Filed under: Newspapers, BooksWhenever I see a list of contrarian stock picks, I'm reminded of the Yogi Berra witticism about a popular restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded." A list of stocks to buy because no one is interested in buying them seems paradoxical, but the methods that the Wall Street Journal used to compile its list of contrarian stocks are interesting: Stocks that have lagged the market for six months but have made sizable gains in the past week, have manageable debt levels, solid profits, negative analyst ratings, and PEG ratios below 1.5.That's a pretty good screen for finding beaten down stocks, and I'm going to try to find a site that will allow me to input all of that into a ...
March, 2007
Filed under: Good news, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, India, Brazil, Unilever ADR (UL)Consumer products company Unilever (NYSE: UL) is embarking on a strong shift in focus and marketing in an attempt not to lose more ground to its main rival, Proctor & Gamble (NYSE: PG). Under CEO Patrick Cescau, Unilever is expanding forcefully into developing markets in India, Brazil, South Africa, and Vietnam, and doing so at the expense of its traditional markets in America and Europe, where sales grew 1% in 4Q 2006. He has cut the European workforce by 11%, and management by 30%, while bringing in more brand managers from the developing world. Unilever has done away with dozens of brands that were static in mature markets and inapplicable in developing markets.Profit margins have only ...
Filed under: Bad news, ManagementThe "Heard on the Street" column in last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (registration required) talked about a growing trend of companies borrowing large amounts of money to pay dividends. When I started writing for BloggingStocks several months ago, one of the first pieces I wrote was called A rally of declining yields: Should you care? If you read that piece, you will get a good idea how I feel about dividends.Let's take a logical look at the idea of borrowing money to pay a dividend: A company borrows money at an interest rate which, however low, will likely be substantially higher than what an investor would earn with a savings account (even if it is a high-yield account such as those offered by EmigrantDirect ...
Filed under: Comfort Zone InvestingTed Allrich is the founder of The Online Investor and author of the just released book: Comfort Zone Investing: Build Wealth And Sleep Well At Night. In this weekly column, he'll offer advice to investors who are just getting started.Commissions on IPO's (initial public offerings) are paid by the company going public. There are no commissions charged to the client who buys an IPO. Some mutual funds have fees that are charged to the client if they sell the fund before a certain number of years. These are known as back end fees. Their purpose: To keep you in the fund through thick and thin.Mutual funds managed by brokerage firms are not transferable to other firms. If you move your account from that brokerage ...
Filed under: Rants and raves, Rich in AmericaI've had a few mortgages in my time, and they've always been the 30-year fixed rate type. You couldn't get me to take an adjustable rate mortgage at gun point, but that's not the point of this post. What I have to say will come to most of you as an oversimplification in the face of the mortgage banking meltdown, but try as I may, I just can't make it any more complicated than this. If I was a mortgage banker facing the wholesale destruction of my lending sector, I'd suck it up quick and proceed as follows:I would begin to contact all my mortgage clients with notes facing foreclosure, starting with the most serious cases first. I'd make the offer ...
The quarter ended with a strong performance from each watch list, all of which are now revamped as of the closing price Friday March 30. Remember, the watch list tracking began at the end of January, so our quarter-end performance figures here reflect only two months.The Small Cap Watch List lost 87 basis points for
The Consumerist has a very enlightening article from a former used car salesman about the tricks that he used on customers, and how to recognize them. It’s a long article that contains a lot of common sense advice, but I found the carefully planned psychological tactics that they employ the most intriguing. Distraction, confusion, manipulation…
At the heart of it all is the “4-square,” a sheet of paper divided into four boxes: your trade value, the purchase price, down payment, and monthly payment. This is supposed to help you and the dealership come to an agreement, but as you’ll see, it’s really more akin to three-card monte dealer’s deck of cards. Many, but not all, dealerships use this tool.
I’ve only shopped for a car by myself once, ...
I was away almost all day on Friday participating in an inter-agency drill with the Fire Department. While I was away a ton of comments came in on the post about Jim Rogers recent comments. I'll try to answer/weigh in on some of this stuff.TomK was first up with a quick look at a couple of the different index (made into ETFs) compositions and notes some big differences. He then offers up a reasonable assessment of what seems like poor returns more often than not (probably true) and some of the downsides to owning this space.Regardless of what you think of TomK's comment there needs to be an introspective assessment of why you own commodities or why you want to buy commodities in the first place. My reason ...
