In the last month, both Linked In (LNKD) and Pandora (P) came to the New York Stock Exchange with an enormous amount of fanfare. Both IPOs held out the promise of a new appreciation for the future of business. And yet, each IPO currently resides below the lowest price on the first day that shares traded. The low for LNKD on its first day on the [...] Continue Reading...
Until recently, scores of gurus had questioned the sector rotation into non-cyclical sectors. April jobs numbers were “phenomenal” and corporate earnings were sensational. Why should investors sell in May and go away? Yet telecom, health care and consumer staples (e.g., toothpaste, peanut butter, etc.) were rocketing up the relative strength percentile rankings. And many analysts explained that the April-May [...] Continue Reading...
It wasn’t that long ago when I criticized terms such as “overbought” and “undervalued.” (See April’s Going Global: Rethinking the Overbought Concept.) In essence, I explained why investors may give more credence to powerful-sounding words than they give to common sense information. With that said, you should look at a sector’s P/E ratio and compare it against the sector’s P/E [...] Continue Reading...
Tech underperformed the broader U.S. market in Q1. And historically, the tech sector’s best months don’t typically arrive until Q4. Will Q2 earnings season be able to get the tech train back on track? Probably not. The longest-term Microsoft investors with the patience to clip the 3% dividend coupon may be satisfied. However, ”cap app” seekers may not be dancing in the [...] Continue Reading...
The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) closed more than 10% above its long-term 200-day moving average. That hasn’t happened since August of 2010, back when investors fretted the possibility of a double-dip recession. Today, the worries are more cumulative in nature. Uncertain job growth, depressed home values, debt troubles in Europe, rising commodity prices, the threat of rising rates, inflation in Asia, [...] Continue Reading...
The first round of earnings reports gave investors plenty of reasons to smile – from Tiffany’s outlook to Alcoa’s expectation-beater to KB Home’s profit. And yet, in spite of the S&P 500 visiting the 1276-1278 level on virtually every day of the New Year, resistance has kept stocks in check. Perhaps it’s not enough that Japan has joined China in offering to buy European debt. [...] Continue Reading...
Honestly, I’ve heard the macro-economic case for investing in the water industry many times in the last half-decade. In fact, I’ve probably written my fair share of features, explaining how population growth is pushing demand at the expense of a limited, uncontaminated supply. Yet, funds like PowerShares Water Resources (PHO) and Claymore Guggenheim S&P Global Water (CGW) have recently catapulted to the forefront [...] Continue Reading...
The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq offer 3 different ways to look at the U.S. market’s health. Even with the monumental start to December trading, however, none of the broad market indexes are hitting new 52-week peaks. (Not yet, anyway.) It’s not like certain sectors haven’t been pulling their weight. SPDR Select Energy (XLE) and SPDR Select Consumer Discretionary (XLY) have [...] Continue Reading...
Permabears love to talk about a “lack of conviction” on the part of the share purchasing public. Specifically, when upward momentum in stocks occurs on “low volume,” they dismiss the price movement outright. On Monday, 8/30/10, Dow stocks experienced a triple-digit pullback. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ both gave up more than 1.5%. However, with the trading [...] Continue Reading...
As many as 75% of companies are beating their earnings estimates… far above the 65% norm. Yet, consumer, homebuilder and newsletter sentiment have all dropped to bone-chilling depths, pushing pessimism to the forefront of investors’ minds. Indeed, macro-economic anxiety has been dampening the share prices of companies, in spite of some very positive results. One would think that Intel’s “best quarter EVER” could have carried [...] Continue Reading...
