Mirror, mirror on the wall, which freight company is the fastest growing of them all? While you might guess it’s FedEx (NYSE: FDX) or United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS), since they are both household names, the answer is the relatively unknown XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO).  When it comes to revenue growth, it’s no contest. Last year, while FedEx grew sales at a 2.9% year-over-year pace and UPS’ revenues were up 5%, XPO’s sales soared 236%.  True, XPO’s revenues totaled $2.4 billion in 2014, while FexEx had more than $45 billion and UPS more than $58 billion. But if you’re looking… Read More

Mirror, mirror on the wall, which freight company is the fastest growing of them all? While you might guess it’s FedEx (NYSE: FDX) or United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS), since they are both household names, the answer is the relatively unknown XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO).  When it comes to revenue growth, it’s no contest. Last year, while FedEx grew sales at a 2.9% year-over-year pace and UPS’ revenues were up 5%, XPO’s sales soared 236%.  True, XPO’s revenues totaled $2.4 billion in 2014, while FexEx had more than $45 billion and UPS more than $58 billion. But if you’re looking for growth, XPO is the place to be. #-ad_banner-# Traders have taken notice, and the stock has more than doubled in the past year and is up more than 300% in less than three years. While organic growth has been solid, a large reason for increased revenues is XPO’s furious pace of acquisition. It bought three key companies in 2014: Pacer International, New Breed Logistics and Atlantic Central Logistics. In fact, XPO has been on a buying spree, acquiring 16 different firms between… Read More

Despite its blue-chip status, it’s been a long time since International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) was an elite stock. Since peaking in March 2013, long-term investors saw their holdings shrink 30% into the December 2014 low, highlighted by a massive price collapse in October.  Big Blue was more black and blue. However, the good news is that after months of sideways trading, the stock started to heal. Indeed, the trend has been to the upside all year. Stocks that suffer the damage seen here are rarely instant… Read More

Despite its blue-chip status, it’s been a long time since International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) was an elite stock. Since peaking in March 2013, long-term investors saw their holdings shrink 30% into the December 2014 low, highlighted by a massive price collapse in October.  Big Blue was more black and blue. However, the good news is that after months of sideways trading, the stock started to heal. Indeed, the trend has been to the upside all year. Stocks that suffer the damage seen here are rarely instant buys. In the stock market, low price does not necessarily mean “on sale.” Indeed, IBM rested for a few weeks before tumbling one more time into its final low. It was so damaged on the charts that traders seemed to stop caring. Never mind that it carried a hefty dividend yield at that point. Even today, it yields 3%, making it of great interest to long-term holders and income seekers. #-ad_banner-# But how will we know whether… Read More

At the end of February, I made the case for a looming market correction based on slowing economic data, downward revisions in corporate earnings growth and the S&P 500’s high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio.  Over the following two weeks, the S&P 500 dropped more than 3% before trading back up and hitting new all-time highs. But I don’t think we’re in the clear yet. Here’s why I foresee a market correction in the coming weeks and a potential way to profit. During the first quarter, the companies of the S&P 500 delivered another lackluster performance, with net earnings rising a paltry… Read More

At the end of February, I made the case for a looming market correction based on slowing economic data, downward revisions in corporate earnings growth and the S&P 500’s high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio.  Over the following two weeks, the S&P 500 dropped more than 3% before trading back up and hitting new all-time highs. But I don’t think we’re in the clear yet. Here’s why I foresee a market correction in the coming weeks and a potential way to profit. During the first quarter, the companies of the S&P 500 delivered another lackluster performance, with net earnings rising a paltry 2.4% year over year while revenue contracted 3.7%. Take out financial stocks and total earnings growth would have actually contracted 1.2% year over year. And it doesn’t look like things are getting better. #-ad_banner-#Second-quarter earnings growth expectations have fallen over the past four months from 1.1% to a loss of 6.4%, according to Zacks estimates. What concerns me even more is that markets have moved higher while earnings growth is basically flat and future earnings estimates are dropping. This has caused the S&P 500’s forward P/E to increase from 17.62 in February to 18.02 today. That’s the highest reading in… Read More

Did it really work? It’s a question many investors are pondering seven months after the conclusion of the Federal Reserve’s massive quantitative easing (QE) program, in which trillions of dollars were pumped into the banking system from 2008 to 2014. The aim was to shock the ailing economy into recovery by providing a flood of cash for banks to lend at ultra-cheap rates. It was an unprecedented move that possibly forestalled a more severe economic downturn, perhaps even a depression. However, the program continued long after the U.S. economy was out of crisis, mainly because of the belief that QE… Read More

