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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

This Left-For-Dead Stock Could Jump 50%-100% In 12 Months

Image representing Research In Motion as depic...

By StreetAuthority

New York, Aug.21, daily stocks .- What struck me most about my first trip to Europe was the popularity of mobile phones.

It seemed everyone had one and was talking or texting while walking down the street. I look back on this experience as a glimpse into the future.

Just a few short years later, the same phenomena occurred in the United States. Today, landlines are becoming a thing of the past while even the majority of preteens own or use mobile phones. Nowhere has this growth been more dramatic than in the smartphone sector. These devices have become a ubiquitous part of our culture. Many people wouldn't even consider venturing outside without their smartphone.

The rise and fall of the companies producing these addictive devices is just as fascinating as their rapid rise to become an indispensible part of most people's lives. Once-popular companies such as Palm and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) were among day traders' favorite stocks for quite some time. Those names have since fallen to competitors such as Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (OTC: SSNLF).

We all know the benefits of investing in the top-tier smartphone makers. However, there is a special situation arising in one left-for-dead manufacturer.

I'm talking about BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY) (previously known as Research in Motion).

This Canadian-based company led the smartphone revolution with its line of corporate-user-focused BlackBerry smartphones. But over the past several years, the company has been left in the dust by competitors.

In fact, this former high-flying company's shares were knocked down into the $6 range back in September. My purpose here is not to talk about why or how this happened, but to explore a real opportunity to profit.



	Flickr/Honou
	With a market value of more than $5 billion, along with its $3 billion in cash and no debt, Blackberry has become a prime takeover target.

The Bad News
In the latest quarter, BlackBerry only shipped 2.7 million BlackBerry 10 devices -- missing Wall Streetexpectations by a disappointing 22%, or 600,000 units. Not to mention, gross margin dropped dramatically the first quarter -- from 40% down to 34%.

The Good News
With a market value of more than $5 billion, along with its $3 billion in cash and no debt, Blackberry has become a prime takeover target.

Analysts at Jeffriess have the takeout price for BlackBerry pegged at $15 per share with a target price of $18.

Sparking this speculation is the fact that BlackBerry's largest shareholder, FairFax Financial CEO Prem Watsa, recently resigned from BlackBerry's board of directors due to a conflict of interest.

This could mean Watsa has plans to take the company private. He has been exploring options withprivate equity firms to facilitate the buyout. BlackBerry has formed a committee to explore a potentialsale. This news sent shares surging more than 10%. Shares have rallied since August 1 on the buyout possibilities prior to hitting resistance in the $12 range. The share price has since dropped back to $10 prior to bouncing off of this support level.

Most interestingly, is Timothy Dattels, who chairs the committee to explore options for the company. Dattels is also a senior partner at TPG Capital, which is a $57 billion private investment firm.

In addition, a possible bidding war could break out with the value of BlackBerry's patent portfolio and enterprise assets, potentially pushing shares above $20.

Risks to Consider: BlackBerry devices have fallen out of favor with many consumers. No matter how the company innovates, it seems to miss the mark. The possible buyout is very speculative and mostly based on circumstantial evidence. While there is the potential for solid upside, investors need to exercise caution, as this stock remains extremely risky.

Action to Take --> I would be a buyer of BlackBerry on a breakout above $11. If shares manage to break this level, the 200-day simple moving average is the next resistance level in the $13 range. If the rumours of a buyout start to turn into actions, shares could reach $15 to $20 within the next 12 months.

How to Be Richer, Thinner and Happier… Part 2

Weight Watchers Keys (Photo credit: slgckgc)

By Investment U

Chicago, Aug.21, best stock to buy .- For most of my post-20s adult life, I was 6'3" and weighed about 220 pounds. I imagined I was about 10 pounds overweight. I was mistaken. According to a body mass index (BMI) calculation, I should weigh no more than 195 pounds. In other words, I was 25 pounds overweight.

To put this in perspective, a gallon of milk weighs
8 1/2 pounds. That meant I was essentially carrying around three big milk jugs each day, a considerable strain on my heart.

