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Posted
Oct 08 2009, 08:22 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 As the market has surged over the past seven months, one of the driving forces has been financial stocks.
Since the March 9 low, the S&P 500 is up an impressive 56%, but the Financial Select Sector SPDR is up a staggering 138%. And financials are the second-best performing sector year-to-date and over the past three months, according to Morningstar.
But while the financial rally has been steep and swift, it's been driven mostly by the relenting of apocalyptic fears about the sector -- not fundamentals. My Guru Strategies, which use rigorous fundamental tests to analyze stocks, aren't finding a lot of values in the sector right now. For example, while shares of Citigroup (C) have more than quadrupled since the March 9 low, none of my models think it has strong enough fundamentals to make it a solid play right now.
There are, however, a relatively small number of financials that my models are keying in on. And in the most recent rebalancing of my Top Stocks tracking portfolio over at Wall Street Survivor, my Warren Buffett-based strategy snagged one that looks like a winner.
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Posted
Sep 15 2009, 01:45 PM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from The Motley Fool's Morgan Housel.
"I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."
Hard to argue with that seed of wisdom from Warren Buffett, isn't it?
Despite the recent rally, there's still plenty of fear out there. The beauty of it is how much opportunity it's creating for investors patient and diligent enough to reach for the babies thrown out with the bath water.
For help in finding such companies, I turned to the MSN CAPS investment community and the CAPS stock screener tool. I was after a list of companies with the following characteristics:
- A five-star rating on CAPS, signifying that it's considered best-of-breed by the community.
- Estimates of profitability in the year ahead.
- Terrible performance over the past 52 weeks.
Yes, most stocks satisfy this last condition, but what I'm really looking for are stocks with the bullish consensus implied by the stocks' five-star ratings and still cheap despite the market's run-up over the past six months. Among the stocks that came through the screen are seven with values so paltry they demand a closer look. None are formal recommendations, just good starting points for you to dig deeper.
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Posted
Sep 01 2009, 03:51 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Vanity Fair has announced its “New Establishment 100″ list for 2009, basing selections on wealth, influence, and philanthropy, as well as such intangibles as vision and "X factor.”
Topping the list is Goldman Sachs (GS) chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. Apparently, the big pay packages that he and his top executives get are not enough to erode his power in the business community. Blankfein was in the No. 2 spot a year ago.
Second on the list is Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple (AAPL). He should arguably be at the top. He is clearly the most influential and powerful chief executive in America, taking a role that Jack Welch of General Electric (GE) once had.
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Posted
Aug 27 2009, 07:44 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Berkshire Hathaway recently filed its latest holdings statement with the SEC, and one major position Warren Buffett is keeping steady is consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (PG). Berkshire owned close to 100 million shares of P&G at the end of the second quarter, according to the filing, making it one of Buffett's biggest positions. In fact, the only companies that Berkshire (BRK.B) has greater stock stakes in, dollar-wise, are well-known Buffett favorites Coca-Cola (KO), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI).
P&G certainly has some of the qualities Buffett has typically looked for in his investments. For example, both the company and many of its products, including Pampers, Tide, Crest, and Bounty, have strong, recognizable brand names that give P&G an advantage over some peers.
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Posted
Aug 06 2009, 06:59 AM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This post comes from Morgan Housel at partner site The Motley Fool.
Of all the insights I've heard over these crazy months, the most telling came from an investor who appeared on CNBC last fall and, being entirely serious, advised, "There're only two positions to be in right now -- cash and fetal."
I get it. Even with the recent rally, it's ugly out there. Many companies that overleveraged their balance sheets are permanently impaired and will probably never fully rebound. Banks such as Citigroup (C) come to mind. We had an unprecedented boom; now we're in the middle of an unprecedented bust. That's how markets work.
Even so, history tells us time and time again that market panics and forced sell-offs indiscriminately throw the good out with the bad. The frenzy over financial markets, coupled with the "sell-now-ask-questions-later" mood of global investors, is providing bargain hunters with the sort of opportunities we haven't seen in decades.
Using the wisdom of our 135,000-member-strong MSN CAPS investor intelligence community, I've hunted down a few dirt-cheap, high-quality companies.
Have a look:
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Posted
Aug 04 2009, 03:50 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 The stock price of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) hit $100,000 yesterday, up from a 52-week low of $70,000, but still well off its period high of $147,000.
Berkshire’s chief Warren Buffett has made a number of shrewd moves over the last year that have paid the company handsomely. The most visible of these is probably an investment in Goldman Sachs (GS), which included warrants for shares of the bank at $115 a share. Those warrants are now in the money at a level that would make them worth $2 billion at today’s stock price.
Buffett bought shares in Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC) when many Wall Street analysts believed that the financial firms could not stay in business. Berkshire’s interest in BAC is up in value by more than 400% and its WFC holdings have gained more than 200%.
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Posted
Jul 29 2009, 06:56 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 There are very few stocks that obtain 100% score based on the Warren Buffett investment model I run on Validea.com.
The strategy (outlined by Buffett's former daughter-in-law Mary in her book Buffettology) is one of the more rigorous approaches I’ve developed over the years. It combines earnings predictability measures along with balance sheet, cash flow, and expected return estimates to determine whether or not a stock gets a passing grade, and on some criteria digs back ten years into a stock's fundamentals.
The method is so rigorous that, right now, only eight of the more than 6,500 stocks that I continuously analyze on Validea.com get a top ranking of 100%. (Click here for details on Validea’s Premium Buffett screen). One of them in particular recently caught my eye -- and since I added it to my public MSN Money TopStocks Wall Street Survivor portfolio on June 15, 2009, the stock is up about 25%.
Interestingly enough, this company’s a technology firm (something that Buffett has publicly said he shies away from due to the complexities of the business and the changing competitive landscape). Given how integral a part of life technology has become, however, I let my Buffett-based algorithm roam free in search of the best ideas -- and one of those top ideas right now is Garmin (GRMN), the maker of GPS navigation, communication, and information devices and applications
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Posted
Jul 24 2009, 12:10 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This is how Warren Buffett makes out in an economic recession:
His stake in Goldman Sachs (GS) is now valued at $9.1 billion. That's $4.1 billion more than what he paid -- 10 months ago, The New York Times reports.
A profit of $4.1 billion in 10 months? It's almost inconceivable.
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Posted
Jul 23 2009, 01:38 PM
by
James Dlugosch
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Warren Buffett is trimming his stake in Moody's, and I think I know why.
We all know that the wealthy enjoy certain advantages when it comes to investing, and Buffett is the wealthiest of the wealthiest. But do you think he knows what's going on?
You bet he does.
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Posted
Jul 20 2009, 05:17 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Take a look at Minyanville's collection of eight lifestyles of the rich and incompetent...
A couple of years ago, a study called "Where Are the Shareholders’ Estates?" by Arizona State University professor Crocker Liu and New York University professor David Yermack, asserted: “Future company performance deteriorates when CEOs acquire extremely large or costly mansions and estates."
The researchers' sources of information included property deeds, tax records, online databases such as Zillow.com and Reply.com, Google searches, employment contracts and voter registration data.
Their findings certainly show a privileged class:
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