September
3
2010
The Oxen Group submits:
Happy Thursday to all. The market is looking interesting today. We have some solid drop in the unemployment claims that was below expectations. Yet, the market is not reacting heavily to it. That may be because of the rise yesterday, and also, we have pending home sales at 10 AM that may actually drop year-over-year. Additionally, retail sales came out looking pretty well in the month of August. Today, it may be a show me what you got sort of day with the market not moving in either direction too strongly. Yesterday, we did not enter any new positions and got out of an Overnight Trade in Donaldson Company (DCI) for no gain at 2.20. The big story, yesterday, was our August results were in for our portfolios. We had a 5% gain in the Buy Portfolio and a 10% gain in the Short Sale Portfolio. Both portfolios continue to improve with a 62% improvement for the year on the Buy and 21% improvement on the Short. You can read the full story and check out the statistics here.
Let’s get into some plays…
September
3
2010
John Reese submits:
It’s no secret that individual investors have been taking big chunks of money out of stocks since the market turned downward in late April — according to the Investment Company Institute, investors removed a net of more than $46 billion from U.S. equity mutual funds from the beginning of May through mid-August. (Mutual fund flows serve as a pretty good proxy for individual investors; at the end of 2009, more than 91% of U.S. equity mutual fund assets belonged to individual investors, according to ICI.)
Interestingly, however, individual investors as a group weren’t even all that keen on stocks during the big rally that began in March 2009. In fact, investors collectively were net sellers of U.S. equity funds from the beginning of April 2009 through April 2010, pulling a net of about $6.8 billion from the funds, according to ICI’s data. During the same period, the S&P 500 was gaining almost 50%.
September
3
2010
Investment U submits:
By Alexander Moschina
You probably remember the agri-boom a few years back.
As grain prices rose to astronomical figures, it triggered an increase in food prices across the board.
September
3
2010
StreetAuthority submits:
By David Sterman
With a deal in place to acquire Burger King (BKC) for a tidy $24 a share, investors are handed the opportunity to quickly assess how its rivals are valued. Any rivals selling at a sharp discount to Burger King’s price are likely to see renewed investor interest as the M&A action heats up in the sector.
September
3
2010
Stirling Capital Management submits:
KDUS: Cadus Corporation
Current Price: $1.43
Price Target: $1.80 – $2.40
September
3
2010
Milwaukee Private Wealth Management, Inc submits:
Clearly the US and its sovereign states are economically challenged today. Among the most desperate states are California, Nevada, Florida and Illinois. MFRI Corp (MFRI), a Niles, Illinois company may be suffering from simple guilt by association.
MFRI is an industrial conglomerate. It reports in four segments:
September
3
2010
Charles Lewis Sizemore submits:
The Financial Times ran a headline several weeks ago that really stuck with me:
"Emerging markets fuel consumer goods groups."
September
3
2010
Dividend Growth Investor submits:
Medtronic, Inc. (MDT) develops, manufactures, and sells device-based medical therapies worldwide. This dividend champion has raised distributions for 33 years in a row.
Over the past decade this dividend stock has produced a negative total return of 2.20% per year. The company was grossly overvalued in 2000, ending the year at a P/E of 68 which explains the poor returns over the past decade.
September
3
2010
Kevin Grewal submits:
Several times a week, Seeking Alpha’s Jason Aycock asks money managers about their single highest-conviction position – what they would own (or short) if they could choose just one stock or ETF.
Analyst Kevin Grewal is founder, editor and publisher of ETF Tutor, and editor at SmartStops.net and the ETF Institute. Previously, he worked as an analyst at a small hedge fund.
Which single asset class are you most bullish (or bearish) about in the coming year? What ETF position would you choose to best capture that?
September
3
2010
The Gold Report submits:
Every day New York-based investment gurus Jeff Mosseri and Doug Loud make key decisions for their high net-worth clients. Many of those decisions involve strategically positioning investors in small- and micro-cap gold and silver plays. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, you will learn some of the names of those plays and how they use Mosseri and Loud as hedges against a failing economy.
The Gold Report: Today, we’re talking with Jeff Mosseri, president of New York-based Greystone Asset Management and a director of Axiom Capital, as well as Doug Loud, who is the executive director of both companies. How do you go about making your clients money?
September
3
2010
Continuing our series (see Part 2 here) on investing for an income stream through companies who sell products people have to buy, even in a depression, I will today be covering companies that are growing their dividends. The best part about them is that they continued to grow their dividends, and had enough money to do so over the past decade while the overall stock market lost money. How is that possible? Their share prices dropped just like nearly every other stock out there. It is because their business remained solid as they sold products people have to buy, even though the owners of the shares were freaking out and selling without thinking. Oh yeah, and they meet our other requirement – they yield more than the 10 year Treasury Bond.
As you are getting used to now, I like to give examples to help re-train the way you view your investments. There are two parts to our dividend paying, publicly traded companies. There is the actual business which sells products and is run by management teams who are in agreement in thinking that we the owners should get some of the profits from the business. This is the most important part of our investment plan, as we want the income from the business. The other part of a publicly traded company is the stock price. This usually has nothing to do with the income producing power of the business in the short term, and has more to do with how your neighbors and co-workers feel that day. If they are excited, they pay higher prices for the stock. If they are sad and scared, they will sell it at any price.
September
3
2010
David Schrader submits:
Do your own research prior to making any investment decisions. I and/or people I know are involved in the names discussed in this article.
This is going to be short and sweet because the opportunity is a simple one. What we have here is a company with 24% of their float short, a 30d average volume equal to approximately 3% of the total short position, and a very bullish trend. We’re talkin’ short squeezin’ time baby.
September
3
2010
David Pinsen submits:
Alloy Steel International (AYSI.OB) is a nano cap company headquartered in Australia that uses a high tech, proprietary process to manufacture protective wear plates for mining equipment. Essentially, the company is a picks & shovels play on the mining industry (particularly iron ore and coal mining, currently), an industry which has of course benefited from the demand for industrial commodities by China and other emerging economies.
Alloy Steel was the subject of a few posts here by Seeking Alpha contributer Michael Alexander, including (most recently) this post from last February, "AYSI’s disruptive technology leads to record growth and earnings". Since then, the stock has dropped by more than two thirds. Much of that drop occured after the company’s most recent quarter showed lower earnings than shareholders (including me) expected.
September
3
2010
James Shaw submits:
The solar sector has became one of the hottest sectors in the US stock market the last few months. This is especially true for most of the Chinese ADRs.
Several stocks are making new year highs, several are nearing their year highs, and several are breaking out of their recent resistance. Even the recent market meltdown cannot bring them down.
September
3
2010
You haven’t really heard much from me on this site lately. The primary reason for that is the fact that this market just isn’t worth spending too much time on right now. We have no discernible trend in equities save for the miners, which I’m long, and certain international markets which I wish I was long but have avoided due to the action state-side, a mistake.
We’re seeing quite a disconnect between certain emerging markets, notably Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, India, anything in South East Asia, and Taiwan, from China and the western developed world. It really all comes down to the consumer, and the divergence between large cap China and small cap Brazil tells the story. The Chinese are having a hard time getting their people to spend money while the Brazilians are spending liberally. Consumers in the western world have throttled back their spending for an obvious reason, they are broke and trying to repair their balance sheets. They also don’t have jobs, something that isn’t changing anytime soon.
