Meredith Whitney became a household name last winter. The banking analyst, who was formerly known only by the Wall Street crowd, caught the attention of Main Street when she predicted that many state and local governments would start defaulting on their municipal bonds as… Read More

Bruce Berkowitz is ready for a long Labor Day respite. The founder of Fairholme Capital, who was named as Morningstar’s “Fund Manager of the Decade” for his audacious and well-timed investments, made a major gaffe this summer. He loaded up on financial stocks in the first… Read More

I recently heard from a reader who wondered aloud why shares of LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK), which have lost half of their value since early May — and 90% of their value since 2007 — are trading so poorly. After all, this major player in the solar industry has… Read More

When it comes to stock buybacks, we tend to assume investors will surely benefit sooner and later. In the near-term, shares can find support from a large institutional buyer — i.e. the company itself — and in the long-term, earnings per share… Read More

Most of the time, value investors look for stocks that have a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio that is less than the earnings growth rate, or a PEG ratio below 1. For example, a stock with a P/E of 15 and an… Read More

Editor’s note: As has been widely reported, Warren Buffett this morning (August 25) announced plans to invest $5 billion in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). According to reports, Buffett will buy 50,000 preferred shares paying a 6% annual… Read More

In the current stock market environment, bargains are showing up wherever you turn. Thousands of stocks are now trading at close to two-year lows, although many of them should be avoided since business can get even worse in a slowing economy. This is why it pays to focus… Read More

Back in 1950, a young investor by the name of Warren Buffett discovered that his mentor Benjamin Graham was chairman of a company named Government Employees Insurance Company, or GEICO for short. Shortly thereafter, he hopped on a train to go visit the company at its headquarters in Washington D.C. Read More

Back in the fall of 2008, virtually every equity-focused mutual fund was falling in value. The selloff was most keenly felt in many closed-end funds (CEFs). Not only did these funds see their portfolio of investments drop in value, but the fund price… Read More

Investors are always on the prowl for stocks that would conceivably appeal to Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) Warren Buffett. He likes established businesses that throw off ample cash flow and have a strong moat to keep competition at bay. We can speculate… Read More