In June, as the third quarter got underway, consensus profits for companies in the S&P 500 were expected to show a modest 1% year-over-year dip. Three months later, analysts now think profits will slide nearly 5%, from year-earlier levels.  Of the companies that have announced guidance, 76 expect negative EPS growth for the third quarter according to FactSet Research. That compares to only 32 companies that have issued positive guidance for the three-month period so far.  The pain continues to build in the energy and materials sectors, but many other sectors are seeing downward earnings revisions as well. Fear of… Read More

In June, as the third quarter got underway, consensus profits for companies in the S&P 500 were expected to show a modest 1% year-over-year dip. Three months later, analysts now think profits will slide nearly 5%, from year-earlier levels.  Of the companies that have announced guidance, 76 expect negative EPS growth for the third quarter according to FactSet Research. That compares to only 32 companies that have issued positive guidance for the three-month period so far.  The pain continues to build in the energy and materials sectors, but many other sectors are seeing downward earnings revisions as well. Fear of higher interest rates and declining earnings growth led an 8.6% drop in the S&P 500 index, and a sharp spike in the VIX volatility index since mid-August. The trend is so bad that analysts are expecting earnings growth of just 0.6% in the fourth quarter. The revenue picture is equally challenging. Analysts think that third-quarter sales fell 3.3% against the same quarter last year. On a full-year basis, they are modeling for a 2.4% drop in sales. Unless revenue growth returns soon,  investors may start questioning whether corporate management teams can squeeze further earnings growth from continued cutbacks. The 12-month… Read More

The stock market has been gyrating wildly in recent months, and the wild ride may be far from over. That’s great news for Chicago-based CBOE Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: CBOE). This securities exchange operator is uniquely positioned to benefit from volatile markets. Shares of CBOE are getting lift from a key technical index: the VIX, which measures market volatility. As the chart below shows, shares have been moving higher in recent weeks, despite a pullback in the broader market. That’s solely due to volatility levels that have not been seen since the financial crisis. As the VIX appears poised to remain… Read More

The stock market has been gyrating wildly in recent months, and the wild ride may be far from over. That’s great news for Chicago-based CBOE Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: CBOE). This securities exchange operator is uniquely positioned to benefit from volatile markets. Shares of CBOE are getting lift from a key technical index: the VIX, which measures market volatility. As the chart below shows, shares have been moving higher in recent weeks, despite a pullback in the broader market. That’s solely due to volatility levels that have not been seen since the financial crisis. As the VIX appears poised to remain at elevated levels, CBOE’s investors are looking at an attractive profit opportunity. The Case For Large Near-Term Gains As the owner of the well-known Chicago Board Options Exchange, CBOE provides the world’s largest market for options contracts on stocks, indexes and exchange-traded products. It directly owns the VIX, as well as the associated options and futures. Key proprietary products also include the highly popular S&P 500 option, the most actively traded index option in the United States. As volatility rises, demand for options soars because more investors use them to hedge losses, or speculate on specific indexes… Read More

While it may feel as if the stock market is in a deep slump, the S&P 500 is still within 10% of its all-time high. Perhaps the market environment feels so lousy because many individual stocks are now trading far below their 52-week highs. In fact, more than a quarter of all stocks in the S&P 500 have fallen more than 30% from their peak. And fully 96 of the companies in the index are now trading more than 40% below the 52-week high. #-ad_banner-# I’ve spent the last week researching this group of laggards. Many — if not most… Read More

While it may feel as if the stock market is in a deep slump, the S&P 500 is still within 10% of its all-time high. Perhaps the market environment feels so lousy because many individual stocks are now trading far below their 52-week highs. In fact, more than a quarter of all stocks in the S&P 500 have fallen more than 30% from their peak. And fully 96 of the companies in the index are now trading more than 40% below the 52-week high. #-ad_banner-# I’ve spent the last week researching this group of laggards. Many — if not most — of them may stay stuck in a rut for some time to come, thanks to growth headwinds of still-rich valuations. Yet a handful of these losing stocks are clearly oversold, and poised for a sharp rebound in coming quarters. These are the three best opportunities I’ve found. Kohl’s (NYSE: KSS) Earlier this year, shares of this department store retailer were surging as management laid out plans to pursue more bold fashions for the back-to-school and holiday seasons. A period of subsequent tepid quarters have quashed investor enthusiasm, leading shares to fall sharply. To be sure, fiscal… Read More