Incidentally, here is an easy way to calculate your ideal weight, according to Dr. Roberta Anding, a registered dietician and Director of Sports Nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine.

If you are a man, take 105 pounds and add 6 pounds for every inch you are over 5 feet tall. (Depressing, I know.) If you are a woman, take 100 pounds and add 5 pounds for every inch you are over 5 feet tall. Now you have a number to shoot for.

Know the Principles

You might be wondering what the heck this has to do with investing. My answer is everything. As I noted yesterday, in my experience the same principles that create wealth can be used to create a leaner body. Investors and dieters who fail fall prey to the same five problems:

They have a knowledge deficit.
They have unrealistic expectations.
They embrace all-or-nothing thinking.
They fail to control their environment.
They don't stick to proven principles.

When I was trying to lose weight, my first mistake was thinking I already understood everything I needed to know about weight loss, despite the fact that I hadn't lost any. After all, every day you either take in more calories than you burn or you burn more calories than you take in. So I just needed to exercise more, right?

Didn't work. I was (and am) an avid singles tennis player. Three or four times a week, I would play for two hours or more and leave the court feeling like a wet rag. Yet I managed to eat enough to match (or exceed) the calories I was burning.

So I figured I just needed to make a few changes to my diet. I switched coke for diet coke, ordered the salad instead of the fries with my cheeseburger, and had frozen yogurt instead of ice cream for dessert. Yet my weight loss was somewhere between glacial and nonexistent.

Turnaround

Then, about a year and a half ago, my wife Karen invited me to join Weight Watchers with her. I was skeptical, but in looking into the company, I learned something interesting.

Two years ago, U.S. News & World Report published its first-ever Best Diets rankings. A panel of 22 leading, independent science experts ranked 20 different diet programs based on seven key factors: short-term weight loss, long-term weight loss, ease of compliance, nutritional completeness, health risks, and ability to prevent or manage diabetes and heart disease.

Weight Watchers finished at the top of the heap.

(Full disclosure: I'm not an expert on diet and nutrition, and I'm not endorsing Weight Watchers over competing weight-loss systems. I'm only relating my personal experience here.)

What I liked about Weight Watchers is that it offers a complete weight-loss system. I won't go into all the details here, but Weight Watchers doesn't tell you what you can or can't eat.

Instead, it makes you accountable for everything you put in your mouth by requiring you to record what you eat and drink each day. This puts an immediate end to mindless eating. (And you can eat and drink more if you exercise more.) I had expected this to be boring at best, but I found it challenging instead - an enjoyable contest... with myself.

Within 90 days, I had reached my ideal weight and canceled my membership. And I've maintained this weight for well over a year.

The parallels between successful investing and successful weight loss are uncanny. I finally succeeded in losing weight because I corrected my knowledge deficit, aligned my expectations with reality, and stuck closely to a system that's proven to work. Which is exactly how, years earlier, I had turned around my financial fortunes.

Tomorrow, we'll discuss how you can avoid the five mistakes and start applying proven principles to your own goals - whether you're trying to build a fortune, lose weight... or both.

Until then, good investing,

...

Avoid the Emerging Markets Storm

HK Central QRC Luk Hoi Tong Bldg n Theatre Lane Hang Seng Index (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Rude Awakening

Baltimore, Aug.21, best stock .- The broad market just posted its first four-day losing streak of the year. But you should continue to concentrate on U.S. stocks to help fuel gains in your portfolio.

Why?

Because despite recent market weakness stateside, the rest of the world's performance just isn't up to snuff right now—especially emerging markets.

Take a look:

And the chart illustrates just a couple of examples. MarketWatch notes that today alone even the major Asian markets tumbled alongside the once-revered emerging market leaders. Japan's Nikkei dropped 2.6%, South Korea's Kospi lost 1.6% and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gave up 0.7%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index shed 2.2%...

