The Intelligent Investor

Intelligent Investor

Miclyn: Time to talk back to your broker

GREG HOFFMAN If someone is encouraging you to buy shares in upcoming float Miclyn Express Offshore, you might like to raise a couple of questions.

Intelligent Investor

How safe is Spark's 11.3% yield?

GREG HOFFMAN Boring, regulated businesses usually produce highly desirable cash flow. That's not always the end of the story.

Intelligent Investor

Goldies, Greece and Lehman's Repo 105

GREG HOFFMAN The recent release of a 2200-page report on Lehman’s collapse in September 2008 has revealed some explosive findings.

Intelligent Investor

Directors who should be voted out

GREG HOFFMAN Investors have every right to feel angry when a share offering is followed by a profit warning.

Intelligent Investor

Primary patience tested over Bateman's millions

GREG HOFFMAN Primary Health Care should be thriving, enjoying the twin tailwinds of an ageing population and growing healthcare expenditure. But it's not.

Intelligent Investor

Gunns under fire over Gay share sale

GREG HOFFMAN Shareholders in forestry giant Gunns have every right to be upset at chairman John Gay, with the company’s share price falling from almost $3 to less than 70 cents. That, though, is not the worst of it.

Intelligent Investor

Books to make you a better investor

GREG HOFFMAN We're big on education at The Intelligent Investor.

Intelligent Investor

The Packer factor in investing

GREG HOFFMAN Many fortunes are built with a value-based approach. Kerry Packer is a great example.

Intelligent Investor

Buffett sticks it to the CEOs

GREG HOFFMAN Billionaire Warren Buffett reminds us of a few investment basics - while unloading on failed corporate bosses.

Intelligent Investor

Asset plays the last piece in the puzzle

GREG HOFFMAN Now, like the end of a game of Trivial Pursuit, we'll fill in the last piece of investment pie: asset plays.

Intelligent Investor

Turnaround stocks: The pleasure and pain

GREG HOFFMAN Turnaround stocks offer tricks and treats, especially for the beginner investor.

Intelligent Investor

The pitfalls and profits of cyclical stocks

GREG HOFFMAN If the sharemarket were a sporting competition, cyclical stocks would be reserved for "first grade" players only.

Intelligent Investor

Stalking the ten-bagger

GREG HOFFMAN Here are some tips on landing a wonder stock - and when to let it go.

Intelligent Investor

Which pigeon hole for Telstra?

GREG HOFFMAN To analyse Telstra one almost needs to be a psychologist.

Intelligent Investor

Anchors aweigh for stock holders

GREG HOFFMAN We've all done it - waiting for the share price to rise back to where we bought the stock. Bad idea.

Intelligent Investor

The share price target myth

GREG HOFFMAN Earnings season portends a flood of analysts' reports. Here's a few tips before diving in.

Intelligent Investor

QBE better than Buffett

GREG HOFFMAN In the past four years, QBE shares have underperformed, which begs the question: is this an opportunity, or simply a business that isn’t as good as it once was?

Intelligent Investor

The Westfield of insurance

GREG HOFFMAN There aren’t many businesses that can boast a track record like this one. And there are even fewer that are available at such an attractive price.

Intelligent Investor

My grandmother wouldn't bet on Tabcorp

GREG HOFFMAN Tabcorp seems like a fine prospect; it’s available at a seemingly attractive price and it owns some unique assets in its collection of casinos, gaming and wagering licences. But what’s the company actually worth?

Intelligent Investor

Time to turn to quality stocks

GREG HOFFMAN Confidence is back. Those same cyclical stocks that people were avoiding last year have become today’s darlings.

Intelligent Investor

Confessions of an aeroholic

GREG HOFFMAN Hi, my name is Greg and I’m an aeroholic. I’ve thought about buying shares in airline stocks and the urge is growing stronger. The economy is picking up and so are airline stocks with it.

Intelligent Investor

Be on guard against 'creative reporting'

GREG HOFFMAN Important information that should be brought to the attention of shareholders - the true owners of the company - is often buried at the end of company announcements.

Intelligent Investor

Hills hoist by its own petard

GREG HOFFMAN From annual reports to ASX announcements, bad news is glossed over and good news talked up. Take Hills Industries’ latest profit result.

