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Monday, May 13th, 2013
When it comes to assigning blame for the great housing bubble of the last decade, the debate is far from settled and, like the long-running argument about the antecedents of the Great Depression, it may never be. One summary most can agree on, though, is this: too many people spent too much money on too [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Monday, April 22nd, 2013
Equity markets have now registered gains in each of the last four first quarters (January-March), extending a streak that began in 2010. Last quarter’s gain of 10.6% pushed the S&P 500 into record territory, surpassing levels it first reached in October 2007 – prior to the debt crisis and recession. This year has also started [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Monday, February 25th, 2013
A persistent feature of this recovery, today’s low interest rates, are a result of the Federal Reserve Bank’s Quantitative Easing (QE) programs. Homeowners with mortgages – at least those able to refinance their loans – have benefited from progressively lower borrowing costs (the Fed’s goal), but retirees who rely on income from CDs or other bonds aren’t [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Monday, January 14th, 2013
Dividends are like Rodney Dangerfield – they get no respect. One reason is because stock investors are mainly interested in capital appreciation, not income, so they tend to overlook dividend yields. Another reason is that dividend yields have historically been lower than bond yields, so they’re relatively less attractive to traditional fixed-income investors. In reality, [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Friday, December 21st, 2012
Shareholders of NYSE Euronext (NYX) were treated to some fun news yesterday morning: the company has agreed to be acquired by Atlanta’s Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). The offering price of $33.12 per share represents a 37.7% premium to NYX’s closing price on December 19. Pending regulatory approval, the deal is expected to close in the second [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
In 2001, Stanford Business professor Jim Collins authored Good to Great, a book that became an enormous success. The central premise of the book was that good companies which became great companies (as measured by financial performance) were focused: on hiring talent, on using technology smartly, on core competency, etc. The book was highly regarded [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Dear Dr. Bernanke, We heard that you and the other Fed governors are considering taking more action to stimulate the economy. May we share some thoughts on that topic? We admit that we haven’t been terribly supportive of your past stimulus initiatives. We thought that QE2 and Operation Twist wouldn’t work. Our belief then (as [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Thursday, July 12th, 2012
It’s pretty straightforward, really. Here’s a video of Florida Senator Marco Rubio laying out a common sense path growth.
Posted in Current Updates
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
The oft-repeated characterization of today’s European disharmony is that it is a battle between austerity and growth. Make no mistake: this is a classic false dichotomy. In fact, it’s egregiously wrong in three major ways simultaneously. First, in a Eurozone context, austerity has come to mean that Germans will release billions of their own wealth [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Thursday, May 10th, 2012
There is a lot of worry that stocks this summer will repeat the negative performance pattern of the last two summers. Markets hit their 2012 highs around the end of the first quarter and since then, the volatile, negative price action has led many to groan “Here we go again!” Peloton does not believe we are in for a 3-peat of the last two years, but as we have [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Monday, March 26th, 2012
We’ve admired Sallie Krawcheck’s (former head of research at Sanford Bernstein) work for several years and so were intrigued by her recent op ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “Money Market Funds Aren’t What You Think.” The article addresses the SEC’s forthcoming proposal which would require money market funds to post a certain amount [...]
Tags: breaking the buck, money market funds, Sallie Krawcheck, SEC
Posted in Current Updates
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
No, we’re not suggesting that Apple’s business is in trouble—far from it actually. Apple’s operating performance has been spectacular. They are clearly leading in both the smart phone and tablet markets and have used success in those areas to introduce numerous PC users to their Mac notebooks and desktops. Financially, what can you say about [...]
Tags: AAPL, dividend, free cash flow, iPad, iPhone
Posted in Current Updates
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
Our regular readers will not be surprised that we’re encouraged by the potential of the U.S. manufacturing sector. We recently wrote about the Labor Department’s January Employment Situation report which showed that the growth manufacturing jobs was one of the truly bright spots in the U.S. economy over the course of 2011. What may be even [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
“Things just feel like they’re getting better,” is a phrase we recently heard—and one we’ve not heard in a while from investors. We’ll be the first to say that how things feel doesn’t necessarily reflect how things really are. But right now, things are beginning to FEEL better because they have been GETTING better—on several [...]
Posted in Current Updates
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
Owning a piece of the Golden Arches has been tremendously profitable over the last couple of years. Not only have the shares themselves appreciated from $63 to $101, but investors who held the stock during that stretch also collected an average dividend yield of over 3%. The share price has simply reflected the company’s operational [...]
Posted in Current Updates