"The eye of the storm is directly above emerging markets now, two years after it hovered over Europe and four years after it hit the U.S.," Stephen Jen, co-founder of hedge fund SLJ Macro Partners LLP in London and former head of foreign-exchange strategy at Morgan Stanley told Bloomberg. "This could be serious for Asia."

As a result, investors are favoring U.S. stocks over emerging markets by the most ever right now. "Almost $95 billion was poured into exchange-traded funds of American shares this year, while developing-nation ETFs saw withdrawals of $8.4 billion," Bloomberg notes. That's huge…

I know this week isn't looking very promising so far (not even here in ole' USA). In fact, it's been downright crappy. Everything—and I mean everything—closed lower yesterday. Bonds, gold, and stocks. All of them fell Monday.

But it's August. Trading volume is incredibly low right now. While the short-term trend for the broad market is lower, it's not yet flirting with disaster. Conditions can change quickly. We have to react—not anticipate.

In the meantime, except for a select few opportunities, you should not try to bottom-pick emerging markets. It will only lead to pain and suffering for your portfolio…
.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

How to Invest Like Warren Buffett

Buffett's home in Omaha (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By StreetAuthority

Omaha, Aug.12, daily stocks .- In any given year, an up-and-coming fund manager is able to make some great investment moves, propelling him to the top of the annual leaderboard. But only a select few have the vision and the skill to lead the pack for decades at a time.

The Oracle of Omaha might be the best of them all.

Over many decades, Warren Buffet has made his clients huge sums of money -- and equally important -- has helped them to avoid losing lotsof money when the broader market slumps. Just how awesome has he been for shareholders? His portfolio has outperformed the S&P 500 in 24 of the past 30 years. In that time, he's garnered an 18% annualized return, compared to an 11% annualized return for the S&P 500.

Most impressive of all, Buffett doesn't rely on some secret formula. While other investment pros talk about their "black box" approach to investing, Buffett's investment approach is remarkably straightforward -- and can be copied by almost any investor.

Warren Buffett's Biography
After getting his MBA in 1951 from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business at the ripe old age of 21, Buffett worked at various investment firms, though he's known more for his focus on the insurance business than any particular affiliation with a major Wall Street firm.

Why insurance? Because it's a steady, predictable business that generates respectable annual cash flow in any economic climate. Buffett learned that lesson after reading up on the most noteworthy figure in value investing -- Benjamin Graham, who along with David Dodd in 1935 wrote "Security Analysis," which is perhaps the most widely read book in the modern era of investing.



	Buffett's portfolio has outperformed the S&P 500 in 24 of the past 30 years.

In a bid to learn from the master himself, Buffett began working for Graham's investment firm in 1952. Later that decade, Buffett went out on his own, launching Buffett Partnership Ltd. He was just 27 years old. By 1962, he was worth more than $1 million.

After taking the helm of struggling textile firmBerkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK) in the mid-1960s and turning it into an investment company, Buffett's steady hand helped the company to boostbook value at Berkshire at a 21% annual clip for the next 40 years.

By 1990, Buffett entered into the billionaires club, and by 2008, he was deemed the richest man in the world, with $62 billion in assets. Yet these days, Buffett is more interested in shedding his wealth. Though he's given vast sums to a range of charities, his primary philanthropic focus is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which stands to eventually receive tens of billions of dollars of Berkshire Hathaway stock. Buffett and Bill gates have teamed up to promote their "Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge" which calls on other wealthy people to pledge at least half their fortune to philanthropy.

Buffett's also not shy when it comes to espousing his political and social views. He has strongly advocated for a change in tax policies so hedge fund managers can't shield their income through lowercapital gains income tax rates. He's also an outspoken critic of the health industry, which he believes costs too much and delivers inferior outcomes. Medical industry lobbying and costly end-of-life medical choices are his two main areas of concern.

Buffett's Investment Strategy And Big Wins
Investors can bag Buffett-like returns by following two simple maxims. First, focus on companies that have a long track record of steady and strong cash flow, and make sure that they are fairly well-insulated from new competition or technological obsolescence.

