Tuesday, September 20, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Some businesses are so straightforward and boring that they don't have to twist anything to make the numbers look better than they are... Consider Fastenal (FAST), an enormously successful company that distributes screws, nuts, and bolts. A business doesn't get more boring than that... I mentioned the company in the most recent issue of my […]
Friday, September 16, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Friday nights aren't just for high school football in Texas... It's when public companies often wait to file bad news with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), which they hope will go unnoticed since by the time the news drops everybody on Wall Street has gone home. They've been doing it for years... no, make […]
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I go out of my way to steer clear from writing about politics, but I'm finding it hard to sit still on one story in particular anymore... I'm talking about members of Congress trading stocks. Last time I looked, there was supposed to be some kind of bill ready in August that banned lawmakers from […]
Friday, September 9, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
One of the most liberating things I've done in a few decades is 'cut the cord'... No, not to cable... though I have no idea why I still have it. I'm talking about writing almost exclusively about stocks that will fall, companies that will fail, and – when I wanted to stare into the abyss […]
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
One of my favorite investment podcasts is On the Tape, featuring Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, and Danny Moses... It's the perfect complement to Hard Money's Million Dollar Podcast, featuring my colleagues Enrique Abeyta and Gabe Marshank. And I don't just say that because I work with Enrique and Gabe... It's because if you merge the […]
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I sometimes get asked to read pre-publication versions of new books but often don't have time or an interest in the topic, so I politely pass... But when Gary Weiss asked me to read the so-called "galleys" of his new book on the notorious electronics chain Crazy Eddie, in hopes that I would write a […]
Friday, August 5, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
The day it went public in 2013, Potbelly (PBPB) might have had the best single-day jump of any restaurant chain... It has been downhill ever since for the sandwich chain, as the company once hailed as "the next Chipotle" started looking more like a burrito without any filling. After going public at $14 per share […]
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
During the boom, you would be lucky to get yourself on a wait list for a new home, even starting in the millions – let alone get one – here in Southern California... They couldn't build them fast enough. But as the longtime sales manager for one SoCal developer told me the other day, using […]
Friday, July 29, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Back when I was with the short-biased research firm I had co-founded, we were trying to sell a major hedge fund on our work... I was talking with the co-chief investment officer ("CIO"), who asked what made our firm different. I explained that I was a former journalist and my business partner was a forensic […]
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Random Musing No. 1 – I bought out my lease on my car over the weekend... This Mercedes SUV has been the best car I've owned and there's no reason to replace it... especially given the state of the auto market, which remains a seller's market. Plus, no way am I paying those absurdly ridiculous […]
Friday, July 22, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
When Jim Cramer lured me away from newspapers to join TheStreet.com in 1998, people thought I was making a mistake... I was one of the first somewhat high-profile print journalists to make the shift to online from print... leaving a six-day-a-week column I had written for 10 years at the San Francisco Chronicle for a […]
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I call it the 'meet-or-beat game'... This is when companies do whatever it takes to meet or beat analyst estimates. The trouble is, like any drug, there's a danger of getting addicted to doing whatever it takes to avoid losing that high. And pretty soon, rather than running a business for the sake of running […]
Friday, July 15, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
With the market rising, if you are heavily invested enough to have seen your retirement account get clobbered, it's easy to wipe the sweat from your brow and think you just survived something horrible... But only a fool would think the worst is over... That's why I'm dusting off something I first wrote in 1995 […]
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
I've known smart people on both sides of the Carvana (CVNA) trade – investors who were long and short... Anybody long – for a good part of four years – made a bundle on the online used-car retailer, which is known for its multistory car vending machines. But as the company's results and near-round trip […]
Friday, July 1, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Editor's note: The Empire Financial Research offices are closed on Monday in observance of Independence Day. Look for your next issue of Empire Financial Daily on Tuesday, after the Weekend Edition. There's a broad consensus that 'you ain't seen nothing yet' when it comes to this market... Everybody has a reason... higher interest rates, the […]
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
There's a saying that I was thinking about the other day when I was reading a story in the Wall Street Journal... "Reaching for yield." That's when, for the sake of making even a little more on a supposedly conservative fixed- income investment, you buy something with a higher yield. But with higher yield comes […]
Friday, June 17, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
Editor's note: The Empire Financial Research offices are closed on Monday in observance of Juneteenth. Look for the next Empire Financial Daily in your inbox on Tuesday, June 21, after the Weekend Edition. There's a place to turn if you ever want to know the motive of public company fraud or aggressive accounting or stretched […]
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
It's a question you hear over and over again... Is the U.S. Federal Reserve out of touch with the average American? There may be something to it, at least based on my firsthand experience... This was years ago – many years, in fact (back in the late 1980s) – but I'm willing to bet it's […]
Friday, June 10, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
If you take drugs for anything chronic, you'll fully understand what I'm about to say... When I saw the recent news that the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") was going to investigate pharmacy benefit managers ("PBMs"), I thought, "It's about time." Talk about cartels... In the murky world of drug pricing, the PBMs are the middlemen […]
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
By Herb Greenberg
A recent move by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ('SEC') is coming not a moment too soon... Specifically, the agency is on the scene to focus on bogus claims of environmental, social, and governance ("ESG") by mutual funds, exchange-traded funds ("ETFs"), and other investment vehicles. The SEC is purportedly planning to crack down on […]