Stock Gumshoe

This is part of an ad that we’ve looked at before in slightly different form — the other “Billion Dollar SSE” we looked at was General Steel Holdings back in July.

What the folks at the Motley Fool’s Global Gains newsletter mean when they call something a “SSE” is a “state sponsored entrepreneur” or “state sponsored enterprise” — that’s a term they use for something inbetween the tiny mom-and-pop firms in China, and the huge state-owned companies. These are midsize companies, though many are really small caps in the context of the US stock market, and they usually have good connections to the government but are privately owned and managed by entrepreneurial founders.

In general, I like the theory — these are the companies I am most comfortable with in China, too, though they are certainly not guaranteed successes. And I have some financial interest in a few of them (though not the main one covered here today). Small companies that are either consolidating industries or growing organically in a huge market are usually more compelling for me than are large companies that are owned by the government and may have other priorities beyond growing shareholder value (or a big overhang of shares if the government decides to sell). Not always true, of course, that’s just my general feeling.

So what is this latest teaser company from Bill Mann at the Motley Fool? Here’s a taste of what they’re selling … Read the rest of this entry »

This one comes in from Bill Mann at the Motley Fool’s Global Gains service, which I’ve looked at several times before — and I’ve also liked a lot of their picks and have invested in a few of the same companies personally, so I usually pay extra attention to their ads.

Which doesn’t make them any shorter, unfortunately — as with all Motley Fool email ads, this one would require a serious binding if printed out, and the felling of a few trees.

This is a follow-on to the general focus that Global Gains has had on “Tier Two Cities” in China and India — focusing on companies that are poised to profit from the growing smaller cities that most of us haven’t yet heard of, and that most investment analysts don’t visit. Past picks along these lines have included Home Inns (HMIN), HDFC Bank (HDB), and a few others that don’t immediately spring to mind. As one might guess from the collapse of the Chinese and Indian markets, none of those picks are doing particularly great at this moment (I do own shares of HDB, for full disclosure).

The thesis is probably reasonable, though, since in Read the rest of this entry »

I know it seems like I’ve been writing primarily about the Motley Fool over the past week or so, but I am but a simple servant to my masters: the wide-ranging, unusually intelligent, and good lookin’ Gumshoe readership. And a large number of you, I’m guessing something on the order of a zillion, have emailed me about this one.

So on we go.

This is from Bill Mann, who co-edits the Motley Fool Hidden Gems newsletter with Tom Gardner. I have a bit of a soft spot for Mann because he’s picked several international stocks that I also really like for Hidden Gems and his Global Gains newsletter (Sadia, HDFC Bank and others), but this is a domestic pick … so let’s see what we’re dealing with.

The essential claim here is that gasoline is going to $5 a gallon, and that this will benefit the “one oil-services company that stands head and shoulders above all the rest.”

“When it comes to finding new Read the rest of this entry »