We’d all love to find a way to find that +1,000% gainer. To capture this kind of upside, investors will have to take their chances on companies that may have a great future but little to show for it right now. These speculative plays, more often than not, fail to… Read More

After starting the year on a high note, economic worries and uncertainty over the current earnings season have caused volatility to return to the stock market. As a result, the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) remains tepid. And recent performance statistics place overall IPO returns in negative territory so far in 2010. Despite the tough IPO market, there are still a number of stocks that have done quite well. Below is an overview of the most popular and best performing IPOs during the… Read More

After starting the year on a high note, economic worries and uncertainty over the current earnings season have caused volatility to return to the stock market. As a result, the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) remains tepid. And recent performance statistics place overall IPO returns in negative territory so far in 2010. Despite the tough IPO market, there are still a number of stocks that have done quite well. Below is an overview of the most popular and best performing IPOs during the past year. Better yet, they still have plenty of room to run as the business cycle heats up and each firm has the ability to expand its market reach significantly after raising funds from their recent offerings. Tesla Motors Inc (Nasdaq: TSLA) Business: Auto Manufacturing Trailing 12-month Revenue: $111.9 Million Tesla’s IPO was one of the more widely covered and popular IPOs of the year. The firm is still tiny by many measures, including revenue just over $100 million during the past year and a market capitalization of… Read More

It’s an age-old question: Do you chase fast-rising stocks or go after beaten-down names? If you’re in the former camp, check out the stocks in the table below. They’ve posted stunning gains in July and investors may wonder whether yet more gains lie ahead. As is with… Read More

I sold my 1994 Mazda 626 — affectionately called “The Green Monster” — to a neighbor about two years ago. The car had served me well and still had enough life left to see his two teenagers through those dicey “new driver” years. I’m happy to report that the teens… Read More

During the past decade, analysts have collectively raised and lowered their rating on Walmart (NYSE: WMT) hundreds of times. Perhaps they shouldn’t have bothered. The stock has gone nowhere in 10 years, having been mostly stuck between $45 and $60 for all of that time. But just because the stock… Read More

U.S. debt is skyrocketing with no end in sight. And while the dollar has recently functioned as a short-term safe haven, its long-term fundamentals are deteriorating. #-ad_banner-#To put it in perspective, U.S. public debt in 2000 was $3.4 trillion. That has now more than doubled to $8.6… Read More

In many respects, the auto industry remains in a funk. Industry sales remain well below previous peaks, competition has never been more fierce, and the need to spend heavily to develop future technologies like electric cars are all creating profit headwinds. In that light,… Read More

If the BP (NYSE: BP) saga is a tale of three acts, Act One will soon be complete. The company’s leaking well is almost capped, new management is in place and a plan is emerging that will help cover recent costs and make sure the balance sheet doesn’t collapse. Act Two, which will play out during the next 18 months, will involve implementing the turnaround plan. And Act Three, which we’ll likely see in 2012, will be a new, smaller, post-crisis BP that is once… Read More

If the BP (NYSE: BP) saga is a tale of three acts, Act One will soon be complete. The company’s leaking well is almost capped, new management is in place and a plan is emerging that will help cover recent costs and make sure the balance sheet doesn’t collapse. Act Two, which will play out during the next 18 months, will involve implementing the turnaround plan. And Act Three, which we’ll likely see in 2012, will be a new, smaller, post-crisis BP that is once again valued on future profits and not simply a rough guess of assets and liabilities. BP’s debt/cash flow balancing act On its second-quarter conference call, BP management laid out plans to cover the spill’s costs by taking out a $32 billion charge. In our initial assessment back in early June, we assumed that costs would be less, in the $10 to $20 billion range. After our initial analysis, shares fell even further as concerns grew that liabilities would break the company. Shares have recently rallied to… Read More

Soon after taking office, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made U.S. banks undergo a stress test to see how they would fare in ever more dire economic scenarios. Almost all U.S. banks passed the test with flying colors. And as investors breathed a sigh of relief, they called their brokers… Read More