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Posted
Jun 26 2008, 01:18 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
It’s easy to imagine that the 25 best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 Index this year are all oil and gas producers, and the 25 worst-performing stocks are all banks and brokers. Yet as we near the halfway mark in 2008, it turns out that there are quite a few surprises in the mix of best and worst.
For instance, the No. 1 stock in the benchmark index this year isn’t an oil producer, but a coal miner, Massey Energy. It’s up 155% so far, rising to $89 from $35 as coal prices have soared in the wake of booming demand in China and India. The No. 2 stock is actually a discount retailer, Big Lots. It’s up 100%, from $15 to $30, as investors speculate it will get a big share of tax-rebate money from low-income Americans.
Most of the rest of the next best 15 gainers
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Posted
Jun 24 2008, 01:05 AM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
If you're a GE shareholder, you've probably been pondering the idea since April 11, when the company shocked investors around the world by reporting a first-quarter profit decline that absolutely no one expected.
Since then, there's been chatter in blogs (See this from George Yared) and message boards about whether Immelt's tenure should end. Some posts are on MSN Money.
The New York Times noted on Sunday that Wall Street seems to have fallen out of love with GE. Douglas McIntyre, a Top Stocks partner blogger, says the company is in need of a major change in direction. "It's a dog of a stock," he wrote this week.
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Posted
Jun 12 2008, 02:04 AM
by
Jon Markman
Rating:
As we watch the brokerage industry trip and crash this year over its mistakes in the mortgage business, it’s nice to know that it still has a sense of humor. How else to explain the decision by industry heavyweight Invesco to launch an exchange-traded fund focused on the countries in North Africa and the Middle East -- and name it the Frontier Countries Portfolio?
I really don’t consider Kuwait, the United Emirates, Lebanon, Morocco and Egypt to be the frontier of anything except, possibly, some marketing guy’s imagination. Do they really have cowboys and cactus in Beirut these days?
After a little digging, I did discover that “frontier countries” really is a new industry euphemism for a bunch of little countries with investable public stock markets but thin regulatory, reporting and transparency standards. I suppose you could make a lot of money
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Posted
Apr 17 2008, 11:32 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Hell hath no fury like investors who believed a data source that turned out to be wrong.
Just ask comScore, the Internet trafffic tracking company that suggested that growth in Google's domestic paid clicks were slowing. Lots of investors interpreted that to mean that Google's profit growth would slow (unless Google was collecting more money for each click). And that was one reason why, over the past eight weeks or so, Google's stock struggled.
Well, after Thursday's market close, Google said that its profits soared in the first quarter, and the stock jumped 17% to $525.96 in after-hours trading. And it appears that the Internet search giant was, in fact, getting more money for each click
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Posted
Mar 26 2008, 03:23 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
The market's reaction to Oracle's third-quarter earnings was almost a classic "buy the hype, sell the news" event. Except that the hype turned out to be wishful thinking.
The stock had been shooting nicely higher since early March on the supposition that Oracle was going to deliver a blockbuster report today. From a March 4 closing low of $18.44, Oracle shares had jumped more than 14% to $21.08 on Tuesday as investors bet on a strong report.
But when the numbers disappointed, the market slammed Oracle, knocking the shares 8.2% to $19.22 in after-hours trading. The shares had finished off 0.7% to $20.94 in regular Nasdaq trading
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Posted
Mar 16 2008, 07:37 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
The proposed sale of Bear Stearns on Sunday to JPMorgan Chase for $2 a share, or $236 million, will keep litigation lawyers busy for years as enraged shareholders seek to recover anything from the disaster.
The losses from Bear Stearns' demise are shocking, so shocking that Asian and Australian stocks tumbled on the news. The dollar was fallling. Crude oil jumped over $111 a barrel, and European shares were expected to open lower as was the U.S. stock market.
From a peak price of $171.52 in January 2007, Bear Stearns managed to lose 98.8% of its peak market value of $20.2 billion in less than 15 months, all because the company bet everything that the housing market and the markets for securities backed by subprime mortgages wouldn't break. It did
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Posted
Feb 29 2008, 03:22 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
How bad have the first two months of 2008 been? Bad. January and February were the worst-ever opening two months for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite Index. The Dow Jones Industrial Average wasn't much better.
The advice investors should take away from the numbers: Be patient for a bottom. Be very patient. The odds that the market will recover completely by year-end aren't great, if only because it will take a long time to solve all the problems facing the banking system and the credit markets.
(For some perspective, check Barry Ritholtz's blog The Big Picture. Barry also likes to toss in fun cartoons and thoughts about everything from digital cameras to rock music. Also, check Floyd Norris' blog at the New York Times site.)
The Dow finished the first two months of the year down 7.5%. Since 1928, that's the blue-chip index's 6th-worst opening two months. The worst was 1933, when the index fell 14.3%. The next worst was 2000, when the Dow fell a combined 11.9%.
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Posted
Feb 11 2008, 08:30 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Chances are you haven't heard of Gordon Crawford, but my guess is that both Microsoft and Yahoo are paying close attention to whatever he thinks of Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money)
Crawford is a senior vice president at Capital Research and Management, the nation's largest mutual fund company. For years, he has been one of the world's top players in media investing. He helped Ted Turner sell Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner. Turner and Crawford are still pals; they share a passion for fly fishing.
And Crawford was one of the people who engineered Steve Case's departure from the board of Time Warner, back in those unhappy days when the media giant was AOL-Time Warner.
More important for our discussion: Capital Research is Yahoo's largest shareholder with 11.6% of the outstanding shares -- nearly twice as many as Yahoo co-founder David Filo. Capital Research boosted its position in Yahoo by 49.4% in the third quarter and, according to The Wall Street Journal, increased its stake in the fourth quarter.
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