This market has been painful for many investors. Shares of many large and mid-cap stocks are off 20% to 30% in just the past month or two. And the lower down the food chain you go, the… Read More

In the Chairman’s letter written to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) in 1995, Warren Buffett explained why retailing can be a tough business. He likened it to a “shooting-star phenomenon,” where not taking care of day-to-day details can lead to failure. He also explained that consumers… Read More

Prior to the recent market slump, you could find many companies with enough cash to equate to 10% or even 20% of their market value. Yet as stock prices have fallen and those cash balances have remained intact, a very unusual event has occurred. Read More

As many companies prepared to disclose second-quarter earnings, they noted a fundamental disconnect between their outlooks, their balance sheets and their lagging share price. In search of a remedy, these companies announced major stock buyback programs. Little did they know the stock market plunge of the past two weeks… Read More

Even with the real-estate market mired in a slump, investors still clamored for shares of Zillow (NYSE: Z). On July 20, the real estate-focused website went public at an initial offering price of $20, opened in the low $30s and briefly spiked to $60 that same day, as more… Read More

In stressful times like these, it’s important to distinguish between investors’ appetite for stocks in general and the actual outlook of each company. The market plunge is related to top-down concerns about the U.S. economy, but a bottom-up approach is still warranted. This is because — despite the weak… Read More

Great companies know the key to future success lies in the steps you take today. These companies dole out massive amounts of cash to their engineering teams to develop cutting-edge products that will provide for sales and profit growth in the… Read More

In the book Spin-off to Pay-off, author Joseph Cornell cites a number of reasons why corporate spinoffs are ideal for finding highly compelling investment opportunities. And with companies struggling to grow in the current market environment, the timing is proving ideal for spinoffs because they represent a great way to… Read More

We watched the market implode last week. Some were scared, some were exhilarated. Some could only watch. When the market closed flat Friday after a tough Thursday, in which more than a trillion dollars of investor wealth was wiped away, I think pretty much everyone was pretty… Read More

With the outlook for the U.S. economy in question for the rest of the year, this is a bad time to pursue high-priced growth stocks. Any hit to growth forecasts can lead to a double hit from both lowered profit forecasts… Read More