One Man's Opinion Let’s see if STBB is for you. You’re basically bullish on the stock market, and you have a nice chunk of cash handy that you hate to see withering away in your bank, earning squat. You are going out of the country on an extended business trip, and you have no time to futz with your portfolio. Well, you and I are in the same boat. So I decided to share my most recent STBB short-term portfolio concept with followers to my reinvigorated Young’s World Money Forecast, first launched in 1978. Young’s World Money Forecast never died. It simply went on a 40-year … [Read more...]

There are 9 Dow stocks currently paying 3% or more. (See which stocks I'm talking about in my new "Dow Lab") Not one of these top 2017 cash flow winners for shareholders is in the top 12 Dow stock price performers for the year. What we are looking at in 2017 is a "follow the leader" momentum based market move completely untethered from the long term anchor of dependable cash flow for shareholders. I cannot think of a more dangerous signal for serious money. As of Sept 2017, all investors should be concentrating on companies that bribe today’s stockholders with a yield of more than 3% … [Read more...]

Boeing and Airbus are viewing the combination of their parts suppliers with justified skepticism. As more parts suppliers combine, like the recently announced acquisition of Rockwell Collins by United Technologies, the big jet makers will be forced to pay higher prices for parts. This reality has them considering making more of their parts themselves. Robert Wall and Doug Cameron write: Worried about getting squeezed by the consolidation, Boeing and Airbus have moved to protect themselves by building more of their parts in-house. This month, Boeing will start construction of a new production … [Read more...]

In Today's Financial Times, John Authers explains companies' motivations behind manipulating earnings. With plenty of companies "managing" their earnings, it's a concern that your portfolio may be sitting on what Authers calls an "earnings torpedo." “Within GAAP” manipulation involves dipping further into accruals than they would otherwise do, without resorting to outright fraud. After a while, even this will not work, and so they move on to fraud. In part this is driven by the asymmetric pressure from the market — the longer a company takes to come clean, the bigger and more damaging the … [Read more...]

You know something isn’t quite right in financial markets when you start reading articles in mainstream newspapers about newly minted millionaires who made their fortunes day trading. Right on cue, the NY Times recently ran a story about a former logistics manager at Target, who has become a multi-millionaire day trading volatility. If you’ve wondered why markets are so calm and why volatility has been so subdued, this piece offers some insight. Each morning, at the market’s open, Seth M. Golden, a former logistics manager at a Target store, fires up the computer in his home office in … [Read more...]

Pet care is a lucrative business. Historically much of the spending on pets has come from developed world economies like the U.S. and U.K., but as the FT reports here, pet ownership has risen dramatically in developing countries. A growing middle class in emerging markets is driving worldwide pet ownership higher. Since 2003, the number of pet dogs in emerging market countries has jumped 51% compared to a 5% rise in the developed world. “In poor countries people are more focused on a chicken that will lay eggs or a pig that might eat their waste. It’s only as they get a little bit richer … [Read more...]

Big name American fashion brands like Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren have been using heavy promotions to sell their goods of late. But now they're trying to wean customers off such sales. Brands like these have been hurting for years as e-commerce and lower foot traffic at department stores cut into revenues. Now the brand name fashion companies are fighting back. Suzanne Kapner reports: One way he hopes to do that is by strengthening e-commerce, where sales in North America fell 22% in the most recent quarter. Mr. Louvet said he hasn’t ruled out deepening Ralph Lauren’s relationship … [Read more...]

Tesla has become the largest auto-maker in America as measured by market capitalization even though it produces a small fraction of the cars that General Motors produces. Tesla produced about 84,000 cars last year. General Motors produced over 10 million. Yup, I know, Tesla is different than the other U.S. auto makers. Tesla is a growth stock. You hear it from the analysts whose banks regularly underwrite securities for Tesla that Tesla has a cult following. It is more like Apple than General Motors. That’s possible, but do you want to invest your money in a company that is burning cash … [Read more...]

United Technologies, the Connecticut based conglomerate that build elevators, jet engines, and HVAC systems, is attempting to purchase Rockwell Collins. Based in Iowa, Rockwell Collins an aerospace supplier producing cutting edge technologies like the F-35's new Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System (seen in the picture nearby) that would be a great bolt-on business addition to United Technologies' aerospace segment, its most profitable business. Dana Mattioli and Joann S. Lublin report for the Wall Street Journal: Rockwell specializes in cockpit displays and communications systems for … [Read more...]

For years now hedge funds, institutions, and retail investors have been loading up the shares of a very small sliver of the stock market. The shares I'm referring to are the so-called FAANG stocks, and others like them. FAANG stands for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (now known as Alphabet). As the valuations of these stocks have pushed their company market shares ever higher, they have become a disproportionately large slice of the various indices they are included in. (Read more here and here). But now it appears that some hedge funds have tired of buying the FAANGs and … [Read more...]