Value Expectations's blog

Cisco delivered a shock to the investment world, lowering its quarterly and fiscal year sales guidance by a notable amount, causing the company’s shares to suffer a 16% drop today. However, we question whether such a drastic drop in share price was justified given the adjustment to guidance.

The third annual ranking of the chief executive/applied finance group wealth creators—and destroyers—sees new contenders surface and several that sustained performance through tough times.
Now in its third year, the wealth creation index developed by Chief Executive, Applied Finance Group and Great Numbers! attempts to identify those business leaders who have performed best in creating true economic value—as opposed to mere accounting value—as measured by GAAP metrics.

High interest rates aren't a crisis as Ben Bernanke assumes, instead they're a positive symptom of past mistakes which ensure that no more capital will be destroyed supporting what has already failed.

The NFL is the nation's premiere sports league by far, but there's room for improvement through better incentives with regard to draft position, team ownership, and the sharing of television/merchandize revenues

Investors who employ technical analysis tend to monitor stock trading volumes in comparison to its movements in price in order to predict upcoming reversals in trends in attempt to identify attractive entry points and essentially “time the market”. Today, we will identify which actively traded stocks you should buy

After preparing my taxes last year, my accountant noticed my horror and responded that “You’re not playing the game right. Buy a house with a large mortgage, have children, or do something that’s deductible to reduce your tax bill.” The accountant’s words were true, and a shining example of a wealth transfer that’s not spoken of enough.

The Tea Parties have returned the 10th amendment and constitutional governance to the discussion, and clearly impacted elections. What they don't seem to talk about much is the weak dollar's role in our malaise. Absent changes in dollar policy, the Tea Party movement could be discredited too.

In The Seven Fat Years, the classic account of the U.S.’s economic revival in the 1980s, the late Robert Bartley addressed the economic hardship experienced in the 1970s, and specifically spent time on the oil spikes that occurred during the lost decade. Of great importance, Bartley made sure to put “spikes” in quotes when describing the major run-up in oil prices.

Created by The Applied Finance Group, The Economic Margin (EM) Framework was developed to evaluate corporate performance from an economic cash flow perspective and is an alternative to accounting-based valuation metrics. EM measures the return a company earns above or below its cost of capital and provides a more complete view of a company’s underlying economic strength.

Who would have thought that Burrito Bowls and Red Envelopes would be hotter than the I-pad in 2010? Sounds crazy but it’s true. By looking at the YTD performance chart from Yahoo! Finance you can see that the stocks for Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) have significantly outpaced Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock price so far this year.

There are several articles and studies around the finance industry that talk about the value of sell-side analyst ratings or the lack thereof. Most of the studies provide a negative view of the accuracy of ratings from sell-side analysts and bring to light the many potential problems associated with sell-side analysts and their ratings including conflicts of interest with the firms that employ them as well as their tendency to appease management teams who provide them with information not available to the public by providing favorable ratings for those firms. Some other problems associated with sell-side analyst ratings include: 1) Buy recommendations outnumber sell recommendations some speculate for the purpose of making management happy. 2) Analysts often downgrade firms after negative news has already hit public eyes. 3) Unable to purchase the stocks that they cover, no “skin in the game” 4) Analysts often find comfort in being a part of the majority and often times fall victim to groupthink. 5) Compensation analyst’s receive has been found to be tied to the investment banking business the analyst generates.

What are the drivers of the recent heat-up in M&A activity in the past few weeks? A healthy prospect of the Global Economy? Cash burning holes in CEOs’ pockets? Valuation for the acquisition targets is compelling?

Is Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) a Buy, Hold or Sell? Not knowing what kind of performance you’re paying for makes it challenging to answer. It would be just like asking, do I take the over/under in the Super Bowl without knowing the over/under line.

Money managers are always looking for an advantage to help them better understand the market and get an edge in their stock selection process. The Applied Finance Group's (AFG’s) Market Forecast Project (MFP) has served that purpose for over 300 investment professionals that participate, and it continues to grow. In our 6th issue of the MFP we have identified the favorite long and short equity ideas from participants, trends in the movements of investor sentiment over the last 6 surveys, as well as other key topics affecting the economy and the markets.

This month’s survey contains questions on topics such as:

• How many seats will change in the House of Representatives in the 2010 election from (D) to (R)?

• What are investor’s Stock Market and Economy predictions for 2010?

• Is the current stock market fundamentally undervalued, fairly valued, or overvalued?

• Best performing BRIC of 2010?

2009 reacquainted the investment profession with the alphabet, as it was the year of the V, U, L, and W. Every economist tried to get recognition for predicting the most appropriate letter to describe the US economy’s expected path. Sadly, very few of those letters made investors any significant amount of money during the year, and now the debate about the economy rages on as to whether it will double-dip, or continue to climb. However, there was one letter that was very profitable to investors for most of 2009 – Beta.