• FactSet Research Systems Hits New High
    Posted by on March 12th, 2007 at 10:19 am

    Please don’t tell FactSet Research Systems (FDS) that we’re in a bear market. The stock just hit a new 52-week high. I’m not sure if it’s a “healthy” new high though.
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  • WWTDRWD
    Posted by on March 12th, 2007 at 7:26 am

    As soon as the stock market started to break, the first question on my mind was “what would the Detroit Red Wings Do”? Fortunately, we have the Detroit Free:

    Chris Osgood
    What’s your approach to investing? Pretty passive. I don’t take too many risks. So (the market) going down 400 wouldn’t affect me as much as someone else. I don’t really take that many risks.
    Why are you so conservative? I don’t want to lose my money unnecessarily. Not do anything I would jeopardize losing money for a stupid reason when I don’t need to.
    Is anyone in the locker room a big Wall Street Journal kind of guy? Not really. We used to have Brent Gilchrist. Mike Vernon was, Steve Yzerman knew quite a bit about it. There used to be a lot of guys in the ’90s that knew quite a bit. I haven’t seen the Wall Street Journal all year.

  • Surowiecki on the Correction
    Posted by on March 11th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki looks at the stock market’s recent unpleasantness. He agrees that faulting China is a weak excuse. But he raises an interesting point in that investors aren’t very good at assessing the impact of new information:

    In one famous experiment by the psychologist Paul Andreassen, investors who selected a portfolio of stocks and then saw nothing but the stocks’ changing prices managed their portfolios significantly better than investors who were also given a stream of news about the companies they’d invested in. The reason, Andreassen suggested, was that the media’s tendency to overplay stories led investors to place too much weight on news that turned out to be of only transient importance.

    Sometimes asking why the market falls is a fruitless task. It’s not a comforting thought, but the stock market can fall suddenly for little or no reason.

  • Buy List Year to Date
    Posted by on March 9th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    We’re holding up well. Through Friday, the Buy List is down 0.63% for the year, while the S&P 500 is down 1.09% (not including dividends).
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  • Today’s Jobs Report
    Posted by on March 9th, 2007 at 10:20 am

    The unemployment rate fell to 4.5% for February, although it’s still above the 4.4% it reached in October. In the last 50 years, the current jobless rate is the 102nd lowest of 600 months.
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    The economy added 97,000 jobs last month, and the job growth numbers for December and January were both revised higher. Here’s a look at non-farm payrolls:
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  • Think Our Market Is Volatile
    Posted by on March 8th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Check out the Indian Sensex (the blue line):
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  • Fedipus Rex
    Posted by on March 8th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Bloomberg writes on the growing rift between the current Fed and the former chariman:

    Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said Alan Greenspan may be distracting investors from the Fed’s forecast that growth will strengthen this year.
    Greenspan, who was Fed chairman for almost two decades until Ben S. Bernanke took over 13 months ago, said at least three times in the past two weeks that a recession is possible. He didn’t say one was likely.
    “It is a little bit of a problem,” Blinder, now a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, said in an interview. “He is sort of stepping on the message. The Fed’s message is things look pretty good and in particular we are not at all worried about a recession.”
    Current Fed officials are stressing that they don’t predict a recession, even after last week’s global equities plunge and a run of weaker-than-forecast economic data. Chicago Fed President Michael Moskow said in a speech today that he’s not prepared to significantly alter his forecast for a pickup.

  • JOSB Rises on Same-Store-Sales Report
    Posted by on March 8th, 2007 at 10:45 am

    Good news for Joe Bank (JOSB) today. The company reported that same-store-sales grew by 2.8% in February, higher than the 1.7% predicted by analysts. The stock is doing very well this morning.
    Two other things to note. Donald Tomitz, the CEO of DR Horton (DHI), said that 2007 is going to be so bad for his company, it will be homosexual: “I don’t want to be too sophisticated here, but ‘07 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.”
    Also, in the Radio Shack (RSH) conference call, someone said something. And they probably shouldn’t have. That’s pretty much all I can say. Radio Shack, if you recall, was the only stock in the S&P 500 to do well last Tuesday.

  • Buy List News Today
    Posted by on March 7th, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    Here are a few bits of news today regarding the Buy List.
    Erin Burnett talked with Dave Roberts, the CEO of Graco (GGG). He says he doesn’t see an immediate recession.
    Nicholas Financial (NICK) had a very good day today. The stock jumped 66 cents, which is an increase of over 6.1%. As far as I could tell, there was no news on the stock.
    WR Berkley (BER) announced that it’s increasing its dividend by 20% to five cents a share. Unless I have something wrong, the old dividend was four cents a share, so the increase is by 25%. Here’s the press release. Things must be busy there.
    Finally, Danaher (DHR) raised the lower end of its guidance today. The company now sees first-quarter profits of 75 cents to 77 cents a share. The previous forecast was for 72 cents to 77 cents a share.

  • John F. Baugh 1916-2007
    Posted by on March 7th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

    John F. Baugh, the founder of Sysco (SYY), has died.
    The company’s press release said:

    John F. Baugh, the founder of SYSCO Corporation, the $33 billion Fortune 100 global foodservice marketer and distributor, passed away March 5, 2007. His passing was 37 years, almost to the date, of the corporation’s initial public offering on March 3, 1970.
    Richard J. Schnieders, SYSCO’s chairman, CEO and president, said, “His passing is indeed a profound loss. First and foremost, John Baugh was a man of commitment — to his wife, his daughter, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to his faith, his community and to the company he founded that touches so many lives today. A true visionary, a legendary entrepreneur, an inspiration to friends and colleagues and a generous philanthropist, his impeccable integrity and generosity of spirit have imprinted indelibly the character of our organization.”
    John F. Baugh was born February 29, 1916 in Waco, TX. Growing up in the Depression era, Baugh began his lifelong passion with the food industry at an A&P grocery store as a stock boy at the age of 13. Eventually, he became a store manager and in 1946, he and his wife Eula Mae founded a new company, Zero Foods, and began selling and distributing frozen foods to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, fast-food stores and grocery chains.
    In 1969, Americans were eating out more than ever and industry studies predicted that half of all meals would be eaten away from home by 2000. Women who had entered the workforce during World War II were continuing to work; with less time to cook they wanted more food prepared by others. Baugh envisioned a national foodservice distribution organization and shared ideas with industry friends across the country.
    His dream became a reality when Zero Foods and eight other companies joined together to form SYSCO (an acronym for SYstems and Services COmpany). At the initial public offering on March 3, 1970, the nine companies had aggregate sales of $115 million and served a $35 billion market. In 1977 SYSCO became the leading foodservice supplier in North America and has since maintained this position. In 1988, an acquisition of its next largest competitor gave the company national coverage. SYSCO’s network of 172 locations and approximately 50,000 employees now serves an industry in excess of $200 billion. Mr. Baugh published a book about the company, “The SYSCO Story…Thus Far!” in 2003.

    Ulrich Boser of Slate recently profiled Sysco and its products.