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I am currently going through my Watch List to ensure that each company still deserves to be on the list. Because of the number of companies on my list, I am going to try to knock out 2 per weekday.

Company name Ascena Retail Group Inc
Stock ticker ASNA
Live stock price [stckqut]ASNA[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Fair
P/E growth Fair
EBIT growth Fair

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Fair
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $14.08
Target stock price (averages with growth) $19.53
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $17.12
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $17.86

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=asna

Ascena Retail Group, Inc. (Ascena) is a national specialty retailer of apparel for women and teen girls operating, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, the Justice; Lane Bryant; maurices; dressbarn; and Catherines. As of July 28, 2013, the Company operated over 3,900 stores throughout the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. Ascena operates under five brands: dressbarn, maurices, Catherines, Lane Bryant and Justice. In October 2013, Ascena Retail Group Inc closed the sale of Fig’s, food gift retailer, to Mason Companies, Inc.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this time, I think that a Confident Investor can cautiously invest in Ascena Retail Group Inc as long as the price is correct. Most of the fundamentals of this company are good but there are some concerns. I am removing Ascena from my Watch List as I feel that I have plenty of better performing retail companies.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor.

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
[s2If current_user_can(s2member_level1)]
In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

Stock price at the time of the calculation: $16.75

Growth: 0.12

Current EPS (TTM): $0.96

P/E: 17

Future EPS Calc: $1.69

Future Stock Price Calc: $28.76

Target stock price: $17.85

I hope that this makes you a better investor. [/s2If]

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I am currently going through my Watch List to ensure that each company still deserves to be on the list. Because of the number of companies on my list, I am going to try to knock out 2 per weekday.

Company name Balchem Corporation
Stock ticker BCPC
Live stock price [stckqut]BCPC[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Fair

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $83.55
Target stock price (averages with growth) $97.67
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $63.3
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $78.96

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=bcpc

Balchem Corporation is engaged in the development, manufacture and marketing of specialty performance ingredients and products for the food, nutritional, feed, pharmaceutical and medical sterilization industries. The Company operates in three segments: Specialty Products, Food, Pharma & Nutrition and Animal Nutrition & Health. The Food, Pharma & Nutrition (FPN) segment provides microencapsulation solutions to a variety of applications in food, pharmaceutical and nutritional ingredients. The Company’s Specialty Products segment operates in industry as ARC Specialty Products. Ethylene oxide, at the 100% level, is sold as a sterilant gas, primarily for use in the health care industry. The Company’s Animal Nutrition & Health segment provides the animal nutrition and health markets with products derived from the Company’s microencapsulation, chelation, and basic choline chloride technologies.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in Balchem Corporation.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor.

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
[s2If current_user_can(s2member_level1)]
In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

Stock price at the time of the calculation: $59.2

Growth: 0.17

Current EPS (TTM): $1.45

P/E: 40

Future EPS Calc: $3.17

Future Stock Price Calc: $127.16

Target stock price: $78.95

I hope that this makes you a better investor. [/s2If]

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There is no doubt that some investors still fear the stock crash of 2008. This is even more common when there are so many discussions about the market being overpriced today. Some advisors are once again suggesting that investors should invest in “safer” businesses.

Much of this fear of a stock crash has more to do with availability bias than anything else. Availability bias is a bias that causes people to overestimate the probability of events that are memorable. Memorable events are further magnified by coverage in the media; therefore, the bias is compounded.

Two prominent examples would be estimations of how likely plane accidents are to occur and how often children are abducted. Both events are quite rare, but the vast majority of people believe that they are more common and worry about them. In reality, people are much more likely to die from an auto accident than a plane accident, and children are more likely to die in an accident than get abducted. The majority of people think the reverse is true. This is because the less likely events are more “available” or more memorable. Looking at the literature or even just the interactions of daily life will reveal thousands of examples of availability bias in action.

So is your fear of another stock crash more to do with availability bias than fact? Are you acting irrationally because of fear that can sometimes be common in the media?stock crash photo

Prudent monitoring of your investments is important. With the strategy that I explain on this site and in my book, The Confident Investor, I teach you to get out of the market before the stock crash is so bad that it destroys your portfolio.  In fact, I specifically do investment trade analysis with the time frame of 2008, just so you know that the system should prevent the worst of dire consequences that occurred during that stock crash (see here, here, and here).

You can purchase my book wherever books are sold such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books A Million. It is available in e-book formats for Nook, Kindle, and iPad.

Photo by zemistor