Did it really work? It’s a question many investors are pondering seven months after the conclusion of the Federal Reserve’s massive quantitative easing (QE) program, in which trillions of dollars were pumped into the banking system from 2008 to 2014. The aim was to shock the ailing economy into recovery by providing a flood of cash for banks to lend at ultra-cheap rates. It was an unprecedented move that possibly forestalled a more severe economic downturn, perhaps even a depression. However, the program continued long after the U.S. economy was out of crisis, mainly because of the belief that QE could generate robust, sustainable long-term growth by facilitating lending, business investment and hiring. The economy is so complex that such a hypothesis may take years to confirm or disprove. But in the meantime, there are plenty of compelling signs that QE is nothing near the growth driver that policymakers had hoped. Vulnerable Economy Perhaps the most obvious sign of QE’s limits is how quickly the economy lost steam when the program ended. After surging by a 5% annual rate in the third quarter of 2014, gross domestic product (GDP) rose just 2.2% in the fourth quarter. The slump in growth… Read More

Average Gains of 144% — Is it Possible? One of the top trading experts in the world has created a unique, two-part options strategy with average annualized gains that seem too good to be true: 89% in 2012… 144% in 2013… 211% in 2014. I can’t guarantee you’ll have the same kind of success. But if history is any guide, it could help you make annualized gains of 220%… 508%… even 2,201% — which is what it has delivered over the past few weeks. We’ve put together a… Read More

Average Gains of 144% — Is it Possible? One of the top trading experts in the world has created a unique, two-part options strategy with average annualized gains that seem too good to be true: 89% in 2012… 144% in 2013… 211% in 2014. I can’t guarantee you’ll have the same kind of success. But if history is any guide, it could help you make annualized gains of 220%… 508%… even 2,201% — which is what it has delivered over the past few weeks. We’ve put together a free webpage revealing the details behind this strategy. Click here to go there now. Sincerely, Frank Bermea Publisher, Profitable Trading P.S. This expert just revealed his latest trade. He expects it to deliver 106% — but only if you take advantage immediately. Click here to get all the details. All major U.S. indices except for the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average closed higher last week, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 and small-cap Russell 2000,… Read More

One of my favorite things to see in a long candidate is a pattern of beating Wall Street’s earnings estimates. After all, if a stock beats the Street consistently, it is doing many things right.   An earnings beat will often cause a stock’s price to pop, and when that stock also sports a superb long-term chart, I know I have found a winner. The Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK) fits this description to a T. In the company’s past 18 quarterly earnings reports, going back to the end of 2010, it has only missed Zacks’ consensus estimate… Read More

One of my favorite things to see in a long candidate is a pattern of beating Wall Street’s earnings estimates. After all, if a stock beats the Street consistently, it is doing many things right.   An earnings beat will often cause a stock’s price to pop, and when that stock also sports a superb long-term chart, I know I have found a winner. The Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK) fits this description to a T. In the company’s past 18 quarterly earnings reports, going back to the end of 2010, it has only missed Zacks’ consensus estimate three times. And it has beaten estimates more than 72% of the time. In the most recently reported quarter, announced in April, Bank of New York Mellon exceeded estimates by nearly 14%. #-ad_banner-# The financial institution has a storied history. The Bank of New York was founded in 1784 by the future first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, whose portrait adorns the $10 bill. It grew steadily over the centuries and merged with Mellon Financial in 2007.   The Bank of… Read More

Last week, I was surprised when my system designed to spot stocks on the verge of a breakout gave a buy signal for a stock in one of the most hated sectors of the market. It’s been a very long time since this dormant sector produced a buy candidate, but its boom-and-bust nature can produce huge winners. Subscribers to my premium Alpha Trader service rode one stock in this group to a 135% gain last year, making it our second largest winner. We are seeing green… Read More

