Louis Liu

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• Shopping for Retailer Stocks by Following the Insiders (II)

  By Louis Liu - December 1, 2012

  On October 19, I published this article, in which I applied my three-step test to three retailer stocks, namely Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF), bebe stores (NASADAQ: BEBE) and Deckers Outdoors (NASDAQ: DECK) and recommended that investors buy ANF and DECK and avoid BEBE.  In this article, I will provide an updated analysis to those three stocks and then analyze another retailer stock: Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO).    

  As a value investor, I more »

• Why I Would Not Buy the Shares of Facebook

  By Louis Liu - October 25, 2012 | Tickers: FB

  Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) might have been one of the most simple yet powerful business ideas of the Internet age.  With Facebook, people who are separated from each other by their physical distance now can all come to a pre-arranged virtual “meeting place” to have meaningful (or not so meaningful) exchanges and interactions, to a large degree as if they were not so separated.  Moreover, the sheer size of Facebook’s more »

• Why I Would not Buy the Shares of Apple

  By Louis Liu - October 25, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL

  After using the BlackBerry that my employer handed down to me for the last five years, I eventually decided not to resist the trend of our times and catch up with the rest of the human civilization by purchasing my very first iPhone. I am still fiddling with this new toy of mine, but I have started to understand why people love iPhones. I am also probably one of the more »

• Why I Would Not Initiate a Position in Lululemon Athletica

  By Louis Liu - October 23, 2012 | Tickers: DECK, LULU

  I think it is an understatement that a large segment of the North American population is madly in love with Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU). Some of those people fall in love with LULU as consumers of its products, and others fall in love with LULU as investors of the company. However, I would not initiate a long position in LULU at this point of time because:

  LULU Is Grossly Overpriced more »

• How to Enhance the Return on Your BDC Stocks

  By Louis Liu - October 22, 2012 | Tickers: AINV

  Most investors buy shares of BDC’s, or business development companies, to generate dividend incomes. As a pass-through tax structure, BDC’s must distribute at least 90% of taxable income as dividends to their investors. So how do you further increase the income you can get from your shares of BDC’s? One way to do it is to write the so-called covered calls on the shares you own.

  I more »

• Shopping for Retailer Stocks by Following the Insiders

  By Louis Liu - October 19, 2012 | Tickers: ANF, BEBE, DECK

  If you have owned shares of retailers, you probably know that their prices can be very volatile. However, a smart investor should try to exploit such volatility to enhance the overall return of his portfolio. I personally have bought and sold the shares of many retailers, and I am glad to report that in more than 90% of the cases, I have made decent profits.

  I did so usually with more »

• The First Step to Pick Winning Retailer Stocks: Analyzing Their Business Models

  By Louis Liu - September 13, 2012 | Tickers: ANF, AMZN, BKS, BBY, COST, GPS, KR, WMT, WFM

  One of Peter Lynch's favorite ways of finding a good stock to invest was to take his family shopping at a large shopping center and see how each store was doing. It was no wonder that he picked up Gap (NYSE: GPS) during the early stage of the franchise's nationwide expansion and captured the huge run in the company’s stock price for the investors of Magellan Fund more »

• Why Bank of America is a Long Term Buy

  By Louis Liu - September 10, 2012 | Tickers: BAC, BRK-B, BRK-A

  In my last article on Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), I analyzed Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) $5 billion investment in the bank to conclude that individual investors shall buy the bank's common shares at today's price. One of my colleagues read that article and pointed out that individual investors who followed Buffett's footsteps into General Electric Company (GE) and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS more »