Out Fox The $treet

It might sound counterintuitive to buy a company after it encounters multiple operational issues, but in some situations the quality of assets and management team warrant such a move. In the case of Laredo Petroleum Holdings ( NYSE: LPI     ) , the company has fantastic acreage in the suddenly hot Permian Basin. Note that Pioneer Natural Resources ( NYSE: PXD     ) has suggested the Permian Basin contains more than 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent, making it the largest domestic oil field. Laredo also has an executive team that has developed and successfully sold multiple exploration companies in the past.   Read the full article here . Disclosure: No position mentioned. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

With the recent run-up in Carrizo Oil & Gas ( NASDAQ: CRZO     ), you are probably wondering if the stock has any room for future gains. Balancing long-term potential and the risk of losing 100% in gains can be a difficult task. The company is a small exploration firm focused on the production of oil in the Eagle Ford Shale, Niobrara Shale, and natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. In addition, it recently completed the first well in the Utica Shale. Read the full article here . Disclosure: Long CRZO. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

After reporting earnings back on November 6th, Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc (CRZO) plunged over the next week. While the company beat earnings estimates, the market was clearly disappointed with some of the reduced production estimates even if it was due to previously announced joint ventures. The company is an oil and natural gas exploration and production company focused on the shale plays: Eagle Ford, Niobrara, Marcellus, and now the Utica. One has to wonder if Carrizo isn't running into some of the investor's frustrations as with Halcon Resources (HK) and SandRidge Energy (SD) . The numerous joint ventures along with previous sales of Barnett Shale assets make the company difficult to value. With Wall Street focused specifically on quarterly production growth numbers, the constant shifting of assets leads to confusion. Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: Long CRZO. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

A little over eight months ago we wrote this article about some under the radar Eagle Ford Shale plays. While Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO) and C&J Energy Services (CJES) might be better known stocks, both have struggled even as the liquids rich basin has produced strong earnings for the companies. The market clearly has lumped both of them into the nat gas price collapse. The Houston Chronicle had some interesting stats regarding the Eagle Ford relayed from the Energy Symposium: Director of energy research at ITG Investment Research expects production to reach 1 million barrels a day by 2016 Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: Long CJES and CRZO. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

This stock was crushed today, down over 5% at the close. On top of that Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO) is down over 33% from last years high. The main issue is that the market still sees it as a natural gas play, but clearly the company has already moved to mainly oil. Per the interview below on Mad Money , the CEO reconfirms that the company is already 60% oil and will hit 80% oil by the end of the year. The most interesting part of the interview was the prediction that 2013 revenues could hit $750M with the current rig count. Incredible considering analysts forecast something in the $600M range and considering the company just sold a large chunk of Barnett Shale production. Also worth noting is that the company will be throwing off cash in 2013 though the CEO wants to add rigs once the company reaches that level. All in all very positive news about a stock I was becoming concerned about. Considering the oil focused stocks have recently hit new highs and especially trade above ...

After a bad 2011, this year got off to a fantastic start with the model seeing a 25% gain in January easily outperforming the 4.4% gain for the S&P500. The model spent most of the month accumulating cheap stocks in order to take advantage of the market rallying against the proverbial 'wall of worry'. January was an interesting month with stocks rising even in the face of what appeared like continued negative news out of Europe. With the continued focus on Greece, most investors stayed out of the stock market and missed that yields on Italian and Spanish bonds saw dramatic declines. The ability to isolate the problems to Greece and Portugal to a lessor extent were a big relief to a market pricing in a European blowup in December. In addition, the decline in emerging markets inflation was a big benefit to the under performing stock class in the new year. Specifically fast growing countries like China and India saw multi year lows in inflation rates allowing monetary polic...

