management posts
FeedPosted Jan 8th 2011 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Comfort Zone Investing, Stocks to Buy, Stocks to Sell
Investors spend most of their time looking for a great stock, anxious to buy one before others discover what they have. But equally important is knowing when to sell or when not to buy a stock. Here are a few red flags that stocks wave, no matter how good their numbers.
Dividends Are Very High. Stocks paying a dividend are a smart part of any portfolio. But when those dividends are much higher than average payments from companies in their industry, that's a problem waiting to happen. For example, if the average payment from the utility sector is 4% and the one you own is paying 10%, most likely the company's in trouble. Investors are selling the stock for a reason, making the dividend go ever higher (yield is: annual dividend/price ... the lower the price, the higher the yield). Sometimes the reasons for selling aren't known but become apparent after the quarterly earnings report. Or an announcement is made such as losing a contract that explains the downward pressure.
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: When Stocks Wave Red Flags
Posted Dec 25th 2010 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Comfort Zone Investing
Yes, there is a secret ingredient to a successful stock. It's called great management. No company sustains superior growth without management that is focused and honest. That last part is crucial. Ask investors in Tyco, Enron, or the old MCI. As Warren Buffett once said, ""In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy." You're hiring a company's management when you buy a stock. Here are two measures to help determine how well they're doing.
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: One Thing All Great Stocks Have
Posted Feb 20th 2010 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco Systems (CSCO), General Electric (GE), Comfort Zone Investing
If investing were only about numbers, then the math Ph.D.s would have all the money. But they don't. While numbers are very important and provide the majority of an investment decision, other elements come into play that are critical to any stock's success. They're hard to find sometimes but always worth the effort.
If you can discover these elements in a stock and great numbers, too, you've got all the odds for investing success in your favor.
The number one, most important piece of the investing puzzle is management. Management is everything. It's where all ideas begin and execution of them is implemented. Management can turn around a bad company and make it great. Management can take a good idea and turn it into a successful business.
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: Successful Stocks -- More Than Numbers
Posted Jan 19th 2010 1:40PM by Brent Archer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major Movement, International Markets, Bad News, Management, China, Options, Technical Analysis

Baidu.com (
BIDU -
option chain) stock is trading lower today after
the company's chief technology officer, Yinan Li, has resigned for undisclosed personal reasons. With this departure less than two weeks after Chief Operating Officer Peng Ye's resignation, analysts and traders alike are speculating that Li's resignation is related to the rollout of a new advertising tool that has given the company trouble. The WSJ (
supscription required) also speculates today that BIDU shares may have over-reacted to the recent Google (
GOOG) - China showdown. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on BIDU.
This morning, BIDU opened at $450.00. So far today the stock has hit a high of $452.02 and a low of $429.09. As of 11:55, BIDU is trading at $435.50, down $32.18 (-6.9%). The chart for BIDU looks neutral while
S&P gives BIDU a 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.
Continue reading Baidu.com Chief Technology Officer Resigns
Posted Oct 8th 2009 5:20PM by John Jagerson (RSS feed)
Filed under: Other Issues

Earnings season seems to be off to a promising start. So far
Alcoa (NYSE:
AA) cut enough costs to get back into profitable territory and same-store retail sales are up collectively for the first time since last year.
This sounds good and the major market indexes are up on the news reaching mid-September's resistance levels. A break here could turn into another extension of the rally. However, should investors be moving more heavily into stocks?
Continue reading How fragile are stock returns?
Posted Jul 26th 2009 2:40PM by Zac Bissonnette (RSS feed)
Filed under: Management, Private Equity, Recession
During the private equity boom years, one of the most common criticisms of the private equity kingpins went like this: "All they do is buy companies at a discount, leverage up the balance sheet, and use the cash flow to pay off the debt -- extracting millions in fees in the process."
Well now that access to cheap, covenant-lite debt has dried up, buyout shops are turning to the other option for making money: operational improvements. A new white paper released by Grant Thornton and the Association for Corporate Growth -- admittedly a private equity trade group -- found that 42% of private equity firms are devoting between 51% and 75% of their time on the management of companies they already control.
Continue reading Private equity firms actually do try to improve portfolio companies
Posted Apr 20th 2009 3:00PM by Zac Bissonnette (RSS feed)
Filed under: Forecasts, Management
The Associated Press reports that many publicly traded U.S. companies are cutting back on the amount of forecasting they're willing to do, leaving investors in the dark with little in the way of "forward-looking statements" to rely on.
It's easy to understand why: The tough economy has given many companies trouble in meeting their forecasts, and hell hath no fury like a stockholder or Wall Street analyst whose investment hasn't performed as well as management had predicted.
According to the AP, "A third of the 600 companies responding to a recent survey by the National Investor Relations Institute said their policies about financial guidance had changed. Most eliminated or limited the amount of guidance they provide about earnings and revenue."
Continue reading Companies tighten up on 'forward-looking statements'
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