The aftermath of financial crises
Just how long do recessions / bear markets / house price crashes last anyway?
An historical analysis of past and current systematic banking crises published in January has an answer. Here are the lowlights:
Real housing price declines average 35 percent stretched out over six years, while equity price collapses average 55 percent over a downturn of [...]
Domino Printing Sciences
Falling like Domino
I expected Domino (DNO) to be dull. In fact it’s at the forefront of technology, manufacturing machines to stamp food, beverages, drugs, building materials, automotive parts and packaging with sell-by dates and identification codes.
Its annual report does an unusually good job of explaining the business and one map in particular stands out:
Only 8% [...]
The Not-so Nifty Fifty
Blowing it away on growth stocks
It’s a tenet of growth investing that the more profitable you expect a company to be in future, the more it’s worth. The more it’s worth, the higher the price investors are prepared to pay for its shares.
The problem is working out how much a company will grow.
In the early [...]
ITE exhibits value potential
News of Global recession reaches Urumqi
Investors have been reappraising ITE’s growth prospects by the look of its chart, which isn’t surprising since it’s about as dependent on the global economy as a business could be.
ITE (ITE) organises international trade exhibitions and conferences in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, although it has outposts from Huddersfield [...]
Chilled about Uniq
Was it all worth it?
One of the little bits ‘n pieces that clutter my writing month is the Share Snapshot that sits amid a mass of data near the rear of Money Observer. The editor gives me a list of the shares that moved most in price over the previous month. The sub-editor gives me [...]
The stock market according to Buffett
The curse of the value manager
Well, not Buffett exactly, but Fortune’s interpretation of Buffett.
This chart plots the relationship between the stockmarket and GNP (i.e. the value of US output versus the value of its companies) on the likely the assumption that over the long-term the two are related. In 2001, Buffett told Fortune:
If the percentage [...]
Twitterrrr
Vaguely embarassing, I’ll skirt around the ‘twit’ jokes, but I’m on Twitter.
Here’s a sample of my, err… twits?
Fountains (FNT)
No sign of the green shoots of recovery
I’m looking at Fountains (FNT) with flagging enthusiasm, which is a shame because it’s a worthy company. It’s been going around since the 1950’s busily tidying up our environment; picking up litter, removing graffiti, maintaining street lights, cleaning toilets, and looking after playgrounds, forests and maybe even the [...]
Education Development International (EDD)
So far, so recession proof
Here’s a rarity, a company beating expectations that were positive anyway.
It’s Education Development International (EDD), the examinations company I berated last July and commended to Money Observer readers in August (pdf). iBall lampooned it in September.
Chief executive Nigel Snook has had the latest laugh. £1,000 invested in EDI last summer is [...]
Electronic Data Processing (EDP)
Don’t judge a company by its PE ratio alone
At first glance, Electronic Data Processing (EDP) doesn’t have much to offer a value investor. The share price resembles a comatose patient briefly awakened during the technology bubble and its erratic earnings record and apparently high price (its long-term price earnings ratio is nearly 22) might suggest erratic and [...]
