More than 200 stocks hit new 52-week highs on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday as the market powers ever higher. Toiling on the sidelines of this surge is former highflyer Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO), which has the dubious distinction of being one of just a handful of names hitting 52-week lows these days. The question for investors: is the Queen of domestic design becoming irrelevant, or simply the victim of bad-timing? To be sure, it’s no fun being a magazine publisher these days. High-profile titles such as Newsweek are seemingly… Read More

More than 200 stocks hit new 52-week highs on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday as the market powers ever higher. Toiling on the sidelines of this surge is former highflyer Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO), which has the dubious distinction of being one of just a handful of names hitting 52-week lows these days. The question for investors: is the Queen of domestic design becoming irrelevant, or simply the victim of bad-timing? To be sure, it’s no fun being a magazine publisher these days. High-profile titles such as Newsweek are seemingly near death, while other esteemed titles such as The Atlantic are forced to cut the number of issues they publish each year. Yet Martha Stewart Living’s publishing business looks quite healthy — at least in terms of circulation. The company’s flagship Martha Stewart Living actually recently increased the amount of circulating copies its guarantees to advertisers to 2.025 million, while lesser titles such as Everyday Food (1 million) and Whole Living (650,000) are also posting rate base increases. Trouble is, the weak economy has been pressuring ad rates. So these titles… Read More

What’s one of the hottest micro-cap stocks of the last three months? I’ll give you a clue: it’s a mining company that’s stock tripled in value since mid-August. But instead of mining gold, silver or platinum, this company digs something else entirely different out of the earth. Read More

Like every investor, I try to read voraciously to get an edge. I’m always on the lookout for investment angles that haven’t gotten much press but could eventually turn into a market-moving event. So my ears perked up last week when I saw that hedge fund traders have… Read More

You may think stocks are still attractively priced after the recent rebound — but that doesn’t matter. Instead, it’s more important what your peers think and do. Because if you’re buying while they’re selling, you’ll lose. And right now, many of your peers have a solid excuse for selling: year-end profits. The S&P 500 has risen nearly +15% since early September, and many individual stocks are up +40% or even +50% from the summer swoon. With a hike in the capital gains tax expected next year, many investors will look to secure profits now instead of later. Read More

You may think stocks are still attractively priced after the recent rebound — but that doesn’t matter. Instead, it’s more important what your peers think and do. Because if you’re buying while they’re selling, you’ll lose. And right now, many of your peers have a solid excuse for selling: year-end profits. The S&P 500 has risen nearly +15% since early September, and many individual stocks are up +40% or even +50% from the summer swoon. With a hike in the capital gains tax expected next year, many investors will look to secure profits now instead of later. As my colleague Ryan Fuhrmann noted back in September, the capital gains tax rate will rise from 15% to 20% in 2011. Investors can avoid capital gains by generating offsetting capital losses, but after the market’s massive 20-month surge, there are fewer losers to be culled from investors’ portfolios. #-ad_banner-#If investors start to tiptoe toward the exits, it could quickly morph into a larger move. Just like we’re seeing in the current rally where success begets success, failure also begets failure. The market seems to be locked into mini-cycles characterized by broadening rallies (March… Read More

A surging stock market has brought a smile to the face of investment bankers. They’ve suddenly found a much more receptive environment for new initial public offerings (IPOs), with 16 deals of at least $100 million being pulled off in October — the best month for IPOs this year. And… Read More

All eyes will be on Ben Bernanke this Wednesday as the Federal Reserve finally spells out the details of its much-anticipated second round of Quantitative Easing, known as “QE2.” [For more on QE2 and how it works, read this InvestingAnswers.com article] The Fed‘s efforts to stimulate the economy through bond buybacks have led investors to already open the champagne. As I noted recently, the S&P 500 has already appreciated by more than $1 trillion simply in anticipation of any presumed benefits. But in recent days, economists… Read More

All eyes will be on Ben Bernanke this Wednesday as the Federal Reserve finally spells out the details of its much-anticipated second round of Quantitative Easing, known as “QE2.” [For more on QE2 and how it works, read this InvestingAnswers.com article] The Fed‘s efforts to stimulate the economy through bond buybacks have led investors to already open the champagne. As I noted recently, the S&P 500 has already appreciated by more than $1 trillion simply in anticipation of any presumed benefits. But in recent days, economists are beginning to doubt whether Mr. Bernanke is going to bring out the large cannons, or simply a set of pea-shooters. More specifically, will QE2 be large enough to get the economy going, buying back up to $1 trillion in bonds, or will the Fed believe that a few hundred billion dollars will be sufficient? #-ad_banner-#A pair of fresh economic data points point to the latter. Last week, we saw a moderate drop in weekly jobless claims that makes it clear that unemployment is at least not getting worse at this point. And then on Monday… Read More

At the end of every quarter, I like to look back over recent market laggards. Most of the stocks that took a recent deep hit are likely to stay depressed, but some are the victim of investor over-reaction and poised for a rebound. With that in mind, let’s look at the five worst-performing small caps during the past month. All of these stocks are in the Russell 2000 Index of small caps, and each sport a market value of at least $300 million. Read More

At the end of every quarter, I like to look back over recent market laggards. Most of the stocks that took a recent deep hit are likely to stay depressed, but some are the victim of investor over-reaction and poised for a rebound. With that in mind, let’s look at the five worst-performing small caps during the past month. All of these stocks are in the Russell 2000 Index of small caps, and each sport a market value of at least $300 million. Savient Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SVNT) This biotech soared +83% in the third quarter. Roughly a third of that gain came on just one day in September when it received FDA approval for Krystexxa, a gout drug which targets patients for which other gout treatments have proven ineffective. Some analysts think Krystexxa represents $200-250 million in annual sales, while others peg it as a $750 million annual revenue opportunity. Global Hunter Securities figures the market niche is roughly $400 million. Savient announced back in May that it would put itself up for sale, and the FDA… Read More

The Russell 2000 index is widely seen as a proxy for small cap stocks. Yet the definition of “small cap” can be quite loose. Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), the Russell 2000’s largest component, is worth more than $4 billion, while a number of members of the index are worth less than $200 million. Historically, the biggest names in this index eventually graduate, often to the S&P 500, where they become one of the smaller companies in this large company index. Such a… Read More

The Russell 2000 index is widely seen as a proxy for small cap stocks. Yet the definition of “small cap” can be quite loose. Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), the Russell 2000’s largest component, is worth more than $4 billion, while a number of members of the index are worth less than $200 million. Historically, the biggest names in this index eventually graduate, often to the S&P 500, where they become one of the smaller companies in this large company index. Such a move often triggers a nice little gain, as index funds need to buy up shares of any new S&P 500 entrants to ensure that they own the whole portfolio. So which stocks are most likely to graduate and matriculate upwards? Let’s take a look. The candidates To gain inclusion in the S&P 500, decision-makers at Standard & Poor’s like to ensure that new entrants have a reasonable level of current business and a bright future. Here’s a look at the top 10 companies in the Russell… Read More

$17 billion. That’s how much stock market value has been wiped out at Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) in the latest foreclosure mess. JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) has seen its value shrink by several billion dollars, while Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Wells Fargo… Read More

As Americans were heading back to work from the long Memorial Day weekend, Europeans were fretting about a looming banking crisis that threatened to take down major banks in Ireland and Spain. Europe went on to dodge that bullet, and its equity markets have rebounded +30% in the last five… Read More