By Herb Greenberg
A funny thing happened on the way to starting a new venture in activist short selling... Something else came along. It was an out-of-the-blue e-mail from Enrique Abeyta, a source from my days as a journalist, that simply said, "Catch up?" This was about a month into my new gig, and since he's a former […]
By Herb Greenberg
Talk to friends in almost any part of the country – certainly here in California – and the conversation goes something like this... "You won't believe what the house down the block sold for – and it needs to be totally gutted." "Yeah, can't believe it. We should sell." "We've thought the same thing, but […]
By Herb Greenberg
Using buybacks to goose a stock can be controversial... There are plenty of examples where they're little more than good money chasing bad – a last-ditch effort by some companies to prop up their sagging stocks. Other businesses see it as a great use of money, but only if there is no better use of […]
By Herb Greenberg
With the market having been whacked – especially some of the highest fliers – there's a new popular pastime... Guessing which companies will get acquired. Predicting takeovers is generally little more than luck. It's the ultimate fool's game – often sparked by wishful thinking or intentionally planted rumors steeped in little more than fantasy... especially […]
By Herb Greenberg
The recent announcement from Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) of an upcoming 20-for-1 stock split renewed the age-old debate about whether splits matter... Post-split, based on a price of around $3,000, the stock will trade at around $150. Here's the deal... Over my career, I've spent a good deal of time lampooning stock splits. The classic […]
By Herb Greenberg
Based on commercial real estate in San Diego – or in any biotech hub, for that matter – you would never know that stocks in the sector have gone bust... It's like boomtown here in San Diego, where I live. It seems that every time I go out, which is often, I see another new […]
By Herb Greenberg
With Robinhood getting crushed and meme madness celebrating the peak of its insanity, this quick note in a book explains exactly what happened... Here we are, a year after the fact, and we're still talking about "meme madness." Or at least some of us are. It was a moment you remember, even if you weren't […]
By Herb Greenberg
When the story of home fitness company Peloton (PTON) is written, it'll be a doozy. Or in the least, a good case study... Somewhere in here is a management team that for whatever reason (and you can let your imagination run wild) blindly produced more product than it realistically could ever sell – especially after […]
By Herb Greenberg
Warby Parker (WRBY) has done a brilliant job building its eyewear brand along with its self-described 'do good' image... This is driven by the company's longtime slogan and program, "Buy a Pair, Give a Pair." This has become such a prominent part of Warby Parker's strategy that it's the third sentence of the formal four-sentence […]
By Herb Greenberg
I was talking with a friend the other day about whether with inflation sprinting ahead and interest rates inching higher, the market's bull run is over... By now, most investors likely know the old adage: Don't fight the Fed. But is this that "don't fight the Fed" moment? Rates are rising... and this market has […]
By Herb Greenberg
Editor's note: The Empire Financial Research offices are closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Look for the next Empire Financial Daily in your inbox on Tuesday, January 18, after the Weekend Edition. When it comes to this market, everybody wants to know... which inning are we in? Many folks think […]
By Herb Greenberg
My wife and I love to travel... One of our favorite ways to get from here to there is on cruise ships – not the big mega-monsters, but smaller so-called "luxury" ships, which sometimes offer expeditions. While cruising is the laughingstock of many people on Wall Street, who think they're all like the Love Boat […]
By Herb Greenberg
I can remember it so clearly... It was 1997, and I was working at my desk at the San Francisco Chronicle, where I wrote a daily business column. We were in the thick of the market melt-up when the only thing everybody wanted to talk about was the latest hot-tech initial public offering ("IPO"). (Sound […]
By Herb Greenberg
We were chatting internally last week about a list of companies a short seller we know had mentioned. They included two old favorites – BlackBerry (BB) and Eastman Kodak (KODK). Without skipping a beat, Sam Latter, Empire's Editor in Chief, chimed in... When I look at this list and think, "I can't believe this company […]
By Herb Greenberg
There was a time when most people who bought cars and toasters wouldn't know the difference between a semiconductor chip and a chocolate chip... Let alone what goes into manufacturing them. The companies that make the equipment used to make semiconductor chips – known as chip-equipment manufacturers – can be a good leading and lagging […]
By Herb Greenberg
Investing in biotechnology is like going to the racetrack... Everybody has the inside track on who's going to win. This guy knows the trainer. That guy knows the jockey. And look at the odds... look at those odds. You know the rest of the story... That horse barely made it out of the gate, let […]
By Herb Greenberg
It was one of my big mistakes during the pandemic-related crash... I bought the SPDR Energy Fund (XLE) in April 2020, when it looked like death, but sold it a few months later for a small profit. I loved that as stocks gushed higher energy had been left behind. Plus, the XLE paid a good […]
By Herb Greenberg
When BuzzFeed (BZFD) went public earlier this week via a special purpose acquisition company ('SPAC'), two groups of people made money... First, there are the so-called "sponsors," who created the SPAC. While there are exceptions, they generally walk away with tens of millions of dollars' worth of stock, regardless of how well the deal does. […]
By Herb Greenberg
Back when I was doing short research, the last thing any of us wanted to hear was that a company was overvalued... All companies, it seemed, were overvalued. But even with today's bounce, with more than a few of the market's high-flyers having sputtered, an obvious thought occurred to me: Maybe valuation is starting to matter […]
By Herb Greenberg
Other than having previously owned the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and one other entity (which I still own), I've steered clear of crypto... It's not because I think it's a farce or a fraud or a fad, but because... I just haven't been able to wrap my head around it enough to have conviction one […]