In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by the gods. As the gods created her, each gave Pandora a special gift. Apollo bestowed on her the gift of music. Fast-forward about 3,000 years, and the Internet radio company that has taken her namesake could have a gift for investors. Pandora Media (NYSE: P) has that attractive combination of a strong chart and an outstanding fundamental growth story. In its most recent quarter, the company posted 50% year-over-year revenue growth, with sales climbing past $180 million. The number of active listeners rose 20%, to 70.9 million… Read More

In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by the gods. As the gods created her, each gave Pandora a special gift. Apollo bestowed on her the gift of music. Fast-forward about 3,000 years, and the Internet radio company that has taken her namesake could have a gift for investors. Pandora Media (NYSE: P) has that attractive combination of a strong chart and an outstanding fundamental growth story. In its most recent quarter, the company posted 50% year-over-year revenue growth, with sales climbing past $180 million. The number of active listeners rose 20%, to 70.9 million users.#-ad_banner-# Pandora is a free service, although it does offer a paid premium service. However, its free offerings can be highly profitable for the company since its growing user base has caught the attention of advertisers. Mobile ad revenue is a tremendous growth area for the company. In its fiscal third quarter, mobile ad sales hit $104.9 million, a 58% increase from the same period last year. Pandora’s mobile ad platform is very attractive because the site specializes in collecting and aggregating user data based on listening preferences. This capability allows advertisers to accurately market products to specific target markets. Read More

Black Friday, Nov. 29, is less than a week away. The iconic day can be described as one of numbers: Millions of bargain hunters will spend hours upon hours waiting in lines to spend billions to walk away with the best deals. This year, U.S. Black Friday sales are expected to total about $13.6 billion, a 3.9% increase from last year, according to IbisWorld research. There’s one sure winner to emerge from this buying frenzy. And no, it’s not necessarily Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) or Target (NYSE: TGT). In my mind, it’s the credit card companies who really benefit. Read More

Black Friday, Nov. 29, is less than a week away. The iconic day can be described as one of numbers: Millions of bargain hunters will spend hours upon hours waiting in lines to spend billions to walk away with the best deals. This year, U.S. Black Friday sales are expected to total about $13.6 billion, a 3.9% increase from last year, according to IbisWorld research. There’s one sure winner to emerge from this buying frenzy. And no, it’s not necessarily Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) or Target (NYSE: TGT). In my mind, it’s the credit card companies who really benefit. In 2011, the National Retail Federation found Americans primarily use credit cards to fuel their Black Friday buying binges. In 2012, MasterCard (NYSE: MA) reported a 26.2% increase in retail transactions compared to the previous year tied to Black Friday purchases.#-ad_banner-# With tight budgets prevailing again this year, MA may receive another boost as consumers choose to hoard their cash and put purchases on their cards. But it’s not just Black Friday, or even U.S. retail sales, that is driving MA higher. Currently, over 1.9 billion people worldwide use a MasterCard, and the card is accepted at over 35.9 million… Read More

Dunkin’ Brands (Nasdaq: DNKN) has far outpaced the performance of the S&P 500 Index year to date, gaining nearly 48% compared with the broader index’s 26% gain.#-ad_banner-# Even more exciting is that if the shares can crack round-number resistance at $50, they are likely to challenge $60 in fairly short order. Since there is a well-defined stop-loss level at the major uptrend line, which intersects the chart just under $46, the reward-to-risk ratio is roughly 2.5 to 1, which is highly attractive. Dunkin’ Donuts, which has been around since 1950, is an American favorite. Through aggressive expansion, it is capturing… Read More

Dunkin’ Brands (Nasdaq: DNKN) has far outpaced the performance of the S&P 500 Index year to date, gaining nearly 48% compared with the broader index’s 26% gain.#-ad_banner-# Even more exciting is that if the shares can crack round-number resistance at $50, they are likely to challenge $60 in fairly short order. Since there is a well-defined stop-loss level at the major uptrend line, which intersects the chart just under $46, the reward-to-risk ratio is roughly 2.5 to 1, which is highly attractive. Dunkin’ Donuts, which has been around since 1950, is an American favorite. Through aggressive expansion, it is capturing an even larger domestic and international following. (My colleague David Goodboy is also a longtime fan of the company, as he wrote recently.) In its third quarter, the company, which also owns the Baskin-Robbins brand, added 222 new stores worldwide, 81 of which were U.S.-based Dunkin’ Donuts locations. There are now 7,500 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in the U.S. CEO Nigel Travis announced his goals of opening at least 15,000 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in the U.S., including 3,000 east of the Mississippi and 5,000 in Western states. That’s double the size of the current chain. At present, Dunkin’ Donuts is heavily… Read More

Throw away your wallet. Toss out all those heavy, antiquated coins. Burn your checkbook. Cut up your credit cards. But make sure you keep your mobile phone. It’s how you soon may pay for almost everything you buy using a method some call the “mobile wallet” and others term “mobile money” but is most commonly known as mobile payment solutions. Mobile payment transactions are exploding. According to a report by Gartner Research, these types of payments totaled roughly $171.5 billion in 2012, a 62% rise from $105.9 billion in 2011. In 2012, roughly 212 million people worldwide made mobile payments,… Read More