Intelligent Investor

Top three stock tips prove the point

GREG HOFFMAN We kicked off a new ''Top 3 for 3'' in December last year and the one-year check-up has produced some amazing results.

Intelligent Investor

Patient wait for the big win

GREG HOFFMAN “Sovereign defaults” would likely send shockwaves around the world. Given the powerful sharemarket recovery since the low point reached in March, this is particularly pertinent. Complacency can steal your cufflinks.

Intelligent Investor

Black swans hit Dubai

GREG HOFFMAN The events in Dubai are but a recent and fascinating example of a 'black swan'.

Intelligent Investor

Betting on prosperous times

GREG HOFFMAN More than 50 years ago, an engineer at the Ainsworth Dental Company put it to the proprietor's son, Len Ainsworth, that their factory had all the equipment necessary to build a prototype poker machine.

Intelligent Investor

Be fearful: speculation is back

GREG HOFFMAN For the first time in more than two years, total margin lending increased in the September quarter, and even more tellingly, money is now finding its way into speculative “blue sky” stocks.

Intelligent Investor

What the 19.5% man can teach us

GREG HOFFMAN There's a few tips worth learning from Anthony Bolton, one of the UK's best-known fund managers.

Intelligent Investor

What's Woodside really worth?

GREG HOFFMAN Woodside has fantastic assets, first class management and a market capitalisation that has risen 36,000 times since listing in 1954. But does its share price accurately its true future value?

Intelligent Investor

Woodside's walk on the wild side

GREG HOFFMAN Is Woodside's future as assured as its share price suggests?

Intelligent Investor

Woodside steps on the gas

GREG HOFFMAN Woodside's success as Australia's largest independent oil and gas company almost didn't happen.

Intelligent Investor

The case for higher oil prices

GREG HOFFMAN Whereas oil producers can adjust their output based on their marginal cost of production, consumers have less flexibility - oil is embedded in our lives in a way that is hard to overstate.

Intelligent Investor

When oils ain't oils

GREG HOFFMAN Finding new oilfields won't do much for global supply if they're uneconomic to tap.

Intelligent Investor

Why peak oil doesn’t matter

GREG HOFFMAN The absolute quantity of oil in the ground isn’t all that important in discerning the direction of oil prices. What is important is the cost of extracting an extra barrel.

Intelligent Investor

The secret life of caterpillar investing

GREG HOFFMAN The behaviour of small birds can reveal tips on - of all things - smarter investment.

Intelligent Investor

What to make of ANZ's latest offer

GREG HOFFMAN The ANZ CPS2 offer of convertible preference shares is the latest of its kind to land in investors' in-trays. How does it stack up?

Intelligent Investor

RHG shareholders don't get the change they wanted

GREG HOFFMAN The tiff at the RHG annual meeting offered the strange feeling of losing a vote one was never going to win.

Intelligent Investor

Shareholder activism - an insider's perspective

GREG HOFFMAN Getting rid of a board member is very difficult, not least because incumbent directors, regardless of their performance, have a huge advantage over anybody opposing them.

Intelligent Investor

Wilkins gives IAG shareholders reason to 'unworry'

GREG HOFFMAN Former Insurance Australia Group CEO Michael Hawker had his fair share of critics but his replacement, Michael Wilkins, deserves more praise than he's getting.

Intelligent Investor

Big banks bounce back

GREG HOFFMAN The talk from the Commonwealth Bank was cautious but the figures are undeniably impressive.

The Intelligent Investor

Advice from a billionaire

GREG HOFFMAN Since I was young, I've been interested in learning from successful people. Platinum's Kerr Neilson is one of them.

Intelligent Investor

How interest rates affect your share portfolio

GREG HOFFMAN When most people hear the term 'interest rates', they think of the official cash rate (consciously or otherwise). There's a lot more to it.

Intelligent Investor

Telstra’s $4.2b accounting trick

GREG HOFFMAN Even in a business the size of Telstra’s, $4.2 billion is a lot of money. But when it’s the subject of what polite society calls “creative accounting”, the normally effusive management team falls silent.