The Resurrection of General Motors

Mention the American auto industry and most people will still respond with pessimism about its future. Any time the majority takes a singular position with respect to business, my natural tendency as a value-oriented investor is to look closer. After all, when investors are optimists they have a habit of paying too much for assets. When pessimism exists, odds are good that you can find an attractive price.

While I've yet to invest in General Motors (GM), the shares sit trading at $20 a share and less than 8x earnings. And if you believe that the American auto companies are embarking on a slow resurrection of sorts, GM is an even more attractive opportunity than valuation ratios suggest. GM recently reported second-quarter earnings of $1.5 billion, or 90 cents a share. Profits declined 41% from the year-ago quarter. Unsurprisingly, the decline was a result of weak performance from Europe and South America. Yet even under this scenario GM made a tidy profit relative to its valuation....391 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.

Read the full story and get access to the Real Money Pro trading floor.

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.

Except as otherwise indicated, quotes are delayed. Quotes delayed at least 20 minutes for all exchanges. Market Data provided by Interactive Data. Company fundamental data provided by Morningstar. Earnings and ratings provided by Zacks. Mutual fund data provided by Valueline. ETF data provided by Lipper. Powered and implemented by Interactive Data Managed Solutions.

TheStreet Ratings updates stock ratings daily. However, if no rating change occurs, the data on this page does not update. The data does update after 90 days if no rating change occurs within that time period.

IDC calculates the Market Cap for the basic symbol to include common shares only. Year-to-date mutual fund returns are calculated on a monthly basis by Value Line and posted mid-month.