Throw away your wallet. Toss out all those heavy, antiquated coins. Burn your checkbook. Cut up your credit cards. But make sure you keep your mobile phone. It’s how you soon may pay for almost everything you buy using a method some call the “mobile wallet” and others term “mobile money” but is most commonly known as mobile payment solutions. Mobile payment transactions are exploding. According to a report by Gartner Research, these types of payments totaled roughly $171.5 billion in 2012, a 62% rise from $105.9 billion in 2011. In 2012, roughly 212 million people worldwide made mobile payments, up 32% from nearly 160 million users in 2011. More importantly, Gartner expects mobile transactions will grow at an average pace of 42% a year. By 2016, the firm forecasts the mobile transaction market will be worth $617 billion with 448 million global users. This amazing growth outlook means tremendous opportunity for mobile payment service providers. Traders tapping into the trend now could also make stellar returns. Of the publicly traded mobile payment solutions companies, the one I like best is NXP Semiconductors (Nasdaq: NXPI) based on its solid chart and increasing revenue and profits.#-ad_banner-# The hardware… Read More

I’m a big fan of buying stocks that have recently hit a new all-time high. Clearly they have strong momentum, but the main reason is that, because there is no overhead resistance, they often go higher. And when that bullish chart is supported… Read More

With the threat of a U.S. strike against Syria postponed, a major overhang for the overall market has been removed. The S&P 500 index has again rallied back above its 50-day moving… Read More

Legendary stock picker Peter Lynch used to salivate over what he called 10-baggers — stocks that increased 1,000%. Admittedly, that’s incredible performance, but nothing compared to the track record of Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), one of the largest online travel booking websites. Over the past 10 years, this dot-com gem has rallied more than 9,000%. That’s a 90-bagger!  Shares have skyrocketed, from split-adjusted lows near $10 in 2003 to their current multi-year high above $914. While the biggest… Read More

Legendary stock picker Peter Lynch used to salivate over what he called 10-baggers — stocks that increased 1,000%. Admittedly, that’s incredible performance, but nothing compared to the track record of Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), one of the largest online travel booking websites. Over the past 10 years, this dot-com gem has rallied more than 9,000%. That’s a 90-bagger!  Shares have skyrocketed, from split-adjusted lows near $10 in 2003 to their current multi-year high above $914. While the biggest gains may or may not be behind it, short-term traders can still profit. According to Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), there’s still plenty of upside potential. In fact, shares could be the first dot-com to surpass the $1,000 mark — a feat not even Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has achieved.#-ad_banner-# Because of a growing appetite for travel based on the improving economy, Morgan Stanley has set a price target of $1,010. Technically the stock… Read More

Legendary stock picker Peter Lynch used to salivate over what he called 10-baggers — stocks that increased 1,000%. Admittedly, that’s incredible performance, but nothing compared to the track record of Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), one of the largest online travel booking websites. Over the past 10 years, this dot-com gem has rallied more than 9,000%. That’s a 90-bagger!  Shares have skyrocketed, from split-adjusted lows near $10 in 2003 to their current multi-year high above $914. While the biggest… Read More

Legendary stock picker Peter Lynch used to salivate over what he called 10-baggers — stocks that increased 1,000%. Admittedly, that’s incredible performance, but nothing compared to the track record of Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), one of the largest online travel booking websites. Over the past 10 years, this dot-com gem has rallied more than 9,000%. That’s a 90-bagger!  Shares have skyrocketed, from split-adjusted lows near $10 in 2003 to their current multi-year high above $914. While the biggest gains may or may not be behind it, short-term traders can still profit. According to Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), there’s still plenty of upside potential. In fact, shares could be the first dot-com to surpass the $1,000 mark — a feat not even Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has achieved.#-ad_banner-# Because of a growing appetite for travel based on the improving economy, Morgan Stanley has set a price target of $1,010. Technically the stock… Read More

Until recently, I would have avoided regional banks. However, the green shoots of the U.S. recovery are now sturdy enough that select financial institutions are showing highly bullish charts backed by strong fundamentals. Both the technicals and fundamentals tell me there is a good trading opportunity at hand. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the number of bank failures has dropped dramatically since June 2011. At this time two years ago, 48 banks had entered… Read More

Until recently, I would have avoided regional banks. However, the green shoots of the U.S. recovery are now sturdy enough that select financial institutions are showing highly bullish charts backed by strong fundamentals. Both the technicals and fundamentals tell me there is a good trading opportunity at hand. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the number of bank failures has dropped dramatically since June 2011. At this time two years ago, 48 banks had entered receivership. By this time in 2012, the number dropped to 31. So far this year, only 16 banks have failed — one-third the number of failures compared with 2011.#-ad_banner-# Moreover, revenue and earnings prospects for select regional banks should continue to improve. For starters, the Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep interest rates near record lows means low-cost loans for consumers, and that translates to strong… Read More

Until recently, I would have avoided regional banks. However, the green shoots of the U.S. recovery are now sturdy enough that select financial institutions are showing highly bullish charts backed by strong fundamentals. Both the technicals and fundamentals tell me there is a good trading opportunity at hand. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the number of bank failures has dropped dramatically since June 2011. At this time two years ago, 48 banks had entered… Read More

Until recently, I would have avoided regional banks. However, the green shoots of the U.S. recovery are now sturdy enough that select financial institutions are showing highly bullish charts backed by strong fundamentals. Both the technicals and fundamentals tell me there is a good trading opportunity at hand. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the number of bank failures has dropped dramatically since June 2011. At this time two years ago, 48 banks had entered receivership. By this time in 2012, the number dropped to 31. So far this year, only 16 banks have failed — one-third the number of failures compared with 2011.#-ad_banner-# Moreover, revenue and earnings prospects for select regional banks should continue to improve. For starters, the Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep interest rates near record lows means low-cost loans for consumers, and that translates to strong… Read More