Welcome to F Wall Street
If Wall Street taught you how to invest intelligently, they'd be out of business. Learn how to invest comfortably and confidently for your future by focusing on value investing and ignoring the silly daily swings of the stock markets.
How The Risk of a Double Dip Recession is Being Overblown
7/29/2010 | Cale Smith
Like many value investors, my skepticism of economic predictions and forecasts runs fairly high. There was a time when I rarely devoted any serious time to thinking about GDP growth, unemployment levels, or our government’s fiscal policies. Not because such things aren’t important, but because they are so difficult to accurately predict. Successful investing is much more about solid bottoms‐up analysis than accurate top‐down forecasting.
In recent months, however, my skepticism about the usefulness of macroeconomics has been dulled by my contrarian streak. When every headline seems to be cause for a sell‐off on Wall Street, I find myself reflexively searching for silver linings. And I’m pleased to say that despite recent headlines, there are more reasons for optimism out there than you might think.
Profitable Business Trading at Depression Levels
7/22/2010 | Mariusz Skonieczny | about: KSW
What do all value investors have in common? After they buy a stock, the price almost always goes down right away. I am definitely no exception. I often joke around that in order to make precise timing decisions, just buy my stocks two weeks after I do. But sometimes, stocks become so cheap that their prices simply do not make any sense. I believe that this is the case with KSW, Inc. The company furnishes and installs heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems; and process piping systems for institutional, industrial, commercial, high-rise residential, and public works projects primarily in the state of New York. The price of this stock kept going down after I bought it. Refer to my analysis for more information about this company.
Do Unwanted Stocks Lead to Market Beating Returns?
7/22/2010 | asues | 2 Comments
This is part two of my series on abnormal stock market anomalies. I originally wrote a post about the S&P 500 index effect. The second part of the series will focus on deletions.
Each time a stock is added to an S&P index, a corresponding deletion occurs to keep constant the number of companies with the index.
S&P has the option of moving stocks down to a lower index such as the S&P MidCap 400 or S&P SmallCap 600, or deleting them from all indices.
Firms are deleted for a number of reasons: declining market cap, a merger with another company, or moving headquarters to a foreign country.
The key theory behind this strategy:
NASCAR – A Dream Business
7/20/2010 | Mariusz Skonieczny
Great businesses are great no matter what the economy is doing because recessions or booms don’t determine their quality. Recessions or economic slowdowns are often the only times that investors can acquire quality businesses at reasonable prices because at these times, most investors are afraid of anything other than the safest investment vehicles.
F Wall Street Spreadsheets Update
7/12/2010 | Joe Ponzio | 68 Comments
If you had been using some version of the F Wall Street spreadsheets, you’ll likely have noticed that it went kaput. This is because Morningstar decided to stop displaying ten years of financial data on their website, thereby breaking tens of thousands of value investing spreadsheets. As such, I have two important announcements regarding the valuation spreadsheets:
Continue reading »
Is the S&P 500 Index Effect Gone for Good?
7/12/2010 | asues | 7 Comments
I recently finished the excellent book, Beyond the Random Walk: A Guide to Stock Market Anomalies and Low-Risk Investing
I’ve always been very interested in the published academic papers that detail financial trading strategies, but often find myself getting bogged down in the dry ‘academic-speak’ and equations when I try to decipher them.
Going Private with Emmis
6/22/2010 | Joseph Carrozza | 18 Comments | about: EMMS
Over the past several weeks I have been scanning the going private deal of Emmis Communications Corp (EMMS). EMMS is a media conglomerate owning mostly radio stations and some magazines throughout the U.S. and in some Eastern European countries. The going private deal is being led by Jeffrey Smulyan, the founder and CEO of Emmis, and financed by Alden Capital. No new updates have come out since the shares began tendering on June 2nd, and I don’t foresee any news coming out till the tender offer period ends at Midnight June 29th.
So…with a 7% premium and one week to close, I figured this would be a good time to talk about this deal.
When Economies Collapse
6/16/2010 | Joe Ponzio | 10 Comments
How will the historians call this one? The European Crisis? Euro-doom? If you’ve been under a rock for the past few months, you may not have noticed the recent downturn in the markets. The headlines are all about the potential default of Greece on its debt, possibly followed in short order by a slew of other EU counties — Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy top the list.
Naturally, I have received a few e-mails and phone calls on this one; so, let’s talk about what happens if/when one or some of these countries go down for the count.
Is This Workout Working Out?
6/14/2010 | Joseph Carrozza | 11 Comments | about: HSP / JAV / MYRX
This is my first article here at F Wall Street and I wanted to take the chance to talk about the first workout deal I found that I thought was worth an in-depth look – the acquisition of Javelin Pharmaceuticals (JAV) by Hospira (HSP).
Why Isn’t Value Investing More Popular?
6/14/2010 | Mariusz Skonieczny | 6 Comments
Though there are many extremely successful value investors, few money managers and individual investors choose to follow the value investing strategy. They don’t follow it because it doesn’t work all the time. That is, investment returns are not positive every day, every quarter, and every year. Because it is a long-term strategy, investors do not have the discipline to stick with it even though, over long periods of time, it works wonderfully. Instead, they keep searching for other strategies that work all time, or at least appear to work all the time.
Eeep said,
Any update on this data issue?
» F Wall Street Spreadsheets Update