Jeffrey Saut submits:
Excerpt from Raymond James strategist Jeffrey Saut’s latest essay (published Monday, March 29th):
…Interestingly, [our] institutional accounts want to know what retail accounts were “doing,” while the retail accounts want to know what the institutions were doing. Accordingly, at least from my observations, order flow from retail investors suggests that they have under-played the current equity rally and are instead buying bond funds. In fact, ~70% of retail order flow into mutual funds has been into bond funds, and not short-term oriented bond funds, but long-duration bond funds.
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Value Expectations submits:
The Applied Finance Group’s (AFG’s) valuation techniques have proven successful at identifying mispriced securities. Clients use the tools built by AFG to identify investment opportunities in order to outperform their benchmarks. Normally when searching for attractive investment opportunities, AFG uses, along with Valuation, a combination of proprietary variables that include Economic Performance (EM), Management Quality, and Earnings Quality. Although our valuation variable (Value Score) works best in concert with our other proprietary variables, AFG’s valuation metric also works well on its own.
For those investor’s who focus on small to mid cap stocks from the Russell 2000, we have provided a list of companies with the most attractive valuations within the index.
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Market Folly submits:
In the past we posted David Einhorn and hedge fund Greenlight Capital’s investor letter. In it, we learned that Einhorn was bullish on shares of Vodafone (VOD) as it represented one of the larger positions in Greenlight’s portfolio. Greenlight Capital of course has an impressive track record, returning 22% annualized. Einhorn’s thesis on Vodafone argues that VOD’s most valuable asset is its 45% ownership stake in Verizon Wireless. (Verizon Communications (VZ) owns the other 55%).
Previously, Vodafone had received a dividend from Verizon Wireless. However, it hasn’t received one in quite some time as Verizon Wireless’ cashflow was being used to pay back debt to Verizon Communications. Verizon Wireless is expected to be debt-free by the end of next year and this is where the catalyst component of this investment comes in. Einhorn believes the restoration of this Verizon Wireless dividend or some other transaction is highly likely. And as you’ll find out below, this may very well be the case.
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Value Expectations submits:
Barron’s is a well-respected, widely-publicized weekly newspaper that covers U.S. financial information, market developments, and relevant statistics. Each issue provides a wrap-up of the previous week’s market activity and news reports, as well as an informative outlook on the week to come. An interesting piece within Barron’s that garners special attention each week is their interviews of well-known fund managers (who often manage over 1 Billion in A.U.M.), which gives their best stock picks.
According to a 1994 study by Gary Banesh and Jeffrey Clark from The Journal of Financial and Strategic Decisions (The Value of Indirect Investment Advice: Stock Recommendations in Barron’s (.pdf)), stock picks from Barron’s weekly Money Manger Interview outperform the market. The success of the picks from Barron’s is likely due to the fact that each fund manager provides one pick, which is usually a holding in their fund, and the success of that pick could bring their fund new investors. Therefore, there is plenty of incentive for these managers to get their best picks in front of the public’s eyes via Barron’s.
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David Brown submits:
The market continued to inch ahead Monday, with the S&P 500 taking another aim at the 18-month high of 1180 which it reached last Thursday before backing off a bit on Friday. The only thing nudging the market forward seems to be the lack of anything really negative. The economic releases over the past week and Monday were either at or slightly above projections, and we seemed to have dodged the bullet on a couple of portentous events.
For example, the poor consumer sentiment reading by the Conference Board in February seems to have been anomalous, and it appears that progress is being made in the Greece-related problems in Europe that will likely preclude any long-term negative effect.
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Zachary Scheidt submits:
ISRG)” hspace=”6″ vspace=”6″ width=”216″ height=”106″ />Medical stocks have received more than their fair share of attention in the past few weeks as congress passed the health care reform bill. While I see the bill as a major impediment to free commerce – Note AT&T Inc. (T) $1 billion dollar charge related to healthcare – there are still many medical companies which will continue to experience growth and opportunity in the coming years. Best of all, some of these investments are trading at discounts to a “fair market value” due to concern over what healthcare reform will look like.
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) has put in a very strong performance with the stock up more than 250% since this time last year. The company makes robotic equipment for Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) procedures and has expanded the number of procedures and the quality of service that physicians can offer patients. The daVinci Surgical System employs cutting-edge (no pun intended) technology which is assisting surgeons around the world.
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Timothy Lutts submits:
Today’s tip is about an unknown stock with big growth potential.
