| Company |
Ticker |
Issue Date |
Print
Headline
|
| SoftBank Group Corp. |
9984@JP |
Dec. 15, 2017 |
Epitome of the cycle |
 |
| Arrow Global Group plc. |
ARW@LN |
Nov. 3, 2017 |
Pay Me, Plc. |
|
| Campbell Soup Co. |
CPB@US |
Mar. 25, 2016 |
Sell Big Food |
|
| Facebook |
FB@US |
Aug. 11, 2017 |
Concerning Mark Zuckerberg |
|
| Bitcoin Investment Trust |
GBTC@US |
Sep. 8, 2017 |
Crypto 36,000 |
|
| Greif Inc. |
GEF@US |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
Barrel roll |
|
| Hanesbrands Inc. |
HBI@US |
Jul. 1, 2016 |
Inside Story |
|
| Kraft Heinz Co |
KHC@US |
Mar. 25, 2016 |
Sell Big Food |
|
| Nvidia Corp. |
NVDA@US |
Jun. 29, 2018 |
Crypto’s doppelganger |
|
| Signet Jewelers Ltd. |
SIG@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Lending clubbed |
|
| Snap-on Inc. |
SNA@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Lending clubbed |
|
| Unum Group |
UNM@US |
Oct. 28, 2016 |
Disabled no more |
|
| Valeant Pharmaceuticals International |
VRX@US |
Mar. 7, 2014 |
Drug dealer |
|
| Whirlpool Corp |
WHR@US |
Feb. 10, 2017 |
Spin cycle |
|
| W.R. Berkley Corp. |
WRB@US |
Feb. 23, 2018 |
Let’s assume |
|
| The most recent two years of investment ideas are only available to paid-up subscribers. (Please log in.) |
Hyundai Motor
|
005380@KS |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
Preferred by more
|
| Just how inclusive is the global stock-market rally? Inclusive enough to levitate South Korean preferreds. Following is an update to our analysis of this value-laden, hard-to-buy and chronically underachieving asset class.
|
Hyundai Motor Co., preferred
|
005387@KS |
Sep. 21, 2012 |
Uncommonly preferred
|
| There's no guarantee, of course, that cheap securities can't become even cheaper (it happens all the time in Value Land). But, as discounts widen, other things being the same, yields increase. In this supposed age of financial globalization, herewith a bullish expose on a distant market inefficiency.
|
Hang Seng Bank Ltd
|
11@HK |
Nov. 11, 2016 |
Banking on Turmoil
|
| Imagine a capitalist island set down in a communist sea. Recall the American real-estate bubble of the mid-2000s. Observe the mighty Swiss franc. Thus imagining, recalling and observing, you understand the vulnerability of a certain top-tier bank.
|
Zoomlion
|
1157@HK |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Zoomlion
|
1157@HK |
May. 18, 2012 |
Made in China
|
| According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, nominal Chinese GDP, sparked by a 20.9% surge in urban fixed-asset investment, grew at a year over year rate of 12.1% in the first quarter. Yet, according to China's heavy construction machinery trade group, sales of heavy equipment plunged in the same quarter--and in the same China. |
China Cinda Asset Management Co.
|
1359@HK |
Jan. 24, 2014 |
Heretofore unimagined
|
| Bank footings in the People's Republic represent a third of world GDP, yet China's economic output amounts to just 12.2% of world GDP. Which will serve to introduce the story of a company that ought to be better than it is.
|
Prada SpA
|
1913@HK |
Jun. 15, 2012 |
Time piece
|
| "Folks," the CEO of a certain major luxury-goods maker told the dialers-in to a recent earnings call, "I'm not--they begged me, my colleagues, 'Please don't say it'--but I feel like I'm having a black-tie dinner on top of a volcano." The figurative volcano isn't Greece. |
Ping An Insurance Group Co.
|
2318@HK |
Feb. 6, 2015 |
Essence of China
|
| The supposed once and future driver of world economic growth remains a laboratory experiment in how much debt a society can bear without absolutely collapsing.
|
Fosun International Ltd.
|
656@HK |
Sep. 30, 2016 |
One-stock ETF
|
| What single liquid security is the best proxy for China’s frenzied finance? A certain deal-doing conglomerate may fill the bill.
|
Daishi Bank
|
8324@JT |
May. 6, 2016 |
Made (up) in Japan
|
| You can run from credit risk, but you can’t hide it. A kind word for bankruptcy reform, no matter how belated. |
Shizuoka Bank
|
8355@JT |
May. 6, 2016 |
Made (up) in Japan
|
| You can run from credit risk, but you can’t hide it. A kind word for bankruptcy reform, no matter how belated. |
Nanto Bank
|
8367@JT |
May. 6, 2016 |
Made (up) in Japan
|
| You can run from credit risk, but you can’t hide it. A kind word for bankruptcy reform, no matter how belated. |
SoftBank Group Corp.
|
9984@JP |
Dec. 15, 2017 |
Epitome of the cycle
|
| Every financial epoch has its avatar. For this epoch, we nominate a certain mammoth, leveraged, complex and speculative business a half world away. “The smartest guy in the room.”
|
SoftBank Group Corp.
|
9984@JP |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
You only get par
|
| Take a plunging VIX and a resurgent S&P. Add tight credit spreads, rock-bottom sovereign yields and a world-wide income famine. Voila: today's not so high-yield bond market. The worst of all fixed-income worlds.
|
Aaron’s Inc.
|
AAN@US |
Jun. 30, 2017 |
Reaching for customers
|
| A certain subprime-lender-cum-retailer is front and center in this exploration of the mores of late-cycle American credit. How many checks can a mother write?
|
Barrick Gold
|
ABX@US |
Mar. 6, 2015 |
Last to first
|
| Gold needs a hug—as central bankers run riot, the legacy monetary asset languishes at $1,200 an ounce—but don’t go feeling sorry for a certain unesteemed and over encumbered mining company. Its fortunes are on the upswing.
|
AllianceBernstein Income Fund
|
ACG@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
AerCap Holdings NV
|
AER@US |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Radical negative one
|
| David Einhorn, long-short equity investor par excellence, led off the Grant’s Spring Conference with a long idea and a short-sale candidate.
He prefaced his stock picks with a grand tour of interest rates, such as they are.
|
Allergan Inc.
|
AGN@US |
Oct. 20, 2017 |
Attack of the killer BBBs
|
| Tomorrow’s fallen angels come thick and fast in the corporate bond market. Not quite junk, barely investment grade, is the flavor of the cycle. Creditors may be senior claimants in the capital structure, but they don’t stand at the head of the queue for corporate emoluments. Marking the wise words of Graham and Dodd.
|
Allergan Inc.
|
AGN@US |
May. 2, 2014 |
Sacrificial creditors
|
| That $46 billion bid for Allergan Inc. by Valeant Pharmaceuticals is widely decried as "hostile." Bondholders would likely agree. A word on golf-course-gate.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Oct. 6, 2017 |
Preferred income
|
| Now that the Fed's massive iceberg of a balance sheet is starting to melt, the search for yield becomes even more interesting. A kind word for a particular kind of options-laden preferred.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Postscript to value
|
| The emergence of a new fact improves the risk-reward proposition attached to a pair of leveraged income vehicles.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Preferred income
|
| Mortgage REITs deliver income but not always serenity. The common shares pay big dividends until the yield curve becomes disarranged or mortgage prepayments accelerate. Then—poof! There are safer yield vehicles.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Oct. 17, 2014 |
Yield times four
|
| Savers need something besides consolation and a Social Security check. What they need is income—safe, dependable and (to the extent possible) lavish. Pending the return of the 6% Treasury bill yield, next best alternatives are the subject under discussion.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
The price is wrong
|
| Investors, financiers and financial analysts do business in a governmentally constructed funhouse. The interior décor features unconventional mirrors. Concave and convex, they can make a short yield look taller but they can’t make that illusion pay cash. Which fact brings us back to the universal thirst for income and to the corporate structures that exist to slake it.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Aug. 9, 2013 |
Quartered and drawn
|
| Mortgage REITs are the subject under discussion, and a timely topic it is. MBS--mortgage-backed securities—are hard enough to manage in ordinary times. They are extra rambunctious in interesting ones.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Jun. 28, 2013 |
Revenge of the invisible hand
|
| Only last month, stocks and real estate and other income-producing assets were capitalized for a 2% 10-year Treasury yield. But if 2% was a fake rate of interest, the valuations deriving from 2% were likewise ersatz. Thus, the world is making adjustments. Interest rates, causes and consequences, is the subject at hand. Subsidiary points of focus include monetary management and—a somewhat lengthier topic—monetary mismanagement. For the sake of his always fragile mental health, Mr. Market might recall a relevant precedent to today’s bond upheaval. Our plan of action is to place today’s turmoil in historical context, to review the dramatic events of recent weeks and, most important, to propose a course of investment action suitable for the occasion.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
May. 17, 2013 |
Pole-vault yields
|
| In the first quarter, falling mortgage-backed securities prices dented the book value of two of the biggest mortgage REITs, while a third mortgage REIT, tiny by comparison, sailed through almost un-dinged. Which of the three is the best candidate to continue to deliver yields in the low to mid-double digits is the topic at hand.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Feb. 22, 2013 |
Oases of income
|
| Try as it might, the Fed can’t seem to stomp out every last source of interest income in America. Mortgage REITs and business development companies, for instance, still yield enough to sustain the body and spirit of your favorite charity, retiree or lay-about heir. An update on the risks and rewards of yield hunting.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Nov. 16, 2012 |
The votes are in
|
| Along with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the invisible hand had an election to forget. Even so, the market is pricing in an assortment of mortgage REITs as if the Republicans won—with the price mechanism riding victorious on their coattails—and as if the Democrats lost. Herewith, a look at some potentially mispriced securities.
|
AGNC Investment Corp.
|
AGNC@US |
Oct. 5, 2012 |
Calm before the storm
|
| We doubt that the Federal Reserve will recognize the moment at which to backpedal, and we speculate that the future will bear no obvious resemblance to that version of the future that the Fed today makes bold to forecast. Hold on to your hats is the executive summary of the Grant’s credit and interest rate forecast; details to follow.
|
Adecoagro S.A.
|
AGRO@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Popular Pariahs
|
| Never mind "global macro." Global micro's the ticket. Pick a good company in a bad country with a worse government.
|
Ashtead Group plc
|
AHT@LN |
Oct. 28, 2016 |
Keep selling it
|
| What we did not anticipate was the warmth of the credit market’s hospitality towards a known Grant’s pick not to click.
|
Ashtead Group plc
|
AHT@LN |
Jul. 15, 2016 |
Borrow to rent
|
| The cacophony of jackhammers, brick saws and excavators outside our window (and yours, too, we’ll bet) bodes well for the construction capital-goods business. A certain company’s debt bodes ill.
|
Akenerji Elektrik Uretim A.S.
|
AKENR@TI |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Horrible to bad
|
| In investing, timing is said to be everything. In value investing in far-away places, solvency—in fact—is everything. Kind words for a pariah.
|
Allison Transmission Holdings Inc.
|
ALSN@US |
May. 20, 2016 |
Transmission mechanism
|
| A cyclical stock that dances to the beat of a cyclical industry (as well as to the cha-cha-cha of the Federal Open Market Committee). Now unfolding is a speculation about a profit-driven investment decline.
|
Antero Midstream Partners L.P.
|
AM@US |
Jul. 14, 2017 |
Viscous black yields
|
| The honor of calling the bottom in oil we leave to others. Herewith a trio of picks which can thrive with or without a new bull market in crude.
|
Advanced Micro Devices
|
AMD@US |
Aug. 7, 2015 |
Fault lines in credit
|
| The fateful words of a Chicago alderman mark the turn in the credit cycle.
|
Amazon.com
|
AMZN@US |
Jan. 24, 2014 |
So close to the sun
|
| What kind of inflation does the Fed wish to raise up? Each kind: The stock-market variety to foster the confidence that leads to a faster pace of consumption and the checkout-counter sort to protect against a return to the economic environment of "The Grapes of Wrath." Herewith a look at one of the central bank's warmest friends and worst enemies, all in the same ticker.
|
Africa Opportunity Fund
|
AOF@LN |
Jan. 27, 2012 |
Above its weight
|
| In the absence of money printing, capital tends to be scarce, the portfolio manager of a London-listed fund observes; so much the better for people with capital. An admiring review of a tiny enterprise trading at a 19% discount to year-end net asset value.
|
Apollo Global Management
|
APO@US |
Apr. 19, 2013 |
Complexity made simple
|
| Presented to the Grant’s throng as a specialist in abstruse and illiquid—or at the least, misunderstood—securities, Jody LaNasa did not disappoint.
|
Ares Capital Corp.
|
ARCC@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Constructive developments
|
| A lightly leveraged closed-end fund, managed by prudent and independent-minded people, is priced at a deep discount to book value and offers a high yield. What’s not to like?
|
Ares Capital Corp.
|
ARCC@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Preferred income
|
| Mortgage REITs deliver income but not always serenity. The common shares pay big dividends until the yield curve becomes disarranged or mortgage prepayments accelerate. Then—poof! There are safer yield vehicles.
|
Ares Capital Corp.
|
ARCC@US |
Oct. 3, 2014 |
Yield on sale
|
| Income is what many need nowadays—while balancing credit and interest rate risk, of course. Herewith, some ideas on how to procure it.
|
Ares Capital Corp.
|
ARCC@US |
Oct. 19, 2012 |
Ben Bernanke kicks Snoopy
|
| Managers of life-insurance general accounts are well aware of the cost that the collapse of interest rates has exacted. In 2007, let us say, management asked the investment officers if 3% was not a viable yield to offer on a long-term annuity. How could it not have been? Actually it wasn’t. Nowadays, companies are having to resort to speculative grade debt to fund five year annuities promising just 2.5%.
|
Arrow Global Group plc.
|
ARW@LN |
Nov. 3, 2017 |
Pay Me, Plc.
|
| Debt begets debt, which begets defaults. Defaults beget debt collectors, which begets the debt (and the equity) of the debt collectors themselves. Behold the story of humanity in markets.
|
Altice N.V.
|
ATC@NA |
Oct. 2, 2015 |
Frontiers of junk
|
| If a market can become overvalued—and can remain so (as this one has) for the better part of nine months—it can surely become undervalued.
|
athenahealth
|
ATHN@US |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Radical negative one
|
| David Einhorn, long-short equity investor par excellence, led off the Grant’s Spring Conference with a long idea and a short-sale candidate.
