Peridot Capitalist

If you have read about my investment philosophy on peridotcapital.com you will see that I refer to Bill Miller (manager of Legg Mason Value Trust) in comparing my value strategy to others that are more well known than myself. Miller looks at the market differently than most, and I use many of the same techniques [...]

In a perfect world, stock brokers would actually earn their money. If they recommend individual stocks to their clients, those stocks would do better than the ones chimpanzees choose by throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal stock tables. If they recommend mutual funds to their clients, those mutual funds would be above-average performers. After [...]

From the Associated Press:
“A survey by J.D. Power and Associates found that brokerage Edward Jones was consumers’ choice as the best full-service investment adviser for a second straight year.
J.D. Power, a marketing firm that’s part of The McGraw-Hill Cos., asked investors to evaluate full-service brokers on seven criteria, including competitiveness of portfolio, account set-up and [...]

In the latest example of how mutual fund companies couldn’t care less about their long suffering shareholders, consider Fidelity’s recent announcement that it will be recommending its Blue Chip Growth Fund (FBGRX) change its benchmark from the S&P 500 index to the Russell 1000 Growth index.
As soon as I read about the proposal I knew [...]

I had to double check to make sure what I heard over the weekend was correct. A.G. Edwards (AGE), a St. Louis based firm with 7,000 brokers nationwide, is planning to raise their commissions by 5 percent beginning on March 15th. In addition, their postage and handling fee is jumping 10 percent to $5.50 per [...]

Merrill Lynch (MER) is changing the name of its mutual fund group to Princeton Portfolio Research and Management later this year. Now this might seem strange on the surface, just because as far as name recognition and brand awareness go, I would think investors would choose to invest with Merrill over Princeton. Maybe that’s just [...]

Bill Miller, manager of Legg Mason Value Trust (LMVTX), has done something that no other fund manager can claim. Since taking over sole management of the fund, he has beaten the market each and every year, for 15 straight years. Is he just lucky like some efficient market supporters would claim? Or does he know [...]

Vanguard did a good job of convincing people to buy into their S&P 500 index fund, but was that advice wise? Jack Bogle, the company’s founder and most outspoken advocate, seems to make a decent case for Vanguard.After getting crushed by their technology stock centric portfolios from 2000 through 2002 (The Nasdaq fell 80%), investors [...]

Thought maybe readers would find this list helpful. Not that I think H&R Block Financial Advisors are great stock pickers, but maybe some of these fit criteria that you look for in a stock.
Comcast (CMCSA) Consumer Disc.
Int’l Speedway (ISCA) Consumer Disc.
CVS Corp (CVS) Consumer Staples
Pepsi Bottling (PBG) Consumer Staples
United Natural Foods (UNFI) Consumer Staples
Global Santa [...]