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

When Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) started selling its single-cup coffee brewing systems (known as the Keurig) five years ago, few expected the company to single-handedly revolutionize the coffee industry. These days, former rivals are looking to partner with the company to help get a piece… Read More

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

Even as the market surged ever higher in 2009, 2010 and early 2011, an unpleasant development occurred. One of the world’s most appealing economies saw its stock market zoom ahead so quickly, that it became hard to justify putting any new investment dollars into it. But thanks to the recent… 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

After a couple of weeks of steady losses, the stock market is now in all-out frenzy mode. Massive drops or eye-popping gains are the norm these days, creating havoc for anyone trying to establish a foothold with long or short-oriented investments. In fact, short sellers are the most exposed in this current era of high volatility, even with their potential of reaping huge gains, as they have recently. Short sellers need to watch out for sudden rallies. If they are targeting a heavily-shorted stock, then a short squeeze could push up… Read More

After a couple of weeks of steady losses, the stock market is now in all-out frenzy mode. Massive drops or eye-popping gains are the norm these days, creating havoc for anyone trying to establish a foothold with long or short-oriented investments. In fact, short sellers are the most exposed in this current era of high volatility, even with their potential of reaping huge gains, as they have recently. Short sellers need to watch out for sudden rallies. If they are targeting a heavily-shorted stock, then a short squeeze could push up the stock up faster than the broader market, creating potentially huge losses for shorts — yet equally large gains for investors who went long. With this in mind, I’ve been looking at the just-released short-interest data, which tallies the short-interest levels in stocks as of July 28. The size of these short positions may have changed since then, but almost all of the most heavily-shorted stocks are likely to remain near or atop the leader board when we get the next round of data that tracks short levels through Aug. 15. Make no mistake,… 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

A sharp plunge on Monday, Aug.8, a stunning rebound on Tuesday, another pullback on Wednesday. When will it all end? It’s increasingly clear that very low price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios aren’t grounds enough to bring out value investors. 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