Call it American ingenuity, but the things we come up with are inevitably sought after by people in nearly every corner of the world. Even where the governments don’t like us — like in Russia and Iran. This has occurred throughout much of U.S. history. The list is endless: the cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the light bulb, the airplane. You get the picture. #-ad_banner-#I’m not saying this to be patriotic. I say it to remind you that we have something unique in this country that’s helped us out of every economic mess we’ve found ourselves in. In fact,… Read More

Call it American ingenuity, but the things we come up with are inevitably sought after by people in nearly every corner of the world. Even where the governments don’t like us — like in Russia and Iran. This has occurred throughout much of U.S. history. The list is endless: the cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the light bulb, the airplane. You get the picture. #-ad_banner-#I’m not saying this to be patriotic. I say it to remind you that we have something unique in this country that’s helped us out of every economic mess we’ve found ourselves in. In fact, nearly every time our economy has looked down and out, we’ve turned things around. And no one ever seems to see it coming. Take the baby boom for example. The world’s economy had just been devastated by WWII. We’d just picked up the tab to rebuild Europe, thrusting ourselves into crushing post-war debt totaling more than our nation’s GDP. And to make things worse, most American families were struggling just to return to normal life. Factories closed as they stopped producing war goods, and unemployment doubled as 10 million soldiers returned home. In fact, a year after the war, the… Read More

Some of the best long-term investments are in companies that dominate a niche market. As an example, I recently highlighted the strong appeal of auto parts supplier Dorman Products (Nasdaq: DORM).  Investors should consider Ball Corp (NYSE: BLL) as another market niche dominator. The company makes metal packaging products, has a similarly profitable past, and an equally bright future. #-ad_banner-#You probably use Ball Corp’s products every day. It makes metal cans and containers for companies like Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD), PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP), The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO), and Unilever Plc (NYSE: UL). The operational dynamics at work in Ball’s… Read More

Some of the best long-term investments are in companies that dominate a niche market. As an example, I recently highlighted the strong appeal of auto parts supplier Dorman Products (Nasdaq: DORM).  Investors should consider Ball Corp (NYSE: BLL) as another market niche dominator. The company makes metal packaging products, has a similarly profitable past, and an equally bright future. #-ad_banner-#You probably use Ball Corp’s products every day. It makes metal cans and containers for companies like Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD), PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP), The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO), and Unilever Plc (NYSE: UL). The operational dynamics at work in Ball’s industry are quite appealing. Metal cans and bottles for the food, beverage and personal care industries represent huge markets, for which there are few good substitutes. Despite the huge market, the risk of technological disruption is low, and Ball’s products require minimal new investment in product improvements. After all, does a can of cola look any different today than it did a decade or two ago? Furthermore, Ball has already reached the size and scale that would make it difficult for new companies to enter the market. In the company’s 2014 10-K filing, Ball noted that only “Five companies manufacture… Read More

The past couple of weeks have sent investors into a frenzy.  I know most aren’t surprised by this market hiccup, but volatility like what we’ve seen recently can still be tough to stomach. It’s times like these that it becomes important to get back to the basics. In fact, I’d venture to say that anyone can follow just four simple steps to invest successfully. They’re not difficult concepts, and they’re most important when the market is in flux. 1. Have a system.  There are too many securities in the world to approach… Read More

The past couple of weeks have sent investors into a frenzy.  I know most aren’t surprised by this market hiccup, but volatility like what we’ve seen recently can still be tough to stomach. It’s times like these that it becomes important to get back to the basics. In fact, I’d venture to say that anyone can follow just four simple steps to invest successfully. They’re not difficult concepts, and they’re most important when the market is in flux. 1. Have a system.  There are too many securities in the world to approach the market without some framework for making rational choices. For instance, my newsletter, Game-Changing Stocks, has a simple system — put 80% of the portfolio into predictable stocks or index-tracking vehicles and allocate the remaining 20% to aggressive growth securities with greater potential returns than the overall market offers. This system is backstopped by millions of data points that offer a reliable statistical underpinning for predictable results over the long term.  Over the long term, corrections are going to happen. That’s reality. But we go in knowing that, and we do not panic when the arrows on Wall Street start… Read More

“Talk to me when it’s timely.” That’s a response I often heard when pitching my best sell-side ideas to my firm’s hedge fund money manager clients. Most fund managers want to hear about a stock idea only when it is on the cusp of a big upward move. Lacking such imminent catalysts, a stock can languish for an extended period. Yet value-oriented fund managers take a completely different view. They love to find stocks that offer deep intrinsic value, and they are willing to be patient and wait for an unloved stock to morph into a loved one. #-ad_banner-#And right… Read More

