Deals and Financings Nanjing Xinjiekou Department Store Co. made an unsolicited offer of “not less than” $966 million to buy China Cord Blood Corp. (NYSE: CO), a cord blood banking and stem cell processing company (see story). In April, Golden Meditech (HK: 801), China Cord Blood’s major owner, made a $771 million offer to take…
We evaluated 24 different companies this week to determine whether they are suitable for Defensive Investors, those unwilling to do substantial research, or Enterprising Investors, those who are willing to do such research. We also put each company through the ModernGraham valuation model based on Benjamin Graham’s value investing formulas in order to determine an…
The US dollar posted gains against all the major currencies over the past week save the Australian and New Zealand dollars. The Reserve Bank of Australia appears to have moved to a more neutral stance on rates, relying on the currency to provide the necessary adjustment. The dollar’s gains were helped by a strong July auto…
The best thing about the commodity crash relapse taking place so quickly after the last swoon – recall that we have had two oil bear markets within 8 months – is that all those hollow chatterboxes and econo-tourists who swore that tumbling oil is “unambiguously good” and “great for the economy” (first and foremost Larry…
Dividend growth investors should pay attention to Cummins (CMI). A few compelling stats about the company’s stock are below: 25% dividend hike in July 3.1% dividend yield Price-to-earnings ratio of 13.4 25 years without a dividend reduction 14.3% earnings-per-share CAGR over the last decade Are you interested in Cummins yet? This article takes a deeper…
Energy master limited partnerships (MLPs) have had a bad 12 months. That fact was emphasized last Friday when one of the largest MLPs, Linn Energy (LINE), finally eliminated its dividend. Linn Energy’s stock price has fallen nearly 90% in the last year, which is especially disquieting because LINE was famous for using sophisticated derivatives to…
It appears that many people are so married to this wrong idea that INFLATION is created by the Fed expanding the money supply. Sorry – it does not work that way. Others are confused that interest rate increases are bearish and declines are bullish. All you need to do is look at Japan to see…
As promised I am not going to rattle on about China. Instead, look at Putin-land. My tirade has a personal side. I had my teeth cleaned on Wednesday by Irina, the Russian dental hygienist, who scraped at the plaque by leveraging against the saliva suction device so hard that she drew blood at the base…
I glanced at Yahoo Finance’s home page on Friday, and noticed ZNGA was very prominently featured: I figured using space that precious for a particular stock meant there was something very big going on. How much was Zynga up? 20%? 30%? 50%? I just had to check it out. Here’s the daily chart. The stock…
In the first quarter of 2015, it was suggested that the seasonal adjusting methodology understated economic growth in first quarters. Now in the second quarter of 2015, the scuttlebutt is that the inflation adjustment has overstated economic growth. My position is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ annualized methodology for determining headline growth magnifies normally…