He prefaced his stock picks with a grand tour of interest rates, such as they are.
|
Atwood Oceanics
|
ATW@US |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
Laddered oil play
|
| Everyone is bullish on oil, though not so bullish as to lift the valuations of drillers whose survival depends on a $60 crude price. Nigeria on the cheap, the Arctic for a pittance. Widows and orphans, please avert your eyes.
|
Atwood Oceanics
|
ATW@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
For the un-meek
|
| If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. Now under way is a bullish speculation on a bearish set of circumstances. Anticipating the joyous relief imparted by the lifting of bankruptcy fears.
|
Avianca Holdings SA
|
AVH@US |
Aug. 7, 2015 |
Global verbiage glut
|
| Opportunities in places you may not care to visit.
|
HomeAway
|
AWAY@US |
Mar. 6, 2015 |
Get out of town
|
| You’ve decided to vacation on the French Riviera with family, in-laws, cousins. You could book six or eight hotel rooms—or a single villa in Saint-Tropez. This being the 21st century, you can, and you do, book the villa. Now unfolding is a bearish story on the company that helped you secure it.
|
Accelerate Diagnostics
|
AXDX@US |
Apr. 3, 2015 |
Use as directed
|
| On July 15, 2014, on the ceremonial stage of her second Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, Janet Yellen singled out biotech (and social media) stocks for their "substantially stretched" valuations. Since that ex cathedra pronouncement, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index has rallied by a cool 39%. And now?
|
Amrep Corp.
|
AXR@US |
Nov. 30, 2012 |
Land rush
|
| So far has home building recovered from the stygian depths of 2009 that prices are rising even for unimproved dirt without gold underneath. Never mind the absence of acquisition, development and construction loans or the money woes of the smaller home builders, the prices of finished lots are on the rise. A kind word on the long fallow equity of a couple of listed land businesses.
|
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
|
BABA@US |
Apr. 22, 2016 |
Short and a long
|
| It was the short that caught the Grant's audience's fancy. "It is a poor steward of capital and a poor investor of capital. Its operating metrics are implausible and not a few of its assets dubious."
|
Credicorp Ltd.
|
BAP@US |
Jun. 28, 2013 |
Revenge of the invisible hand
|
| Only last month, stocks and real estate and other income-producing assets were capitalized for a 2% 10-year Treasury yield. But if 2% was a fake rate of interest, the valuations deriving from 2% were likewise ersatz. Thus, the world is making adjustments. Interest rates, causes and consequences, is the subject at hand. Subsidiary points of focus include monetary management and—a somewhat lengthier topic—monetary mismanagement. For the sake of his always fragile mental health, Mr. Market might recall a relevant precedent to today’s bond upheaval. Our plan of action is to place today’s turmoil in historical context, to review the dramatic events of recent weeks and, most important, to propose a course of investment action suitable for the occasion.
|
BASF SE
|
BAS@GY |
Jun. 1, 2012 |
Bubble in safety
|
| Just seven basis points more than zero was the yield on Germany's zero-coupon notes of June 2014. The times may be troubled (they often are) and people may be desperate (someone usually is), but that doesn't mean that low-yielding sovereign debt is the last word in safety and soundness. Herewith an exploration of the alternatives.
|
BlackRock Taxable Municipal Bond Trust
|
BBN@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA
|
BBVA@SM |
Jul. 15, 2016 |
European scavenger hunt
|
| Under the spell of Mario Draghi, the once rugged terrain of European credit is today a flat, bleak tableland. Preserving capital, sanity |
Boulder Brands
|
BDBD@US |
Nov. 15, 2013 |
Introducing the Grant's Story Stock Index
|
| No bull stock market is complete before the debut of the kind of equity that's valued on the quality of its narrative. "The road is better than the inn," wrote the immortal Cervantes centuries before the Twitter IPO. Herewith, a review of the new crop of story stocks. |
Franklin Resources
|
BEN@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
Almighty ringgit?
|
| Everyone knows that the dollar is appreciating. Everyone similarly knows that emerging-market currencies are depreciating. Could everyone be thinking the wrong thoughts?
|
Franklin Resources
|
BEN@US |
Jul. 11, 2014 |
Sell to whom?
|
| A revered bond mutual fund plays fast and loose with the gospel of liquidity. Advice to its investors: If it ever comes down to a run, run early.
|
Blackstone/GSO Strategic Credit Fund
|
BGB@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
BHP Billiton Ltd.
|
BHP@AU |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Sell a non sequitur
|
| The asset-allocation votes are in for 2017, and the results are confounding. You can defend one big idea or the other big idea, but hardly both at once. What coal owes to Chinese speculators.
|
BlackRock
|
BLK@US |
Jul. 28, 2017 |
Seven singularities
|
| An unzestful, low-volume and low-volatility affair, the post-crisis bull market seems to belong on a psychiatrist’s couch. We herein catalogue its singularities with a view to answering the always pertinent question: What to do with money besides enjoy it? |
BlackRock
|
BLK@US |
Sep. 30, 2016 |
House of fads
|
| Activist monetary policy has laid low active investment management. Index funds and ETFs have supplanted the fine art of security analysis. A bearish speculation on the central banks’ own Wall Street doppelganger.
|
Ball Corp.
|
BLL@US |
Oct. 28, 2016 |
Kicking the can
|
| Hundreds of companies used to compete to sell canning jars to American families. For the giant corporate descendants of those glass-jar makers, it’s not so clear that the 21st-century business model is any more lucrative than the legacy one.
|
Bank of Nova Scotia
|
BNS@CN |
Jul. 12, 2013 |
Unsafe havens
|
| You can hardly beat a Canadian bank for safety and profitability. And for the cleverest system of mortgage finance, look no farther than Denmark. So the world believes, but the world may presently have to change its mind. |
BOK Financial
|
BOKF@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
Trade closed
|
| The market having performed its revaluation, we lift our fatwa.
|
BOK Financial
|
BOKF@US |
Nov. 27, 2015 |
Banking on energy
|
| You can't blame this Grant's-assembled collection of energy lenders for the macro- and microeconomic scrapes in which they find themselves. But you could sell them.
|
Bank of Queensland
|
BOQ@AU |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Bank of Queensland
|
BOQ@AU |
Mar. 22, 2013 |
Banking on China
|
| Sitting in 126 crates on the Melbourne docks is a prefabricated, six-story hotel in which workers on BHP Billiton’s projected $22 billion harbor expansion project in Port Hedland, Western Australia, would lay their weary heads at night. But the project has been scrubbed, and the hotel-maker is broke. The resource-led investment cycle that has fed Australia’s growth is fading. What to do about it is the question before the house.
|
Blackstone/GSO Senior Floating Rate Term Fund
|
BSL@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
Babcock & Wilcox Co.
|
BWC@US |
May. 3, 2013 |
Nuclear option
|
| Having built the boilers for Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, a certain company grew and grew--only, much later, to file for bankruptcy protection and suffer from the plunging price of natural gas. Herewith, a bullish analysis of an underachieving stock.
|
Boardwalk Pipeline Partners
|
BWP@US |
Mar. 7, 2014 |
Under the Boardwalk
|
| Shares of a certain master limited partnership was sawed in half last month. It was a mortification--indeed, a double mortification. Now for an analytical reassessment.
|
Boardwalk Pipeline Partners
|
BWP@US |
May. 4, 2012 |
Gas-fired income
|
| A certain master limited partnership, in the business of transporting and storing natural gas, perhaps comes as close as any public security to delivering Fed-resistant income. The shares—not to be confused with Treasury bills, by any means—are priced to yield more than you might expect.
|
Blackstone Group L.P.
|
BX@US |
Oct. 17, 2014 |
Yield times four
|
| Savers need something besides consolation and a Social Security check. What they need is income—safe, dependable and (to the extent possible) lavish. Pending the return of the 6% Treasury bill yield, next best alternatives are the subject under discussion.
|
Blackstone Group L.P.
|
BX@US |
Feb. 22, 2013 |
For the unrepressed
|
| Of the 25 largest global buyout transactions executed in the golden age of 2002-2007, only two failed. The largest private equity funds survived, and the limited partners met their financial commitments. So the world loves the big public purveyors of private equity and so-called alternative assets?
|
Blackstone Group L.P.
|
BX@US |
Jul. 27, 2012 |
Opportunism still knocks
|
| A subscriber laments, "the markets are so screwed up, with systematic interference with price discovery going on. How do you run a bank in this environment? Bank equities offer levered exposure to mispriced, distorted credit markets. It's difficult to have confidence in longs." Amen to that, but a cheap stock is a cheap stock.
|
Blackstone Mortgage Trust
|
BXMT@US |
Feb. 24, 2017 |
So long for now
|
| A favorite Grant's income play has progressed from reasonably cheap to fully valued. While there are better examples of excess in the beautiful Trump stock market, "fully valued" is the amber light of investment.
|
Blackstone Mortgage Trust
|
BXMT@US |
Jul. 29, 2016 |
Speculating for income
|
| For U.S. dollar-denominated yields in excess of 3%, one must settle for the types of securities once known as a businessman’s risk. |
Blackstone Mortgage Trust
|
BXMT@US |
Nov. 29, 2013 |
Plugging for 9%
|
| At America's big banks, the live-in regulators seem almost to outnumber the paid help. A risk-averse cadre are these government overseers. Good, safe loans are what they want. Enter here a new real estate finance company with designs on the lunch that banks no longer seem to have permission to eat.
|
Carrefour S.A.
|
CA@FP |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
Meet the Carrefour S.A. senior unsecured 1-3/4s of 2022
|
| The central banks of the West, rattling their interest rates, are hinting at a big change. Whither bond prices?
|
Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust
|
CAR-U@CN |
Nov. 17, 2017 |
About that dividend
|
| The halving of General Electric Co.'s once-sacred dividend surprised few longtime Grant's readers. Paying out more than you operationally take in is more than a GE problem – more, in fact, than an American problem.
|
Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust
|
CAR-U@CN |
May. 20, 2016 |
Yield from hunger
|
| A dividend aristocrat of the North with an unsustainable payout.
|
CBL & Associates Properties
|
CBL@US |
Nov. 13, 2015 |
Over here, Carl Icahn!
|
| The bullish analysis of a little-regarded REIT has so far yielded bearish results. Why a sky-high dividend yield and a record-setting discount to evident NAV leave the market cold. Calling all activists.
|
CBL & Associates Properties
|
CBL@US |
May. 15, 2015 |
The only game
|
| If a company seems to be cheap in the sixth year of a bull market, it probably isn’t a legitimate company, and it probably isn’t cheap. An exception to prove the rule is the subject at hand.
|
Cameco Corporation
|
CCO@CN |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Mushroom cloud parts
|
| Returning to the scene of an error in judgment, we are bullish all over again. Why a lift is in store for the Earth’s heaviest naturally occurring element.
|
Cameco Corporation
|
CCO@CN |
Mar. 22, 2013 |
Nuke ‘em
|
| “Think of all the benefits that nuclear energy can bring to bear on a growing civilization.” The author of those words, which appeared on March 7, was none other than Patrick Moore, the Canadian co-founder of Greenpeace. Herewith, a bullish appraisal of the element that the greens once loved to hate.
|
Copperbelt Energy Corp plc
|
CEC@ZL |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
Laddered oil play
|
| Everyone is bullish on oil, though not so bullish as to lift the valuations of drillers whose survival depends on a $60 crude price. Nigeria on the cheap, the Arctic for a pittance. Widows and orphans, please avert your eyes.
|
Cullen/Frost Bankers
|
CFR@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
Trade closed
|
| The market having performed its revaluation, we lift our fatwa.
|
Cullen/Frost Bankers
|
CFR@US |
Nov. 27, 2015 |
Banking on energy
|
| You can't blame this Grant's-assembled collection of energy lenders for the macro- and microeconomic scrapes in which they find themselves. But you could sell them.
|
Richemont SA
|
CFR@VX |
Jun. 15, 2012 |
Time piece
|
| "Folks," the CEO of a certain major luxury-goods maker told the dialers-in to a recent earnings call, "I'm not--they begged me, my colleagues, 'Please don't say it'--but I feel like I'm having a black-tie dinner on top of a volcano." The figurative volcano isn't Greece. |
Bancolombia SA
|
CIB@US |
Jun. 28, 2013 |
Revenge of the invisible hand
|
| Only last month, stocks and real estate and other income-producing assets were capitalized for a 2% 10-year Treasury yield. But if 2% was a fake rate of interest, the valuations deriving from 2% were likewise ersatz. Thus, the world is making adjustments. Interest rates, causes and consequences, is the subject at hand. Subsidiary points of focus include monetary management and—a somewhat lengthier topic—monetary mismanagement. For the sake of his always fragile mental health, Mr. Market might recall a relevant precedent to today’s bond upheaval. Our plan of action is to place today’s turmoil in historical context, to review the dramatic events of recent weeks and, most important, to propose a course of investment action suitable for the occasion.
|
CIT Group
|
CIT@US |
Nov. 2, 2012 |
Thanks, Mr. Market
|
| “If you find yourself in a room with 500 shareholders at an annual meeting,” Michael Price advised the Grant’s assemblage last week, “maybe it’s not an undiscovered stock. But if you’re the only guy who shows up, maybe it is.”
|
C&J Energy Services Inc.
|
CJ@US |
Jul. 28, 2017 |
Seven singularities
|
| An unzestful, low-volume and low-volatility affair, the post-crisis bull market seems to belong on a psychiatrist’s couch. We herein catalogue its singularities with a view to answering the always pertinent question: What to do with money besides enjoy it? |
Seacor Holdings
|
CKH@US |
Nov. 11, 2016 |
Opportunity droops
|
| The leader in one of the world’s most battered industries prepares to lead a consolidation drive. Buying low is laudable. Buying very low is scary.
|
Seacor Holdings
|
CKH@US |
Mar. 25, 2016 |
Investment value—“on”
|
| Occupying a kind of parallel, Benjamin Graham universe, this bright light has figured out a way to buy assets during a bear market rather than having to sell them. A bullish reappraisal.
|
Clean Harbors, Inc.
