Archives for May 2012

May 2012 - Page 5 of 15 - Money Morning - Only the News You Can Profit From

Why is Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) Stock Falling?

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) investors have cringed as the stock slipped about 16% from its peak over the last two months.

But given the absence of any catastrophic bad news, why is AAPL stock tumbling? And where will it stop?

It's important to note off the bat that Apple's fundamentals are just as strong as they were last fall when the stock began its huge run-up from just under $400 to $636.23 on April 9 (it hit an intraday high of $644 on April 10).

In short: Apple still expects to make a mountain of profit this year. Apple still has over $100 billion in cash with no debt. The company's price/earnings ratio is about 13.50 for the trailing 12 months and its forward P/E just 10.

So something else must be driving down Apple stock. Some of it is logical, some of it emotional – but none of it permanent.

Let's take a closer look:

  • A Parabolic Rise: First and foremost, AAPL simply rose too far too quickly. Rapid gains beg profit-taking.

"It was clear to me that this kind of reversal was coming – and sooner rather than later," said Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald when the selloff started in April. "The shares had soared 75% in just five months – one analyst actually described the performance as "euphoric.'"

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Election 2012: Forget Bailouts, We Need a Shakeout

The markets rallied Monday on news that global leaders favor additional stimulus. The hope is that additional spending will induce growth and put the world back on track.

Don't hold your breath.

Big government robs the economy of wealth, strips it of initiative and further undermines our recovery.

So why, then, do our leaders continue to throw good money after bad?

Try this on for size.

In 1958, a man named Cyril Northcote Parkinson published a series of essays in book form called Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress. In it, he postulated a mathematical equation that describes how bureaucracies expand over time and why.

I don't know if he had a wicked sense of humor or a dramatic flair for irony but the equation at the core of his argument relied on something he termed the "coefficient of inefficiency."

The coefficient of inefficiency says the size of a committee or government decision-making body is determined by the point at which it becomes completely inefficient or irrelevant. Or both – hence the name.

Parkinson determined that the minimal effective size for a decision-making body is about five people, and the optimal size is somewhere between three and 20.

Last time I checked, we had 548 people inside the beltway – 535 voting members of Congress, nine Supreme Court justices, one president, one vice president, one treasurer and one Fed chairman – who are responsible for making decisions on behalf of 330 million citizens.

Combine that with nearly 2.8 million total Federal employees (excluding our military) and we're waaaaay beyond anything even remotely resembling workable decision making.

Now here's the thing. Parkinson also observed that bureaucracies grew by about 5%-7% a year, "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done."

In other words, the larger bureaucracies become, the more ineffective they get even if additional people are hired to do work that doesn't exist.

And to think, all this time I thought our government ran on the Peter Principle!

Parkinson attributed this to two things:

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Facebook Stock Price: Time to Play the Blame Game

It's the third trading day for Facebook stock, and the finger pointing over what went wrong has begun. Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), its underwriters, and the Nasdaq are all red-faced after the lackluster debut of the largest-ever tech offering. The hyped-up Facebook IPO was finally priced at $38 last Thursday, raising $16 billion. Shares opened Friday […]

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The Five Biggest Roadblocks to America's Energy Future

Marina and I got to come home to Pittsburgh for a few days. But by the time you read this, we'll be in the Bahamas. Upon returning from our stay in Germany, some developments in the U.S. struck me. President Obama said he aims to create advisory groups to explore regulations for natural gas drilling […]

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Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Stock Hopes Ditching Assets Will Spark Turnaround

Finally, after all the negotiations and failed attempts at making a deal, Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) has agreed to let China's e-commerce company Alibaba repurchase its shares.

In just over a week since Yahoo ousted CEO Scott Thompson for padding his resume, the search engine giant announced that it would sell half of its 40% stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. with the possibility of selling the rest at some point.

