We’re inching ever closer to an official “market correction.” The S&P 500 is down almost 10% from its recent peak, which means we’ll soon hear that phrase bandied about in the financial media.  These pullbacks are painful but bring a… Read More

It’s that time of year again, when investment managers are required to disclose their fund’s holdings to the SEC, and by extension, to all investors. And for most investment companies and hedge funds, it’s a pretty straight-forward process… just make a list of all the stocks you own, and how much of them you own. If you’re Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, however, it’s not quite that simple. With Einhorn’s willingness to hold short as well as long positions (not to mention his willingness to speak out about them) in the $7 billion hedge fund,… Read More

It’s that time of year again, when investment managers are required to disclose their fund’s holdings to the SEC, and by extension, to all investors. And for most investment companies and hedge funds, it’s a pretty straight-forward process… just make a list of all the stocks you own, and how much of them you own. If you’re Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, however, it’s not quite that simple. With Einhorn’s willingness to hold short as well as long positions (not to mention his willingness to speak out about them) in the $7 billion hedge fund, it’s a bit of a process to truly figure out what he’s thinking, or trading. On the other hand, considering his fund has returned an average of 21% per year for the past 15 years, sifting through the data is worth the effort. What Einhorn likes Of course, closed trades are history and don’t offer investors any new specific coattails to ride. The best clues traders can glean from Greenlight’s exits last quarter are to look at what he bought. There were only three new positions added in the first quarter, in addition to only three existing… Read More

Investors looking at energy stocks may have a bit of whiplash these days. Oil prices appear fairly firm while natural gas prices still remain near multi-year lows. In other countries, natural gas prices are surging, as demand rises in places that have de-commissioned nuclear power plants, such as Japan and… Read More

I’m a stock screening maniac. All day, every day the market is open, I am running my various stock screening programs in real time. I search across time frames, sectors, indexes, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in an effort to locate companies prepped to continue… Read More

Earnings season is off to a generally solid start, though tucked into the broad group of estimate-beating companies are more than a few cautionary notes: A range of companies — many of which have exposure to Europe or China — are speaking of tougher times ahead. Read More

In most instances, it pays to focus your investment research on companies that are delivering great results. Rising profits, thanks to market share gains, hot new products, international expansion and other factors often lead to a surging valuation for a company. Yet for some types of… Read More

There’s an old saying on Wall Street that investors should look to the income statement for upside and the balance sheet for downside protection. But for mining and energy stocks, this axiom has been spun on its… Read More

Investors are often faced with a clear conundrum — what to do with a stock that holds great long-term promise and stumbling near-term execution. That question has been vexing me ever since I added shares of Cree Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) to my $100,000 Real-Money Portfolio in early January and… Read More

When it comes to stock-picking, it’s not always about finding the best company in an industry. It’s about finding the best stock in that industry. I was reminded of that axiom after poring over first-quarter results from Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) and Citigroup… Read More

In times past and even recently, I’ve heard investors criticize those who “play it safe” by holding shares of very large, well-established and slower-growing companies. Even though they often pay healthy dividends, such stocks just don’t deliver the returns of newer, smaller and faster-growing… Read More