|
CLH@US |
Feb. 7, 2014 |
Deal us out
|
| If QE made investors complacent, tapering may make them anxious. If so, the short-selling trade may yet have its day in the sun. Herewith, a bearish analysis of a company that, under the spell of monetary ease and a rising stock market, has gotten more hall passes than a high school quarterback.
|
CME Group
|
CME@US |
Oct. 31, 2014 |
Rise of the machines
|
| On Oct. 15, the steady-eddy markets in senior securities underwent a 24 hour personality transplant. Was this a flight to safety, or a stampede from it?
|
Capstead Mortgage Corp.
|
CMO@US |
Oct. 6, 2017 |
Preferred income
|
| Now that the Fed's massive iceberg of a balance sheet is starting to melt, the search for yield becomes even more interesting. A kind word for a particular kind of options-laden preferred.
|
Capstead Mortgage Corp.
|
CMO@US |
Jul. 29, 2016 |
Speculating for income
|
| For U.S. dollar-denominated yields in excess of 3%, one must settle for the types of securities once known as a businessman’s risk. |
Capstead Mortgage Corp.
|
CMO@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Postscript to value
|
| The emergence of a new fact improves the risk-reward proposition attached to a pair of leveraged income vehicles.
|
Capstead Mortgage Corp.
|
CMO@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Preferred income
|
| Mortgage REITs deliver income but not always serenity. The common shares pay big dividends until the yield curve becomes disarranged or mortgage prepayments accelerate. Then—poof! There are safer yield vehicles.
|
Capstead Mortgage Corp.
|
CMO@US |
Oct. 17, 2014 |
Yield times four
|
| Savers need something besides consolation and a Social Security check. What they need is income—safe, dependable and (to the extent possible) lavish. Pending the return of the 6% Treasury bill yield, next best alternatives are the subject under discussion.
|
Capstead Mortgage Corp.
|
CMO@US |
Aug. 9, 2013 |
Quartered and drawn
|
| Mortgage REITs are the subject under discussion, and a timely topic it is. MBS--mortgage-backed securities—are hard enough to manage in ordinary times. They are extra rambunctious in interesting ones.
|
Cairn Energy
|
CNE@LN |
Mar. 20, 2015 |
Bullish even now
|
| "Settle in" for a period of relatively weak oil prices, Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, resignedly advised analysts the other day. Reconsider the values inherent in a pair of orphaned energy stocks, Grant's proposes.
|
Cairn Energy
|
CNE@LN |
Jul. 13, 2012 |
Just in case
|
| The speaker was Rex Tillerson, chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, the date was June 27 and the price of natural gas on the day he spoke was around $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. “What I can tell you,” Tillerson informed his audience, “is the cost to supply is not $2.50.” |
Contura Energy Inc.
|
CNTE@US |
Sep. 8, 2017 |
For the contrary
|
| The utility component of the S&P 500 is up, the energy component of the S&P is down. For your consideration: cheap and marginalized plays on a reversal of fortune.
|
Casino Guichard Perrachon SA
|
CO@FP |
Jan. 15, 2016 |
Neither fish nor fowl
|
| A certain kind of hybrid security answers the needs of leveraged issuers and yield-starved investors alike. It offers incremental returns relative to senior bonds in the same capital structure. There must be something wrong with it.
|
Conn’s Inc.
|
CONN@US |
Jan. 24, 2014 |
Paycheck to paycheck
|
| Our pick not to click is an outlier in many respects. Its growth is supersonic, its sponsorship is first class, its margins are otherworldly--and Amazon has so far failed to lay a glove on it. A skeptical analysis of a stock that only seems to want to go up.
|
Campbell Soup Co.
|
CPB@US |
Mar. 25, 2016 |
Sell Big Food
|
| Americans may be buying the stocks. They are not – as they have done in the past – buying the products. The trouble is that crowds are |
Constellation Software Inc.
|
CSU@CN |
Dec. 9, 2016 |
Past Performance, Inc.
|
| Good news you shout from the rooftops, bad news you mumble in a footnote. The most successful Canadian company you've never heard of isn't one for shouting.
|
Customers Bancorp, Inc.
|
CUBI@US |
Dec. 11, 2015 |
Interest rates by the clock
|
| Ultra-low rates push and they pull. They push business failure out into the future. They pull consumption forward into the present. Here with a grand tour of the credit horizon. In the background: auto sales and corporate M&A. In the foreground: a booming regional bank and a credit-dependent time-share vendor.
|
Calavo Growers
|
CVGW@US |
Jul. 24, 2015 |
Holy guacamole!
|
| It’s hard to argue with a 20-year improving market. We do. |
Danske Bank A/S
|
DANSKE@DC |
Jul. 12, 2013 |
Unsafe havens
|
| You can hardly beat a Canadian bank for safety and profitability. And for the cleverest system of mortgage finance, look no farther than Denmark. So the world believes, but the world may presently have to change its mind. |
Danske Bank A/S
|
DANSKE@DC |
Apr. 5, 2013 |
On the true meaning of Cyprus
|
| In the first quarter, European peripheral states issued more debt than in any three months since the first period of 2010. In America, BB-minus-rated H.J. Heinz raised $3.1 billion through a sale of seven-year notes at the lowest interest cost ever attached to any public LBO-related debt in America. The message of the market is that Cyprus is a blip, or news particle. We write to contend that it is no such thing.
|
Deere & Co.
|
DE@US |
Apr. 21, 2017 |
Bots buy beans
|
| Once upon a time, investors used machines. Nowadays, machines use investors. Herewith a speculation on the consequences of auto-investing, along with a revisit to a known Grant’s pick-not-to-click.
|
Deere & Co.
|
DE@US |
Sep. 16, 2016 |
Worst is yet to come
|
| The story remains the same for a Grant's candidate for the title of most likely not to succeed. Picking apart the one-offs and monitoring the credit troubles of a bank-in-all-but-name. |
Deere & Co.
|
DE@US |
Apr. 8, 2016 |
Dialing for dollars
|
| At the end of a lease, what's left? Less than a certain capital-goods giant might be bargaining for.
|
Deere & Co.
|
DE@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
Borrow to plow
|
| What looks like a tax-and commodity-price-induced bubble in tractors, combines, harvesters etc. is visibly deflating – visibly, so far, except to the stock market. The latest from Machinery Pete.
|
Destination Maternity
|
DEST@US |
Jan. 11, 2013 |
Returns to illiquidity
|
| In this Fed-centric world, people are spending less time reading corporate filings and more time parsing the deliberations of their monetary masters in Washington, D.C. So much the better for the inefficiency of markets, we say. Herewith, an exercise in security analysis.
|
Detour Gold Corp.
|
DGC@CN |
Jun. 13, 2014 |
A million for Pierre
|
| A survey of some of the most unloved and under-owned stocks in the world. Can you guess which legacy monetary medium they dig from the earth?
|
Quest Diagnostics
|
DGX@US |
Jul. 24, 2015 |
New diagnosis
|
| Quick, painless and cheap. What is Mr. Market pretending not to notice? |
Quest Diagnostics
|
DGX@US |
May. 29, 2015 |
Get your free money!
|
| “Buy the rumor, sell the news,” is standard operating procedure in most markets. “Buy the rumor,” suffices in such a credit-juiced market as this one.
|
Quest Diagnostics
|
DGX@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Quest and ye shall find
|
| There ought to be deflation, these pages have long contended. As the cost of making things falls, so should the price of buying them. Which brings us to a certain Big Board-listed case study in the progress of the species.
|
Dogan Gazetecilik A.S.
|
DGZTE@TI |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Horrible to bad
|
| In investing, timing is said to be everything. In value investing in far-away places, solvency—in fact—is everything. Kind words for a pariah.
|
Deutsche High Income Opportunities Fund
|
DHG@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Closed-end days
|
| In closed-end funds, a novelty: investor-led initiatives to close persistent discounts to net asset value.
|
Delek Logistics Partners L.P.
|
DKL@US |
Jul. 14, 2017 |
Viscous black yields
|
| The honor of calling the bottom in oil we leave to others. Herewith a trio of picks which can thrive with or without a new bull market in crude.
|
Dollar Tree, Inc.
|
DLTR@CN |
Nov. 17, 2017 |
Upholster your portfolio
|
| All about a growing class of bonds that features high coupons and early call dates. How a "yield-to-worst" of minus 45 basis points turned into an annualized return of 8.8%.
|
NOW Inc
|
DNOW@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
For the un-meek
|
| If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. Now under way is a bullish speculation on a bearish set of circumstances. Anticipating the joyous relief imparted by the lifting of bankruptcy fears.
|
Dorman Products
|
DORM@US |
Jan. 10, 2014 |
Collision course
|
| On the authority of the retiring chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, things are looking up in America. If he's right, woe betide the high-flying shares of a certain replacement-parts vendor. Then again, now that we've analyzed the situation, woe betide them anyway.
|
Diamond Resorts International
|
DRII@US |
Dec. 11, 2015 |
Interest rates by the clock
|
| Ultra-low rates push and they pull. They push business failure out into the future. They pull consumption forward into the present. Here with a grand tour of the credit horizon. In the background: auto sales and corporate M&A. In the foreground: a booming regional bank and a credit-dependent time-share vendor.
|
DoubleLine Income Solutions
|
DSL@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Domestic Debt Fund
|
EDD@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
Almighty ringgit?
|
| Everyone knows that the dollar is appreciating. Everyone similarly knows that emerging-market currencies are depreciating. Could everyone be thinking the wrong thoughts?
|
Eaton Vance Municipal Bond Fund
|
EIM@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Closed-end days
|
| In closed-end funds, a novelty: investor-led initiatives to close persistent discounts to net asset value.
|
iShares JP Morgan U.S. Dollar Emerging Markets Bond ETF
|
EMB@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
Almighty ringgit?
|
| Everyone knows that the dollar is appreciating. Everyone similarly knows that emerging-market currencies are depreciating. Could everyone be thinking the wrong thoughts?
|
iShares JP Morgan U.S. Dollar Emerging Markets Bond ETF
|
EMB@US |
Oct. 17, 2014 |
Yield to hope
|
| The weight of debt in the world is one topic at hand. The puny yields attached to that debt is a second. Finally, just what does it take for a sovereign to be denied access to the bond markets?
|
Emmis Communications Corp.
|
EMMS@US |
Mar. 23, 2012 |
Not preferred
|
| Should management of this dwindling, idiosyncratically-governed media company succeed in journaling millions from the preferred holders to the common holders, the resulting ripples could be worth billions. A story about the sanctity of contract--or, as it appears to be in this case, the evanescence of contract.
|
Endo International Plc
|
ENDP@US |
May. 29, 2015 |
Wire-pullers of the twenty-first century
|
| Markets are just as efficient as the people who operate in them. They are just as cool, calm and calculating as the humans who will buy high and will sell low. Still, they are devilishly hard to beat. Credit, restaurant chains and platform companies are among the topics under discussion.
|
ENI S.p.A
|
ENI@IM |
Oct. 18, 2013 |
Investing in Yellen
|
| By the looks of things, the post-Bernanke Federal Reserve will be much like the Bernanke Federal Reserve, except, perhaps, more open-handed. The ideal hedge against the possible consequences of an overly aggressive monetary policy would be a value-laden equity that could prosper in any macroeconomic setting but could shine in an inflationary one. Herewith, candidates to fill the bill.
|
Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones SA, ENTEL
|
ENTEL@CI |
Apr. 22, 2016 |
South of the border
|
| The stars are profitably aligned for U.S. investors in Latin America. "Local currencies are cheap, multiples are reasonable and corporate earnings have troughed."
|
Western Asset Emerging Markets Debt Fund
|
ESD@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
Almighty ringgit?
|
| Everyone knows that the dollar is appreciating. Everyone similarly knows that emerging-market currencies are depreciating. Could everyone be thinking the wrong thoughts?
|
Enstar Group Ltd.
|
ESGR@US |
Jun. 13, 2014 |
Book’s closed
|
| The road to riches is poorly marked, long and winding. A bullish analysis of a complex financial business that travels some of the most remote stretches of that storied thoroughfare.
|
Ensco plc.
|
ESV@US |
Nov. 3, 2017 |
Not the FANGs
|
| In this flyaway stock market, some sectors, still, are positively reviled. Unusual is a group in which the average price is down 90% from the peak and in which the average discount to replacement value is pushing 60%. Of babies and bath water.
|
Euronav NV
|
EURN@US |
Apr. 3, 2015 |
Turn of the tide?
|
| Kind words for an orphaned sector of seaborne commerce. A funny thing happened on the way to its supposed insolvency.
|
Evercore Partners Inc.
|
EVR@US |
Sep. 19, 2014 |
Sell advisory
|
| Physicians get sick, lawyers run afoul of the law and financiers make ill-advised financial choices. Herewith a skeptical look at the recent doings of some of the leading lights of Wall Street.
|
Exor SpA
|
EXO@IM |
Jun. 15, 2012 |
Panic of the headline writers
|
| When two-year German government securities are priced to yield less than nothing and Martin Wolf, the cerebral Financial Times columnist, counsels panic (as he did only last Wednesday), an enlightened opportunist may begin to allow himself to think of the upside. What kind of opportunities is the old continent serving up?
|
Fastenal Co.
|
FAST@US |
Feb. 7, 2014 |
Unfasten it
|
| "I made the mistake of selling it once before…," a major shareholder of a certain industrial supply distributor wrote to his investors last spring. "The memory of that sale is still painful." If the following analysis is on the beam, it's the memory of not having sold that will soon trouble the company's ardent fans.
|
Facebook
|
FB@US |
Aug. 11, 2017 |
Concerning Mark Zuckerberg
|
| Like Alexander the Great, the Facebook CEO has only one world to conquer. Then, again, unlike Alexander's world, Zuckerberg's market is both expandable and contractible. A meaningful community of the rich and liquid?
|
Forest City Enterprises
|
FCE/A@US |
Jan. 23, 2015 |
Good news for a change
|
| This publication is on record decrying the mass, interest-rate-induced levitation of the property REITS. There is, however, a special, underachieving, value-laden exception.
|
Forest City Enterprises
|
FCE/A@US |
Jul. 11, 2014 |
Just you wait
|
| Many lush bull-market months have skipped by since our upbeat analysis on a certain leveraged real estate company. The subsequent derisory rise in the share fairly demands a reappraisal.
