount airline Allegiant Travel (Nasdaq: ALGT). Selling 5.75 million shares to the public at $18 a share back in December 2006, its stock jumped more than 30% on the first day of […]
Averaging Down Never Looked So Good
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Almost one year ago to the day, I was discussing the hopelessness of the markets with a fellow writer. He provided me with evidence showing the best yearly returns for U.S. stocks in the last 100 years. Most of the winners came the year after a recession. That got us wondering if the big year […]
“Online Sales Ratio” Key To Retail Success
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009Online retail is highly profitable. You need not look any further than Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN) for confirmation of this fact. Yet so many retailers seem to be missing the boat on this lucrative piece of the retail pie. Real estate is expensive, making online sales vital to the success of any retailer. I’m sure you’ve heard […]
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