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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 24 2009, 11:00 AM
by
John Reese
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
My Warren Buffett-themed Top Stocks tracking portfolio on Wall Street Survivor has been on a roll lately, having gained 9.3% in the past month (vs. 3.6% for the S&P 500) and 23.8% since I created it back in mid-June (vs. about 14% for the S&P).
A big reason why has been GPS giant Garmin (GRMN), which I wrote about in late July and which has now jumped more than 62% since joining the portfolio. But another key contributor is one you might not expect: ITT Educational Services (ESI).
Since my Buffett-based model snatched up this Indiana-based for-profit education firm in June, the stock has gained close to 20%. It is one of several for-profit education companies that have seen a major jump in profits over the past year or two, with the theory being that the deep recession and rough job market have sent many would-be job-seekers heading back to school for more training.
Now, however, fear has reared its ugly head for this industry.
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Posted
Sep 24 2009, 06:31 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Billionaire investor Warren Buffett gets business pitches all the time, but this one he didn't turn down.
Buffett was in China two years ago when a friend of a friend suggested he get fitted for a Trands suit. He agreed, and two tailors soon burst into his hotel room to take measurements, according to The Wall Street Journal. And that began the ongoing love affair between Buffett and Trands, a menswear label founded by a former Chinese farmer who knows how to pounce on opportunity. Buffett received two suits for free and said no suits had ever fit him better. Bing: What are the best mens' suits?
He likes them so much, in fact, that he recently filmed a promotional video for the company's Web site, the Journal reports. Now, he has nine suits and recommends the brand to people like Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates.
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Posted
Sep 18 2009, 04:41 PM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
My investment philosophy is rooted in the idea that beating the market is less about reinventing the wheel and more about listening to the right people. That's how I came to develop my Guru Strategy computer models, and it's why I take a look every Friday at what the market gurus I follow are saying.
In a week in which the economy has shown several signs of life, a number of these gurus have been sounding bullish -- though the optimism has been tempered with some words of caution.
For starters, Warren Buffett -- whose approach is the basis of the Guru Strategy I'm using for Wall Street Survivor -- sounded off this week, saying that the economy has at last leveled off. “We have not bounced, but we’ve quit going down," he told CNBC. "We are on the mend." Buffett pointed to uptrends in the housing market over the past several months as one of the key positive signs. And, in an interview with Fortune, Buffett said he's been buying stocks, with orders in on two picks this week. (He was tight-lipped about just which shares he's purchasing, however.)
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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 14 2009, 04:00 PM
by
AllStarPortfolio
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This is my maiden voyage into the world of stock analysis and I thought why not play it safe and write about the best buy in the world. Navios Maritime is a shipping company and probably one of the most conservatively managed shippers of the publicly traded companies. Shipping rates measured by the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) are down 65% yoy when the S&P 500 is down 25%. Much of the world is now becoming industrialized as the economies of Brazil, India, Russia, and China are growing and stabilizing and will continue to over the next decade or so, which will increase the consumption of half of the world population. This will increase shipping rates back to rates we have seen in 2008 in the coming years. http://caps.fool.com/player/allstarportfolio.aspx In the meantime, Navios Maritime has charter-out coverage on 99% of their vessel voyages for the rest of 2009. This is by far the highest rate in the industry and thus they have "locked-in" profits for 2009. They are chartered to make $0.67 per
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Posted
Sep 09 2009, 07:16 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The Warren Buffett-based "Guru Strategy" I'm using to manage my Top Stocks portfolio is up 17% since I started tracking it in mid-June at Wall Street Survivor, well ahead of the S&P 500 (for the year the Buffett-based portfolio I follow on Validea.com is up almost 40%). In my latest scheduled monthly rebalancing, it's added one new pick, and it's one that might come as something of a surprise: Coach (COH) -- one of the few stocks (out of over 6,000 securities I analyze) that my Buffett model gives a 100% rating.
Coach seems an odd pick for more than one reason -- first, there's the juxtaposition of the firm's upscale luxury clothing and accessories with Buffett's own personal style (or, someone less kind might say, lack thereof); and second, it comes at a time when the consensus seems to be that the economy is headed for a "new normal", one in which consumers continue to tighten their belts and shop for bargains.
But Buffett has always been something of a contrarian -- "be greedy only when others are fearful" is one of his main mantras -- so the fact that the model I base on his approach is keying in on COH right now isn't a big surprise to me. And, when you look at the numbers, Coach's appeal to my Buffett-based model becomes as plain as the suits you can usually find on "The Oracle of Omaha's" back.
(If you'd like to see the detailed analysis of COH using my Buffett quant model, please email me at johnreese@validea.com and I will send an in-depth guru research report along.)
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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 21 2009, 02:33 PM
by
John Reese
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Because my investment philosophy is rooted in the idea that beating the market is less about reinventing the wheel and more about listening to the right people, I take a look every Friday at what the market gurus I follow are saying.
This week, the mood among the gurus has been one of cautious optimism on the stock market, and greater caution on the economy. Exemplifying the cautious optimism on the market was Barry Ritholtz of FusionIQ and The Big Picture blog, who has been pretty on target with his forecasting of both the financial crisis and the bullish turn in March. Ritholtz told Yahoo! TechTicker that the market's oversold status is fading, with mutual fund managers -- many of whom had upped their cash positions during the crisis -- now collectively having the same percentage equity exposure as they did back in October 2007. But, he says, "it’s not a sign the rally is over. It’s a sign that one source of fuel is starting to run low.” Read More...
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Posted
Aug 18 2009, 03:00 PM
by
InvestorPlace
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post was written by InvestorPlace's Jim Woods
Any man who’s garnered the mystical, yet homey nickname “Oracle of Omaha” immediately sets off my skeptic radar. When it comes to investing, I’m an advocate of thinking for yourself, and not taking your marching orders off another man’s playbook.
Perhaps this unbridled individualism is my own flaw, but when I hear how much attention is being paid to Warren Buffett and what stocks he likes, his frugal lifestyle, his favorite restaurant, and even his favorite meal at that restaurant (T-bone steak and hash browns at Gorat’s Steak House), I can’t help but get the sense that the disease of groupthink has run amok.
Bing: More on Warren Buffett
Now before you Buffett-philes start hurling angry emails my way, let me just acknowledge that Mr. Buffett is deserving of tremendous plaudits for his unprecedented investing success. The man’s track record over the past three decades is amazing.
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