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Posted
Sep 15 2009, 07:09 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article is written by Minyanville's Glenn Curtis Wednesday after the close, Oracle (ORCL) is due out with first-quarter numbers. And I think this a decent time to belly up to the big-name California-based company. Here's why -- in no particular order:
1. I generally don’t like to chase stocks, but I think the fact that it's trading right near its 52-week high may turn out to be a positive. I suspect it will capture the hearts of momentum folks (retail and institutional), and as a result, this ball may continue to bounce.
2. As far as the first-quarter numbers are concerned (the estimate is currently $0.30), I believe it will beat by $0.01-$0.04. Ellison and crew know the score and the importance of meeting/exceeding expectations. And given the bounce-back in the share price, they’d all but wrestle a bull to make sure folks out there are left with a big grin after the first-quarter numbers are made public. Of course, its recent history raises my optimism, too: It's beaten expectations the last two quarters straight and in three of the last four quarters.
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Posted
Aug 27 2009, 01:42 PM
by
Tobin Smith
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I've long believed that the key to a coming economic recovery won't be found on the consumer front. Instead, it's the all-important corporate spending side of the equation that needs to improve before we can begin to really call an end to the "Great Recession."
Fortunately, that improvement in corporate spending may well be taking place -- albeit at a slower pace than in recent past. All this means good news for some of the most stalwart corporate software vendors, including Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM) and SAP (SAP).
Bing: More on corporate software spending
According to the latest ChangeWave Alliance Research Network corporate software survey, business purchasing continues to improve even as the pace of the recovery slows. To put it another way, we are seeing an uptick in planned spending for the next 90 days, but that upward trend is not as pronounced as the rate of improvement we saw back in April.
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Posted
Jun 15 2009, 04:57 PM
by
Kelley Wright
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Investor sentiment can be visualized as an emotional roller coaster with highs and lows that gives new meaning to the term bi-polar. At the March lows sentiment was black bearish; all news was bad news. Almost on cue, the market reversed and began the first meaningful retracement of the declines from the October, 2007 highs, with green shoots and other assorted flora and fauna nonetheless! Hallelujah, happy days are here again!
As few current market participants were around for the last real bear market from 1966 through 1974, they can be forgiven for not knowing that all trends, be they bull or bear, move in waves. No market trend goes straight up or straight down from beginning to its ultimate conclusion. Both markets and participants need a time of pause to collect their breath, digest the preceding action and gather energy for the next phase of the primary trend.
The typical pattern in a bear market is three down legs interspersed with two very profitable retracements. In the case of this bear market the logical places for a retracement were sliced through like a hot knife through butter, in effect completing two down legs in one fell swoop (if 18 months of declines can be characterized as such).
With so much damage done to the market averages and investors psyches, it’s understandable that investors are hesitant to take long-term positions when quick profits have been readily available. While this approach works well in a bear market rally, it isn’t a long-term strategy with legs.
Shelby Davis (the founder of the Davis family of funds) has been credited with saying that “most of the big money is made by buying in a bear market; you just don’t realize it at the time.” That makes a lot of sense to us, which is why we put together a list of ten stocks we feel will outperform the market over the next five years in each issue of Investment Quality Trends.
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Posted
May 07 2009, 12:17 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Battle lines are being drawn. Sides chosen. Allegiances cemented.
But this war won't be waged with bullets; instead, it will be fought with words and ideas. The dollar wars are heating up.
Just a few weeks ago, the governor of the People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, made unambiguous comments about his country's desire for a single, international currency. Gone, he said, were the days when the money of choice for global trade was that of a single sovereign nation. Russia, along with a host of other nations only moderately friendly to the U.S., expressed similar sentiments.
Today, firing back against the single-global-currency crew, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar reaffirmed their support of the dollar. Bloomberg reports the three Gulf nations have no plans to abandon their U.S. dollar pegs, applauding its resilience in the face of crisis.
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Posted
Apr 23 2009, 03:46 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
As the executives at Apple (AAPL) were passing around the Dom Perignon, their counterparts at other companies that design and manufacture smartphones were putting all sharp objects out of reach. In a recession, there is only so much air in any room. Smartphone sales are suffering like all consumer electronics. If the iPhone is doing extraordinarily well, others are doing badly.
