It’s not often you’ll come across a stock that has risen roughly 200% in the past year and is still valued at less than six times projected 2014 profits. Equally impressive: Those profits are expected to come on the heels of 450% revenue growth. Sounds too good to be true?… Read More

Remember the summer of 2011? Warren Buffett sure does. He continues to speak of the sharp market sell-off in late July and early August, and how he was a very active buyer on Aug. 8, 2011, when stocks were “capitulating.” Washington was a mess, which he saw as a time to… Read More

Many consumers are still ignoring the quickest way to lower their utility bills.  Swapping out all of your older light bulbs for new light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs can save hundreds of dollars in power costs. And the fact that these bulbs can last up to 25,000 hours means you’re all set for the next decade. This new technology has been a notable success story for Home Depot (NYSE: HD), and its key LED supplier, Cree (Nasdaq: CREE). You would think that Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) would also like to have been a major vendor of this cutting-edge, cost-saving lighting technology. But… Read More

Many consumers are still ignoring the quickest way to lower their utility bills.  Swapping out all of your older light bulbs for new light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs can save hundreds of dollars in power costs. And the fact that these bulbs can last up to 25,000 hours means you’re all set for the next decade. This new technology has been a notable success story for Home Depot (NYSE: HD), and its key LED supplier, Cree (Nasdaq: CREE). You would think that Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) would also like to have been a major vendor of this cutting-edge, cost-saving lighting technology. But the LEDs it sold from many manufacturers have always been a bit too pricey for Wal-Mart’s rank-and-file shoppers.  Yet Wal-Mart’s new house-brand line of LEDs changes everything.#-ad_banner-# Wal-Mart’s Great Value LED lights, made by privately held TCP Inc., are priced under $10, which is crucial in two respects. It’s a price point that lures many more consumers to make the change, considering these bulbs can now pay for themselves in terms of power consumption in just two or three years. And it’s a nightmare price point for Cree, which appears hard-pressed to make profits at such a price.  At least… Read More

Remember the summer of 2011? Warren Buffett sure does. He continues to speak of the sharp market sell-off in late July and early August, and how he was a very active buyer on Aug. 8, 2011, when stocks were “capitulating.” Washington was a mess, which he saw as a time to… Read More

I’ve been tracking the moves made by insiders for more than two decades — but recently, I’ve been paying less attention. That’s because my experience has shown that following the moves of insiders in a rising stock market isn’t fully helpful, as a rising tide lifts all boats anyway, and… Read More

For years, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) has been known as the ultimate “story stock.” Investors have been asked to overlook the e-commerce giant’s relatively unimpressive cash flow metrics, assuming that the company will eventually deliver the bottom-line numbers that mature companies deliver.#-ad_banner-# How large is the disconnect? The company delivered an… Read More

Identifying a great turnaround opportunity can be hugely profitable. When investors become universally negative about a company’s prospects, you’ve got the chance to spot early signs of improvement, and latch on before the crowd does.  Of course, it’s impossible to perfectly time a turnaround, even if your analysis is roughly… Read More

About a year ago, short sellers were loading up on shares of online music service Pandora (NYSE: P). Rising competition in streaming radio was expected to keep a lid on growth, but short sellers, which controlled more than half the float in November 2012, clearly missed the mark. Pandora has… Read More

If you haven’t noticed, the IPO market is on fire.  As has been the case for a number of months, the most recent crop of newly public companies are posting stellar after-market gains. With the exception of a tepid after-market performance for data storage firm Violin Memory (Nasdaq: VMEM), the… Read More

Coming out of the housing crisis, hundreds of thousands of homes could have been bought on the cheap. And some of the world’s largest investors did just that.  For example, we noted earlier this year that the Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) spent roughly $100 million per week buying distressed real… Read More