Investors often make one key mistake: They look to bag profits after an investment has made an impressive move. That makes sense — if the reasons to buy that stock have changed, or if the stock is now too pricey in relation to future earnings. But there are… Read More

Back in the 1980s, Peter Lynch, the famed head of Fidelity’s flagship Magellan fund, stumbled across an industry that he found to be undervalued and underfollowed by Wall Street. To paraphrase his analysis in his popular Beating the Street book, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Philip Morris had nearly 50 analysts… Read More

When this stock underwent its IPO in 1986, four of the company’s employees became instant billionaires and 12 thousand of the firm’s employees were millionaires. The share price continued to soar. But the tech bubble of the early… Read More

In my recent article, “5 Stocks That Could Win in the Digital Age,” I examined five large media companies that were poised to not only survive the onslaught of the Internet and the Digital Age, but thrive. A couple of my picks in that article have more than one class… Read More

As investors continually seek out new investment ideas, it can get very tiresome. Just when you’ve found certain appealing stocks, they move up to your price target or lose operating momentum, and you’re compelled to find the next idea. But what if you could hold a stock for the whole year, a whole decade or even a whole generation? Well, that’s how people used to invest. My grandmother bought shares of AT&T (NYSE: T) in the 1950s — and never sold them. The dividend income was surely appealing. And the capital appreciation helped… Read More

As investors continually seek out new investment ideas, it can get very tiresome. Just when you’ve found certain appealing stocks, they move up to your price target or lose operating momentum, and you’re compelled to find the next idea. But what if you could hold a stock for the whole year, a whole decade or even a whole generation? Well, that’s how people used to invest. My grandmother bought shares of AT&T (NYSE: T) in the 1950s — and never sold them. The dividend income was surely appealing. And the capital appreciation helped her stay well ahead of the forces of inflation. But if my Grandma were alive today, would she still be able to find a “forever stock?” After all, in recent years, even stalwarts such as AT&T have lost their luster: Ma Bell’s shares have fallen by half since 2002. You can still find “forever stocks” if you know where to look. The key ingredient is to seek out companies with long operating histories, that sell goods or services that won’t become obsolete, and routinely generate solid rates of return on their deployed capital. Read More

Like most value investors, I frequently find it difficult to justify “paying up” for growth. A challenging stock market during the past couple of years has provided ample opportunity to find stocks that are trading at ridiculously low levels. But now that the market has rallied strongly for nearly two… Read More

The S&P 500 pushed back above 1,100 in September 2010, past the 1,200 mark in early December and is already on the cusp of 1,300. With that kind of upward move, it’s reasonable to feel cautious. You want to participate in this impressive rally, but don’t want to give up… Read More

Every company looks at a new year as a fresh opportunity. Companies make plans to boost sales, watch costs and deliver investor-pleasing bottom-line results. The three companies we’re discussing today clearly didn’t meet those goals in 2010. But the stars are aligning for better results this year, perhaps spectacularly so. Read More

It’s no secret that the media industry has been deeply affected by the advent of the Internet. It is the most efficient distribution channel ever for consumers to read, listen, and watch content. Newspapers and magazines continue to give way to online content outlets, airwaves are being replaced by Internet… Read More

As my colleague Tom Hutchinson recently pointed out, defense sector spending may be under threat of budget cuts, but make no mistake: demand will always be robust. That makes the defense sector not only a safe place for investors to be, but it also ensures a solid growth path. Read More