Not to play on stereotypes, but if Turkcell ($TKC) were a government and not a private company, a cabal of stone-faced Turkish generals would have surrounded its headquarters with tanks months ago and forcibly taken over its board of directors. And if they had, you could bet that the share price would have enjoyed a...Read More

One of my favorite scenes in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is the exchange where Jack Nicholson asks Leonardo DiCaprio what a nice kid like him was doing in the South Boston projects. “And if I can slander my own environment, it makes me sad, this regression.” Unfortunately, I find myself asking the same question about...Read More

Last week, I took a look at how the “Investing All-Stars” were positioning themselves for the remainder of 2012. Then—as now—the Eurozone crisis hung over the capital markets like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.  Given the difficulty of investing under this kind of uncertainty, I thought it would be beneficial to peek over the shoulders...Read More

Question: When looking at cheaply-priced stocks, how do you know which ones are solid value stocks and which ones are dreaded value traps? Answer: The value stocks eventually recover, whereas the value traps do not. I realize that my answer is no more useful than Will Rogers’ advice to “Buy stocks that go up; if...Read More

I’ll let you in on a little secret, dear reader. In those moments when I have doubts, I like to look over the shoulders of great investors to see what they are doing. (Actually, it’s really not much of a secret. It’s a topic I discuss quite openly and frequently. See “When in Doubt, Follow...Read More