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Posted
Jul 09 2009, 05:40 PM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Th![]() is post comes from Rich Duprey at partner site The Motley Fool.
Had Jerry Maguire been an investor instead of a fictional sports agent, he might have become famous for yelling, "Show me the cash flow!"
Earnings come and go, and the green-eyeshade types can legally manipulate them to mask a company's true operations. Yet a company's ability to generate cash remains the preeminent indicator of its worth.
In short, cash is king.
Let's look at companies that have proven themselves prodigious generators of free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company has left over that it could potentially pay to its investors.
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Posted
Jun 02 2009, 08:21 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
With General Motors (GMGMQ) Chapter 11 filing, this is a suitable time to discuss what happens to the options when an underlying company declares bankruptcy.
It's traditional for existing shareholders to lose 100% of their investment when a company becomes bankrupt - even when there are assets of value. Stockholders are at the end of the line, and those assets go to others. Think K-Mart: After its bankruptcy, it was suddenly "discovered" that their real estate was worth a great deal of money, and the "new" K-Mart stock soared. The original shareholders were left with nothing.
Call Options Are Kaput
Once bankruptcy is declared, the stock is worthless - and so are all call options. The stock is usually de-listed from the stock exchanges, but continues to trade in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. If you wonder why it trades, or why anyone would pay anything for the shares, those are good questions.
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Posted
Apr 01 2009, 11:12 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A tech giant has fallen. Computer maker Silicon Graphics (SGIC) -- once a powerhouse in the technology world -- is being sold to Rackable Systems (RACK) for a mere $25 million.
That's a shocking price for a company that, a decade ago, was getting nearly $4 billion in yearly sales and was a leader in high-performance computing. But the company has fallen prey to rivals that made cheaper chips and graphics products, the New York Times reports. SGI also made a mistake by shacking up with Intel's disappointing Itanium chip.
SGI has been in bankruptcy and tried to claw its way back, but it filed for Chapter 11 again Wednesday. The company said in a regulatory filing that stockholders will not get any money from the sale. As a result, Silicon Graphics shares plunged 56% Wednesday to 18 cents.
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Posted
Jul 24 2009, 09:49 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
My investment philosophy is based on a central concept: Individuals can beat the market by learning from the wisdom of history's greatest investors. In that spirit, at the end of every week I recap what the market gurus I follow are saying about the investment world and the economy.
This week, these gurus have been making some pretty bullish statements -- or at the very least not sounding bearish. For example, some big-name hedge fund managers who made out shorting stocks last year, including Crispin Odey and Phillipe Jabre, are now finding major short positions to be too risky, Reuters reported.
Now, they are tilting their portfolios mostly -- or completely -- to the long side. Odey said that “equities now look exceptionally cheap against cash," and has his European fund 65% long in equities. Jabre says he has no short positions because it would be “too dangerous.”
They aren't the only strategists who have stopped shorting. Commodities guru Jim Rogers told Bloomberg this week that, for one of the few times in his career, he has no major short positions.
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Posted
Mar 19 2009, 11:31 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 I love the cute little Flip digital video cameras, and had no doubt that the company behind them would be snapped up by someone. But Cisco Systems (CSCO)? And for $590 million?
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially after chief executive John Chambers said last month that he has "no interest" in buying a consumer device company. Either Chambers was lying, or Cisco just did a major strategy turnaround. Cisco has been making small forays into consumer electronics (like its new digital stereo system), but always with the larger goal of capitalizing on networks and moving data quickly across them. The company owns the ubiquitous Linksys routers, after all. So why buy Pure Digital, whose main product is an ultracheap camcorder with no networking capabilities? The consensus opinion is that,
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Posted
Aug 05 2009, 09:42 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article was written by Minyanville's Josh Lipton The first publicly known cyberspace attack came in the 1980’s, when the KGB hired West German hackers to penetrate U.S. military and research networks. In the years since, cybersecurity attacks against both military and civilian installations have become more sophisticated and well publicized. In 2007, the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Commerce and NASA all suffered major intrusions by unknown foreign entities, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, President Barack Obama has made cybersecurity a priority of his administration. “[I]t’s now clear this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation,” he said in a speech in May. And on Monday, the White House’s acting cybersecurity czar announced her resignation. So, for now, the White House cybersecurity post is still unfilled. (See also: Seven Addictions to Replace Your Hacked iPhone)
However, the threat from foreign enemies and rogue hackers continues, threatening both public and private sector cyber infrastructure. It also presents potential money making profits for companies developing technologies to beat back the cyber threat, and for nimble investors thinking about market opportunities.
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Posted
Jul 06 2009, 03:50 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Alnylam (ALNY) leads a short list of some of the fastest-growing biotech stocks where analyst estimate revisions continue to rise.
Biohealth Investor began by analyzing 171 stocks in the biotech sector based on revenue growth over the trailing four quarters, identifying 30 stocks in the sector with better than 50% revenue growth over the past year.
We then screened those 30 stocks to look for those very few names that have seen both strong growth in at least the past two years and positive analyst estimate revisions in recent months, in an effort to find stocks with strong trends that still have potentially improving operations going forward.
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Posted
Sep 29 2009, 11:40 AM
by
Jim Jubak
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 The stock market got all excited Monday by big acquisitions announced by Xerox (XRX) and Abbott Laboratories (ABT).
Xerox announced that it would buy Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) for $6.4 billion in cash and stock and Abbott said it would buy the drugs business of Solvay (SVYSY) for $6.6 billion in cash.
That news helped stocks reverse recent weakness: The Standard & Poor's 500 closed up 1.8% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.3%. The two deals came after news of acquisitions like Dell's (DELL) $3.9-billion cash offer for Perot Systems (PER).
Now, I can understand why the market as a whole would get excited at the news. Mergers and acquisitions push up stock prices. Dell, for example, has offered a 70% premium to buy Perot Systems.
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Posted
Apr 07 2009, 09:50 AM
by
MSN Editors
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This is the latest roundup from ProPublica's stimulus blog.
The Agriculture Department will spend $45 million in stimulus money to strengthen rural dams, including six in Georgia and seven in Oklahoma. Here’s the list. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is in Hartford, Conn., this morning for a hearing on how the stimulus is playing out in the states. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden will be on the phone with governors and mayors for two conference calls about the stimulus
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Posted
May 13 2009, 10:18 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Once again, I’ll share a chart of what I call “food for food,” not because anybody reading this trades soybean meal, but perhaps that fact, in and of itself, offers evidence as to why I believe this data matter so much.
There are no ETFs for soybean meal, and I don’t know too many hedge-fund managers who even trade it. Therefore, I believe it offers an uncommon scale to measure true supply and demand for the grain used in animal feed, and therefore global appetites, and therefore is a measurement for all of you who trade stocks and bonds to help you get a unique window into growing or slowing consumption around the world.
I'm not suggesting it's any key indicator of anything, but I hope it's helped offer (in some small way) a break from the debates on artificially created demand or supply. You don't buy a lot of this stuff unless you plan to use it, and God has the only "printing press" I know of to make more of it.
Notice another potential breakout, and the always-tasty bow-tie cross, where the 50-day moving average has now crossed above both the 100 and 200, circled in green.
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