|
Forest City Enterprises
|
FCE/A@US |
Sep. 20, 2013 |
Forest and trees
|
| Earlier this month, Jason Kidd bought $500,000 worth of the team of which he's the head coach, the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association. How different things might have been had he invested in the company that owns a portion of the team rather than the team itself. |
Fortress Investment Group
|
FIG@US |
Feb. 24, 2017 |
White flag at Fortress
|
| Last week, the first private alternative asset manager to go public became the first public alternative asset manager to declare its intention to go private--at less than one-half the 2007 IPO price. Could the business model use a tweak?
|
Fortress Investment Group
|
FIG@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Exit, Michael Novogratz
|
| A corporate problem child and the man who managed it take their leave. Good news for the business he helped to found.
|
Fortress Investment Group
|
FIG@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Unaccountably cheaper
|
| Any stock that derives its value from a portfolio of assets has taken a pratfall. One particular asset-sensitive stock has been splattered—for no good reason, we say.
|
Fortress Investment Group
|
FIG@US |
Nov. 14, 2014 |
Unaccountably cheap
|
| If efficient-market doctrine were correct, the share price of a certain alternative asset manager would likewise, necessarily, be correct. As we doubt the doctrine, so do we doubt the price. It is too low.
|
Fairfax India Holdings Corp.
|
FIH/U@CN |
Feb. 6, 2015 |
Passage to capitalism
|
| A storied investor opens a new India fund. Just the vehicle for a “dynamic and changing environment.”
|
Fortescue Metals Group Ltd.
|
FMG@AU |
Nov. 17, 2017 |
Upholster your portfolio
|
| All about a growing class of bonds that features high coupons and early call dates. How a "yield-to-worst" of minus 45 basis points turned into an annualized return of 8.8%.
|
Fortescue Metals Group Ltd.
|
FMG@AU |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Sell a non sequitur
|
| The asset-allocation votes are in for 2017, and the results are confounding. You can defend one big idea or the other big idea, but hardly both at once. What coal owes to Chinese speculators.
|
Financial Engines
|
FNGN@US |
Apr. 22, 2016 |
Advice at a price
|
| If it's financial advice you want, you could ask a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Alternatively, you could invest in a company that markets highbrow robo-advice.
|
Forestar Group
|
FOR@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Acres of hope
|
| Asset-rich and management-poor, a certain real estate-development company is ending its years in the wilderness. Next order of business: Sunlight on net asset value.
|
Fondual Proprietatea
|
FP@RO |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
Fifth Street Finance Corp.
|
FSC@US |
Oct. 3, 2014 |
Yield on sale
|
| Income is what many need nowadays—while balancing credit and interest rate risk, of course. Herewith, some ideas on how to procure it.
|
Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp.
|
FSFR@US |
Oct. 3, 2014 |
Yield on sale
|
| Income is what many need nowadays—while balancing credit and interest rate risk, of course. Herewith, some ideas on how to procure it.
|
Frontier Communications Corp.
|
FTR@US |
Oct. 2, 2015 |
Frontiers of junk
|
| If a market can become overvalued—and can remain so (as this one has) for the better part of nine months—it can surely become undervalued.
|
Fibra Uno
|
FUNO11@MM |
Jan. 27, 2017 |
REIT numero uno
|
| “Investors Bolt Mexico as Peso Enters Free Fall,” a Wall Street Journal headline of Jan. 11, is our journalistic call to arms, a 55.9% too-cheap peso our value observation. On a certain developing opportunity behind the projected Trumpian wall.
|
Fleetwood Corp.
|
FWD@AU |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Fleetwood Corp.
|
FWD@AU |
Jul. 13, 2012 |
The People's Outback
|
| Chinese banks are ramping up their lending in Australia, while Wayne Swan, the Australian treasurer, petitions Beijing to make the Australian Dollar directly convertible into the Renminbi. Homing in on an Australian company that seems especially exposed to Chinese disappointment. |
Golub Capital
|
GBDC@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Constructive developments
|
| A lightly leveraged closed-end fund, managed by prudent and independent-minded people, is priced at a deep discount to book value and offers a high yield. What’s not to like?
|
Golub Capital
|
GBDC@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Preferred income
|
| Mortgage REITs deliver income but not always serenity. The common shares pay big dividends until the yield curve becomes disarranged or mortgage prepayments accelerate. Then—poof! There are safer yield vehicles.
|
Golub Capital
|
GBDC@US |
Oct. 3, 2014 |
Yield on sale
|
| Income is what many need nowadays—while balancing credit and interest rate risk, of course. Herewith, some ideas on how to procure it.
|
Golub Capital
|
GBDC@US |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
The price is wrong
|
| Investors, financiers and financial analysts do business in a governmentally constructed funhouse. The interior décor features unconventional mirrors. Concave and convex, they can make a short yield look taller but they can’t make that illusion pay cash. Which fact brings us back to the universal thirst for income and to the corporate structures that exist to slake it.
|
Golub Capital
|
GBDC@US |
Nov. 2, 2012 |
Reluctant optimist
|
| The Bernanke Income Wilderness is not entirely barren even at zero percent interest rates. Here and there sprouts a desert flower.
|
Bitcoin Investment Trust
|
GBTC@US |
Sep. 8, 2017 |
Crypto 36,000
|
| Craft currencies, fiat money, craft beer and gold bullion – argument holds no power against the locomotive force of a speculative mania.
|
Western Asset Global Corporate Defined Opportunity Fund
|
GDO@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Yield to term
|
| In a picked over, credit swollen, ZIRP strafed bond market, a certain kind of mutual fund is making the best of things.
|
Goodrich Petroleum
|
GDP@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Opportunity in confusion
|
| Herewith a survey of risk and opportunity in the junk bond market, post the energy bust. This is the time for security analysis.
|
Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF
|
GDX@US |
Jun. 28, 2013 |
Revenge of the invisible hand
|
| Only last month, stocks and real estate and other income-producing assets were capitalized for a 2% 10-year Treasury yield. But if 2% was a fake rate of interest, the valuations deriving from 2% were likewise ersatz. Thus, the world is making adjustments. Interest rates, causes and consequences, is the subject at hand. Subsidiary points of focus include monetary management and—a somewhat lengthier topic—monetary mismanagement. For the sake of his always fragile mental health, Mr. Market might recall a relevant precedent to today’s bond upheaval. Our plan of action is to place today’s turmoil in historical context, to review the dramatic events of recent weeks and, most important, to propose a course of investment action suitable for the occasion.
|
Greif Inc.
|
GEF@US |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
Barrel roll
|
| Dubious governance, environmental depredation, a stretched valuation and a vulnerable dividend – it's the very stock not to own, and the very dividend yield on which not to depend, on the eve of a recession. |
Grupo Financiero Galicia
|
GGAL@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Popular Pariahs
|
| Never mind "global macro." Global micro's the ticket. Pick a good company in a bad country with a worse government.
|
General Motors
|
GM@US |
Aug. 10, 2012 |
Bullish on the one with the hair
|
| Mr. Market is as fed up as anyone with this once-mighty corporate edifice, whose stock is seemingly valued for every contingency except good news. The question, therefore, is not whether a certain disfavored automaker is driving on economic black ice, but whether the market has adequately, or more than adequately, discounted that known risk. |
GATX Corporation
|
GMT@US |
May. 16, 2014 |
Couldn’t be better
|
| A certain capital-equipment lessor has not one complaint about America’s weak-as-water business expansion—wherein lies the trouble.
|
Google
|
GOOG@US |
Jul. 27, 2012 |
Human progress at a market multiple
|
| We live in a technological golden age but in a monetary and fiscal dark age. While physicists discover the so-called God particle, governments print and borrow by the trillions. Science and technology may hurtle forward, but money and banking race backward. Now underway is an attempt to resolve the investment tension between technological progress and financial retrogression.
|
Goldman Sachs Group
|
GS@US |
Aug. 8, 2014 |
Yield to steepness
|
| Obscure, scarce, illiquid, generally callable, potentially volatile and not quite self-explanatory, these oddball securities may be. We judge that their merits trump even their flaws. |
General Shopping Brasil S.A.
|
GSHP3@BZ |
Aug. 7, 2015 |
Global verbiage glut
|
| Opportunities in places you may not care to visit.
|
Gunes Sigorta A.S.
|
GUSGR@TI |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Horrible to bad
|
| In investing, timing is said to be everything. In value investing in far-away places, solvency—in fact—is everything. Kind words for a pariah.
|
Genesee & Wyoming Inc
|
GWR@US |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Genesee & Wyoming Inc
|
GWR@US |
Mar. 23, 2012 |
Short a short line
|
| The consequences of Beijing's variant on the so-called Asian development model come in two phases. The short run yields breakneck growth and worldwide acclaim for genius of the Chinese technocrats. The long run features a towering stock of unproductive assets matched by a teetering pile of debt. For a certain railroad holding company, the long run is here.
|
W.W. Grainger
|
GWW@US |
May. 5, 2017 |
In the Bezos bullseye
|
| The price revolution rages in the office and on the factory floor as well as in the home. Competition hots up, profit margins flatten while Mr. Market---Mr. Market, are you paying attention? |
Hancock Holding Co.
|
HBHC@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
Trade closed
|
| The market having performed its revaluation, we lift our fatwa.
|
Hancock Holding Co.
|
HBHC@US |
Nov. 27, 2015 |
Banking on energy
|
| You can't blame this Grant's-assembled collection of energy lenders for the macro- and microeconomic scrapes in which they find themselves. But you could sell them.
|
Hanesbrands Inc.
|
HBI@US |
Jul. 1, 2016 |
Inside Story
|
| Strange to relate, the collapse of the share prices of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Endo International has drawn no line under the era of debt-funded |
Halcon Resources
|
HK@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Opportunity in confusion
|
| Herewith a survey of risk and opportunity in the junk bond market, post the energy bust. This is the time for security analysis.
|
Hallador Energy Co.
|
HNRG@US |
Sep. 8, 2017 |
For the contrary
|
| The utility component of the S&P 500 is up, the energy component of the S&P is down. For your consideration: cheap and marginalized plays on a reversal of fortune.
|
Hallador Energy Co.
|
HNRG@US |
Jan. 15, 2016 |
Black as coal
|
| Nothing is better calculated to restore the profitability of a fallen industry than to cut off its access to credit. A bullish word for a desperately out-of-favor business. |
Hallador Energy Co.
|
HNRG@US |
Jun. 12, 2015 |
Pessimism to burn
|
| When Norway's' sovereign wealth fund prepared to divest its coal holdings last week, it joined a growing fatwa against the world's least beloved fossil. One miner deserves a reprieve.
|
Hallador Energy Co.
|
HNRG@US |
Jan. 9, 2015 |
Christmas came early
|
| The oil price is halved, but so what? A certain well-financed, low-cost producer of an unfashionable energy source is cheaper than ever.
|
Hallador Energy Co.
|
HNRG@US |
Nov. 29, 2013 |
Fuel least popular
|
| The Environmental Protection Agency makes war on it, people of any shade of green despise it, and the advent of cheap natural gas threatens to marginalize it. Coal--and a certain attractive small-cap miner--are the topics under discussion. |
Hudson Pacific Properties Inc.
|
HPP@US |
Jan. 27, 2017 |
Changing places
|
| In which we journalistically cover one short-sale candidate, propose another in its place. Since when did the technology industry become cycle-free?
|
Hospira
|
HSP@US |
Nov. 2, 2012 |
Thanks, Mr. Market
|
| “If you find yourself in a room with 500 shareholders at an annual meeting,” Michael Price advised the Grant’s assemblage last week, “maybe it’s not an undiscovered stock. But if you’re the only guy who shows up, maybe it is.”
|
Hatteras Financial Corp
|
HTS@US |
Aug. 9, 2013 |
Quartered and drawn
|
| Mortgage REITs are the subject under discussion, and a timely topic it is. MBS--mortgage-backed securities—are hard enough to manage in ordinary times. They are extra rambunctious in interesting ones.
|
Hatteras Financial Corp
|
HTS@US |
Jun. 28, 2013 |
Revenge of the invisible hand
|
| Only last month, stocks and real estate and other income-producing assets were capitalized for a 2% 10-year Treasury yield. But if 2% was a fake rate of interest, the valuations deriving from 2% were likewise ersatz. Thus, the world is making adjustments. Interest rates, causes and consequences, is the subject at hand. Subsidiary points of focus include monetary management and—a somewhat lengthier topic—monetary mismanagement. For the sake of his always fragile mental health, Mr. Market might recall a relevant precedent to today’s bond upheaval. Our plan of action is to place today’s turmoil in historical context, to review the dramatic events of recent weeks and, most important, to propose a course of investment action suitable for the occasion.
|
Hatteras Financial Corp
|
HTS@US |
May. 17, 2013 |
Pole-vault yields
|
| In the first quarter, falling mortgage-backed securities prices dented the book value of two of the biggest mortgage REITs, while a third mortgage REIT, tiny by comparison, sailed through almost un-dinged. Which of the three is the best candidate to continue to deliver yields in the low to mid-double digits is the topic at hand.
|
Hatteras Financial Corp
|
HTS@US |
Nov. 16, 2012 |
The votes are in
|
| Along with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the invisible hand had an election to forget. Even so, the market is pricing in an assortment of mortgage REITs as if the Republicans won—with the price mechanism riding victorious on their coattails—and as if the Democrats lost. Herewith, a look at some potentially mispriced securities.
|
Western Asset High Yield Defined Opportunity Fund
|
HYI@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Yield to term
|
| In a picked over, credit swollen, ZIRP strafed bond market, a certain kind of mutual fund is making the best of things.
|
Intercontinental Exchange
|
ICE@US |
Oct. 31, 2014 |
Rise of the machines
|
| On Oct. 15, the steady-eddy markets in senior securities underwent a 24 hour personality transplant. Was this a flight to safety, or a stampede from it?
|
iShares International Treasury Bond ETF
|
IGOV@US |
Jul. 29, 2016 |
Speculating for income
|
| For U.S. dollar-denominated yields in excess of 3%, one must settle for the types of securities once known as a businessman’s risk. |
Infosys
|
INFO@IN |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
BRIC-laying
|
| As we go to press, India is going out of business, or so it might appear. The rupee is quoted at 58.4 to the dollar, cheapest on record. India's current account deficit is swelling, inflation is raging, and car sales are dwindling. What to do?
