Demitri Kalogeropoulos

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• 3 Holiday Shopping Tips for Investors

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - October 12, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL, MSFT, ROST, TJX

  Holiday shoppers know that the early bird gets the worm.

  Fill your gift-buying needs before the crush hits in December, and you can still snag good deals while dodging the crowds. According to shoppertrack, the sweet spot of the holiday season shopping -- when store traffic is the lowest but discounts are still high -- is the set of weekdays just following Black Friday. This year, that’s Monday, November 26 and more »

• Amazon Drops $1 Billion on Real Estate

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - October 10, 2012 | Tickers: AMZN, AAPL, GOOG, MSFT

  Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is doing its part to help the Seattle real estate market rebound. Late Friday afternoon the company disclosed in financial filings that it will purchase the 11 buildings that make up its headquarters in Seattle. Amazon had been leasing the property, but apparently decided that it makes more sense to buy it outright. The price tag on the deal was a cool $1.16 billion. 

  According to more »

• A Potential Netflix Foe Bows Out

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - October 10, 2012 | Tickers: AMZN, CSTR, DISH, NFLX, VZ |

  For a company that's about to be crushed by competitors at any minute, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is looking safer by the day. After a week where the company's shares jumped 22% on a surge in bullish sentiment, Netflix saw a major potential threat, Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH), give up its competitive challenge. 

  The pay-TV provider had planned to use the Blockbuster brand it purchased out of bankruptcy last more »

• Can Best Buy Hire its Way out of this Mess?

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - October 8, 2012 | Tickers: BBY, EXPE, SBUX |

  Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) is having an easier time attracting talent to its boardroom than bringing customers to its stores.

  The company -- which has seen comparable sales fall in nine of the last 10 quarters -- was able to bring another star executive onto its already impressive tech team last week. Best Buy hired Scott Durchslag, who had been president at the uber-successful online travel company, Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE).

  The talent more »

• eBay Moves to Boost International Selling

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - October 4, 2012 | Tickers: EBAY, FDX, PBI, UPS |

  eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) thinks your aging baseball card collection is finally ready for the world stage. In a bid to juice international sales, eBay has been testing a service in conjunction with logistics provider Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI) that gives sellers an easier way to sell their wares overseas. The service has been unofficial and under wraps, but the Wall Street Journal reported on it earlier this week. While we more »

• 4 Old Places to Stash New Money

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 28, 2012 | Tickers: KO, HNZ, LOW, BID, TRLA

  Despite worries about the death of the IPO, the appetite on Wall Street for untested companies with limited business histories is still strong. After shunning the Zynga and Facebook debuts, investors welcomed real estate research provider Trulia (NYSE: TRLA) to the market last week. Shares jumped 30% in their first day of trading. 

  In weighing whether to join that frenzy, readers of Trulia's IPO filing could review just a more »

• Zipcar is Driving on Borrowed Time

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 27, 2012 | Tickers: F, GM, HTZ, ZIP |

  Car sharing pioneer Zipcar (NASDAQ: ZIP) is running late. By the company's own estimates, it should have had a higher member count and more profit at this point. But that hasn't happened. The company’s members know that they face stiff penalties when they're late returning a car. In the same way, Zipcar should know that time is working against the company. Debts are piling up and more »

• 4 Stocks Worth Buying Again

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 24, 2012 | Tickers: COST, DEO, EBAY, DIS

  I'm willing to bet that you’ve got a few winners in your portfolio at the moment. And that maybe you’re looking at some unrealized gains, wondering whether it’s time to start realizing them. After a run like the market’s had lately, that’s a familiar perch for many investors. And it’s a great problem to have.

  But I’ll leave the “taking more »

• TV Sales Won't Save These Stocks

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 19, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL, BBY, GLW, LPL, SNE

  The TV industry needs a new product to sell.

  According to NPD, global shipments of TVs fell again last quarter, dropping another 8%. And those awful sales figures came despite a further round of price cuts by manufacturers scrambling to clear inventory. That strategy hasn't worked so far. Sony (NYSE: SNE), for example, still reported a 30% slump in TV revenue in the last year on a 13% drop more »

• What's Pushing Americans Out of Banking?

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 16, 2012 | Tickers: BAC, C, WFC

  People are abandoning banks. And, for a change, we aren't talking about investors bailing out of the financial sector, as they did in '08 and '09. Those stocks are faring well, with the industry up over 30% in the last year. Instead, it’s American households that are leaving banks and finding other ways to manage their finances.