Yahoo will receive at least $6.3 billion in cash and as much as $800 million in newly issued Alibaba preferred stock, the companies said in a statement yesterday (Monday). At the time of an IPO, Alibaba will be required to either buy back a quarter of Yahoo's current stake or let Yahoo sell the shares.

In the announcement, Yahoo also said it would use all of the sale's after-tax proceeds to repurchase its own shares, with the Yahoo board already having approved a $5 billion increase to the firm's current buyback program.

The sale, strongly encouraged by analysts and investors, frees up some cash for Yahoo. Many have been waiting for this deal to come through as talks repeatedly failed over the past year between Yahoo's ex-CEO Carol Bartz and Alibaba.

Some calculations suggest Yahoo may have let go of Alibaba at a steep discount. But a person familiar with the deal said there were provisions which would allow Yahoo to benefit if Alibaba is valued at more than $35 billion when it sets the pricing for its IPO.

Furthermore, the move had to be made, and was one of five things that Money Morning's Keith Fitz-Gerald said he would do if he ran Yahoo.

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Mobile Wallet Technology: The Giant Killers in the Weeds

When it comes to the revolution in mobile wallet technology, Isis Mobile Wallet is a collaboration between some super-heavyweights.

Its founders and main partners are AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, Visa (NYSE: V), Discover (NYSE: DFS), American Express (NYSE: AXP) and Verizon Wireless.

This is a monster worth watching.

The idea behind Isis is to allow users to pay with "preferred" credit or debit resources available through their Isis-enabled phones by tapping or waving their devices at NFC (near field communications) terminals in participating merchant outlets.

Isis-enabled phones are being manufactured by additional partners Research in Motion, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

Card.io is a mobile phone application (available at the Apple App Store and as a Google Android app) that allows users to receive and make payments by letting them (in the case of making a payment) enter an amount they want to charge on their app, for what they want to buy, and holding the card they want to use up to the phone's camera lens, which logs the card and processes the transaction.

Received payments can be channeled directly into the user's checking account, savings account, or PayPal account. Card.io charges a hefty 3.5% (of the transaction amount) fee and 15 cents per transaction.

Another mobile solution to not having a credit swiping machine in your pocket is offered by Square.

Square, named after the small square magnetic tape data reader that you plug into your phone's audio jack to convert encoded data from the tape on the back of cards to an electronic file, was started by Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter.

Electronic data from the magnetic strips on the backs of cards is encrypted automatically, sent to Square's servers and rerouted through the Global Payments Network. You sign the electronic receipt with your finger, which is then sent to you via SMS or email. Now anyone can accept credit cards for anything.

There are lots of start-ups and up-and-comers wading aggressively into the exploding mobile wallet space. Some of these companies will become giants and some will go the way of the dodo.

But, one thing's for sure, the winners will be worth investing in.

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Mining Stocks: Will the Downturn Last?

Over the last twelve months mining stocks have substantially underperformed the market.

In fact, the Standard and Poor's Metals and Mining select industry index (INDEXSP: SPSIMM) is off 35% in the past year, while the overall market is up 2.5%.

Admittedly commodities prices are down, but only by 14% in the last year. Meanwhile, the cost of some commodities — notably gold prices — are much higher than they were.

Given the buoyancy of global monetary policy, this is surprising. For investors, the big question is: will the downturn in mining stocks last?

It truth, though, when you look more closely at operating numbers, the weakness in commodity shares is easier to explain.

Mining Stocks: Breaking Down Barrick Gold

For example, Barrick Gold (NYSE:ABX), a gold and copper miner that is generally well regarded, posted first quarter earnings which were up just 3% from the previous year. That was a surprisingly weak performance given that its gold sales price was up 22% — even though its copper price realized was down 11%.

However, gold cash mining costs were up 25% and copper cash mining costs were up a startling 66%. So even though copper production and sales were also up sharply, margins on those sales were down 43%.

In other words, even though Barrick enjoyed a favorable operating quarter with good prices, mining costs for both gold and copper were up so sharply that Barrick enjoyed little benefit from this success.