|
InRetail Peru Corp.
|
INRETC1@PE |
Apr. 22, 2016 |
South of the border
|
| The stars are profitably aligned for U.S. investors in Latin America. "Local currencies are cheap, multiples are reasonable and corporate earnings have troughed."
|
Iron Mountain, Inc.
|
IRM@US |
Nov. 17, 2017 |
About this dividend
|
| Financial leverage, bespoke accounting, a problematic dividend and more: the REIT in the Grant's crosshairs is as contemporary as taking a knee.
|
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
|
IRWD@US |
Apr. 3, 2015 |
Use as directed
|
| On July 15, 2014, on the ceremonial stage of her second Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, Janet Yellen singled out biotech (and social media) stocks for their "substantially stretched" valuations. Since that ex cathedra pronouncement, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index has rallied by a cool 39%. And now?
|
Jazz Pharmaceuticals PLC
|
JAZZ@US |
Sep. 5, 2014 |
Narcolepsy blues
|
| Sky-high margins, ultra-low tax rates and blisteringly fast sales growth are the historical facts surrounding a certain pharmaceuticals business. Falling margins, a rising tax rate and decelerating sales growth prove to be the prospective salient features.
|
JB Hi-Fi Ltd.
|
JBH@AU |
Jun. 16, 2017 |
Two hips joined
|
| With news of another positive print in GDP growth, the long-running Australian economic expansion sets a new world record for the greatest streak of unchecked prosperity in modern times. How a lucky country shackled itself to an unlucky one.
|
J.P. Morgan Chase
|
JPM@US |
Jul. 29, 2016 |
Speculating for income
|
| For U.S. dollar-denominated yields in excess of 3%, one must settle for the types of securities once known as a businessman’s risk. |
Klondex Mines
|
KDX@CN |
Jan. 10, 2014 |
Nature's own bitcoin
|
| They won't be overproducing bitcoin if the shadowy progenitor of the crypto-currency is as good as his word. Supply is fixed at 21 million units while 11.5 million units circulate. The supply of what might be considered the legacy form of bitcoin is the subject at hand.
|
Keryx Biopharmaceuticals
|
KERX@US |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
Just say no
|
| After delivering a 50% gain in 2012, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index has leapt by 60% in the 11 1/3 months of 2013. In November, 75% of the respondents to a poll said they expected another banner showing in 2014. Herewith a dissenting opinion and a short-sale candidate.
|
Kraft Heinz Co
|
KHC@US |
Oct. 20, 2017 |
Attack of the killer BBBs
|
| Tomorrow’s fallen angels come thick and fast in the corporate bond market. Not quite junk, barely investment grade, is the flavor of the cycle. Creditors may be senior claimants in the capital structure, but they don’t stand at the head of the queue for corporate emoluments. Marking the wise words of Graham and Dodd.
|
Kraft Heinz Co
|
KHC@US |
Mar. 24, 2017 |
Price war for Warren Buffett
|
| “There are just way too many assets chasing the sales,” says a man as wise—in this particular instance—as the Sage of Omaha himself. Ultra-low interest rates, high price/earnings ratios and credit markets fitted out with red carpets share the blame. No profits? No problem.
|
Kraft Heinz Co
|
KHC@US |
Mar. 25, 2016 |
Sell Big Food
|
| Americans may be buying the stocks. They are not – as they have done in the past – buying the products. The trouble is that crowds are |
Deutsche High Income Trust
|
KHI@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
10% off sale
|
| Closed-end funds usually trade at a discount to net asset value. They rarely trade at the discounts now quoted.
|
KKR & Co. LP
|
KKR@US |
Feb. 22, 2013 |
For the unrepressed
|
| Of the 25 largest global buyout transactions executed in the golden age of 2002-2007, only two failed. The largest private equity funds survived, and the limited partners met their financial commitments. So the world loves the big public purveyors of private equity and so-called alternative assets?
|
Kulicke & Soffa
|
KLIC@US |
Jan. 11, 2013 |
Returns to illiquidity
|
| In this Fed-centric world, people are spending less time reading corporate filings and more time parsing the deliberations of their monetary masters in Washington, D.C. So much the better for the inefficiency of markets, we say. Herewith, an exercise in security analysis.
|
Kinder Morgan Inc.
|
KMI@US |
Sep. 20, 2013 |
We said, he said
|
| A new Hedgeye report on a midstream energy behemoth says "sell." A 2012 Grant's article on the same business said "buy." What do the bears just say? And what do we say now? |
Kinder Morgan Inc.
|
KMI@US |
Jun. 29, 2012 |
$2 and a dream
|
| Income is the scarce thing—that and actionable ideas on how to procure it. The shares of a certain North American midstream energy company may sport a fetching yield, but is not the subject before the house. Front and center, rather, is that yield at one remove.
|
CarMax Inc.
|
KMX@US |
Feb. 24, 2017 |
Disabled vehicles
|
| For long-range worry, imagine a Detroit that produces not 17 million new vehicles a year but three or four million (who needs a car in the Age of Autonomy?). For a timelier set of concerns, observe today's falling used-car prices, decaying credit metrics and at-risk auto lease market.
|
Kone OYJ
|
KNEBV@FH |
May. 1, 2015 |
Elevator going down
|
| Let it be said, writes Evan Lorenz, that China has the best airports, the fastest trains and the comeliest empty residential towers in the world. I can say this with some authority after spending last week in the People’s Republic.
|
Kone OYJ
|
KNEBV@FH |
May. 30, 2014 |
Going down
|
| On May 21, a leading Chinese daily crystallized the mainland’s real estate situation: “The rich have sold, the banks are scared, the government won’t come to the rescue and developers are frantic.” On turning this predicament to profit.
|
Coca-Cola Co.
|
KO@US |
Mar. 9, 2012 |
Not so fast, Warren Buffett
|
| “Productive” assets are the ones to buy, counsels the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, low- or non-yielding assets the kind to shun. Who could quibble? Why, this publication.
|
Koppers Holdings
|
KOP@US |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Value times three
|
| Cash constitutes 62.8% of his portfolio, Mitch Cantor, portfolio manager of Mountain Lake Investment Management, told the Grant's audience. After which he pitched a trio of value-laden, improbable-sounding equities.
|
Kilroy Realty Corp.
|
KRC@US |
Jan. 27, 2017 |
Changing places
|
| In which we journalistically cover one short-sale candidate, propose another in its place. Since when did the technology industry become cycle-free?
|
Kilroy Realty Corp.
|
KRC@US |
Apr. 8, 2016 |
Wide open spaces
|
| A known Grant's pick not to click is living out the theory of interest rate-induced market distortions. Landlords, beware.
|
Kilroy Realty Corp.
|
KRC@US |
Oct. 2, 2015 |
Towers of deflation
|
| It’s evidently not impossible to forget that real estate is a cyclical business. The localized booms in office construction suggest that many would rather not remember. |
KapStone Paper and Packaging Corp.
|
KS@US |
Nov. 25, 2016 |
Contain your enthusiasm
|
| Years of ultra-low interest rates have facilitated the cartelization of a certain branch of American industry. Rarely have its profits been so high. And rarely has it been so overvalued. An eagle eye on the soaring dollar.
|
Kohl’s Corp.
|
KSS@US |
Oct. 20, 2017 |
Attack of the killer BBBs
|
| Tomorrow’s fallen angels come thick and fast in the corporate bond market. Not quite junk, barely investment grade, is the flavor of the cycle. Creditors may be senior claimants in the capital structure, but they don’t stand at the head of the queue for corporate emoluments. Marking the wise words of Graham and Dodd.
|
Kohl’s Corp.
|
KSS@US |
Feb. 8, 2013 |
Standing pat
|
| In which we update, and reiterate, our views on a pair of familiar Grant's names |
Kohl’s Corp.
|
KSS@US |
Jan. 25, 2013 |
Call on prosperity
|
| A well-financed company once beloved for its growth is now shrinking--its share count. But maybe growth is not such a forlorn hope, either for the company or for the country. |
Kerry Group plc
|
KYG@ID |
Jul. 29, 2016 |
Corporate mystery meat
|
| The strategy of selling complex solutions rather than individual products is the new, new thing in flavors and ingredients. Safety, or rather, perceived safety, is what investors seem to crave. |
iShares J.P. Morgan EM Local Currency Bond ETF
|
LEMB@US |
Dec. 1, 2017 |
Trigger points
|
| The Third World branch of the everything bull market of 2017 hangs on the words of the volatile Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
|
iShares J.P. Morgan EM Local Currency Bond ETF
|
LEMB@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
Almighty ringgit?
|
| Everyone knows that the dollar is appreciating. Everyone similarly knows that emerging-market currencies are depreciating. Could everyone be thinking the wrong thoughts?
|
Lukoil OAO
|
LKOD@LI |
May. 16, 2014 |
From Russia with value
|
| You can have cheap stocks or good news, but you can’t have both at once. The profitable application of the Joe Rosenberg dictum is the subject at hand.
|
Lumber Liquidators Holdings
|
LL@US |
Sep. 6, 2013 |
Floor to ceiling
|
| Since May, when the updraft in mortgage interest rates began, home-building stocks have fallen by as much as 30%. Sales of new, single-family homes have dropped off, and the rate of rise in house prices has leveled off. All of which frames the continued rise in the share price of a certain specialty retailer.
|
Lumber Liquidators Holdings
|
LL@US |
May. 17, 2013 |
Puts on Ph.D.s
|
| Let's say that the agents of financial repression misplay their hands and print the fatal redundant unit of scrip. Come the day of disillusionment, plenty will change, including, perhaps, the prices of the following trio of corporate equities.
|
Lincoln National Corp.
|
LNC@US |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Rooting rates higher
|
| Many a financial institution has been rooting for a normalized yield curve. The ZIRP-y structure of rates in place punishes them on both sides of the balance sheet. Low rates mean that assets yield less and liabilities cost more. Rising rates deliver a double measure of relief. Who stands to benefit?
|
LifeLock
|
LOCK@US |
Jul. 24, 2015 |
Toss away the key
|
| Constant readers will recognize the government’s allegations against a certain identity-theft promotion. |
LifeLock
|
LOCK@US |
Feb. 6, 2015 |
Not such a lock
|
| Save us from the security experts. What, exactly, do they do?
|
Dorian LPG Ltd.
|
LPG@US |
Aug. 12, 2016 |
Dorian gray
|
| A former Grant’s pick to click was always a speculation. It is now a very cheap and very risky speculation.
|
Dorian LPG Ltd.
|
LPG@US |
May. 30, 2014 |
All ahead full
|
| A half-decade ago, few spared a thought for liquefied petroleum gas. Today, the United States is a growing net exporter of that shale-derived substance. One company, in particular, stands to benefit.
|
iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond Fund
|
LQD@US |
Jun. 27, 2014 |
‘Doesn’t have to be a reason’
|
| Millions of people can’t predict baseball, and billions can’t predict soccer. As for interest rates, commodity prices, exchange rates, GDP growth, the weather, and equities, the cream of Wall Street can’t seem to predict them, either. On the difficulties—and opportunities—in the top-down branch of the speculative arts called global macro.
|
Midas Gold Corp.
|
MAX@CN |
Apr. 21, 2017 |
Long Shots, Inc.
|
| Framed by a presidential musing, some deep out-of-the-money options on a change in the monetary climate. “I do like a low interest-rate policy, I must be honest with you.”
|
Methanex Corp
|
MEOH@US |
Feb. 20, 2015 |
Mistaken identity
|
| Either the great lake of redundant crude oil points to long-term oversupply in fossil fuels, or it doesn't. The price of oil hangs in the balance. Not so--by rights, we herein contend--the price of the shares of a certain value-laden chemicals company.
|
MetLife
|
MET@US |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Rooting rates higher
|
| Many a financial institution has been rooting for a normalized yield curve. The ZIRP-y structure of rates in place punishes them on both sides of the balance sheet. Low rates mean that assets yield less and liabilities cost more. Rising rates deliver a double measure of relief. Who stands to benefit?
|
MetLife
|
MET@US |
Oct. 19, 2012 |
Ben Bernanke kicks Snoopy
|
| Managers of life-insurance general accounts are well aware of the cost that the collapse of interest rates has exacted. In 2007, let us say, management asked the investment officers if 3% was not a viable yield to offer on a long-term annuity. How could it not have been? Actually it wasn’t. Nowadays, companies are having to resort to speculative grade debt to fund five year annuities promising just 2.5%.
|
Metal Constructions of Greece (Metka)
|
METTK@GA |
Oct. 19, 2012 |
Greek bearing news
|
| A shrinking top line, a shrinking bottom line, a 25% unemployment rate in one’s home country—pretty clearly, not everything is going swimmingly for a certain Athens-based engineering company. “It’s hard to expand without a banking system and a government,” a company officer remarks. Perhaps not impossible, though.
|
MFA Financial Inc.
|
MFA@US |
Nov. 16, 2012 |
The votes are in
|
| Along with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the invisible hand had an election to forget. Even so, the market is pricing in an assortment of mortgage REITs as if the Republicans won—with the price mechanism riding victorious on their coattails—and as if the Democrats lost. Herewith, a look at some potentially mispriced securities.
|
MGM Energy
|
MGX@CN |
May. 17, 2013 |
Puts on Ph.D.s
|
| Let's say that the agents of financial repression misplay their hands and print the fatal redundant unit of scrip. Come the day of disillusionment, plenty will change, including, perhaps, the prices of the following trio of corporate equities.
|
Mastech Holdings
|
MHH@US |
Nov. 30, 2012 |
Above their weight
|
| It isn't a stock market, but a market of stocks, as someone or another said. Some stocks are big, and they are in the S&P 500. Others are medium size, and they are in the S&P 400. Still others are so tiny, so infinitely insignificant in the eyes of Wall Street that they are beyond the pale of any familiar index. A survey of the stock market's bantamweight division.
|
Middleby Corp.
|
MIDD@US |
Dec. 23, 2016 |
Out of the kitchen
|
| Beleaguered by eight years of weaponized regulation, the dining-out industry sees a new day dawning. What am I to bid for a like-new, high-end commercial stainless steel 2-bay steam table with drain and storage shelf?
|
Middleby Corp.
