John Dorfman stories

If you want an edge in investing, one path is to find companies whose stocks are cheap but whose profits are improving. I went hunting for some this weekend, and found a few, including Williams-Sonoma Inc. (WSM) and Movado Group Inc. (MOV). To qualify for consideration in today’s column, a...

The height of folly. That’s what I call it when people pay 100 times a company’s pre-share revenue to buy a stock. You see this behavior mostly with young biotechnology stocks and fledgling technology stocks. Investors mentally build what economics professor Burton Malkiel called “castles in the sky” when they...

In a stock market where momentum reigns, what’s a bargain hunter to do? One answer is to look for stocks that possess both value and momentum. Today, I offer four such stocks for your consideration. Applied Materials Let’s start with Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT), up 20 percent this year through...

No month has more stock-market lore associated with it than January. Yes, October is known as the haunt of crashes. But January is known for several things, including the “January effect” and the “January barometer.” The so-called January effect is really a confluence of three effects: • Most stocks tend...

A harsh December capped a hard fourth quarter for stocks. Many good companies have been knocked down, some to bargain levels. I’ve picked four of them for my Casualty List, a quarterly compilation of wounded stocks that I believe may recover strongly. The Casualty List has a profitable track record....