Welcome to the third Fundamental Friday of 2009! Today, we will cover Cisco Systems, Inc. Cisco Systems (Ticker: CSCO) is a San Jose, California It firm. Cisco was founded in 1984 and brought in revenues of $39.5 billion last year.
 
Cisco closed yesterday at $15.93 per share. Let’s see what the fundamentals say about CSCO.

Valuation measures – Data from Reuters
Price-earnings - Compares the current market value per share to the earnings per share.  P/E ratio for CSCO: 12.61, P/E industry average: 10.58, P/E sector average: 8.75. Signal: OVERVALUED
Price-sales – Compares the current market value per share to the revenue per share.  P/S ratio for CSCO: 2.43, P/S industry …read more

I don’t want to spend too much of my time on John Thain, but after writing my previous post I came across an interesting tidbit from his stint as CEO of Merrill Lynch.

Apparently, Mr. Thain was very into office decor. CNBC put together a slideshow highlighting Mr. Thain’s executive suite shopping spree. The final cost: $1.22 million. Click here to see what he spent it on.
Just to put things in perspective: According the National Association of Realtors (NAR), as of 12/31/08 the median price for a single-family home in the United States is just under $185,000. So, the money spent on Mr. Thain’s office could …read more

A little over two weeks ago, I wrote a post about Sam Zell, Rod Blagojevich and Mark Cuban. Sounds like a fun bunch, right? View my previous post: “Does Sam Zell Have The Magic Touch? ”for some background.

Today, there is good news to report! The Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field and a 25 percent stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago will be sold for approximately $900 million.
The buyer is NOT Mark Cuban! Tom Ricketts, son of TD Ameritrade founder J. Joe Ricketts, has emerged as the winning bidder. According to bloggingstocks.com, the deal should close in two to three months.
There are still some hurdles to clear, …read more

Watching Citigroup (Ticker: C) unwind reminds me of a familiar Wall Street story line and a character from a hilarious TV show.
Bank behaves badly while maintaining the “we’re fine” facade, stockholders get scared, bank tries to raise cash, stockholders become more fearful, bank tries to sell assets, stockholders don’t buy it, bank blames small part of senior management, stock goes down the tubes, etc., etc. 
Then the news hits Main Street and we all wonder: What did they do and what were they supposed to be doing instead?
This is difficult to answer since so many companies (AIG, Citi) became too huge for management to effectively control, too complex for government watchdogs …read more

Who is Samuel Zell?  Why has news of him working with Starwood Hotels sent the stock through the roof?

According to Forbes, Starwood (Ticker: HOT) and Zell’s private investment firm, Equity Group Investments, signed a confidentiality agreement last week. The firm already owns 8 percent of Starwood’s stock.
Agreements like this usually precede M& A activity. As such, the prospect of a deal between the two sent shares of Starwood up 16 percent on Friday.
All of this buzz has me wondering: who is Sam Zell and what’s the big deal?
Zell has been around for a long time and is most recently known for his purchase of the Tribune …read more

Shares of Time Warner (Ticker: TWX) kicked off 2008 above $16 and have since fallen 37.5 percent. TWX saw a lot of red, but it may start the year off in the black…
According to the Austin Business Journal, Viacom (Ticker: VIA) and Time Warner are battling over a fee hike proposed by Viacom. Viacom claims the fee hike will translate to less than 25 cents per month per subscriber. Time Warner says the problem has arisen due to Viacom’s other ailing revenue streams. 

Viacom is threatening to snatch its shows from Time Warner as soon as the ball drops! Well, 12:01 AM to be exact. :)
Viacom owns several channels such as MTV, …read more

I wanted to take this final Tuesday of 2008 to talk about another terrible, time-sensitive ”t”…taxes!
As the tax year comes to a close fund managers sift through their portfolios and decide what to throw away and what to keep. Individual investors ought to do the same thing. Converting a few paper losses into realized losses can give you a tax credit! 

Realized losses can be used to offset capital gains or reduce your taxable income base, but this does not mean that you should sell everything.
Here are a couple of things you should know before you sell:
1. There is an annual limit to the tax credit - The maximum write off per …read more

Since this is the final Friday of 2008, I decided to take it back to the basics…of stock valuation!
In late October I began hosting Fundamental Fridays to see if trading on the fundamentals could yield profits. So far I have used ratios like price-to-earnings (P/E), return on equity (ROE), and return on assets (ROA) to examine the valuation of four companies: Dell, Alcoa, Amazon.com and Nike.
Here are the results:

10/31: Dell (Ticker: DELL) - Recommendation: BUY, 12/24 Price: $10.65. At the time of this recommendation, shares of Dell were trading at $12.20…strike one!
11/14: Alcoa (Ticker: AA) - Recommendation: BUY, 12/24 Price: $9.39. Alcoa’s shares were trading at $11.20 …read more

When I pressed the mental rewind button on the year 2008, many words came to mind. ”Change” tops my list since it has saturated every form of media for what seems like an eternity!  
I decided to check Merriam-Webster’s Top Ten List for “Word of the Year” and four of those terms were in heavy Palin rotation: maverick, bipartisan, socialism and rogue.

Each word brings back memories, but financially speaking how will you choose to remember 2008?  
Place your vote for Talk Stock Trading’s “Term of the Year”
Term #1: BAILOUT – Too big to fail?  Ask the government to pay your bail!  A bailout is loosely defined as a financial rescue …read more

No one has swagger like the King, but do you want to smell like a piece of charred meat? 
Well if you do, Burger King has announced the release of their new body spray, Flame.  The tag line for the new cologne is: “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.”

Sounds yummy ;)
The restaurant sector needs some fire!  The recession has hit the sector pretty hard this year.  Year-to-date, BK’s stock has fallen 29 percent.  The bright side of the loss is that is better than the overall market.  The S&P 500 has lost over 37 percent of its value during the same …read more