The second maxim is harder to follow and requires a great deal of resolve. You must be bold when the market and the economy reach their scariest moments. By keeping cash in reserve, you should counterintuitively load up on stocks right at the times of peak selling. Warren Buffett relishes those moments, and so should you.

Buffett and Berkshire bagged those gains by taking major stakes in large and stable businesses such asThe Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO), Salomon Brothers and Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO). These firms shared a few key traits: They all produced prodigious cash flow, and they all had a fairly wide competitive moat around them.

Buffett's focus on value means he can still generate upside even when the broader market fails to rise. For example, from 2007 through 2011, the S&P 500 lost 1% of its value -- but shares of Berkshire Hathaway rose an impressive 42%, according to GuruFocus.com.

Buffett's $34 billion acquisition of railroad operator BNSF in early 2010 is emblematic of his bold style. He was one of the first major investors to realize that railroad firms had been making badly needed infrastructure investments that would eventually lead to robust growth and solid cash flow. BNSF generated $6 billion in operating cash flow in 2012 for Berkshire Hathaway, and a slate of current investments to improve the railroad's network is expected to lead to higher freight volumes and higher cash flow in the years to come.

Warren Buffett's Portfolio: What's He Holding Now?
Though Berkshire Hathaway now has stakes worth hundreds of millions of dollars in many companies, the firm has more than $10 billion in just a handful of top holdings.

Berkshire's Current Portfolio

Davita Healthcare (NYSE: DVA), which operates a national chain of dialysis centers, has been an increasing focus for Buffett in recent quarters, leading some to conclude that he'll eventually seek to acquire the entire company. Buffett also tends to keep buying more stock of companies he already owns -- as long as they remain attractively priced in relation to cash flows. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC),DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), for example, have become larger components of his portfolio in recent quarters.

If history is any guide, Buffett and his team of analysts at Berkshire are getting close to making some sort of major move: Every few years, the company makes a major acquisition that deepens the foundation of cash flow. In 2009, Berkshire paid more than $40 billion to acquire railroad firm BNSF. Since then, solid cash flow has rebuilt Berkshire's short-term cash balance back up to $48 billion. That money is just itching to go to work, setting the stage for yet more gains for Warren Buffett's portfolio.

Action to Take --> If you'd like to follow Buffett's approach but find it challenging to find the right companies that meet his criteria, you can buy shares of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that tend to hold stocks with strong cash flow. For example, health care providers (such as DaVita Healthcare, Buffett's current favorite) often generate strong cash flow and trade for reasonable cash flow multiples. TheiShares Dow Jones US Healthcare Provider (NYSE: IHF) is a solid choice and carries a reasonable 0.46% expense ratio. Insurers are also always a favorite of Buffett's, and the SPDR S&P Insurance ETF(NYSE: KIE), is a solid choice, with a reasonable 0.35% expense ratio.

...

5 More Dividend Stocks That Just Got Trumped by Treasuries ...

, American fashion designer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By InvestorPlace

Time to move on to better investments

New York, Aug.12, best stock to buy .- Though bond yields didn’t jump as much last month as they did in June, interest rates are still on the rise.

The yield on ten-year treasuries was cranked up from 2.5% at the end of June to 2.6% at the end of July. It’s a small move in terms of basis points, but that small move still trumped another batch of dividend paying stock that had been yielding somewhere between those two rates.

Here are the five stocks investors need to be most worried about now that interest rates are a tad higher. Note that each has problems above and beyond unimpressive yields — the rise in bond yields is just the proverbial last straw.

Coach

Once deemed immune to even the worst of conceivable economic situations, high-end handbag maker Coach (COH) has finally started struggling. Last quarter, same-store sales declined by 1.7% — the second time in the past three quarters that sales fell.

You can blame Michael Kors (KORS) for that. While Coach was once the top-tier name in handbags, its designs are stuck in the 90’s, and their former target demographic has largely aged themselves out of the luxury purse market. It’s a problem that can be fixed, but not quickly. It will require new looks and rebranding, which could take years.

