September is nearly in the record books, and as it turned out, a month that began replete with potential headwinds for equities turned out to be a very good one so far for the bulls. The S&P 500 index is up 3.8% month to date, a move that I doubt… Read More

Traders were pleasantly surprised by the Federal Reserve’s decision to continue buying $85 billion worth of bonds a month. Stocks, bonds and gold moved up on the news, but the effect was short-lived as stocks and gold… Read More

Although most companies appear largely focused on dividends and buybacks these days, some still see the merits of a growth-inducing acquisition. In a slow-growth economy, dealmaking can lead to sales synergies… Read More

Stocks have been strong heading into the Federal Reserve’s quarterly press conference. They are now back to levels reached in May, before speculation about tapering picked up. This week, we will… Read More

PC maker Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) kick-started the era of affordable personal computers — and made many people very wealthy along the way. Its rise was meteoric. Its stock price shot from about $1 in early 1998 to… Read More

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  Try telling that to a company that has just been “Einhorned.” Hedge fund billionaire David Einhorn has the ability to crater a company’s share price with the mere mention of its name in one of his closely followed investment presentations. That ability has turned his name into a verb, spawning the expression that a company is being “Einhorned” when targeted by short sellers.#-ad_banner-# Einhorn’s forensic approach to research has… Read More

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  Try telling that to a company that has just been “Einhorned.” Hedge fund billionaire David Einhorn has the ability to crater a company’s share price with the mere mention of its name in one of his closely followed investment presentations. That ability has turned his name into a verb, spawning the expression that a company is being “Einhorned” when targeted by short sellers.#-ad_banner-# Einhorn’s forensic approach to research has enabled him to sniff out some of the most publicized and successful shorts in the past 10 years. That includes one of the earliest calls and moves on Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and a short on Green Mountain Coffee (Nasdaq: GMCR) that netted his firm hundreds of millions. That has turned Einhorn into one of the most popular figures on the Street — but also one of its most polarizing. Some call him a genius; others oppose his ability to profit from struggling… Read More

In any industry, the only way to avoid price wars is to offer a superior product or service. Customers will pay full price only if they think your offering is… Read More

We have Charles Martin Hall to thanks for many major industrial advances of the 20th century. His discovery of the process of aluminum smelting produced many breakthroughs in food services, packaging, automobiles and aerospace. But Hall and the company he founded are no longer held in such high esteem on Wall Street. Alcoa (NYSE: AA) has just been asked to pick up its things and leave the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) have also been shown the door.#-ad_banner-#… Read More

We have Charles Martin Hall to thanks for many major industrial advances of the 20th century. His discovery of the process of aluminum smelting produced many breakthroughs in food services, packaging, automobiles and aerospace. But Hall and the company he founded are no longer held in such high esteem on Wall Street. Alcoa (NYSE: AA) has just been asked to pick up its things and leave the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) have also been shown the door.#-ad_banner-# I noted the possibility of these changes last year, predicting that Alcoa and HP were headed for the exits. I also thought Travelers (NYSE: TRV) would be given the boot, though the ongoing troubles at Bank of America made that financial services firm more vulnerable. The fact that BofA has more than five times the market value of Travelers was apparently of little concern. (And the fact that Travelers was added to the index only four years ago likely meant that it… Read More

Even the best companies are finding it hard to generate solid revenue growth these days.#-ad_banner-# The slow-growth economy means that the majority of companies in the S&P 500 are expected to boost… Read More

Last week’s gains in the stock market highlight the increasing bullishness of traders. But one little-known indicator shows this market looks surprisingly like 2007. However, because longer-term indicators show economic… Read More