Last week, I was surprised when my system designed to spot stocks on the verge of a breakout gave a buy signal for a stock in one of the most hated sectors of the market. It’s been a very long time since this dormant sector produced a buy candidate, but its boom-and-bust nature can produce huge winners. Subscribers to my premium Alpha Trader service rode one stock in this group to a 135% gain last year, making it our second largest winner. We are seeing green shoots sprout in the commodity-driven natural resource sector, and this could be the start of a long and persistent run in some very beaten-down stocks. Commodities are reflecting the nascent but aggressive pickup in inflation. The chained consumer price index (CPI) for all urban consumers showed a 1.2% rate of inflation from its January low, which annualizes to a 7.2% rate. This metric is considered to be a good representation of the general public because it accounts for nearly 90% of the population. Read More

Stock splits are typically seen as bullish events, even though they don’t change the value of your investment. They simply increase the number of shares outstanding and reduce the price per share on a proportional basis. What’s important is the reason for a split. Companies usually do it when the stock price has risen so high that management thinks a price cut is necessary to keep shares looking attractive for investors, many of whom equate lower-priced shares with better values. Investors tend to see a stock split as a sign of financial strength, since splits are often announced at the… Read More

Stock splits are typically seen as bullish events, even though they don’t change the value of your investment. They simply increase the number of shares outstanding and reduce the price per share on a proportional basis. What’s important is the reason for a split. Companies usually do it when the stock price has risen so high that management thinks a price cut is necessary to keep shares looking attractive for investors, many of whom equate lower-priced shares with better values. Investors tend to see a stock split as a sign of financial strength, since splits are often announced at the same time as dividend hikes. Plus, studies have found a strong positive correlation between stock splits and future earnings growth. Clearly, splits have positive implications for portfolio performance, and a good real-world example of this comes from a unique exchange-traded fund called the USCF Stock Split ETF (NYSE: TOFR). The fund, which provides an easy way to gain regular exposure to stock splitters, has risen roughly 10% in value since last September, while the S&P 500 has risen around 7%.  The fund is still only about eight months old, and only has about $5 million in net assets thus… Read More

I am a big fan of looking at charts one degree of time further out than I plan to trade. It is the market-ification of the old saying about seeing the forest for the trees. For instance, the short-term chart of programmable circuit and semiconductor maker Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) is a mess. But when we pull back to the weekly chart we can clearly see a breakout with supporting technicals. Considering that the semiconductor sector remains in a long-term uptrend, this is good news for the stock. When a sector is strong, lagging stocks within it can see big gains… Read More

I am a big fan of looking at charts one degree of time further out than I plan to trade. It is the market-ification of the old saying about seeing the forest for the trees. For instance, the short-term chart of programmable circuit and semiconductor maker Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) is a mess. But when we pull back to the weekly chart we can clearly see a breakout with supporting technicals. Considering that the semiconductor sector remains in a long-term uptrend, this is good news for the stock. When a sector is strong, lagging stocks within it can see big gains as they catch up with their peers. The trick is that they have to exhibit technical strength before we can safely buy them.  XLNX now shows that strength. Last week, powered by buyout talk in rival Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR), Xilinx jumped higher from a four-week trading range.  In the short term, the ensuing rally ran into resistance from the December high after becoming technically overbought. By itself, an overbought condition is not enough to shun a stock. Overbought stocks can become more overbought before the trend ends. The daily chart seems to be all over the place with… Read More

Even great companies can see their stock prices sink on short-term factors and negative headlines. If you want to outperform the market, then you have to be ready to avoid these near-term catalysts, take profits and wait to take advantage of lower prices down the road. I warned investors in late 2013 that one such company could be hit by the outcry for higher wages despite a strong business model and an excellent brand. Within a month of the article, shares were 20% lower. Since then, however, the share price has jumped 45% in about 18 months. Now that very… Read More

Even great companies can see their stock prices sink on short-term factors and negative headlines. If you want to outperform the market, then you have to be ready to avoid these near-term catalysts, take profits and wait to take advantage of lower prices down the road. I warned investors in late 2013 that one such company could be hit by the outcry for higher wages despite a strong business model and an excellent brand. Within a month of the article, shares were 20% lower. Since then, however, the share price has jumped 45% in about 18 months. Now that very same stock could be facing near-term catalysts to the downside. Another plunge in the shares could offer another great buying opportunity or it could wipe out all of your returns if you don’t take profits beforehand. This Company Is Juiced For Profits Jamba, Inc. (Nasdaq: JMBA), based in California, is the top retailer of the growing freshly-squeezed juice and smoothie market, with 100 million annual visitors to its 862 Jamba Juice stores. The company rolled out four grocery products to 300 stores in California through the last quarter of 2014 and plans on a national… Read More