Archive for 2007

  • Lincare Holdings
    , June 13th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Since the beginning of 2006, the market value of the S&P 500 has increased by $2 trillion, but the health care sector has been warming the bench. Health care has chipped in just $66 billion, or about 3.3%, which is well below its sector weighting of 12%. Fortunately, lagging sectors are often good places to spot bargains.

    One mid-cap health care stock that I’ve got on my radar is Clearwater, FL-based Lincare Holdings (LNCR). Lincare is in the oxygen and respiratory therapy biz. You may have seen their portable oxygen tanks which, in Florida, are sorta like iPods for the retiree set.
    I’m not claiming to have any special insight here. I’ve just run the numbers on LNCR and it looks like a good stock at a good price. The shares are currently going for 13.6 times next year’s estimate, which is about a 13% discount to the market. EPS jumped 24% last quarter and is expected to rise 16% this year.
    I don’t own it, but in a market where Yahoo (YHOO) can fetch $27, Lincare at $39 ain’t bad.

  • Guess What’s Up 90% in the Past Year?
    , June 13th, 2007 at 11:41 am

    Nope, I’m not talking about a stock.
    The answer: Foreclosures.

  • The Return of Volatility
    , June 13th, 2007 at 10:59 am

    The stock market could be heading towards its fifth 100-point day move in the last six sessions. To add some perspective, there were five 100-point days in the entire fourth quarter.
    Of course, I remember when 100 points used to mean something….

  • Warren Buffett Talks to MBA Students
    , June 13th, 2007 at 10:34 am

    YouTube comes through again. I found this 10-part video of Warren Buffett speaking to MBA students.
    I don’t know the date, but it seems to be a few years old. Nevertheless, it’s a great talk. Buffett has a way of making complicated topics easy to understand.
    If you have a chance, I urge you to see the whole thing (about 90 minutes). Here’s part 1:

    (more…)

  • Quotes at Yahoo Finance
    , June 13th, 2007 at 9:57 am

    Just in case you’re using Yahoo Finance this morning, Fiserv (FISV) is not up 150% today.
    They have yesterday’s close listed at $22.29, instead of $56.49. The stock is really down a few pennies. I think this is all part of Terry Semel’s masterplan to take down Google — build ad revenue through wrong stock quotes. Still, it’s better than Panama.

  • Quit Following Me
    , June 12th, 2007 at 1:54 pm

    The stocks of Lehman (LEH) and Bear Stearns (BSC) for the past year:
    lehbsc.gif

  • Hold Off Selling Stock
    , June 12th, 2007 at 6:52 am

    Mark C. Leeds in today’s New York Post reminds investors in the 10% and 15% tax brackets — which includes many retirees — to hold off on selling stocks this year. On January 1, the capital gains tax will fall to 0% for both brackets. As of now, the tax cut will last through 2011.

  • Rule Change Could Boost Wall Street’s Profits
    , June 12th, 2007 at 6:30 am

    Wall Street firms could see a big boost to their bottom lines this year thanks to a rule change. An SEC regulation passed in 2004 will allowed firms to set aside less money in reserve so Wall Street can better compete with financial firms in other countries.

    Investors are underestimating the benefits of “alternative net capital requirements,” a regulation passed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 to keep Wall Street firms competitive with their counterparts in the European Union, said Brad Hintz, an analyst at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Profits will get a boost in the second half of 2007, depending on how fast the five firms shift their capital, he said. U.S. commercial banks are receiving a similar break from the Basel II agreement, set to take effect as early as next year.
    “They’re all increasing capital at risk because the new capital requirements allow it,” said Hintz, a former chief financial officer at Lehman. “As the transition to the new capital rules is completed, they’ll have more room to do so, and that will help their profit.”

  • Just in Case You’re Feeling Sorry for Paris
    , June 11th, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    According to the chart, she’s doing just fine.
    HLT.gif
    Hilton‘s (HLT) stock fell in half after 9/11. I remember how people said that it will hurt travel companies. In retrospective, it had almost no impact and the sell-off was really a great time to buy.

  • Chinese Stocks 65% Overvalued
    , June 11th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

    Bloomberg notes that the Chinese stock market’s benchmarket CSI 300 “would have to drop 65 percent to match the average multiple for Chinese shares traded in Singapore.”

    On the mainland, investors pay 147 times earnings to own Fortune Ng Fung Food (Hebei) Co. Hong Kong-listed China Yurun Food Group Ltd. trades at 26.7 times profit. And in Singapore, People’s Food Holdings Ltd. is valued at 11.7 times earnings.
    “There is not that big a difference in their businesses, so there shouldn’t be such a difference in their prospects and valuations,” says Greg Lesko, who helps manage $900 million at New York-based hedge fund Deltec Asset Management.