The current yield of 2.5% isn’t apt to crumble, but with margins already being crimped as the company heads into an overhaul (two executives are leaving next month), the yield isn’t strong enough to justify riding out the looming turbulence.

Deere & Company

While the global economy may be holding its own, it’s not red hot. Capital expenditure plans are being dialed back … particularly for heavy equipment, and particularly thanks to China’s slow-down. Caterpillar (CAT) reports that sales of construction equipment in China are only half as strong now as they were in 2011.

Fortunately Deere & Company (DE) isn’t heavily reliant on China, and leans more towards the farming machinery business than heavy construction. It’s not a completely clean break, though, and food-shortage mania isn’t getting much traction. That’s why William Blair saw fit to go ahead and downgrade DE all the way to an ‘underperform’ earlier in the week.

The current yield is 2.4%, but unlike Coach, with Deere’s net margins of only 8.5%, that payout isn’t exactly well-shielded.

Omnicom Group

Advertising and marketing agency Omnicom Group (OMC) currently yields 2.5%. Not bad. Better still, it has cranked up its quarterly payout from 15 cents per share in 2009 to a hefty 40 cents per quarter as of this year.

You’d think that the near-tripling of the dividend would mean earnings have also tripled during that time. But you’d be wrong. In 2009, the 60-cent dividends were 23% of the $2.53 per share earnings. In 2012, the annual dividend total reached $1.20 per share, or 33% the $3.61 earned. This year, the company’s on pace to pay out $1.60 per share – a whopping 41% of the projected profit of $3.88.

Bottom line? Shareholders have become accustomed to increases, but the dividend’s growth rate is getting to the point where it can’t continue to improve. That won’t go over very well.

H&R Block

Had it just been a one-time event, last quarter’s earnings miss for H&R Block (HRB) might have been dismissible. But it wasn’t.

The tax preparer/bank missed estimates in its two most recent quarters, and fell short in five of the past seven quarters. Now it’s selling its banking business, which is good news in terms of getting and staying focused, but could be a problem in terms of reliable revenue.

Throw in the continued taxpayer migration from tax filing companies like H&R Block to online-filing services, and even its core business is under attack. Already below risk-free rates, there’s no real clarity on how — or even if — the current 2.5% yield will survive.

Northrop Grumman

Earlier in the year, when the government sequester was announced, many feared the worst for the economy. When the sun rose the next day and stores opened and people still went to work, though, fears of the sequester’s impact started to abate.

As it turns out, investors relaxed too soon. The military is finally starting to tighten the purse strings, and that’s making life really difficult for Northrop Grumman (NOC).

Just to be clear, Northrop Grumman is still winning new contracts. But it’s losing a lot of them, too … big ones, including a contract to maintain the Air Force’s ICBMs, which was a worth $6.5 billion. Now BAE Systems will be doing the work. The F-35 program is also reported to be on the chopping block, for which Northrop Grumman makes the communications and navigation systems.

Yep, life’s starting to get real tough for Northrop Grumman, and that 2.5% yield may not be growing much in the foreseeable future.

As of this writing, James Brumley does not have a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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Benjamin Graham Was A Crappy Hedge Fund Manager

Jack Bogle, the outspoken godfather of index funds and passive investing strategies, didn't approve of a recent Wall Street Journal article defending hedge funds.

In particular, he took issue with the author's reference to Benjamin Graham, the legendary Columbia finance professor who literally wrote the book on Security Analysis and mentored Warren Buffett.

Bogle wrote a letter to the editor. Here's an excerpt: Citing Benjamin Graham as the first "hedged fund" operator is an especially unfortunate example. "The trick," Mr. Rice writes, was Graham's "clever way to make money . . . whether it [the market] continued to rise, or started to fall." ...

Proposal for New Hedge Fund Fee Structure: 1% + 33% of Alpha

By The Big Picture

One of my pet peeves is the way that insiders -- whether corporate CEOs, hedge fund managers, or elected politicos -- capture compensation (or credit) for normal cyclical gains they had little or nothing to do with.