  The FDIC's just published survey found that a surprising 8 more »

• 3 Cheap Dividends in an Expensive Market

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 13, 2012 | Tickers: AMD, INTC, SDRL, SI |

  This is not the best time to be a value investor. By most measures the stock market is in "expensive" territory. The Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq indexes each hit multi-year highs over the last few trading sessions. The market's P/E ratio, meanwhile, has jumped from a reasonable 14 times earnings a year ago, to a much richer 17 now. And a less discussed -- but equally important -- ratio more »

• Amazon Tosses More Cash into the Fire

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 10, 2012 | Tickers: AMZN, AAPL, GOOG, NFLX, WMT

  Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos wants you to know that his company "is a for-profit business." That the leader of the biggest online seller in the world -- which booked nearly $50 billion in sales last year -- felt he needed to make that statement in the wake of the company's latest spending spree speaks volumes. 

  For a firmly established, powerhouse of a business that grew sales 40 plus percent more »

• 3 Popular Ways to Fail at the Mobile Ad Business

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 6, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL, FB, GOOG, P, TRIP |

  In The Simpsons Movie, there’s a scene where an advisor to the Schwarzenegger-like U.S. president is asked to give his boss advice as certain doom approaches the fictional town of Springfield. The advisor’s suggestion was classic Simpsons: “Sir, I've narrowed your choices down to 5 unthinkable options.”

  That’s exactly the way I see the rush to find an ad-based business model that can survive the more »

• Is This High-Yield Blue Chip Worth Your Time?

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - September 4, 2012 | Tickers: CPB, GIS, HNZ, KRFT

  H.J. Heinz's (NYSE: HNZ) shares touched a new high last week after the company reported its 29^th straight quarter of organic sales growth. The Ketchup King delivered higher profits too, aided by strong growth in emerging markets. But the stock’s rich valuation and rising debt levels has a lot of investors wondering if the market is charging too much for this sauce-maker and its 3.7 more »

• 5 Stocks Employees Love to Hate

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - August 29, 2012 | Tickers: DDS, GME, HPQ, SHLD, BK

  "I quit."

  If recent history is any guide, nearly 3 million Americans will express that sentiment to bosses this month. While that might sound like a huge number of quits, it's actually a very low figure when compared to healthier job markets. The rate was closer to 4 million fed up workers every August from 2005 – 2007, before the recession depressed those numbers in the years since:

  Source: BLS more »

• Apple's Monopoly Survives

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - August 28, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL, GOOG, MSFT

  The tech industry's second great monopoly court battle has concluded. And this time the ruling favored the dominant company, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). For its part, Samsung had argued that Apple was using patent laws to protect an unfair monopoly and lock competitors out of the smartphone and tablet markets.

  We've seen this movie before but with a much different ending. It first ran as a late 90's more »

• Should You Buy this Security Stock?

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - August 23, 2012 | Tickers: ASEI, ALOG, LLL, OSIS, SAI |

  Sometimes you find the best stocks hiding in plain sight. Security tech producer OSI Systems (NASDAQ: OSIS) isn’t a household name but with a $1.5 billion market cap, it’s not tiny either. And with shares up over 100 percent in the last year, it is clear that OSIS has made it on to at least a few investors' radars. Reflecting that market love, the company’s P more »

• Buffett's Next Move: His Biggest Yet?

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - August 21, 2012 | Tickers: BRK-B, BRK-A, DG, SWK, HSY |

  Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) shocked more than a few investors last week when the company disclosed what amounted to a stock selling spree by CEO Warren Buffett. Financial filings for the quarter showed that Berkshire sliced its stake in pharma giant Johnson & Johnson by almost two thirds. Berkshire also took the hatchet to positions in long-time Buffett favorites Kraft and Proctor & Gamble, too, while liquidating the company's more »

• 3 Reasons to Expect Bigger Dividends

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - August 13, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL, XOM, F, GOOG, TSN |

  Dividends are finally getting some respect. The S&P 500 now counts 402 of its members as regular dividend payers. That marks the highest number of companies tossing cash at their shareholders since December 1999. New stocks on the list include longtime holdouts Dell and GameStop, who both waded into the dividend pool for the first time this summer. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) cannonballs onto the list this week, as its more »

• Is There Still Time to Buy Fossil?

  By Demitri Kalogeropoulos - August 9, 2012 | Tickers: COH, FOSL, TIF

  It isn’t often that a large, widely followed company sees a 30% jump in market cap over the course of one trading day. But when a pop like that happens, as it did with timepiece retailer Fossil (NASDAQ: FOSL) on Tuesday, it’s clear that something was seriously out-of-whack in Wall Street’s value estimates. Mispricings of this magnitude just aren’t supposed to happen.

  While the professional analysts more »

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