Milling Music

As value investors, we tend to put more emphasis than do others on the balance sheet. But Nate over at Oddball Stocks discovered a potential value investment with no balance sheet! This is because the company requires no capital

European Value Investing: Lots of Opportunities

With the macroeconomic turmoil that has sent financial shock waves through Europe, many good companies on the other side of the Atlantic have seen their stocks beaten down. On this site, European stocks are not covered. But investors may notice that American stock markets are at relatively high levels; as such, investors may wish to take profits and apply this capital towards some of Europe's finest value stocks.

Tim Du Toit is here to help investors get started. He is the founder of Eurosharelab, a site dedicated to uncovering European value stocks. He offers newsletters (including a free one) that identify investment ideas on a monthly basis. Recently, I had a chance to ask Tim a few questions about the European market, his investment philosophy and his newsletter:

Takeover Offer At New Frontier Media

Long-time readers of this site will be familiar with New Frontier Media, a company that has been discussed a few times here for both its high cash flow and high cash balance relative to its market cap. Unfortunately, the company has been plagued by some poor-looking capital allocation decisions (perhaps in turn cause by low insider ownership) and high compensation relative to its size. Now, one shareholder has decided to go active, creating a potential catalyst situation.

Competition Demystified: Chapter 8

The author of the excellent book for beginners, Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett..., is back, this time with a book about how to understand and analyze competitive advantages. Investors interested in better understanding what gives a company a competitive advantage must give this book a read.

Competition Demystified: Chapter 7

The author of the excellent book for beginners, Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett..., is back, this time with a book about how to understand and analyze competitive advantages. Investors interested in better understanding what gives a company a competitive advantage must give this book a read.

Insiders Own...Or Do They?

Where management has a significant portion of its net worth invested along with shareholders, agency costs are likely to be at a minimum. Shareholders can easily determine how invested management is in a company by looking in the same place that a company's executive compensation can be found. Unfortunately, the use of equity swaps, becoming more common in the financial world, can render the information on management's stake in the company essentially useless.

Deswell Fell

Last year, Deswell Industries was discussed on this site because of its cheap price relative to historical earnings. Unfortunately, a number of risks were also discussed, and these have continued to plague the company. The good news for potential (as opposed to actual) shareholders, however, is that Mr. Market has continued to lay a beat down on this company, wiping another 40% off the market cap in the last year.