This is the approach favored by the Crony Capitalists — those people pretending to be free market participants, and who merely pretend to be creating value. They are taking credit for structural successes that would have occurred with or without them. What they are actually doing is capturing value, not creating it — and then transferring it from its true owners (shareholders/investors) to themselves.

This is wrong; it is legalized theft.

If you want to see a good example of how CEOs transfer shareholder wealth to themselves, a good place to start is Roger Lowenstein’s 2004 book, Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing. The section on CEO compensation is astounding; these guys were essentially getting wildly overcompensated for being CEOs during a bull market. The prime example was the CEO of Heinz, who gave himself (with the tacit approval of his Board of~~Crony~~ Directors) a $90 million bonus. And this was back in the early 1990s, when $90 million was real money.

Why Do You Want To Be A Hedge Fund Investor?

www.ritholtz.com

Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced that it would launch a new mutual fund that — apparently — will bring the joy of hedge fund investing to the masses. For as little as $1,000, the Multi-Manager Alternatives Fund (GMAMX) allows mom-and-pop investors to put their life savings into some of Wall Street’s riskiest and most expensive products. This “fund of funds” will, according to its prospectus, let investors gain exposure to the trading strategies of hedge funds...

Public pensions fare well with hedge funds

Big public pension funds reaped strong returns from their hedge fund portfolios in 2012, with most of them handily surpassing their own benchmarks and well-used industry indexes. The hedge fund portfolios, for the most part, achieved close to what chief investment officers wanted, despite a 1,500-basis-point difference between the best and worst performers, according toPensions & Investments' analysis of the returns of 19 hedge fund portfolios from 17 U.S. public retirement plans with aggregate hedge fund assets of $60.7 billion.

Daniel Loeb surfing to the top of the hedge fund charts again

Something must be in the water over at 399 Park Avenue, where Daniel Loeb's hedge fund Third Point is headquartered. His Third Point Ultra fund has already gained 12.42 percent this year through the 13th of March, according to data from HSBC’s Private Bank.

The portfolio added 3.3 percent alone between March 1 and March 13. By comparison, hedge funds have returned about 4 percent year-to-date, according to HSBC.

The roughly $1.7 billion Ultra portfolio is a levered version of the firm’s flagship Offshore fund, which manages about $5.7 billion and has gained 8.5 percent over the same period. ...

CHART: Hedge Fund Gold Allocation Falls

After taking a cursory look at the recent 13-Fs filed by hedge funds, it became apparent that hedge funds were scaling back their exposures to gold. George Soros was among the big names that unloaded his position. According to Goldman Sachs' new Hedge Fund Trend Monitor report, hedge funds in aggregate scaled back big time.

Despite low turnover, hedge funds notably reduced holdings of underperforming long-time favorites Apple and gold while raising allocations to rallying Financials. For the first time in three years AAPL was not the top stock in our VIP list, instead ranking as the third most frequent top-10 holding... Continue to read.

10 Publicly Traded Hedge Funds That Pay a Dividend
Investing in publicly traded hedge funds is a great way for an investor to see returns through capital appreciation and dividend payments in the financial sector. When it comes to investing, many think of the process as a choice between growth and value stocks; you’re either taking on risk in search of capital appreciation, or you’re seeking out stable sources of current income through dividend payments. Luckily, Wall Street has many investment options and investors don’t have to make a clear-cut choice between capital gains and dividends. There are a lot of misunderstandings about dividend stocks out there; make sure you’re investing for the right reasons, check out 5 Common Misconceptions About Dividend Investing. ... Continue.

Hedge Funds Love These 3 Outperforming Semiconductor Stocks ...
Do you like to follow the buying trends of smart money investors? We ran a screen to find semiconductor stocks currently in favor by hedge fund managers. We began by screening the semiconductor industry for stocks that are rallying above their 20-day, 50-day, and 200-day moving averages, indicating that these stocks have strong upward momentum.
We then screened for those with bullish sentiment from institutional investors, with significant net institutional purchases over the last quarter representing at least 5% of share float. ... Continue.

