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Thomas Smicklas submits:Recently, the New-York based Americas Society, in conjunction with the Council of the Americas, issued an assessment of the climate for U.S. investment in Cuba. "Cuba has persistently ranked as one of the worst business environments in the world", stated Maria Werlau, a consultant specializing in Cuban affairs."The economy is in shambles, suffers from a high external debt and has investment rules that stifle international investments in and about the country."Complete Story »

Stephen Castellano submits: Weekly Long/Short Focus List as of March 26, 2010 Our highlighted stocks continue to anticipate major ratings and estimate changes by a number of sell side shops, as illustrated in our March 17 report, "Goldman Sachs and Nostradamus versus Simple Quantitative Models and Common Sense." Four Weeks Early on Scotts Miracle-Gro For example, on March 23, 2010, Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG), which has been a top performer in our monthly model portfolio and our monthly focus portfolio, was SMG)+Higher+On+BofAMerrill+Lynch+Upgrade/5463172.html" rel="nofollow">recently upgraded by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch with a target price moving to $53 from $45. Complete Story »

Stephen Castellano submits: Earlier this week we suggested focusing on a few stocks as potential long, short or "contrarian" ideas based on our rankings in the Ascendere Long/Short Model Portfolio. It has not even been a full week since then, but the stocks have already moved significantly. As of the March 4 close, "high quality" long names are up 2.50%, "low quality" short or contrarian names have appreciated to less of an extent at 2.36%, the corresponding net long model portfolio is up 1.10% and the SPX is up 1.67%.We thought it would be interesting just to post the rankings and price performance of the various stocks since the close of February 26, and to take a quick look as to perhaps why in some of these "low quality" stocks are outperforming right now.Complete Story »

Value Expectations submits: In August 2009, The Applied Finance Group (AFG) explored the relationship between Valuation and Momentum variables. (The original article can be found here.) We wrote about an interesting observation of the S&P 500's performance between 9/1998 and 6/2009. We showed that strategies built around Valuation or Momentum variables had periods of outperformance and underperformance, but combining these variables led to fairly consistent outperformance, as well as better overall performance than the individual variables alone. The table below highlights S&P 500 returns for Valuation (AFG’s Percent to Target variable), Momentum (AFG’s EM Momentum variable), and Combination strategies. Table 1: S&P 500 Performance: 9/25/1998 – 6/26/2009 Complete Story »

Phil Davis submits: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." - Charles Dickens, 1859 Dickens' famous novel (which was originally written as a weekly series in 31 installments) depicts life in the time of the French revolution but was also a parable, meant to warn the British aristocracy that they should not ignore the parallels to the social inequities that existed at the time in England. Dickens warned the nobles that the seeds of revolution were planted through unjust acts and surely there would be a time of reaping yet to come.Complete Story »

Compete submits: Compete recently led a workshop at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando, FL that provided a high-level pulse on the travel industry’s level of recovery based on data through September 2009*. One of the conclusions was that different travel categories (hotel, cruise, air, car rental) have recovered at different rates. The analyses were based on the number of visitors to sites in aggregate that represent those industries (suppliers and category-specific sections of OTAs). Note that each visitor is counted only once in a month in a travel category. Someone who visits than one hotel site in the same month is counted only once in the hotel totals for that month. The data presented at PhoCusWright are updated here to include results through October. Complete Story »

Alan Brochstein, CFA submits:
The long-awaited correction appears to have finally arrived. Like a yo-yo that has climbed up sharply and is now heading back down, this fall will probably not be as sharp or as deep as many pundits would suggest. I am going with a SPY target of 87.50 to 92 as the most likely bottom for this move. For those that follow my work, you may recall that this happens to be the area that I initially thought would contain the rally from March. Clearly I was too conservative. I get to my zone using several different metrics, including Fibonacci retracements as well as charting and volume-at-a-price. To be very successful in the last few months, one had to set aside one's fundamental views in my opinion and roll with the liquidity. As long as interest rates aren't rising, I do believe the pullback will be orderly and contained, but the bear is back on if we can't finance our federal debt at a low cost. Even though my expectations are that stocks in general have about 15% downside from here (two weeks or two months - who knows), I believe that many stocks have considerably more risk. In the past few months, companies with leveraged balance sheets have roared back as the capital markets have reopened. Many companies have addressed liquidity issues by extending their debt or issuing stock, but several others have not taken advantage of what I view as a good opportunity. I am cautious on companies in general that have high levels of debt relative to their potential to generate free cash flow, especially in an environment of economic weakness or stagnation at best. With that in mind, I want to share three ideas, all of which have lots of debt relative to FCF and short-interest that has come down significantly over the past several months. None of these companies had moved to address their weak capital structures.Complete Story »

Brooks McFeely submits:4:19 PM, Sep 22, 2009 --

• NYSE up 78.5 (1.1%) to 7,047.13.
• DJIA up 51.01 (0.5%) to 9,830.
• S&P 500 up 7 (0.6%) to 1,072.
• Nasdaq up 8.3 (0.4%) to 2,146.

GLOBAL SENTIMENT Complete Story »

Carnival Corporation (CCL)
F3Q09 Earnings Call
September 22, 2009 10:00 am ETComplete Story »

Frederic Ruffy submits: SentimentStocks are holding modest gains on another slow news day Tuesday. The major averages opened steady after markets across Asia and Europe moved mostly higher. A rebound in crude oil, which is up $1.84 to $71.77 a barrel, and gains in gold helped drive gains in some of the energy, metals and mining names. Gold added $10.40 to $1015.30 an ounce.The only economic stat of the day came early after the FHFA released its Housing Price Index for July, which increased by .3 percent in July. Economists were looking for a .4 percent increase. The market didn't show much reaction to the news.Complete Story »