STOCKS posts
FeedPosted Apr 5th 2011 4:30PM by Jon Ogg (RSS feed)
Filed under: After the Bell, Apple Inc (AAPL), Boeing Co (BA), Merck and Co (MRK), Abercrombie and Fitch (ANF), Texas Instruments (TXN)

Stocks had another mixed day, despite some key winners and losers. China's surprise rate hike came amid word of a rate by the European Central Bank, expected on Thursday of this week. Brent Crude hit what appears to be a two-year high and even Ben Bernanke's remarks on inflation didn't add much to the mix. That being said, it was not known until the final minute if the markets were going to be in the red or the black for the trading day.
Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:
Dow Jones: 12,393.90 -6.13 (-0.05%)
S&P500: 1,332,63 -0.24 (-0.02%)
Nasdaq: 2,791,19 +2.00 (0.07%)
Top Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades
Continue reading Closing Bell: The Directionless Day (AAPL, ANF, BA, FXI, ISPH, MRK, NSM, TXN)
Posted Mar 29th 2011 4:30PM by Jon Ogg (RSS feed)
Filed under: After the Bell, Amazon.com (AMZN), Home Depot (HD), Toyota Motor Corp. (TM)
Consumer Confidence saw a huge drop for March, but that failed to hurt the markets as it was largely expected. Housing prices continued south according to national housing survey data from Case Shiller. International stock markets saw a mixed bag on Tuesday, but U.S. investors continued to sit there, buying stocks. Maybe the real catalyst is the fact that very few companies have formally lowered guidance despite the turmoil.
Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:
Dow Jones: 12,279.01 + 81.13 (0.67%)
S&P500: 1,319.44 +9.25 (0.71%)
Nasdaq: 2,756.89 +26.21 (0.96%)
Continue reading Closing Bell: Cautious Euphoria Continues (AMZN, APOL, CRY, GFRE, HD, TM)
Posted Mar 15th 2011 10:00AM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Japan, Headline News
Watch the tape. Ignore the chatter. Those two are old truisms. The U.S. treasury market held firm Monday, with the 10-year June futures contract closing at 120-06, up 16 ticks.
There was some chatter from naysayers that China or Japan, the biggest foreign holders of U.S. debt, might decide to sell. That piece of news can be discarded. Why would they sell and take huge losses?
Stocks markets, however, across the globe were down, prompting a scramble for safety. Which safety? Why, the U.S. treasury market.
Continue reading U.S. Treasuries Hold Firm Against the Backdrop of the Japanese Crisis
Posted Feb 19th 2011 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Comfort Zone Investing
The perfect stock suggests that it would fit in any portfolio at any time. That perfect stock doesn't exist. Some investors want capital gains from growth only. Others want income. Still others want some of both. So can there be a perfect stock?
There is for each group of investors. For the ones looking for capital gains, the stock would have these attributes:
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: The Perfect Stock
Posted Jan 15th 2011 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Apple Inc (AAPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Intel (INTC), Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), International Business Machines (IBM), Procter and Gamble (PG), duPont(E.I.)deNemours (DD), Comfort Zone Investing
Economies go in cycles. They push to their breaking points, then move in the opposite direction. We saw it clearly in the '90s when there was no end to up (except there was and we abruptly hit it in 2000). In 2008, it felt like there was no end to down. But we now know there is. Things are picking up, and there are numbers to prove it.
Don't be the last to figure out we're in an economic recovery. Sitting on the sidelines, waiting for one more chance to buy a stock at the bargain price you saw in March of 2009 isn't going to happen. Times have changed. The U.S. economy is on the mend.
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: Can You Feel the Pendulum Swinging?
Posted Jan 12th 2011 4:00PM by Nikolay Tsintsadze (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Stocks to Buy
Investors searching for opportunities will be hard pressed to find stocks that are still undervalued. It seems like this rally has pushed every sector to very high levels. Perhaps, it may be time to look in more off-the-cuff places for investment ideas.
