At the behest of a key shareholder, bookseller Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) is in search of a potential suitor. Yet the company’s prospects are dimming, and it’s unclear if any such buyer exists. If you own this stock, look to take profits now. If you don’t, it may be… Read More

What do Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Alcoa (NYSE: AA) have in common? They are book-ends on the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s ranking of best and worst-performing stocks thus far in 2010. Boeing — up +30.4% — is seeing rising demand for airplanes, while Alcoa — off -27.0% — awaits a rebound in demand for aluminum. It’s been a mixed bag of results for this leading index, with 19 stocks rising and the other 11 losing ground since the start of the year. Company (Ticker)   Total Return… Read More

What do Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Alcoa (NYSE: AA) have in common? They are book-ends on the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s ranking of best and worst-performing stocks thus far in 2010. Boeing — up +30.4% — is seeing rising demand for airplanes, while Alcoa — off -27.0% — awaits a rebound in demand for aluminum. It’s been a mixed bag of results for this leading index, with 19 stocks rising and the other 11 losing ground since the start of the year. Company (Ticker)   Total Return YTD P/E Boeing (NYSE: BA) 30.4% 4.5 Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) 27.2% 29.0 Du Pont (NYSE: DD) 26.5% 12.5 McDonalds (NYSE: MCD) 14.4% 16.0 American Express (NYSE: AXP) 12.5% 17.0 Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) 10.6% 14.5 General Electric (NYSE: GE) 9.8% 15.0 3M (NYSE: MMM) 7.1% 15.5 Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) 6.9% 18.0 United Tech (NYSE: UTX) 5.8% 15.0 Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) 5.3% 11.5 Proctor & Gamble (NYSE: PG) 4.7% 16.5 Traveler’s Ins (NYSE: TRV) 3.4% 8.0 Chevron (NYSE: CVX) 2.9% 9.0 Home Depot (NYSE: HD) 2.1% 17.0 IBM (NYSE: IBM) 0.9% 12.5 Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) 0.6% 17.0… Read More

“Moving to the sidelines.” That’s a Wall Street euphemism for “we’re not sure what to make of this stock.” And that’s just what Wall Street analysts did as a group on Thursday, uniformly cutting their rating on marketing firm Vistaprint (Nasdaq: VPRT) to “hold” or “neutral”. Analysts thought the stock… Read More

Call it the winner’s curse. When companies grow at fast clip for a long time, investors come to assume they’ll never slow. Of course, all companies eventually grow too large to keep posting explosive growth. Some settle into a more moderate — but still respectable — plane of growth, while… Read More

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

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

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

There are dozens of very large ships plying the global waters that do nothing but ferry dry goods. Think of coal, grain, steel and other such bulk goods. When major nations actively trade these goods, bulk ships are in hot demand and the cost to lease them can surge. But… Read More