“Talk to me when it’s timely.” That’s a response I often heard when pitching my best sell-side ideas to my firm’s hedge fund money manager clients. Most fund managers want to hear about a stock idea only when it is on the cusp of a big upward move. Lacking such imminent catalysts, a stock can languish for an extended period. Yet value-oriented fund managers take a completely different view. They love to find stocks that offer deep intrinsic value, and they are willing to be patient and wait for an unloved stock to morph into a loved one. #-ad_banner-#And right now, perhaps no other blue chip is so unloved — and holds such deep value — as General Motors (NYSE: GM). By a whole host of metrics, shares of this auto maker are a stunning bargain. And for investors that have a 1-2 year time horizon, robust gains can be had. Equally important: shares offer such deep value right now, that they are very likely to stand their ground if the market tumbles further. Recent Setbacks Have Hurt GM’s Share Price General Motors has recently been beset by a series of setbacks, some of them self-inflicted. For example, in… Read More

Investors are worried… rightfully so. The Federal Reserve meets this week to decide whether or not they should raise interest rates. No matter who you talk to, everyone has a guess as to what they will decide. But how that decision will actually affect stocks is less clear. Personally, I don’t believe any decision will send the U.S. markets into another 2008-2009 scenario. However, as the saying goes: “Plan for the worst. Hope for the best.” #-ad_banner-#By studying which companies fared the best during the Great Recession, we can get an idea of which ones are best equipped to carry… Read More

Investors are worried… rightfully so. The Federal Reserve meets this week to decide whether or not they should raise interest rates. No matter who you talk to, everyone has a guess as to what they will decide. But how that decision will actually affect stocks is less clear. Personally, I don’t believe any decision will send the U.S. markets into another 2008-2009 scenario. However, as the saying goes: “Plan for the worst. Hope for the best.” #-ad_banner-#By studying which companies fared the best during the Great Recession, we can get an idea of which ones are best equipped to carry us through any future turmoil. Specifically, I’m looking for the companies that maintained or even grew their dividends through the 2008 and 2009 downturn — one of the greatest indicators of a company’s fiscal health and management confidence. How To Avoid The Mt. Everest Of Dividend Cuts Companies rely on their shareholders for a number of reasons. But the most important reason why a company needs investors to own and hold its stock is so that it can go to the equity market (issue new shares) when it needs to raise capital. And the quickest way for a company… Read More

Mark Twain understood the mind of an investor. The world-renowned author once proclaimed: “A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way.” Twain acknowledged the rush that can accompany earning money without any labor. He understood that the human brain is not wired for clear thinking in regard to money. That’s because the area of the brain that responds to financial reward is the same part… Read More

Mark Twain understood the mind of an investor. The world-renowned author once proclaimed: “A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way.” Twain acknowledged the rush that can accompany earning money without any labor. He understood that the human brain is not wired for clear thinking in regard to money. That’s because the area of the brain that responds to financial reward is the same part that lights up from cocaine. This presents a major problem. Investors can become insatiable, searching high and low for the next “big winners.” What they’re really interested in is a get-rich-quick scheme. That’s a terrific way to lose money — and quickly. However, if you are a regular reader of my Game-Changing Stocks newsletter, then you know that I have been making a habit of finding stocks with the most “big winner” potential for a while. In fact, I’ve found more than 23 triple-digit winners since joining StreetAuthority… Read More

When I was a kid, I had a friend named Corey. His folks were loaded: His dad was a successful gynecologist, and his mom “came from money,” as polite people used to say. The family cars were all Mercedes-Benzes. I was fortunate to have a relatively affluent upbringing, so luxury cars were not unknown to me. But one thing set Corey’s family’s cars apart: They had cell phones installed in them. #-ad_banner-#During the 1980s in Wichita, Kansas, cellular telephones were an exorbitantly expensive device limited mainly to very serious oilmen and very important physicians. Read More

When I was a kid, I had a friend named Corey. His folks were loaded: His dad was a successful gynecologist, and his mom “came from money,” as polite people used to say. The family cars were all Mercedes-Benzes. I was fortunate to have a relatively affluent upbringing, so luxury cars were not unknown to me. But one thing set Corey’s family’s cars apart: They had cell phones installed in them. #-ad_banner-#During the 1980s in Wichita, Kansas, cellular telephones were an exorbitantly expensive device limited mainly to very serious oilmen and very important physicians. But when I could finally afford it a decade later during my sophomore year of college, I became an early adopter of the technology and bought a Nokia handheld model. It was expensive-ish, I suppose, but the convenience made sense to me, and it wasn’t like I had a mortgage to worry about at the time. Well, you know what happened. It wasn’t much longer before the cell phone trend caught on and then took off. The technology grew better and better, and so did the service, which simultaneously became cheaper and cheaper. Now,… Read More