The same picture is clearly seen around the mining sector, and indeed in the related energy sector.

Strong sales prices over the last few years have had two effects.

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Dividend Stocks: How to Soften the Bear's Short-Term Bite

For investors, May started out as a month of great promise. On May 1, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 65.69 points, closing at 13,279.

Since then, however, that promise has turned to plummet.

The Dow posted losses on 12 of the next 14 trading days, culminating with a drop of 46 points last Friday. In all, since May 1, the Dow has lost 6.17%.

But did you know there was a way you could have avoided the bulk of the damage?

All you had to do was hold the dividend stocks in the 30-stock DJIA that offer the highest current yield.

In fact, numerous academic studies have verified the impressive contribution of dividend stocks to long-term market performance. According to certain studies, dividend yields have been responsible for as much as 90% of stock returns over the past century.

And Standard & Poor's reported last year that the dividend component was "responsible for 44% of the total return" of the S&P 500 over the 80 years from 1930 through 2010.

That is quite impressive considering nearly a third of S&P stocks don't even pay a dividend.

Dividend Stocks and Downturns

However, what these studies don't show is just how effective dividends can be in cushioning the impact of a short-term decline in stocks – both in terms of resisting downward price pressure and offsetting capital losses.

So, let's look at some numbers from this month as the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a whole fell 836.83 points, or 6.30%, from May 1 to May 17.

Keep in mind, of course, that they're not based on a scientific study, but rather casual observation.

What you'll learn may make you see dividend stocks in a different light.

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JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) Stock Price Falling as Losses Could Hit $7 Billion

Since the company announced May 10 that it lost billions on a bad trade, the JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) stock price has dropped about 20%.

And it may have more to go.

CNN Money reported on Monday afternoon that the trading losses are closer to a range of $6 billion to $7 billion, citing several sources who work on trading desks that specialize in the derivatives JPMorgan Chase used to make its trades.

Investors at the Deutsche Bank Global Financial Services Investor Conference in New York drilled CEO Jamie Dimon with questions Monday about how the chief investment office (CIO) racked up the sizable losses.

The biggest U.S. bank by assets, JPMorgan is under pressure from investors and regulators alike to enlighten them on how the CIO, which is in charge of managing excess cash while minimizing risk, made dicey and costly bets on illiquid credit derivatives, some so big they misrepresented market prices.

The $350 billion portfolio managed by the CIO, Dimon reiterated, has a very short duration and an average credit rating of AA designed to "very conservatively handle" interest-rate risks. The heart of the losses, Dimon explained, was the synthetic credit derivative, and just "a part" of the broader portfolio.

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Warren Buffett Stocks: Where the Oracle of Omaha Puts his Money

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) has been on a buying spree, adding a plethora of positions to its storied portfolio of "Warren Buffett stocks."

Last Wednesday the conglomerate released its stock holdings. Mutual funds and retail investors closely watch the picks to dissect the selections for hints about the company's tactics. Other simply want to mimic Buffett's moves.

This quarter Berkshire disclosed new stakes in General Motors (NYSE: GM) and Viacom (Nasdaq: VIAB), larger positions in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT), and a small increased position in International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM).

Declining stakes were noted in Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG).

The Berkshire portfolio ballooned to $89.1 billion on March 31 from $77 billion at the end of 2011. The firm is the largest shareholder in Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Wells Fargo and American Express (NYSE: AXP).

The additions come as Buffett and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger have tasked former hedge fund managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler with more investing duties. The two were brought into Berkshire to help oversee investments, as Buffett, Berkshire's CEO and chairman, transitions the company for his ultimate departure.

The 81-year-old sage acknowledged that he makes Berkshire's larger bets, while his team of stock pickers is responsible for smaller wagers.

In his widely read shareholder letter in February, Buffett penned, "When our quarterly filings report relatively small holdings, these are not likely to be buys I made but rather holdings denoting purchases by Todd or Ted. They have the brains, judgments and character" to do the job.

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