What almost no one saw coming in Apple’s results for the March quarter was that the company would sell nearly 3.8 million iPhones. Most educated guesses were around 3.1 million to 3.3 million. In a world where securities analysts send spies to Apple stores and bribe hardware component suppliers for data on iPhone parts shipments, experts are not supposed to be off that much. It makes them look bad, but it makes Apple look good, both for its ability to keep things secret and for building a handset that is expensive, making the iPhone an aspirational product for many people who buy it. Some consumers walking into AT&T (T) stores don’t have $299 for the iPhone and the money for the exorbitant calling plan that goes with it. They go anyway, like junkies to a dealer.
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Posted
Apr 19 2009, 08:10 PM
by
Louis Navellier
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Wall Street does a fantastic job of making the simple complex. The more Wall Street can confuse investors, the more dependent investors become on Wall Street for products and services. But the stock market is not really that complicated. If companies are growing, you can profit.
The key is to look at the business cycle. When the economy grows, business grows. That growth translates into stock values that go up. Now I like to find stocks that can make money even when their sectors aren't typically fueled by economic growth, like my 5 Hot Stocks in Ice-Cold Sectors. But it's equally as profitable to look to sectors that get a tailwind from economic activity. Technology is one of those sectors right now
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Posted
Apr 07 2009, 03:06 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
American International Group (AIG), still on the hook to pay back the government $173 billion, is attracting interest for its asset-management units, lining up a half-dozen potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reports. That's the good news. The bad news is "the sale of the $100 billion portfolio has become complicated by client withdrawals and declines in asset prices," which value the units potentially hundreds of millions of dollars below what AIG had hoped to get for them, the newspaper adds. The aim is to sell off the units by May, but the stricken insurer could pull out of the auctions altogether if it believes the bids are too low.
Speaking of shaky deals, the business and tech press is left to wonder what lies ahead for Sun Microsystems (JAVA). Shares in Sun fell 23% yesterday after it emerged that takeover talks with IBM (IBM) had fallen apart over the weekend, "raising new questions about the prospects for Sun and its chief executive," the Journal writes.
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Posted
Apr 06 2009, 11:31 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Shares of Sun Microsystems (JAVA) have plunged 22% Monday after news that a possible buyout by IBM (IBM) is now off the table.
Reports say a split had surfaced on Sun's board over the weekend about IBM's $9.40-a-share proposal. Chief executive Jonathan Schwartz was in favor, while the stubbornly combative Scott McNealy, Sun's chairman and co-founder, led a dissident group that wanted to reject the offer. Looks like McNealy won.
What happens next for Sun? Customers start to flee, worried that this company is going to lose focus as it desperately shops itself around. Plenty of other rivals, such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), are ready to snap up the business jumping ship.
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Posted
Apr 06 2009, 03:03 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
The tie-up between between IBM (IBM) and Sun Microsystems (JAVA) is "on the verge of unraveling," The Wall Street Journal reports. Citing sources close to the negotiations, the newspaper says the Sun board is split into two factions, one led by chief executive Jonathan Schwartz, who favors a deal, and one led by Sun chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy.
Their quibble is not with the price tag -- somewhere in the $7 billion range -- but rather "that the offer gave IBM too much 'optionality,' or leeway to walk away from the deal," the Journal writes. Still, a source told the newspaper the negotiation as "fluid."
The New York Times views the negotiations in far less optimistic terms, reporting that the deal has in fact collapsed and that, yes, the negotiations faltered when IBM presented the Sun board with a reduced price of $9.40 per share over the weekend.
Sun's board balked after hearing the offer Sunday, the Times writes.
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Posted
Mar 26 2009, 03:44 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Looking at statistics from India, it's clear that the cost of outsourcing technology work to firms there is dropping as unemployment in the country rises.
For a number of years, unions and members of Congress spent a great deal of time complaining about the number of U.S. jobs being sent abroad. The bitterness about the issue has receded recently, especially as the recession has deepened and large American companies have been inclined to cut jobs as much or more than they have been able to export them. Perhaps with the economy losing about 600,000 jobs a month, the need for efficiency through outsourcing has become less immediate.
But, outsourcing may be making a big comeback, with word that IBM (IBM) would cut about 5,000 jobs in the U.S. and move the work to India. This may be the beginning of a new wave of exporting of American jobs to developing countries which have large pools of well-educated workers.
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