As I generally adopt a bottom-up investing policy, and go into investing without any preconceived notion of what sector my stocks are going to be in. As a result, I am often surprised at the odd niches where attractive stocks hide. However, Mac-Gray Inc. (TUC) is one of the more unusual ones. They operate laundry […]
One of the great debates among fundamental investors, whether they are value investors or whether they should be value investors, is the question of bottom-up or top-down. The top-down approach involves examining the economic outlook, the state of the financial markets, and the trends among the sectors, in order to determine the best stocks in […]
I have over the last few months been forming the conclusion that Cisco offers an attractive potential return situation based on its earnings yield from operations. The company, with a market cap of $105 billion, is sitting on $35 billion in excess bonds because the CEO is unwilling to repatriate its overseas profits under the […]
Future economic historians may refer to the period beginning in 2009 and continuing for some years into the future as the era of deleveraging, at least for everyone except the U.S. government. I have often voiced the opinion on this site that companies that are in compliance with the times by voluntarily paying down debt […]
As my loyal readers will know, I have been following Windstream (WIN), a phone company focusing on rural areas, for some time. Over the last couple of years, it has made a number of acquisitions in order to facilitate its strategy of expanding high speed internet and business services in order to offset losses of […]
Many of you may have no doubt noticed that my approach to investing is largely quantitative, concerned with free cash flow yields, interest coverage ratios, the gap between depreciation and capital expenditure, net working capital position, and other financial vital statistics. This should not be surprising; I take the position that corporations are machines that […]
So, my loyal readers who have been keeping count will know that this to be my 100th post. I thought I would celebrate this exciting occasion with a review of how some of my recommendations have worked out. I know hindsight makes everything look more certain than it was, but it is definitely a useful […]
I find very often that I seem to be the one who is interested in the investments I’m interested in. Certainly that is true of the River Rock and Mohegan casino bonds, where I seem to be the only person on the Internet who has even considered their investing attributes. So, when I find people […]
Behavioural Investing by James Montier is a weighty book with much to tell us about an aspect of investing that has long been overlooked. Behavioral investing, of course, is basically determining why market participants do not act in a manner consistent with the fancy equations of the financial economists, as they frequently don’t. Of course, […]
It appears that Seagate (STX) will not be taken over after all, as it has rebuffed its buyers for not meeting their price. The stock price seems to have taken this development in stride, dropoping only 3.25% today. However, the market’s incurable impatience had already caused the price to drift down from the $15 level […]