Here’s the problem with starting an exercise regimen: You typically pay big up front for the gym membership or equipment, then try to motivate yourself to use it enough to make that payment worthwhile. But recouping a sunk cost isn’t much of a motivator, so you end up both out […]
Monthly Archives: January 2011
112 posts
The benefits and drawbacks of offshore drilling have long been debated. But life after BP’s (NYSE: BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill not only brings in an even more heated debate, it also introduces new troubles for domestic offshore drillers in the form of an offshore drilling ban (which ended in […]
*See important disclosures. Analytic Investment’s Dividend model holds 50 dividend stocks at a time. The goal of the model, along with producing income from dividends, is to outperform the S&P 500 while creating a portfolio that is less volatile than the index. In its January 2011 Investment Report, Analytic Investment […]
Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) put an extra tremor in the steps of caffeine addicted investors this morning when it announced that it expected the rising cost of coffee to derail profits more than previously anticipated. This announcement followed an adjusted earnings forecast that came in below analysts’ expectations. But even with […]
In 1936, economist John Maynard Keynes likened investor behavior in the stock market to a beauty contest gone awry: It is not a case of choosing those [faces] that, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We […]
*See important disclosures Shares of Renasant (NASDAQ: RNST) were added to Andy Schornack’s Financial Services model last week. In the model, Schornack uses a bottom-up approach while looking for companies with stable dividends. In November 2010, RNST was mentioned favorably in the article “The Smart Money’s Top 8 Banking Stocks” […]
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) revealed some positive information on the company’s 2011 employment front today. On the company’s blog, Alan Eustace, the SVP of Engineering and Research states: I love Google because of our people. It’s inspiring to be part of the team. And that’s why I am excited about 2011—because […]
New Covestor model manager Steve Beamer uses a fundamental and technical approach to investing. He made his first stock purchase back in the 1980s and for the past decade has mostly focused on options trading. On his website, Trading for Yourself, Steve addresses his history with investing, I have been […]
A new paper from the American Finance Association finds (from the abstract): An increase in SVI [Google search frequency] predicts higher stock prices in the next two weeks and an eventual price reversal within the year. It also contributes to the large first-day return and long-run underperformance of IPO stocks. […]
A common rule of thumb is that it’s better to rent a home when the cost of buying is at least 20 times higher, and it’s smarter to buy when that ratio falls to 15 or lower. Real estate search company Trulia drew upon its wealth of data to produce […]
Radioshack (NYSE: RSH) fell substantially today—from $17.61 to $15.62—on both the announcement of CEO Julian Day’s retirement and the pre-announcement of a reduced quarter four 2010 EPS that is lower than 2009 quarter four’s EPS and analysts’ estimates. RSH hired Day in 2006 after the company dealt with a disappointing […]
*See important disclosures. John Ballard uses a long-term buy and hold strategy in his Mid-Cap Fundamentals model. A buy and hold strategy generally results in fewer instances of short-term capital gains tax penalties. But because little attention is paid to the short-term price movements of the equities in a buy […]