|
MIDD@US |
Jun. 17, 2016 |
Waiter, the check
|
| People have to eat, and investors want to invest. The trouble, in 2016, is that the urge to eat and the propensity to invest have fallen out of phase.
|
Marks & Spencer plc
|
MKS@LN |
Dec. 1, 2017 |
Bees to honey
|
| The siren song of sensibly free money in the euro-denominated bond market tickles corporate eardrums all the way across the Atlantic. |
3M Co
|
MMM@US |
Oct. 4, 2013 |
Assets less crummy
|
| On Sept. 19, a survey of investor sentiment uncovered a rare meeting of the minds: Everyone was bullish on stocks. This arresting fact we take as our cue to update an old theme. Sell bonds, buy blue chips, this publication counseled at intervals in 2010-11. An answer to the timely question, "What now?" |
Monadelphous Group
|
MND@AU |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Monadelphous Group
|
MND@AU |
Mar. 8, 2013 |
China sneezes
|
| Lesley Stahl, anchor of the eternal weekly American TV news program “Sixty Minutes,” asked Wang Shi, chairman of China Vanke Co., the mainland’s largest homebuilder and developer, if there’s a real estate bubble in China. “Yes, of course,” replied Wang. So the capitalists caught on to the China bubble before the Communists did. But, we think, the capitalists have not fully exploited every short-on-China trade.
|
Monadelphous Group
|
MND@AU |
Jan. 13, 2012 |
The Big 'However'
|
| "To be properly bearish on China," said Grant's on June 3, "one must be similarly bearish on the things connected with the vast Chinese enterprise." Of course, China will eventually go the way of all state-directed abusers of bank credit and over-builders of real estate (risk off!). However, in counterpoint, there's nothing like a cheap stock (risk on!). The bearish case on a corporate jewel and the bullish case on an obscure non-jewel.
|
MannKind Corp.
|
MNKD@US |
Apr. 3, 2015 |
Use as directed
|
| On July 15, 2014, on the ceremonial stage of her second Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, Janet Yellen singled out biotech (and social media) stocks for their "substantially stretched" valuations. Since that ex cathedra pronouncement, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index has rallied by a cool 39%. And now?
|
Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation
|
MNR@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Preferred income
|
| Mortgage REITs deliver income but not always serenity. The common shares pay big dividends until the yield curve becomes disarranged or mortgage prepayments accelerate. Then—poof! There are safer yield vehicles.
|
Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation
|
MNR@US |
Jun. 27, 2014 |
FedEx’s little friend
|
| A small REIT with a big dividend is the subject under discussion—that and the boom in e-commerce, the widening of the Panama Canal and the gift of scrawny interest rates.
|
Moscow Exchange
|
MOEX@RX |
Aug. 7, 2015 |
Global verbiage glut
|
| Opportunities in places you may not care to visit.
|
Moscow Exchange
|
MOEX@RX |
Aug. 8, 2014 |
For the outcasts
|
| Concerning a worrying, far-away geopolitical conflict, Grant’s takes the position, “This, too, will pass.” A bullish survey of pariah stocks.
|
MGIC Investment Corporation
|
MTG@US |
Jul. 24, 2015 |
On the rebound
|
| A long-tailed branch of the insurance market returns to the black. |
Northern Dynasty Minerals
|
NAK@US |
Sep. 20, 2013 |
Not so golden
|
| Grant's draws the veil of charity over a certain exploration company. |
Northern Dynasty Minerals
|
NAK@US |
Mar. 8, 2013 |
Metals redux
|
| Revisiting bullish calls on precious metal exploration companies, as well as a certain industrial metal producer.
|
Northern Dynasty Minerals
|
NAK@US |
Jan. 25, 2013 |
Gold by the share
|
| Gold goes up, the gold-mining stocks down, even the ones that don't deserve to. Herewith an investigation into the whys and wherefores of the great divergence, along with a friendly look at a project that Robert Redford despises.
|
Nordic American Tankers Ltd.
|
NAT@US |
Apr. 3, 2015 |
Turn of the tide?
|
| Kind words for an orphaned sector of seaborne commerce. A funny thing happened on the way to its supposed insolvency.
|
North Atlantic Drilling Ltd.
|
NATDF@US |
Dec. 12, 2014 |
Baiting a hook
|
| Panic, or the lack of it, is the subject under review. “Speculate like you mean it” is the message.
|
North Atlantic Drilling Ltd.
|
NATDF@US |
Sep. 19, 2014 |
Heavy seas
|
| Toward Russia, Ukraine, and the West, these pages have taken the approach, “this too shall pass.” It hasn’t yet, Mr. Market continues to remind us.
|
North Atlantic Drilling Ltd.
|
NATDF@US |
Sep. 5, 2014 |
Three amigos
|
| That we love ‘em and leave ‘em—our long ideas, that is—is a longstanding criticism of the management of these pages. Hence the following “where are they now?” analyses of a trio of Grant’s names.
|
North Atlantic Drilling Ltd.
|
NATDF@US |
Jul. 12, 2013 |
Stormy weather
|
| The interest-rate environment may be cruel, but it’s sweetness and light compared to the North Atlantic E&P environment. Concerning the upside (widows and orphans should now avert their eyes) of a highly leveraged special situation. |
Nuveen Build America Bond Fund
|
NBB@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Yield to term
|
| In a picked over, credit swollen, ZIRP strafed bond market, a certain kind of mutual fund is making the best of things.
|
Nuveen Build America Bond Opportunity Fund
|
NBD@US |
Sep. 18, 2015 |
Yield to term
|
| In a picked over, credit swollen, ZIRP strafed bond market, a certain kind of mutual fund is making the best of things.
|
National Commercial Bank
|
NCB@AB |
Aug. 12, 2016 |
Hostile banking
|
| No staycation for Mr. Market this year. Adventure in foreign parts is rather to his taste. Kind words for a pair of pariahs.
|
Nordea Bank AB
|
NDA@SS |
Apr. 5, 2013 |
On the true meaning of Cyprus
|
| In the first quarter, European peripheral states issued more debt than in any three months since the first period of 2010. In America, BB-minus-rated H.J. Heinz raised $3.1 billion through a sale of seven-year notes at the lowest interest cost ever attached to any public LBO-related debt in America. The message of the market is that Cyprus is a blip, or news particle. We write to contend that it is no such thing.
|
Nestle SA
|
NESN@VX |
Jun. 1, 2012 |
Bubble in safety
|
| Just seven basis points more than zero was the yield on Germany's zero-coupon notes of June 2014. The times may be troubled (they often are) and people may be desperate (someone usually is), but that doesn't mean that low-yielding sovereign debt is the last word in safety and soundness. Herewith an exploration of the alternatives.
|
Netflix Inc.
|
NFLX@US |
Jul. 28, 2017 |
Seven singularities
|
| An unzestful, low-volume and low-volatility affair, the post-crisis bull market seems to belong on a psychiatrist’s couch. We herein catalogue its singularities with a view to answering the always pertinent question: What to do with money besides enjoy it? |
Netflix Inc.
|
NFLX@US |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
You only get par
|
| Take a plunging VIX and a resurgent S&P. Add tight credit spreads, rock-bottom sovereign yields and a world-wide income famine. Voila: today's not so high-yield bond market. The worst of all fixed-income worlds.
|
NovaGold Resources
|
NG@US |
Apr. 21, 2017 |
Long Shots, Inc.
|
| Framed by a presidential musing, some deep out-of-the-money options on a change in the monetary climate. “I do like a low interest-rate policy, I must be honest with you.”
|
NovaGold Resources
|
NG@US |
Oct. 30, 2015 |
Rock-paper-scissors
|
| How an innocent component of the Periodic Table was converted into a kind of neo-subprime mortgage-backed security.
|
NovaGold Resources
|
NG@US |
Jan. 10, 2014 |
Nature's own bitcoin
|
| They won't be overproducing bitcoin if the shadowy progenitor of the crypto-currency is as good as his word. Supply is fixed at 21 million units while 11.5 million units circulate. The supply of what might be considered the legacy form of bitcoin is the subject at hand.
|
NovaGold Resources
|
NG@US |
May. 17, 2013 |
Puts on Ph.D.s
|
| Let's say that the agents of financial repression misplay their hands and print the fatal redundant unit of scrip. Come the day of disillusionment, plenty will change, including, perhaps, the prices of the following trio of corporate equities.
|
New Gold
|
NGD@US |
Feb. 10, 2017 |
Mine disaster
|
| We return to a low-cost, option-laden play on the mismanagement of the world's monetary system. So much potential, yet – in the moment – such disappointment. A speculation on lemonade.
|
New Gold
|
NGD@US |
Jun. 13, 2014 |
A million for Pierre
|
| A survey of some of the most unloved and under-owned stocks in the world. Can you guess which legacy monetary medium they dig from the earth?
|
New Gold
|
NGD@US |
May. 18, 2012 |
Bid wanted—please!
|
| Once upon a time, the phrase "gold mine" had a happy connotation, as in, "Apple Inc.--now there's a gold mine!" Lately though, you hear the once magical words and what you're likely to think is, "margin call." Many ask: is the gold bull market over? |
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Oct. 6, 2017 |
Preferred income
|
| Now that the Fed's massive iceberg of a balance sheet is starting to melt, the search for yield becomes even more interesting. A kind word for a particular kind of options-laden preferred.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Preferred income
|
| Mortgage REITs deliver income but not always serenity. The common shares pay big dividends until the yield curve becomes disarranged or mortgage prepayments accelerate. Then—poof! There are safer yield vehicles.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Oct. 17, 2014 |
Yield times four
|
| Savers need something besides consolation and a Social Security check. What they need is income—safe, dependable and (to the extent possible) lavish. Pending the return of the 6% Treasury bill yield, next best alternatives are the subject under discussion.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
The price is wrong
|
| Investors, financiers and financial analysts do business in a governmentally constructed funhouse. The interior décor features unconventional mirrors. Concave and convex, they can make a short yield look taller but they can’t make that illusion pay cash. Which fact brings us back to the universal thirst for income and to the corporate structures that exist to slake it.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Aug. 9, 2013 |
Quartered and drawn
|
| Mortgage REITs are the subject under discussion, and a timely topic it is. MBS--mortgage-backed securities—are hard enough to manage in ordinary times. They are extra rambunctious in interesting ones.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Jun. 28, 2013 |
Revenge of the invisible hand
|
| Only last month, stocks and real estate and other income-producing assets were capitalized for a 2% 10-year Treasury yield. But if 2% was a fake rate of interest, the valuations deriving from 2% were likewise ersatz. Thus, the world is making adjustments. Interest rates, causes and consequences, is the subject at hand. Subsidiary points of focus include monetary management and—a somewhat lengthier topic—monetary mismanagement. For the sake of his always fragile mental health, Mr. Market might recall a relevant precedent to today’s bond upheaval. Our plan of action is to place today’s turmoil in historical context, to review the dramatic events of recent weeks and, most important, to propose a course of investment action suitable for the occasion.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
May. 17, 2013 |
Pole-vault yields
|
| In the first quarter, falling mortgage-backed securities prices dented the book value of two of the biggest mortgage REITs, while a third mortgage REIT, tiny by comparison, sailed through almost un-dinged. Which of the three is the best candidate to continue to deliver yields in the low to mid-double digits is the topic at hand.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Feb. 22, 2013 |
Oases of income
|
| Try as it might, the Fed can’t seem to stomp out every last source of interest income in America. Mortgage REITs and business development companies, for instance, still yield enough to sustain the body and spirit of your favorite charity, retiree or lay-about heir. An update on the risks and rewards of yield hunting.
|
Annaly Capital Management
|
NLY@US |
Apr. 6, 2012 |
Like typos
|
| It’s Ben Bernanke’s world and interest rates are his to command. But among the chairman’s pygmy rates are a rare few giants. On mid-teen dividend yields and the risks associated with plucking them.
|
National Oilwell Varco
|
NOV@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
For the un-meek
|
| If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. Now under way is a bullish speculation on a bearish set of circumstances. Anticipating the joyous relief imparted by the lifting of bankruptcy fears.
|
Grupo Nutresa SA
|
NUTRESA@CB |
Aug. 7, 2015 |
Global verbiage glut
|
| Opportunities in places you may not care to visit.
|
Oasis Petroleum Inc.
|
OAS@US |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
Laddered oil play
|
| Everyone is bullish on oil, though not so bullish as to lift the valuations of drillers whose survival depends on a $60 crude price. Nigeria on the cheap, the Arctic for a pittance. Widows and orphans, please avert your eyes.
|
Ocean Bio Chem
|
OBCI@US |
Nov. 30, 2012 |
Above their weight
|
| It isn't a stock market, but a market of stocks, as someone or another said. Some stocks are big, and they are in the S&P 500. Others are medium size, and they are in the S&P 400. Still others are so tiny, so infinitely insignificant in the eyes of Wall Street that they are beyond the pale of any familiar index. A survey of the stock market's bantamweight division.
|
Gazprom OAO
|
OGZD@LI |
May. 16, 2014 |
From Russia with value
|
| You can have cheap stocks or good news, but you can’t have both at once. The profitable application of the Joe Rosenberg dictum is the subject at hand.
|
Owens-Illinois
|
OI@US |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Value times three
|
| Cash constitutes 62.8% of his portfolio, Mitch Cantor, portfolio manager of Mountain Lake Investment Management, told the Grant's audience. After which he pitched a trio of value-laden, improbable-sounding equities.
|
Opko Health
|
OPK@US |
Nov. 15, 2013 |
Introducing the Grant's Story Stock Index
|
| No bull stock market is complete before the debut of the kind of equity that's valued on the quality of its narrative. "The road is better than the inn," wrote the immortal Cervantes centuries before the Twitter IPO. Herewith, a review of the new crop of story stocks. |
Pan American Silver
|
PAAS@US |
Jun. 17, 2016 |
Just enough hair
|
| Widows, orphans and college students may avert their eyes. Now in progress
|
Pan American Silver
|
PAAS@US |
May. 15, 2015 |
Balance-sheet story
|
| Constant readers may remember the company herein featured. Some will regret having ever heard the name. As central banks have gained prestige, our subject has lost market cap. What it has not lost is its speculative appeal.
