In May, I wrote an article about Best Buy (BBY). The stock price was still clearly beaten after taking a hit in the beginning of the year. At the time, I wrote that the perception of the investors about this stock was still being affected by non-recurrent items. However, the company was taking measures to…
What do McDonald’s (MCD), Philip Morris (PM), Caterpillar(CAT), Kimberly-Clark (KMB), and Target (TGT) have in common? Yes, they’re all large-cap stocks that pay solid dividends. In fact, three are even Dividend Aristocrats, having increased their dividends for at least 25 consecutive years. But the common characteristic I’m referring to isn’t related to their dividends… or even their common stocks. Instead, I’m looking higher up…
Enough time has passed that I wanted to mention an idea I gave my Slope Plus subscribers back on November 21st. I wrote, in part, “USO did a perfect gap-fill at 29.08. I shorted some crude oil right here, since this is an extremely clean stop.” My stop was too tight (by a few pennies),…
Source Less than 15 years ago, the term ‘BRIC’-countries was introduced by Jim O’Neill. It was an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China whose economies were expected to overtake by 2050 the countries which were the largest economies in 2000. There was a lot of lobbying going on from other countries to…
The U.S. has experienced higher temperatures during December so far. This is in sharp contrast to last month’s chill, marked by heavy snowfall in the Northeast and Midwest. However, temperatures may soon drop again following storm warnings for the Northeast. Bitter November Through November’s end, the U.S. had experienced an early and bitter winter. Portland,…
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE The Dow is currently less than 1% from another milestone, which is the 18,000 level. The above table looks at how many days it took the Dow to reach each 1,000 level and the annualized return during each time period. As you can see the Dow could reach the 18,000…
Midcoast Energy Partners, L.P. (MEP – Snapshot Report) was a big mover last session, as the company saw its shares rise over 7% on the day. The move came on solid volume too with far more shares changing hands than in a normal session. This reverses the recent downtrend for the company as the stock is now down…
Now things will get interesting. As you know, we’ve been making a very public call to short the Nikkei through EWJ (short at $12, using Jan $12 puts at 0.55 as well as /NKD Futures short at 18,100) and today you’ve officially missed your chance as the Nikkei plunged back to 17,900, down 200 points…
If one ignores all traditional, staple indicators of a growing economy, such as stable (not plummeting) crude demand, stable (not plummeting) holiday spending and stable (not plummeting) McDonalds (MCD) comp store sales, then indeed the U.S. economy has “decoupled” from the rest of the world, and those who wish to demonstrate the same intellectual capacity…
Barry Ritholtz has had some good fun torching Tony Robbin’s All Weather Portfolio for having too much in bonds and commodities as well as being to backward looking and being put forth as a one size fits all. The latest was in his WaPo column dated December 5, 2014. He proceeded to offer his All…
