By Bret Jensen:

Banks have been by far the poorest performing sector for more than a year. However, during the last couple of days several things have happened in succession that lead me to believe they could be close to a bottom.

1. Central Banks have acted in coordination to provide liquidity for the global financial system.
2. Dick Bove made a very interesting point this morning on CNBC that the U.S. Banks are benefiting greatly with new deposits and customers from institutions and individuals fleeing the European banks.
3. S&P downgraded 15 U.S. Banks. Given the accuracy of the rating agencies over the past half decade, this may be a great sign of a bottom.
4. Barney Frank (The scourge of the banks and protector of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) announced he will not seek re-election.

Here are four major banks selling way below book value with the potential to at least double in the

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By Tony Daltorio:

Many investors are aware that Brazil’s oil giant Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) is investing nearly $225 billion between 2010 and 2015 to develop its offshore oil fields. These vast ‘pre-salt’ discoveries lie below a two-kilometer deep salt layer underneath the seabed.

But Petrobras faces another difficulty in addition to the technical ones it faces in drilling for oil under such harsh conditions. That difficulty is the Brazilian government and its dictate that equipment used in new oil production fields have a 77 percent local content requirement. The requirement for older fields was for only 35 percent local content. The country simply lacks the capacity at the present time to cope with the enormous demands imposed upon it by Petrobras and other oil companies drilling in Brazil’s waters.

The biggest bottleneck by far is expected to be Brazil’s shipbuilding industry. Petrobras alone is ordering a fleet of new vessels. In June, it

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By Yiannis Mostrous:

I added Standard Chartered (SCBFF.PK) to the Global Investment Strategist portfolio in late 2008 on the premise that banks are one of the best investment vehicles to gain exposure to emerging markets. The banking industry is the centerpiece of every economy, acting as a facilitator of economic activity (through loans) and a custodian of citizens’ money (through deposits).

Standard Chartered is not your typical lender. Although the company is headquartered in the U.K., its primary focus is the emerging markets. Asia is Standard Chartered’s most important geographical region, accounting for 83 percent of revenue. Consequently, the bank offers investors direct exposure to fast-growing emerging economies without the dilution of mature markets.

The current economic and market weakness warrants a look at the bank’s primary markets. I expect the Asian region will be impacted by the economic hardship facing developed nations. However, Asia’s growth remains on an upward trajectory. The real

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By Hawkinvest:

It has been a rough few weeks for most investors and an even tougher year for some shareholders in mortgage REIT stocks. There has been a perfect storm of forces that seem to be working against the mREIT stocks.

However, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel in just a few weeks thanks to the “January Effect.” This is known to occur each year, particularly with small and mid-cap stocks that have seen declines. Stocks that fit this profile typically see heavy selling in the last few weeks of the year as investors sell shares they have losses in, so that they can offset gains in other stocks and harvest tax losses. This process pushes already hard-hit stocks even lower, and that can create a great buying opportunity at this time of year. If you buy the right stocks now, they are likely to rebound substantially

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By Kapitall:

Value investors look for opportunities to buy stocks that are trading at significant discounts to their fair value, with the assumption that they’ll move up to their fair value in the near future. One proxy for fair value is analyst target price.

We ran a screen on the biotech industry for stocks trading at steep discounts to their analyst target prices, which may indicate that they are undervalued.

But because target prices are notoriously inflated, we only used the most pessimistic (the lowest) target prices, and for stocks with sufficient analyst coverage we only screened for stocks with five or more analyst ratings.

Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the top six stocks mentioned below. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.‬

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We also created a price-weighted index of the stocks mentioned

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By Gary Weiss:

Following Overstock.com’s (OSTK) legal wrangling is an exhausting business, which might explain why the Utah newspapers, bless their cowardly little hearts, don’t even try. So I hope I can be forgiven that I totally missed a significant development in the lawsuit filed against this twelfth-string retailer for consumer fraud.

According to papers filed in Alameda County Superior Court last week, the judge hearing the case is “strongly disinclined” to rule in favor of Overstock in its effort to prevent prosecutors from gathering information about its pricing practices.

A copy of the relevant court filing is below.

This is really bad news for my favorite corporate crime petri dish.

Overstock had previously screamed bloody murder about efforts by the prosecutors to extract from the company its “methodology” for determining how it listed “comparable” prices on its website.

The company is accused of systematically overstating those prices, to make its “discounts” seem

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By Yiannis Mostrous:

I added Standard Chartered (SCBFF.PK) to the Global Investment Strategist portfolio in late 2008 on the premise that banks are one of the best investment vehicles to gain exposure to emerging markets. The banking industry is the centerpiece of every economy, acting as a facilitator of economic activity (through loans) and a custodian of citizens’ money (through deposits).

Standard Chartered is not your typical lender. Although the company is headquartered in the U.K., its primary focus is the emerging markets. Asia is Standard Chartered’s most important geographical region, accounting for 83 percent of revenue. Consequently, the bank offers investors direct exposure to fast-growing emerging economies without the dilution of mature markets.

The current economic and market weakness warrants a look at the bank’s primary markets. I expect the Asian region will be impacted by the economic hardship facing developed nations. However, Asia’s growth remains on an upward trajectory. The real

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By Erich Sauer:

Pretend for a second that you didn’t read the headline to this article. I’d like to tell you about a company that on October 20, 2011</a

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By Jim Van Meerten:

I’ll be the first to tell you that I am not a computer gamer. I never even mastered Super Mario Brothers as well as my children did. I will admit that the gaming industry is maturing and the average age of a gamer is increasing as the number of candles on the gamers birthday cakes also increases. The graphics of the games today is beyond what I ever imagined. At the center of this industry is Activision Blizzard (ATVI). Not only is there a cult following for their game offering but those who follow the stock have similar blinders. The recent dip in price is a buying opportunity as this graph provided by Barchart shows:

(Click to enlarge)

Activision Blizzard, Inc. publishes online, personal computer, console, handheld, and mobile games of interactive entertainment worldwide. The company develops and publishes PC-based computer games and maintains its proprietary online-game related service, Battle.net.

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Exelixis, Inc. (EXEL)

Piper Jaffray Health Care Conference Call

November 29, 2011 3:30 PM ET

Executives

Mike Morrissey – Chief Executive Officer

Frank Karbe – Chief Financial Officer

Charles Butler – Investor Relations

Analysts

Ted Tenthoff – Senior Biotech Analyst, Piper Jaffray

Presentation

Ted Tenthoff

Thank you very much for sticking with us. Please come on and join for the next presenting company Exelixis. My name is Ted Tenthoff. I’m a Senior Biotech Analyst here at Piper Jaffray, and before I begin, I’m required to point out certain disclosures regarding the relationship between Piper and Exelixis, which are located both at the back of the room and also at the registration desk.

I’ve covered our next presenting company for over eight years believe it or not, here at Piper Jaffray, and I had to say that last 18 month has been a wild rollercoaster ride to say the least. I

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