|
Pan American Silver
|
PAAS@US |
May. 18, 2012 |
Calling Mitt Romney
|
| The market isn't expecting much from a certain mining company when it reports first quarter results on Wednesday, the shares being as cheap as they are unloved. On channeling a certain nationally prominent LBO veteran. |
Paris Orleans SA
|
PAOR@FP |
May. 29, 2015 |
Wire-pullers of the twenty-first century
|
| Markets are just as efficient as the people who operate in them. They are just as cool, calm and calculating as the humans who will buy high and will sell low. Still, they are devilishly hard to beat. Credit, restaurant chains and platform companies are among the topics under discussion.
|
Paris Orleans SA
|
PAOR@FP |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
European antique show
|
| Converting mutual thrifts into profit-seeking commercial banks has been one of the most lucrative callings in American finance. We now turn to a similar kind of conversion, albeit with a very different kind of bank.
|
Petroleo Brasileiro SA
|
PBR@US |
Nov. 14, 2014 |
Pick to not click
|
| Mr. Stock Market is fully attuned to the problems of this major oil producer. Mr. Bond Market needs to focus.
|
Petroleo Brasileiro SA
|
PBR@US |
Oct. 3, 2014 |
Bonds of debt
|
| A certain Latin American energy company’s debts are ubiquitous. Are bondholders being compensated for the risks they bear? A story of credit, interest rates, politics--and liquidity too.
|
Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust
|
PEI@US |
Mar. 22, 2013 |
Just looking
|
| It’s nobody’s idea of news that Sears Holdings Co. and J.C. Penney Co. are on their uppers or that smart phones facilitate price comparisons or that you don’t have to go to the mall to go shopping. Yet, since the stock market took off four years ago, the Bloomberg REIT Regional Mall Index has out-returned the S&P 500 by 568% to 121%, counting reinvested dividends. To this anomaly we now turn.
|
Paragon Offshore
|
PGN@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Opportunity in confusion
|
| Herewith a survey of risk and opportunity in the junk bond market, post the energy bust. This is the time for security analysis.
|
Progressive Corp.
|
PGR@US |
Nov. 1, 2013 |
Not so fast, Joseph Schumpeter
|
| We accept as fact that the 21st century is a time of wonders and prodigies--don't you wish you could show them to Benjamin Franklin? Yet in certain intellectual and policy-making circles, inflation today is courted like an old flame.
|
Packaging Corp. of America
|
PKG@US |
Nov. 25, 2016 |
Contain your enthusiasm
|
| Years of ultra-low interest rates have facilitated the cartelization of a certain branch of American industry. Rarely have its profits been so high. And rarely has it been so overvalued. An eagle eye on the soaring dollar.
|
Parkway Inc.
|
PKY@US |
Nov. 25, 2016 |
Redheaded stepchild REIT
|
| Put aside the adage, “Buy the best building on the worst block.” We here propose the purchase of OK buildings on a terrible block. Anyway, who needs analyst coverage, an annual report, a dividend or a 10-Q?
|
PNC Financial Services
|
PNC@US |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
On the authority of Bill Gross
|
| The 32-year-old bull market in bonds is kaput, the founder of Pimco tweeted the other day. The implications of this seismic shift in interest rates (if such a shift has, in fact, occurred) is the subject at hand.
|
Post Holdings Inc.
|
POST@US |
Sep. 16, 2016 |
From hunger
|
| Low-vol is a cult for this age of low growth and zero-percent money-market interest rates. A bearish appraisal of one of the beneficiaries of a love affair with boredom. |
Paramount Resources Ltd.
|
POU@CN |
Mar. 20, 2015 |
Bullish even now
|
| "Settle in" for a period of relatively weak oil prices, Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, resignedly advised analysts the other day. Reconsider the values inherent in a pair of orphaned energy stocks, Grant's proposes.
|
Paramount Resources Ltd.
|
POU@CN |
Jul. 13, 2012 |
Just in case
|
| The speaker was Rex Tillerson, chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, the date was June 27 and the price of natural gas on the day he spoke was around $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. “What I can tell you,” Tillerson informed his audience, “is the cost to supply is not $2.50.” |
Pretium Resources
|
PVG@US |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
Problem child redux
|
| It’s a funny thing about the liquidation of gold mining shares or about the pullback, let us call it, in gold itself. Selling gold, the world is saying in so many words, “The central banks have the situation well in hand.”
|
Pretium Resources
|
PVG@US |
Oct. 18, 2013 |
Investing in Yellen
|
| By the looks of things, the post-Bernanke Federal Reserve will be much like the Bernanke Federal Reserve, except, perhaps, more open-handed. The ideal hedge against the possible consequences of an overly aggressive monetary policy would be a value-laden equity that could prosper in any macroeconomic setting but could shine in an inflationary one. Herewith, candidates to fill the bill.
|
Pretium Resources
|
PVG@US |
Jul. 12, 2013 |
Cheap and cheaper
|
| A certain development-stage owner of a world-famous gold deposit derives its value from the monetary asset that’s lately been losing its value. Which facts make the stock doubly cheap. |
Pretium Resources
|
PVG@US |
Mar. 8, 2013 |
Metals redux
|
| Revisiting bullish calls on precious metal exploration companies, as well as a certain industrial metal producer.
|
Pretium Resources
|
PVG@US |
Jan. 25, 2013 |
Gold by the share
|
| Gold goes up, the gold-mining stocks down, even the ones that don't deserve to. Herewith an investigation into the whys and wherefores of the great divergence, along with a friendly look at a project that Robert Redford despises.
|
Restaurant Brands International Inc.
|
QSR@US |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
Meet the Carrefour S.A. senior unsecured 1-3/4s of 2022
|
| The central banks of the West, rattling their interest rates, are hinting at a big change. Whither bond prices?
|
Restaurant Brands International Inc.
|
QSR@US |
Jun. 30, 2017 |
Food fight joined
|
| Yes, we do know many other tickers besides this somewhat familiar one, though few whose share price is so evidently out of sync with the fast-breaking news.
|
Restaurant Brands International Inc.
|
QSR@US |
Jun. 16, 2017 |
At donuts drawn
|
| "False allegations," "misinformation" and a rocket fired by a Toronto law firm. It seems that someone spoke without permission to a certain financial analyst.
|
Restaurant Brands International Inc.
|
QSR@US |
Jun. 2, 2017 |
Rumblings from the great white north
|
| What are the chances of Warren Buffett being wrong?
|
Restaurant Brands International Inc.
|
QSR@US |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
You only get par
|
| Take a plunging VIX and a resurgent S&P. Add tight credit spreads, rock-bottom sovereign yields and a world-wide income famine. Voila: today's not so high-yield bond market. The worst of all fixed-income worlds.
|
Rackspace Hosting
|
RAX@US |
Jan. 25, 2013 |
In case the music stops
|
| Institutionally sponsored bearbaiting arrived on Wall Street with the Jan. 3 debut of a financial instrument created to punish the short sellers. Probably, Deutsche Bank wouldn't have marketed its creation unless its clients asked, and its clients wouldn't have asked unless they were very bullish. Never go unhedged. |
Royal Bank of Scotland
|
RBS@LN |
May. 20, 2016 |
We hardly knew ye
|
| On Friday the 13th of May, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. announced its intention to redeem the three issues of preferred stock that featured in the April 8 issue of Grant's.
|
Royal Bank of Scotland
|
RBS@LN |
Apr. 8, 2016 |
Least to beast
|
| All bad things come to end, even for the former Worst Bank in the Entire World.
|
Radian Group
|
RDN@US |
Jul. 24, 2015 |
On the rebound
|
| A long-tailed branch of the insurance market returns to the black. |
Reis Inc.
|
REIS@US |
Nov. 30, 2012 |
Above their weight
|
| It isn't a stock market, but a market of stocks, as someone or another said. Some stocks are big, and they are in the S&P 500. Others are medium size, and they are in the S&P 400. Still others are so tiny, so infinitely insignificant in the eyes of Wall Street that they are beyond the pale of any familiar index. A survey of the stock market's bantamweight division.
|
Restoration Hardware Holdings
|
RH@US |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
'It's chaos'
|
| Now that the running of the bears is over or ending, Mr. F. can resume the laborious business of running a leveraged retailer in the digital age. |
Restoration Hardware Holdings
|
RH@US |
Dec. 11, 2015 |
Anticipating Mr. Friedman
|
| In an earlier epoch of history, a man so driven as the chief curator of Restoration Hardware might have led a revolution. As it is, he seeks to revolutionize the high end of furniture and décor trades. Awaiting Dec. 10.
|
Restoration Hardware Holdings
|
RH@US |
Jan. 23, 2015 |
House of mirrors
|
| Ultra-low interest rates have facilitated bloated inventories and grandiose building plans at a certain high-end retailer. When the roof caves in the aggrieved bulls can take their complaints, or some of them, to Janet Yellen.
|
Transocean Ltd.
|
RIG@US |
Nov. 3, 2017 |
Not the FANGs
|
| In this flyaway stock market, some sectors, still, are positively reviled. Unusual is a group in which the average price is down 90% from the peak and in which the average discount to replacement value is pushing 60%. Of babies and bath water.
|
Transocean Ltd.
|
RIG@US |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
Laddered oil play
|
| Everyone is bullish on oil, though not so bullish as to lift the valuations of drillers whose survival depends on a $60 crude price. Nigeria on the cheap, the Arctic for a pittance. Widows and orphans, please avert your eyes.
|
Transocean Ltd.
|
RIG@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
For the un-meek
|
| If something can’t go on forever, it won’t. Now under way is a bullish speculation on a bearish set of circumstances. Anticipating the joyous relief imparted by the lifting of bankruptcy fears.
|
Transocean Ltd.
|
RIG@US |
Nov. 28, 2014 |
Opportunity in confusion
|
| Herewith a survey of risk and opportunity in the junk bond market, post the energy bust. This is the time for security analysis.
|
Reliance Industries Ltd.
|
RIL@IN |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Up with India
|
| "India is one of the biggest structural changes taking place in the world today," Jon Thorn, manager of the India Capital Fund, told the Grant's audience, "and, unlike, say, Greece, it's a very positive one."
|
Rio Tinto Ltd.
|
RIO@AU |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Sell a non sequitur
|
| The asset-allocation votes are in for 2017, and the results are confounding. You can defend one big idea or the other big idea, but hardly both at once. What coal owes to Chinese speculators.
|
Market Vectors Russia ETF
|
RSX@US |
Aug. 8, 2014 |
For the outcasts
|
| Concerning a worrying, far-away geopolitical conflict, Grant’s takes the position, “This, too, will pass.” A bullish survey of pariah stocks.
|
Raytheon Co.
|
RTN@US |
Oct. 4, 2013 |
Assets less crummy
|
| On Sept. 19, a survey of investor sentiment uncovered a rare meeting of the minds: Everyone was bullish on stocks. This arresting fact we take as our cue to update an old theme. Sell bonds, buy blue chips, this publication counseled at intervals in 2010-11. An answer to the timely question, "What now?" |
Rosneft OAO
|
RUSN@LI |
May. 16, 2014 |
From Russia with value
|
| You can have cheap stocks or good news, but you can’t have both at once. The profitable application of the Joe Rosenberg dictum is the subject at hand.
|
Redwood Trust
|
RWT@US |
Nov. 16, 2012 |
The votes are in
|
| Along with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the invisible hand had an election to forget. Even so, the market is pricing in an assortment of mortgage REITs as if the Republicans won—with the price mechanism riding victorious on their coattails—and as if the Democrats lost. Herewith, a look at some potentially mispriced securities.
|
Sprint Corp.
|
S@US |
Jul. 28, 2017 |
Seven singularities
|
| An unzestful, low-volume and low-volatility affair, the post-crisis bull market seems to belong on a psychiatrist’s couch. We herein catalogue its singularities with a view to answering the always pertinent question: What to do with money besides enjoy it? |
Sprint Corp.
|
S@US |
Dec. 23, 2016 |
Wrong number
|
| A certain vendor of an indispensable 21st century communications service loses money, piles on leverage and underinvests in its capital stock. Still, its bond prices rally and its share price levitates. Yield-grubbing in a bull market.
|
Sberbank
|
SBER@RX |
Aug. 12, 2016 |
Hostile banking
|
| No staycation for Mr. Market this year. Adventure in foreign parts is rather to his taste. Kind words for a pair of pariahs.
|
Sberbank
|
SBER@RX |
Aug. 7, 2015 |
Global verbiage glut
|
| Opportunities in places you may not care to visit.
|
Sberbank
|
SBER@RX |
Aug. 8, 2014 |
For the outcasts
|
| Concerning a worrying, far-away geopolitical conflict, Grant’s takes the position, “This, too, will pass.” A bullish survey of pariah stocks.
|
Sberbank
|
SBER@RX |
May. 16, 2014 |
From Russia with value
|
| You can have cheap stocks or good news, but you can’t have both at once. The profitable application of the Joe Rosenberg dictum is the subject at hand.
|
Charles Schwab
|
SCHW@US |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Rooting rates higher
|
| Many a financial institution has been rooting for a normalized yield curve. The ZIRP-y structure of rates in place punishes them on both sides of the balance sheet. Low rates mean that assets yield less and liabilities cost more. Rising rates deliver a double measure of relief. Who stands to benefit?
|
SolarCity Corp.
|
SCTY@US |
Oct. 2, 2015 |
Predatory borrower
|
| Care for a nice, fat 5% yield, Mr. and Mrs. America? The people who ought to read the fine print probably won’t.
|
SemGroup Corp.
|
SEMG@US |
Jul. 14, 2017 |
Viscous black yields
|
| The honor of calling the bottom in oil we leave to others. Herewith a trio of picks which can thrive with or without a new bull market in crude.
|
iStar Financial
|
SFI@US |
Sep. 5, 2014 |
Three amigos
|
| That we love ‘em and leave ‘em—our long ideas, that is—is a longstanding criticism of the management of these pages. Hence the following “where are they now?” analyses of a trio of Grant’s names.
