By Stephen Simpson:

Quick! Name a company that manufactures the labels that go on the food, beverages, or consumer goods that you buy at the store every week. The odds are very good that, unless you work in the field, you cannot name one. Product labels are ubiquitous and a $30 billion global industry, but a hugely fragmented market. Multi-Color (Nadsaq: LABL) is looking to change that through a combination of innovative internal product development and acquisitions.

Labels Are Everywhere…

Maybe it’s too obvious to point out that almost everything on a store shelf has a label on it. Not only are labels legally required on many products, but labels represent a final marketing touch that companies can use to make their products pop out from the competition and draw the attention of shoppers. While this is a large business, $30 billion worldwide and $9 billion in North America, it is incredibly fragmented

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By Emerging Money:

By Joseph Hogue CFA

The Argentine government seems to be borrowing from the Venezuelan playbook as of late, and investors would do well to continue the analogy in their analyses of possible investments in 2012, if not beyond.

Intervention in the currency market and a deepening loss of confidence in the peso has created multiple currency markets and expectations of further depreciation against the dollar.

To stem the depreciation and accompanying inflation, the country must sell its foreign reserves, which are low by regional standards. This is particularly important as Argentina, unlike Venezuela, is largely unable to raise funds through the bond market because of a default early in the decade and the lack of

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By Insider Monkey:

Morgan Stanley analysts Ken Zerbe, Josh Wheeler, Jonathan Katz, and Giselle Cheung published a report entitled “Mid Cap Banks” on December 9, 2011. They believe that these banks are currently “in a much better position than the market gives them credit for”. These banks have little, if any, exposure to the European crisis and have been “moving on macro events”. Overall, net interest margin for most of the banks is expected to decrease whereas net interest income is likely to remain stable. Loan growth may improve slightly and the share buybacks is going to triple.

We are discussing the stocks in a series of articles. This is the second (see Part 1).

Cullen/Frost Bankers (CFR) has been given an underweight rating by Morgan Stanley (MS) despite the company’s solid credit quality. Its net interest margin will continue to decline due to a decrease in asset yields and an increase in

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Among the BRIC countries, Russia is probably the one that has most disappointed investors, to the point that some critics say that its economy is not strong enough to justify its presence in the group. The strength of Russia’s economy depends heavily on commodities like oil and gas and in the past three years was hit hard, first by the global financial crisis and then again by the euro crisis.Despite this, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit report, the Russian GDP is forecast to grow at least 4% annually between 2012 and 2015, and this is going to benefit consumer goods producers such as The Coca Cola Co. (KO) and Pepsi Co (PEP). Euromonitor International estimates that Russia comes in second, behind India, as offering the highest growth potential for soft drinks sales in 2012.

Pepsi first entered the Soviet Union in 1973 while Coca Cola didn’t make

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By Roger Nusbaum:

We executed a (mostly) across the board trade for large accounts on Thursday buying ASX Limited (ASXFF.PK), which is the stock exchange in Australia. The trade obviously increases our exposure to financial stocks and takes us back to Australia after having been out for about seven months.

First from the top down I have been concerned that Australia is at risk for some sort of housing problem although with a far less severe magnitude as occurred in the US and so I sold our holding in ANZ Bank (ANZBY.PK) for large accounts and at the same time sold our Aussie ETFs for their large exposure to the banks. ANZBY is down 13% since that sale and the ETFs are down a little more which is nice but I would not call the sale a major transaction.

Going forward I think housing can still be a drag and so I think

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By Osman Gulseven:

Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) is a diversified semiconductor company. The company is a major equipment and service provider to liquid crystal displays and solar photovoltaic industries worldwide. Founded in 1967, Santa Clara-headquartered AMAT is one of the leading players in the semiconductor and solar sectors. The company is doing fine and was able to double its earnings this year. However, the stock lost 22% in 2011, primarily due to the over-supply concerns in the solar industry.

As of the time of writing, AMAT stock was trading at $10.7 with a 52-week range of $10 – $17. It has a market cap of $14 billion. Trailing twelve month [ttm] P/E ratio is 7.4, and forward P/E ratio is 9. P/B, P/S, and P/CF ratios stand at 2.6, 1.4, and 5.9, respectively. Operating margin is 22.8%, and net profit margin is 18.3%. The company does not have any significant debt issues. Debt/equity

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By Emerging Money:

Brazil is the economic powerhouse within Latin America with a GDP roughly the size of the rest of the investable region combined. Despite a sharp decline in industrial production and GDP growth in the latter half of 2011, growth should pick up incrementally in 2012.

Interest rates in excess of 10% throughout 2012 will keep drawing foreign capital and put upward pressure on real-denominated assets.

Brazil is no stranger to capital and investment controls. Although global economic weakness should keep both inflation and exchange rates in line, beware renewed punitive taxes on foreign investment in the latter half of the year.

While opportunities for

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By Insider Monkey:

Morgan Stanley (MS) analysts Ken Zerbe, Josh Wheeler, Jonathan Katz and Giselle Cheung published a report entitled “Mid Cap Banks” on December 9, 2011. They believe that these banks are currently “in a much better position than the market gives them credit for.” These banks have little, if any, exposure to the European crisis and have been “moving on macro events.” Overall, net interest margin for most of the banks is expected to decrease whereas net interest income is likely to remain stable. Loan growth may improve slightly and the share buybacks are going to triple.

This is the first of a series of articles discussing the stocks:

Associated Banc-Corp (ASBC) has been given an equal-weight rating by Morgan Stanley. In the third quarter, average loans grew by 2.9%. Morgan Stanley expects strong growth in its Commercial and Industrial business, while residential mortgage will play a smaller part in 2012.

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By Robert Lewis:

Calamos Global Dynamic Income Fund is a closed-end fund traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CHW. It is part of a group of closed end funds managed by Calamos Investments. The other closed-end funds are Calamos Convertible Opportunities and Income Fund (CHI), Calamos Convertible and High Income (CHY), Calamos Global Total Return (CGO) and Calamos Strategic Total Income Fund (CSG). CHW commenced operations on June 27, 2007. Calamos had launched its first mutual fund in 1985 and its first closed end fund in 2002.

As of October 31, 2011, CHW had gross assets of $732,475,940, of which 37% were borrowed funds of $197,741,191 leaving net assets of $ 534,734,749. As of December 30, 2011, the fund sold at a discount from net asset value of 16.78%. The discount fully reflects its prior performance. Since inception on 6/27/07 its market price had declined by 5.03% even if

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By John Singer:

The analytics are always ambiguous.

Pfizer (PFE) spent $114 billion in 2000 for a hostile takeover of Warner-Lambert, trumping American Home Products in a bidding war to acquire the $130 billion in sales Lipitor delivered during its 14 years on the market, which came to its fabled end on November 30, 2011. But acquisitions are not strategy, and there can be a heavy price to pay in mistaking components of strategy, with strategy itself. On the other side of the fence dividing the Lipitor story are broader lessons in systemic failure.

Between 2000-2010, the value of shares in Pfizer steadily worked their way into the lower right corner of the charts, ending the decade down by almost 60 percent relative to the S&P 500. This comes out to around $115 billion in market capitalization lost since the day former Pfizer Chief Executive, William Steere, broke out his “Cheshire grin” at

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