Maybe I was too harsh on Brian Hunter last week. This morning, I was greeted with a jolt of my own. One of my positions was down 80% in a single day. Fortunately for me, this isn’t the prelude to a death spiral. There’s no margin call to be answered. Such is the power of diversifying risk, especially… Read More »
Bloomberg has posted a piece which explains in wonderful detail the events leading up to the spectacular implosion of Amaranth several months ago. In many ways, it reads like a shorter version of When Genius Failed, Roger Lowenstein’s excellent account of the collapse of Long Term Capital Management. I wrote earlier about my belief that the stellar performance… Read More »
In honor of Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to write about my biggest turkey, Aurora Foods. Aurora Foods was born of private equity cobbling together a bunch of orphan brands from major food manufacturers and loading them up with debt. Brands you probably have in your pantry: Duncan Hines, Lenders Bagels, Van De Kamp, Mrs. Paul’s, Celeste Pizza, Aunt Jemima… Read More »
I previously wrote about BJ’S Wholesale(BJ) in September when the stock was at $26. Since then, the stock has slowly crept up prior today’s leap which has had it trading as high as $32. Today’s jump comes after the company announced that CEO Mike Wedge would be retiring. Reading the press release further gives additional color to the… Read More »
US Air(LCC) announced this morning that it plans to buy Delta(DALRQ). My friend at Flight Wisdom has a fine post summarizing the details, but the stock movements are a bit mystifying to me. US Air is up 12.5% now, down a bit from its high of the day, but still a substantial jump. Clearly investors applaud the idea… Read More »
In 1947, Bing Crosby, unhappy with the necessity of performing his radio broadcasts live, invested in a small company developing recording technology of sufficient quality to allow him to prerecord his show. It would prove a shrewd investment as not only was Crosby able to record his show ahead of time, but Ampex(AMPX) grew to dominate recording for… Read More »
As I am a bit of a curmudgeon, one of the highlights of my weekend is picking Barron’s up off my front steps and reading the column by master curmudgeon Alan Abelson. Mr. Ableson’s prolonged absence earlier this year had me quite concerned and since his return, I have read with a new appreciation. Also, and this is… Read More »
Analyzing a stock is reading a tale of two companies and deciding whether it’s the spring of hope or the winter of despair. Blair Corporation(BL) initially caught my attention because it has no debt and trades close to its book value. Blair has a market cap of only $120 million, and its 3.8% yield looked quite attractive. Further… Read More »
… in which the Inelegant Investor tries his hand with Google’s new custom search engine feature. Earlier this week, Google(GOOG) announced the availability of a new feature which allows users to build custom search engines. While this isn’t likely to have any immediate material impact on the business, it fits perfectly into Google’s paradigm of providing free tools… Read More »
Almost 6 years after filing for bankruptcy under the weight of mounting asbestos liability lawsuits, Armstrong World Industries(AWI) emerged from bankrupty last week and was largely ignored. The manufacturer of flooring, cabinets and other building products averaged volume of only 60,000 shares per day in its first 3 days of trading, and very little has been written about… Read More »