In the 1990s, not owning a Janus mutual fund in any of your investment accounts was tantamount to having to carry a Waltons lunch box at an all boys school in fourth grade. Believe me, I know what the word “ostracized” means and I… Read More

#-ad_banner-#This past Wednesday (June 1), the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped nearly 300 points in just one day, causing investors to feel a bit shaken. Tempting as it may be to load up on names that now seem like bargains, further market… Read More

The frenzy over the recent initial public offering (IPO) (Nasdaq: LNKD) made one thing clear: Investors are desperate to get a piece of companies that look destined to be thriving long-term businesses. Yet many new IPOs don’t really have an extended shelf life. They… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Back in February, I took a close look at Warren Buffett’s $12 billion stake in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Well, it’s now more like a $10 billion position. He hasn’t sold shares, but the bank’s stock has been steadily dropping, giving the Oracle of Omaha a rare black eye. To understand Buffett’s next move with this massive banking concern, you need to understand why shares are marching backward. The long-term view Buffett didn’t simply start acquiring shares in recent quarters. He’s been doing so for a… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Back in February, I took a close look at Warren Buffett’s $12 billion stake in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Well, it’s now more like a $10 billion position. He hasn’t sold shares, but the bank’s stock has been steadily dropping, giving the Oracle of Omaha a rare black eye. To understand Buffett’s next move with this massive banking concern, you need to understand why shares are marching backward. The long-term view Buffett didn’t simply start acquiring shares in recent quarters. He’s been doing so for a number of years. But you could argue that his long-term bullishness has been a bit misplaced, or at least a bit premature. He steadily bought Wells Fargo shares in the middle of the last decade, despite signs the housing sector was starting to overheat. More recently, he bought a lot of stock last fall and winter on hopes the U.S. economy was on the cusp of a broad-based upturn. As a result, his buying binges in 2007 and again in late 2010 took place in the low $30s, above the current price.   The appeal to… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Economists love to run a series of experiments based on “Game Theory,” testing whether individuals rationally account for the actions of others before making their own moves. When it comes to companies in the dry-bulk shipping industry, only one player has been acting rationally. Read More

Billionaire investor George Soros and his team of advisors take a “top-down” approach. This means they seek out big, “macro” investing themes, and then work their way down to the best ways to play that theme. Every quarter, they adjust their stakes in a range of companies, either by loading… Read More

If you want to know where an industry is headed, then just peek inside a few checkbooks. If companies are reining in their spending, then they might be saving pennies for a rainy day. But when an entire sector starts forking over unusually large amounts for expansion… Read More

When it comes to stock-picking, it’s better to be early than late. I’d rather buy shares in a promising company and have to wait for the stock to jump than buy in long after others already have. So from time to time, I like to look back on stocks… Read More

Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari!” The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than take the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country… Read More

Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari!” The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than take the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country lane that circles the property. #-ad_banner-#Dad, clearly pleased with himself for conquering the field, didn’t take his foot off the gas and we were soon going nearly 70 miles per hour down a country road with grass in the middle of it. He looked over to me and grinned. “That’s what happens, son,” he said, “when the rubber meets the road!” It became a sort of catch phrase between us. Whenever something really took off, one of us would say, “Well, looks like the rubber met the road,” and we’d both… Read More

As spring morphs into summer, many stocks are starting to move sideways. The summer doldrums often spell lackluster demand for stocks — unless they are really deep value plays. Value investors will wade in, even when most other buyers take a break. These folks tend to rummage through the waste basket, looking for discarded stocks that have been tossed out by the crowd. Value investors love to focus on two key points: stocks that are well off of their 52-week high and sport price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios well below the market… Read More

As spring morphs into summer, many stocks are starting to move sideways. The summer doldrums often spell lackluster demand for stocks — unless they are really deep value plays. Value investors will wade in, even when most other buyers take a break. These folks tend to rummage through the waste basket, looking for discarded stocks that have been tossed out by the crowd. Value investors love to focus on two key points: stocks that are well off of their 52-week high and sport price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios well below the market average. Many of the names they’ll encounter are in the table below. The table holds four names that I’ve mentioned in the past, each of which looks quite appealing if you can ride out the problems of 2011.   1. Central European Distribution (Nasdaq: CEDC) This purveyor of wine and spirits is glad to be looking ahead and not behind. The last six quarters have been an exercise in frustration as Russian authorities threatened to revoke its licenses, key rivals started price wars, its bonds were downgraded, and wheat, rye and other… Read More