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Two Ways Venture Capitalists Burn IPO Investors

Structured deals help fuel the bubble in private tech companies. Startups get cash so they can keep marketing like crazy, VCs get guaranteed payouts, and everyone gets the prestige and attention of being a “unicorn”. So who suffers? IPO investors that are tricked into believing these massive valuations have any basis in reality.
by Sam McBride
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4 Dividend Traps To Avoid

Investors need to be careful and make sure they do more research beyond just looking at the dividend yield of a stock. Here are four stocks with high dividends that can burn unwary investors.
by Sam McBride
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5 Safe Stocks In A Dangerous Market

Five of our long calls over the past year stand out for their impressive returns and continued stability. Investors should take another look at these five stocks that are up 10% or more since our original calls and still earn an Attractive-or-better rating.
by Sam McBride
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Towers Watson Shareholders Are Getting A Raw Deal

Many investors in professional services firm Towers Watson (TW) have viewed the recent merger with reinsurer Willis Group (WSH) as a raw deal for TW shareholders. The crux of their argument comes down to the fact that the value of the deal, based on share prices before the deal was announced, was a ~12% discount to where TW had been trading.
by Sam McBride
Economic Earnings Vs GAAP Earnings
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3 Ways Accounting Tricks Can Crash Your Portfolio

Buried in the footnotes and MD&A, you can find where reported expenses understate true costs, red flags for earnings manipulation and significant differences that need to be reconciled when comparing companies. If you want to understand the underlying economics of the company’s business, you have to understand its accounting policies.
by Sam McBride
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XBRL: Getting Better, But Work Left To Do

Back in 2013, we wrote about all the errors and issues we discovered when attempting to use XBRL data for our models. In the past couple years, XBRL has definitely come a long way in terms of improving the quality of the data, but there’s a lot of work left to do.
by Sam McBride
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Too Much Goodwill: A Red Flag For Your Portfolio

Analysts and investors tend to spend very little time on Goodwill when looking at financial statements. In reality, Goodwill is an important number to keep an eye on. Since it reflects the money paid for acquisitions above the market value of the acquired company, it can signal overpayment, reckless spending, and the potential for damaging write-downs in the near future.
by Sam McBride