Very few companies can boast of six straight years of sales growth in excess of 25%. And fewer still can match this pace for the next few years as well. So would you want to own the stock? I’m talking about a company that had roughly $7 billion in sales… Read More

Traditionally, investing in the airline industry has been fraught with peril. But there are always exceptions to the rule. In its earlier days, investors could have done quite well by buying and holding on to Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV). When it was first founded 28 years ago,… Read More

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I walked into the store. There were literally dozens of smartly-dressed women excitedly seeking out their sizes in a variety of clothing items. The shoppers were completely undeterred by the relatively high prices but rather focused on just how good their purchases would make them look at the gym, yoga class or just as casual wear. I quickly remembered Fidelity Investments’ Peter Lynch and his investing rule, “buy what you know,” as my wife came out of the dressing room modeling her latest tennis/workout skirt for my approval. Not only did… Read More

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I walked into the store. There were literally dozens of smartly-dressed women excitedly seeking out their sizes in a variety of clothing items. The shoppers were completely undeterred by the relatively high prices but rather focused on just how good their purchases would make them look at the gym, yoga class or just as casual wear. I quickly remembered Fidelity Investments’ Peter Lynch and his investing rule, “buy what you know,” as my wife came out of the dressing room modeling her latest tennis/workout skirt for my approval. Not only did the outfit look great, but the craftsmanship and unique fabric sealed the deal — despite the very high price point. If you haven’t guessed it, then the store we were in was lululemon athletica (Nasdaq: LULU). Riding on the resurgence of the fitness/yoga craze that started in the 1970s, lululemon has built a powerhouse fashion empire on women’s desire for quality, looks, comfort and functionality. It’s also been one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street in recent memory… Interestingly, half the women in the store didn’t… Read More

Every spring, the same headline flashes across the screen: “The housing sector is perking up and it’s time to buy.” As time passed, the newfound momentum invariably petered out, leading to the follow-up refrain “wait ’til next year.”  #-ad_banner-#The fact that housing stocks posted solid gains in the past few… Read More

“They need to get rid of Zuckerberg. Facebook may have a chance if a talented leader is appointed; otherwise it’s a no-go. The guy is a master at the start-up, but he needs to turn the reigns over to someone else to run the company”, exclaimed an under-the-radar Internet insider I recently chatted with in South Florida.  His words proved semi-prescient as the heavily anticipated Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) IPO has gone down in history as providing the worst return of any large IPO in the past… Read More

“They need to get rid of Zuckerberg. Facebook may have a chance if a talented leader is appointed; otherwise it’s a no-go. The guy is a master at the start-up, but he needs to turn the reigns over to someone else to run the company”, exclaimed an under-the-radar Internet insider I recently chatted with in South Florida.  His words proved semi-prescient as the heavily anticipated Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) IPO has gone down in history as providing the worst return of any large IPO in the past decade.  The massive $16 billion IPO was fraught with issues from its launch on May 18. A lack of communication at Nasdaq appears to be the initial trigger of the strife, causing the IPO to be delayed, and some investors complained that their orders weren’t being filled or that they were getting shares at a much higher price than they wanted.  #-ad_banner-#The confusion resulted in about $115 million in losses for the four major market-makers in the IPO: Knight Capital Group, Citigroup’s Automated Trading Desk,… Read More

  Whenever you short a stock, there’s always one huge risk: that your fellow short-sellers will get spooked, buy to cover their positions and unwittingly push the stock up. Indeed, that’s what appears to have happened in the days after I predicted a big pullback (and shorting opportunity) in… Read More

The business world is full of examples of innovators being left in the dust by imitators. Think Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) was the first company to think of the tablet PC? Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) first developed the idea a decade prior to the advent of the iPad. Think Mark Zuckerberg came… Read More

With all due respect to famed economist Burton Malkiel, but stocks don’t make a “random walk.” His famous book from 1973, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, opined that the stock market incorporates all information and there is… Read More

What the heck is going on with this market? On two occasions this week, the major indexes opened sharply lower and then clawed back higher as the trading session wore on. From hour to hour, the bears — who fear a spreading European contagion, and the… Read More

A couple of weeks ago I talked about finding bargains among blue-chip stocks, pointing out how all of the stocks I mentioned had reached bargain-basement levels in terms of their price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios. And while I’m sticking to my guns and affirming that — for those three stocks — a… Read More