Cotton Concerns
As Real Money Pro subscribers have come to realize over the last year, I tend to put a number of things under the microscope when looking at an industry or company. One of the key factors that I look at first is the company's operating margin profile and the prospects for margin expansion. As I learned years ago when covering machinery and cyclical companies, the outlook for a company's operating margins are an indicator of where its earnings per share are likely to head.
As any student of rudimentary accounting knows, calculating a company's operating profit means tallying its revenues against its costs (cost to manufacture, market and sell as well as any research and development efforts). That's why I tend to look at the factors that influence the cost of manufacturing....365 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.
There’s no substitute for a trading floor to get great ideas, so Jim Cramer created a better one at Real Money and blogs there exclusively. We then added legendary hedge fund manager, Doug Kass, with his exclusive Daily Diary and best investing ideas. Staffed with more than 4 dozen investing pros, money managers, journalists and analysts, Real Money Pro gives you a flood of opinions, analysis and actionable trading advice found nowhere else, and allows you to interact directly with each expert.
Already a Subscriber? Please login.