|
iStar Financial
|
SFI@US |
Aug. 9, 2013 |
Special situation redux
|
| In its fair and balanced coverage of U.S. monetary policy, this publication censures the Fed for its downward suppression of interest rates. Yet, equally, we extoll the prudent exploitation of that public-policy blunder for private gain. Enter—or rather, re-enter—a certain value-laden real estate finance company. |
iStar Financial
|
SFI@US |
Dec. 14, 2012 |
Well-marked book
|
| That a certain real estate finance business still lives and breathes after borrowing to buy at the top of the market in 2007 is no minor claim to fame. Better is today’s value proposition, though instant gratification plays no part in it. |
Sprouts Farmers Market
|
SFM@US |
Nov. 15, 2013 |
All you can eat
|
| One could almost say that if this multiple-sprouting specialty retailer of natural and organic food didn't exist, Wall Street would have to invent it. |
Surgutneftegas
|
SGGD@LI |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Leaders have to lead
|
| David Abrams, a top-flight Boston investor whose nearly invisible public profile led The Wall Street Journal to speculate that he might be a unicorn, sat on stage at the Plaza Hotel fielding questions.
|
Signet Jewelers Ltd.
|
SIG@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Lending clubbed
|
| "Saving up" for a purchase is a phrase that connotes consumer behavior in the pioneer days of Little House on the Prairie. In impatient millennial America, we borrow to buy.
|
Societe Internationale de Plantations et de Finance
|
SIP@BB |
Jan. 13, 2012 |
The Big 'However'
|
| "To be properly bearish on China," said Grant's on June 3, "one must be similarly bearish on the things connected with the vast Chinese enterprise." Of course, China will eventually go the way of all state-directed abusers of bank credit and over-builders of real estate (risk off!). However, in counterpoint, there's nothing like a cheap stock (risk on!). The bearish case on a corporate jewel and the bullish case on an obscure non-jewel.
|
SL Green Realty Corp
|
SLG@US |
Dec. 23, 2016 |
Can make it anywhere
|
| "Sell New York," we said, and someone did. That someone is hereby stricken from the list of Grant's short-sale candidates.
|
SL Green Realty Corp
|
SLG@US |
May. 6, 2016 |
Sell New York
|
| Not the city, but the ticker. Where’s the value, Larry Silverstein? |
Solar Capital Ltd.
|
SLRC@US |
Oct. 20, 2017 |
Sun shines
|
| With respect to the shares of business-development companies—dividend-paying, non-bank providers of credit to leveraged corporations—Mr. Market seems to smell a rat. A shining light on a happy outlier in this time of disenchantment.
|
Solar Capital Ltd.
|
SLRC@US |
Apr. 22, 2016 |
Credit the yield
|
| Now under way is a reprise and a report: a reprise of a couple of familiar yield-bearing Grant's favorites and a report on the state of small-business credit.
|
Solar Capital Ltd.
|
SLRC@US |
Oct. 16, 2015 |
Constructive developments
|
| A lightly leveraged closed-end fund, managed by prudent and independent-minded people, is priced at a deep discount to book value and offers a high yield. What’s not to like?
|
iShares Silver Trust
|
SLV@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Up with the accidental metal
|
| A speculation for this year of populist revolt.
|
iShares Silver Trust
|
SLV@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Popular Pariahs
|
| Never mind "global macro." Global micro's the ticket. Pick a good company in a bad country with a worse government.
|
Snap-on Inc.
|
SNA@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Lending clubbed
|
| "Saving up" for a purchase is a phrase that connotes consumer behavior in the pioneer days of Little House on the Prairie. In impatient millennial America, we borrow to buy.
|
Swiss National Bank
|
SNBN@SW |
Oct. 31, 2014 |
SNBN is the Ticker, in Zurich
|
| The Swiss National Bank (it's a stock, incidentally) finds itself in the crosshairs of an angry public. |
Marmara Capital Equity Fund
|
SRMDSMH@TI |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Horrible to bad
|
| In investing, timing is said to be everything. In value investing in far-away places, solvency—in fact—is everything. Kind words for a pariah.
|
Suncor Energy Inc.
|
SU@CN |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
Laddered oil play
|
| Everyone is bullish on oil, though not so bullish as to lift the valuations of drillers whose survival depends on a $60 crude price. Nigeria on the cheap, the Arctic for a pittance. Widows and orphans, please avert your eyes.
|
AT&T Inc.
|
T@US |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
Meet the Carrefour S.A. senior unsecured 1-3/4s of 2022
|
| The central banks of the West, rattling their interest rates, are hinting at a big change. Whither bond prices?
|
Texas Capital Bancshares
|
TCBI@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
Trade closed
|
| The market having performed its revaluation, we lift our fatwa.
|
Texas Capital Bancshares
|
TCBI@US |
Nov. 27, 2015 |
Banking on energy
|
| You can't blame this Grant's-assembled collection of energy lenders for the macro- and microeconomic scrapes in which they find themselves. But you could sell them.
|
TransDigm Group Inc.
|
TDG@US |
Mar. 10, 2017 |
You only get par
|
| Take a plunging VIX and a resurgent S&P. Add tight credit spreads, rock-bottom sovereign yields and a world-wide income famine. Voila: today's not so high-yield bond market. The worst of all fixed-income worlds.
|
Tidewater Inc.
|
TDW@US |
Apr. 17, 2015 |
Value times three
|
| Cash constitutes 62.8% of his portfolio, Mitch Cantor, portfolio manager of Mountain Lake Investment Management, told the Grant's audience. After which he pitched a trio of value-laden, improbable-sounding equities.
|
Templeton Emerging markets Income Fund
|
TEI@US |
Sep. 4, 2015 |
Almighty ringgit?
|
| Everyone knows that the dollar is appreciating. Everyone similarly knows that emerging-market currencies are depreciating. Could everyone be thinking the wrong thoughts?
|
Tocqueville Gold Fund
|
TGLDX@US |
Jun. 27, 2014 |
‘Doesn’t have to be a reason’
|
| Millions of people can’t predict baseball, and billions can’t predict soccer. As for interest rates, commodity prices, exchange rates, GDP growth, the weather, and equities, the cream of Wall Street can’t seem to predict them, either. On the difficulties—and opportunities—in the top-down branch of the speculative arts called global macro.
|
Transportadora de Gas del Sura SA
|
TGS@US |
Jun. 3, 2016 |
Popular Pariahs
|
| Never mind "global macro." Global micro's the ticket. Pick a good company in a bad country with a worse government.
|
Transportadora de Gas del Sura SA
|
TGS@US |
Sep. 5, 2014 |
So long then, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner
|
| Inflation. price controls, capital controls and expropriation, do, ultimately, bear fruit in the shape of collapsed asset values. The Argentine opportunity is the subject at hand.
|
Teranga Gold
|
TGZ@CN |
Jan. 10, 2014 |
Nature's own bitcoin
|
| They won't be overproducing bitcoin if the shadowy progenitor of the crypto-currency is as good as his word. Supply is fixed at 21 million units while 11.5 million units circulate. The supply of what might be considered the legacy form of bitcoin is the subject at hand.
|
Tower Hill Mines Ltd.
|
THM@US |
Apr. 21, 2017 |
Long Shots, Inc.
|
| Framed by a presidential musing, some deep out-of-the-money options on a change in the monetary climate. “I do like a low interest-rate policy, I must be honest with you.”
|
Tahoe Resources
|
THO@CN |
Jun. 17, 2016 |
Just enough hair
|
| Widows, orphans and college students may avert their eyes. Now in progress
|
Turkish Airlines
|
THYAO@TI |
Jan. 13, 2017 |
Horrible to bad
|
| In investing, timing is said to be everything. In value investing in far-away places, solvency—in fact—is everything. Kind words for a pariah.
|
Tiffany & Co.
|
TIF@US |
Jun. 15, 2012 |
Time piece
|
| "Folks," the CEO of a certain major luxury-goods maker told the dialers-in to a recent earnings call, "I'm not--they begged me, my colleagues, 'Please don't say it'--but I feel like I'm having a black-tie dinner on top of a volcano." The figurative volcano isn't Greece. |
Tejon Ranch Company
|
TRC@US |
Nov. 30, 2012 |
Land rush
|
| So far has home building recovered from the stygian depths of 2009 that prices are rising even for unimproved dirt without gold underneath. Never mind the absence of acquisition, development and construction loans or the money woes of the smaller home builders, the prices of finished lots are on the rise. A kind word on the long fallow equity of a couple of listed land businesses.
|
Tile Shop Holdings
|
TTS@US |
Nov. 15, 2013 |
Introducing the Grant's Story Stock Index
|
| No bull stock market is complete before the debut of the kind of equity that's valued on the quality of its narrative. "The road is better than the inn," wrote the immortal Cervantes centuries before the Twitter IPO. Herewith, a review of the new crop of story stocks. |
Treasury Wine Estates
|
TWE@AU |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Under Armour
|
UA@US |
Jun. 12, 2015 |
Under analyzed
|
| What does it take for a once excellent brand to become merely good? A change in the fashion weather, or maybe an article in a college newspaper. Next up: the "dad bod."
|
Unum Group
|
UNM@US |
Oct. 28, 2016 |
Disabled no more
|
| Vanishingly rare is the profitable, market-leading, stockholder-attuned, reasonably large, reasonably cheap business that would stand to gain by a rise in interest rates. This party to the mysteries of actuarial science and insurance accounting would seem to tick every box.
|
United Rentals Inc.
|
URI@US |
Oct. 28, 2016 |
Keep selling it
|
| What we did not anticipate was the warmth of the credit market’s hospitality towards a known Grant’s pick not to click.
|
United Rentals Inc.
|
URI@US |
Jul. 15, 2016 |
Borrow to rent
|
| The cacophony of jackhammers, brick saws and excavators outside our window (and yours, too, we’ll bet) bodes well for the construction capital-goods business. A certain company’s debt bodes ill.
|
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
|
VRX@US |
Mar. 11, 2016 |
Valeant's fine print
|
| Reading the lines—and between the lines—of you-know-who’s debt covenants.
|
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
|
VRX@US |
Oct. 30, 2015 |
Saul Steinberg's second coming
|
| In the 1960s came Leasco and the big conglomerate boom. Now comes Valeant and the bigger platform-company boom. Starved for income, 21st century investors reach not only for yield but also for heroes: "our thirst to believe in others."
|
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
|
VRX@US |
May. 30, 2014 |
Reality check
|
| One might suppose that corporate accounting conventions furnish less scope for make-believe than national income accounting protocols do. The truth is otherwise.
|
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
|
VRX@US |
May. 2, 2014 |
Sacrificial creditors
|
| That $46 billion bid for Allergan Inc. by Valeant Pharmaceuticals is widely decried as "hostile." Bondholders would likely agree. A word on golf-course-gate.
|
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International
|
VRX@US |
Mar. 7, 2014 |
Drug dealer
|
| A financialized age has at last produced a financialized pharmaceutical company. Herewith, a long look at an enterprise that does its compound-hunting not in the laboratory but in the stock market.
|
Verizon Communications
|
VZ@US |
Sep. 22, 2017 |
Meet the Carrefour S.A. senior unsecured 1-3/4s of 2022
|
| The central banks of the West, rattling their interest rates, are hinting at a big change. Whither bond prices?
|
Westpac Banking Corp.
|
WBC@AU |
Jun. 14, 2013 |
Beijing to Sydney
|
| Herewith an update on China (sinking), Australia (sympathetically sinking), and a handful of Grant's short-sale names (also sinking, except for the one that soared). Our longstanding China backstory has lately moved front and center. China's banking and credit structures are evidently cracking.
|
Westpac Banking Corp.
|
WBC@AU |
Mar. 22, 2013 |
Banking on China
|
| Sitting in 126 crates on the Melbourne docks is a prefabricated, six-story hotel in which workers on BHP Billiton’s projected $22 billion harbor expansion project in Port Hedland, Western Australia, would lay their weary heads at night. But the project has been scrubbed, and the hotel-maker is broke. The resource-led investment cycle that has fed Australia’s growth is fading. What to do about it is the question before the house.
|
Wendy’s
|
WEN@US |
Jun. 26, 2015 |
Check, please, waiter
|
| People have to eat, but they don’t have to go out to eat. Investors have to invest, but they don’t have to buy restaurant stocks.
|
Whirlpool Corp
|
WHR@US |
Feb. 10, 2017 |
Spin cycle
|
| Ingenious humans can produce better products at lower prices. They can likewise transform low GAAP earnings into high non-GAAP earnings. Such intellects make their home at a certain iconic American manufacturer. But whither free cash flow?
|
Weiss Korea Opportunity Fund
|
WKOF@LN |
Dec. 13, 2013 |
Preferred by more
|
| Just how inclusive is the global stock-market rally? Inclusive enough to levitate South Korean preferreds. Following is an update to our analysis of this value-laden, hard-to-buy and chronically underachieving asset class.
|
Westlake Chemical Partners LP
|
WLKP@US |
Nov. 27, 2015 |
Guilt by association
|
| "Small, illiquid, complex" to which we now append another attribute: unprofitable, at least so far.
|
Waste Management
|
WM@US |
May. 2, 2014 |
Garbage time
|
| Not so long ago, Americans were drowning in refuse. It seemed there was no place left to put it. That was then.
|
Wright Medical
|
WMGI@US |
Nov. 2, 2012 |
Thanks, Mr. Market
|
| “If you find yourself in a room with 500 shareholders at an annual meeting,” Michael Price advised the Grant’s assemblage last week, “maybe it’s not an undiscovered stock. But if you’re the only guy who shows up, maybe it is.”
|
Wal-Mart Stores
|
WMT@US |
Oct. 4, 2013 |
Assets less crummy
|
| On Sept. 19, a survey of investor sentiment uncovered a rare meeting of the minds: Everyone was bullish on stocks. This arresting fact we take as our cue to update an old theme. Sell bonds, buy blue chips, this publication counseled at intervals in 2010-11. An answer to the timely question, "What now?" |
Wells Fargo Short-Term Municipal Bond Fund Class A
|
WSMAX@US |
Oct. 28, 2016 |
No yield for you
|
| If you are looking for someone to thank, Mr. or Ms. Yield-Starved Cash Hoarder, you may thank the U.S. government. Are there, then, no money-like income oases?
|
Horsehead Holding Corp.,
|
ZINC@US |
Sep. 5, 2014 |
Three amigos
|
| That we love ‘em and leave ‘em—our long ideas, that is—is a longstanding criticism of the management of these pages. Hence the following “where are they now?” analyses of a trio of Grant’s names.
|
Horsehead Holding Corp.,
|
ZINC@US |
Mar. 8, 2013 |
Metals redux
|
| Revisiting bullish calls on precious metal exploration companies, as well as a certain industrial metal producer.
|
| |
