JP Morgan’s sudden confession of a $2 billion loss on a “synthetic credit portfolio” last night was the talk of the morning for many reasons, not the least of which was the ammunition such a mistake gives the regulatory push in Congress. We are not a big holder of the stocks of international money-center banks [...]
An interesting tidbit crossed our desk the other day related to dividends, which is a topic many clients have been interested in with income from bond holdings at fairly meager levels. Morningstar reports that “342 of the S&P 500 companies increased their dividends (in 2011), while only five cut their dividends, leading to a net [...]
This week, we have some merger and acquisition news to pontificate on with regard to our portfolios. In the Blue Chip Growth portfolio, our long-time holding Ecolab (ECL) announced it had reached an agreement to acquire Nalco Holding Company (NLC) for $8.1 billion in cash (30% of deal) and stock (70% of deal), including the [...]
We have added Janus Capital Group, Inc. (JNS) to the Smaller Companies portfolio. Janus manages approximately $173 billion through various mutual funds and separate accounts for retail and institutional accounts. In recent years, Janus has diversified away from a focus on the growth style of investing by purchasing Perkins Investment Management (a value based manager) [...]
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