10 REITs Absolutely Adored By Hedge Funds
After identifying the most popular stocks among hedge funds (see our full Top 10 here) according to their third-quarter 13F filings, we have decided to break down the top 10 REIT stocks that hedge funds love. The REIT industry, notably specialized REITs in hospitality and healthcare, should see positive growth from a rise in job growth and expansion due to freeing up of the credit markets. Our list includes 400 hedge funds and prominent investors that are required by the SEC to disclose their public equity holdings quarterly. In descending order, we have outlined the most-loved REIT stocks based on the aggregate number of funds owning each. ...Continue.

Apple Stock Hit by Panic Selling: 'Someone Yelled Fire'(Yahoo) Forget the "fiscal cliff." The real panic on Wall Street is over Apple's stock. Nearly every mutual and hedge fund has piled into Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) during its spectacular rise over the past few years. Now, these same funds are scrambling for the exits as the stock goes through an equally spectacular decline. Apple plunged to a six-month low Thursday as funds rushed to take profits on the stock before it's too late. Shares are now off 25 percent since late September-shortly after the iPhone 5 launch and a month before the iPad Mini introduction. The stock, once up 74 percent on the year, is still up 30 percent for 2012. That's why Wall Street is getting out while it can. ...

Billionaire George Soros’s Latest Stock Picks (InsiderMonkey) George Soros is best known for the fortune he made shorting the British pound in 1992, but he currently invests a considerable amount of money in equities and so is required to report many of his long positions in 13F filings. We’ve gone through the 13F for the third quarter of the year and compared Soros’s holdings at the end of September to three months earlier. Read on for our impression of his moves and compare them to what he's bought and sold before. AIG. American International Group, Inc. (NYSE::AIG) became Soros’s largest 13F equity holding during the third quarter with a position of over 15 million shares being reported in the filing. A number of value investors have been getting into the insurer over the course of the year, and at a P/B ratio of 0.5 it certainly looks cheap compared to the book value of its equity. We also like its earnings multiples- it trades at 9 times forward earnings estimates- and revenue was up strongly in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2011. Fellow billionaire Dan Loeb had initiated a position during the second quarter of 2012 and we think that it still looks like a good buy for investors. ...

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers still facing issues as tough year nears an end (BizJournals) In late 2011, Jim Rogers seemed almost golden. He was about to close his last big merger deal. He was poised to take a corporate chairmanship tailored to his penchants for energy policy and reshaping the utility-business model. He was ready to bask in the spotlight of a national convention he’d helped bring to Charlotte. But by late 2012, it’s evident things have not gone so well. “It has been a year of challenges,” the Duke Energy Corp. chief executive concedes. “Nothing in life is perfect.” Dan Fogel, associate director of the Wake Forest University Business School’s Center for Energy, ...

Argo unveils emerging markets hedge fund (InvestmentWeek) Argo Group has launched an emerging markets hedge fund investing in bonds and currencies from a universe of over 40 emerging market countries. The Argo Local Markets fund aims to hold between 20 and 30 positions and has been launched with an initial $7m of seed capital. It will offer investors weekly liquidity and has a mandate to take on moderate leverage. Argo chief executive Kyriakos Rialas said: "The case for investing in emerging markets is compelling. ...

Argentina's President Is Making Great Political Theater Out Of Paul Singer Seizing The Country's Naval Ship(BusinessInsider) Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is turning her feud with hedge fund manager Paul Singer into a political rallying cry in Argentina. The President has refused to pay Singer's firm Elliott Management the $1.3 billion it owes the fund after it defaulted in 2010. de Kirchner says it's because Singer was given multiple chances (in 2005 and 2010) to restructure, like other hedge funds did, and take a haircut to recoup at least a portion of their losses. Singer, needless to say, did not. Instead, he decided to capture one of Argentina's naval vessels as collateral, and got Ghana to give him an order to detain the ARA Libertad last month. ...