One possibility trades on the Amsterdam-based exchange, the Euronext. The Dutch insurer, Delta Lloyd Group, which has operations in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, is a profitable company with a favorable balance sheet that trades at a significant discount to its book value. In the first half of 2010, it generated €767 million of income after taxes and non-controlling interests, a 263% increase. At the same time, it has €3,903 billion in tangible assets net of all liabilities, but a market cap of just € 2,810 billion as of January 11. In other words, investing in Delta Lloyd is like buying assets, with all liabilities paid off, at a 30% discount.
Continue reading Opportunity on the Euronext: Delta Lloyd
Posted Nov 3rd 2010 4:45PM by David Fried (RSS feed)
Filed under: Newsletters, Coach Inc (COH), Family Dollar Stores (FDO), Stocks to Buy, Stock Picks
Our recommendations at The Buyback Letter currently focus on a collection of five stocks that we believe, as a group, will outperform the market this month. So far, we have done well. Our Buyback Premium Portfolio is beating the S&P 500 by more than 68% since its inception (August 2, 2000). The portfolio is up 47.53% since inception versus a decline of 20.64% in the S&P 500 over the same time frame. For the month of September 2010, The Buyback Premium Portfolio gained 12.38% vs. a gain of 8.76% in the S&P 500.
So what's our New Premium Portfolio Recommendation? On October 1, we issued a sell recommendation on two stocks Coach (COH) and Health Net (HNT) at market. Now, we recommended using the proceeds and available cash to buy equal dollar amounts of the following two stocks at market:Family Dollar (FDO) and American Financial Group (AFG).
Continue reading Two Stocks That Could Profit from Buybacks
Posted Oct 7th 2010 2:30PM by Nikhil Hutheesing (RSS feed)
Filed under: Columns, Personal Finance, Videos

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average hovering near 11,000, you may be persuaded that times are getting better and that there is money to be made by investing in stocks. James Altucher, managing director of Formula Capital, believes that stocks are going up. But even so, he says there are better ways to make money.
His suggestion: In the video below, he argues that if you have $20,000 to $100,000 to invest, put your money into something that will make a big change in your life, instead of in stocks. If you are a photographer, for example, buy a top of the line camera. The payoff in producing better photographs should help your photography business far more than putting $3,000 in stocks.
Continue reading Here's One Way to Generate 100% Gains -- and It's Not in Stocks
Posted Oct 2nd 2010 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), International Business Machines (IBM), Comfort Zone Investing, Housing
While the stock market has moved up nicely in the last three months, it's hardly moved stocks above reasonable valuations. IBM (IBM) sells at 12.77 times earnings. Intel (INTC) goes for 11.67 times. Microsoft (MSFT) has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 11.74. Google (GOOG) sports one of 22.8, but even that isn't too noteworthy when many of these stocks at one time or another traded at 50 to 100 times their earnings. Of course, those were days when there was only up, and everyone was on Ecstasy. Thankfully, every stock, and everyone, is back on earth.
Those relatively benign valuations come from the reality of a slow global economy. In the U.S. it's more like a smashed-into-a-brick-wall economy. No matter the degree of the economic slowdown, all investors are cautious, not willing to bid up stocks when they believe things will only get worse, that profits will only decrease.
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: Why the Next Rally Could Be a Monster
Posted Sep 8th 2010 12:40PM by Derek and Damien Hoffman (RSS feed)
Filed under: Rumors, Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Newsletters, International Business Machines (IBM), EMC Corp (EMC), Bargain Stocks
The tail-end summer heat has been heavily attributable to the mergers and acquisitions blaze. Companies are putting their cash to work on public companies fetching discounted equity prices in a market environment favoring safety (e.g., gold and bonds).
Recently, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) edged out Dell (DELL) for the 3Par deal award. With an eye toward the future, HP displayed their powerful desire to own a piece of the data storage and cloud computing pie. Since Dell ended empty-handed, it's only a matter of time before the next stock is a tech heavyweight's prime target.
Continue reading Is Brocade the Next 3Par?
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