BloggingStocks recently ran a series of posts called "Stocks for a Volatile Market" in which I argued that shoe maker Steven Madden (NASDAQ: SHOO) was currently priced with much less worthy peers (lower margins, most notably) and loaded with free options and potential catalysts.

While I thought that many of my team's posts made great sense, I take great issue to Sheldon Liber's post on FreightCar America (NASDAQ: RAIL). I have no issues with Sheldon's long term investment record, investing philosophy, or most of his ideas, but I think that this post had several great problems.

Most importantly, Sheldon seemed to purposely neglect considering the future potential of this company by saying that he focuses "not forward projections and guessing, but real facts. It is way too hard to predict the future." But therein lies the entire problem, he neglected the fact that he was looking at an absolute cyclical peak in operations for the company!

He then cited the metrics for the stock (emphasis his): "The P/E is 5.51, the P/S is 0.49, IT HAS ZERO DEBT!, with an ROE and ROI of 87 and an ROA of 47 - that's incredible!"

Continue reading Valuing FreightCar with peak earnings -- a recipe for disappointment

Valuing FreightCar with peak earnings -- a recipe for disappointment originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.