Tom Steyer New Investments
FARALLON CAPITAL Hedge fund billionaire into politics (DailyDemocrat) Hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer staked millions of his own money to take on big oil and then to close a corporate-tax loophole costing California $1 billion a year -- and won both times. Ever heard of him? Don't worry, you will. With his latest behind-the-scenes win at the polls as the man who stared down big business by standing up for Proposition 39, this Stanford MBA and top Obama fundraiser has become an out-of-nowhere big-time political player in California. So what does Tom Steyer want now? "I am an enormous lover of California and to the extent that I see something wrong, I will be involved in trying to fix it," Steyer, 55, said Monday. "What form that takes, I don't have a fixed idea." ...

This Hedge Fund Returned Nearly 25% Last Quarter
Artis Capital Management was a top performing hedge fund during the third quarter. Coming in with the fourth best Q3 performance, the fund’s picks had a weighted average return of 25.5% during the first half of the year, and returned 24.6% for the third quarter, boosting the fund’s year to date performance to 56.4%. Artis Capital was founded in 2001 and is a San Francisco-based hedge fund with a focus on public technology companies. ... Read more.

More ETFs Play Hedge Fund Copycat
What if you could emulate the actions of the most successful hedge fund managers for a fraction of what they cost? Two ETFs that debuted this summer are trying to do that by using public filings to replicate their portfolios. And a third, which launched early this month, promises to add another hedge fund dimension to ETF copycats by adopting what its sponsor calls the only true market-neutral strategy in the lot. Researchers have been trying to emulate hedge fund strategies since the 1990s ... Read more

BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé.

BMW and Pininfarina are two of the most tradition-swathed names in the motoring world. Each is a byword for cutting-edge technology, style, dynamics and aesthetics. With the BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé, the two

time-honoured companies are unveiling the outcome of their first collaboration at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2013. The BMW Pininfarina Gran Lusso Coupé is a one-off and represents the exclusive interpretation of a luxurious BMW Coupé as seen through the eyes of Pininfarina.

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All Time Record Gold Transactions Reported By LBMA

The precious metals have been weak again in May with gold falling 4.4% despite this weeks’ recovery. Silver is down 7% and platinum by 2.6%. Palladium has recovered from recent weakness and those who accumulated on weakness are set for the best month since November after it surged 6.6% in May.

Weakness in gold and silver is leading to robust demand internationally as store of value buyers accumulate gold and silver on this dip. This is particularly the case in Asia where premiums remain robust and supply demand imbalances remain. ...

6 Tips to Work From Home Successfully

The future of work is the work itself, not where and when the work takes place. Workplace flexibility programs are already catching on and will soon become standardized as more millennials enter the workplace. All workers, not just millennials,want freedom and flexibility and some are even quitting their jobs to becoming freelancers in order to gain that freedom. oDesk.com has 3.3 million registered freelancers, and Intuit predicts that by 2020, 40% of Americans will be freelancers. When it comes to working from home, 13.4 million people (9.4% of all American workers) work from home at least one day per week compared to just 9.2 million in 1997 according to one Census Bureau.

Today's top Green Energy Good News

Russia is funding research into powering its airplanes with solar energy. The airline industry is being hurt by high fuel prices, and solar-powered planes would not only be cheaper but also would remove a major source of carbon pollution that contributes to global warming.

Texas is set to double its wind energy generation from 60 gigawatts to 120 gigawatts in 2013.

Britain has made substantial investments in wind energy and its technology. British PM David Cameron is touting his country’s green expertise on his trip to India to promote trade with that country. ... Continue.

High-Dividend ETFs with Reasonable Valuations

Investors have picked over the ETF universe in search of any kind of yield in an extremely low-rate market for bonds. As a result, ETFs tracking many traditional high-yield sectors have been bid up to expensive levels, but there are still places investors can go for income without paying nosebleed valuations. “Unfortunately, valuations [for dividends, high-yield junk bonds, MLPs, and REITs] are approaching sky high levels in many instances as more investors fall in love with these products ... Continue.