It’s Cimarex Energy (XEC), and here’s what editor Michael Cintolo wrote about it in a Cabot Top Ten Report three weeks ago.
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Paul Price submits:
Constellation [CEG: NYSE - $35.50] is the holding company for Baltimore Gas and Electric, the regulated supplier of those commodities to about 1.1 million electric customers and about 640,000 natural gas consumers. They also own the non-regulated Constellation Energy Commodities Group and Constellation NewEnergy.
It’s been a wild ride for CEG shareholders over the past five years as the merchant energy trading arm first made great profits and then nearly bankrupted the company from 2008’s huge energy price rise and fall. Liquidity needs skyrocketed due to the extreme volatility and CEG’s traders being on the wrong side of the markets. Constellation shares plunged from an early 2008 high of $108 to a panic low of $13 in the fall when the financial markets froze after the Lehman collapse.
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The Oxen Group submits:
The agriculture sector has been a tough one to work within lately. Yet fertilizer producers may be on their way back up. Last month in Agrium’s (AGU) earnings, the company cited their forecast moving forward, commenting that there has been a surge in the demand for potash at the start of 2010 and that strong demand should continue into the spring. Further, Brazil, one of the largest importers of potash, is supposed to rebound. Demand is increasing because food demands are expected to increase as the market recovers. The Agrium calls reiterate a position Mosaic (MOS) took back in January with their last earnings announcement: that fertilizer is back.
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Dividends4Life submits:
Linked here is a detailed quantitative analysis of Kimberly Clark Corp. (KMB). Below are some highlights from the above linked analysis:
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Michael Michaud submits:
The Market Outlook This Week
Good Friday is the big USA unemployment numbers report with the equity market closed. Some are expecting job growth last month. Some of the forecasts are anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 increase. The market sure seems to have it priced in already. A positive number here could keep the market moving up, and a negative number could be a let down and create selling pressure on stocks next week. Greece and Dubai are still in focus with their debt problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US Dollar took a breather correction this week with its big up moves from last week.
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The Manual of Ideas submits:
The following five companies are owned by some of the most highly regarded investment managers out there. We believe each company’s shares are worthy of closer consideration and may deliver investment outperformance:
Fair Isaac (FICO) is 20%-owned by Mason Hawkins’ Southeastern Asset Management, which has added to its stake in recent months. Fair Isaac has leveraged the success of the industry-leading FICO credit score brand to create products in related areas and non-financial verticals. These diversification efforts as well as a variable cost structure have dampened the impact of lower demand for high-margin credit scores. FICO continues to be a fundamentally attractive business with low capital intensity, good normalized margins, and a strong competitive position. Longer term, it remains to be seen how successful the FICO score will be in terms of beating back challenges from rival products. We suspect that the brief window of opportunity that opened up for competing products as a result of the credit crisis may be shut before competitors are able to challenge the supremacy of the FICO brand. In any case, with FICO shares trading at a 10+% FCF yield in a still below-normal operating environment, we believe the shares are too cheap to ignore.
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Ben Marks submits:
Bennett Marks is president and chief investment officer of Marks Group Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Seeking Alpha recently had a chance to ask Ben about his highest conviction stock pick.
To get started, please tell us a bit about your firm.
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The Manual of Ideas submits:
By Matt Darrah
My recommendation to buy Tetragon Financial Group (TGONF.PK) does not follow my typical tenet of buying good companies with management teams who are wise capital allocators at a cheap price. But due to the attractiveness of the Company’s valuation, I believe it represents an attractive investment opportunity.
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Dobromir Stoyanov submits:
Finding the best dividend stocks is a difficult process. It requires constant screening of the dividend achievers and dividend aristocrat indexes, in order to identify companies which are worth your time to further research. Research entails reading analysts reports, annual company reports, staying up to date on news in the industry and competitors in general and constantly evaluating whether the stock is worth your investment or not. If you find the right dividend stocks however, the rewards could be tremendous. Sometimes however certain stocks would not be widely followed by dividend investors, because of their small size. Another reason could be because they are very close to getting on the dividend achievers list, but are not there yet.
The companies in the news include Realty Income (O), Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (WSM), ConocoPhillips (COP), Raytheon Company (RTN), Brinker International, Inc. (EAT), Starbucks (SBUX) and Hingham Institution for Savings (HIFS).
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Investing, Long Term Investment, stock market | admin March 30, 2010 | 
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