After a strong 2009 and 2010, 2011 was a year to forget for this portfolio. The market hit highs around the end of April and this model was soaring to new heights at the time. Many of the holdings had valuations nowhere near the 2007/08 peaks or even close to what would normally be considered rich. Regardless, leverage was reduced since some gains were significant. Then, unfortunately most of the stocks collapsed and even in a few cases approached 2009 lows. With too much leverage left, the model was hit very hard. The good news is that valuations started the year as attractive as during the financial collapse of 2009. 2012 Outlook Portfolio Construction The portfolio remains overweight on the global growth theme. Most of the stocks in this sector trade as if emerging markets are headed towards a recession instead of continued growth. The biggest challenge to our investment strategy in 2011 was the major inflation fears in emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil. As 201...

Back in July of last year, I did a series of articles about companies with relatively cheap valuations that were expecting the fastest earnings growth in 2012 (See 1, 2, 3, 4). These companies offered the potential for huge stock gains if earnings estimates were met. Unfortunately, just as I wrote those articles the global economy went into a tailspin due to the European debt crisis and stock prices collapsed along with the earnings estimates of the majority of those stocks Now as global stock markets appear ready to head upwards, it seemed like a good time to revisit this list. It is always a good idea to check the outcome of a previous concept. How did the stocks perform? Were earnings estimates met? What about the valuation now? Read full article on Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: Long CRZO, MTW, and TEX. Please review the disclaimer page for more details.

Carrizo Oil & Gas (CRZO) achieved its oil production per day goal by reaching the objective of 5,000 net barrels by the end of 2011. In fact, production surpassed the goals by 20% with the oil production on December 26th reaching 6,040 barrels. CRZO has had a challenging time of meeting quarterly targets so this should be seen as significant news. Not only that, but it is already forecasting 7K barrels from the Eagle Ford alone by the end of 2012. This doesn't include anything from the Niobrara or any other fields. Amazingly the stock is flat for the day as the markets ignores the good news. Magnum Resources soared 17% yesterday on similar news. Not sure what else the market wanted, but this provides the new investor an opportunity to jump onto a proved fast growing producer at a cheap valuation. Details per PR: "It may have appeared optimistic when we announced our 5,000 bopd target in mid-2010 given that we were producing approximately 400 bopd at the time and...

Most investors have probably already heard about the new oil potential in Ohio via the Utica Shale. Great article in Forbes about the potential for thousands of jobs in this struggling manufacturing state. Would imagine that many a laid off employee in the manufacturing sector could potentially shift to the oil services sector. Sure it'll take training, but the skill set would appear similar. Now if Obama's job ideas would just include money for retraining unemployed workers instead of short term tax breaks. Why does the government always come up short term ideas? Or maybe Obama could just come up with an energy plan to take advantage of the new abundant oil and nat gas resources in the US. Sure he can for through with his green energy plan, but that is a long term plan for 2020 or 2030. What this country needs is a plan to make it to the 2020s living off the fuels already available.  On a cautionary note, the more I read about the oil shale plays including our recent in...

Interesting statement from Rio Tinto (RIO) ahead of an investor seminar. In summary, RIO continues to see strong demand for commodities not only now, but over the next 10 to 20 years. On the other hand, supply constraints remain due to regulatory issues, labor shortages, and geology constraints. Based on continued strong demand and supply issues, one would think the stock would be trading towards not only recent highs but also all times highs. That person would be very wrong. RIO is in fact down some 20% from February/April highs and not even close to the highs hit in 2008. The stock market disconnect just doesn't add up. Sure some commodities like Copper have plunged in the last few weeks, but prices remain close to all time highs. Clearly still at prices that suggest very healthy profits. One could easily argue that stock prices never reflected the commodity prices hit in the Spring. Even more precarious is the surging stock prices on some momentum stocks like Apple (AAPL)...

A few weeks back CNBC sent anchor and  Mad Mone y host Jim Cramer up to the Bakken shale to get an on the ground view of the amazing changes taking place in the area. North Dakota is booming with an overwhelming demand for employees. The companies leading the drilling efforts such as Continental Resources ( CLR ) and Brigham Exploration ( BEXP ) have benefited handsomely from the massive growth in that area. Though known by many industry experts and investors, another area exists in southern Texas that might match or exceed the oil produced from the Bakken. That area is called the Eagle Ford Shale.  Read the full article at Seeking Alpha.  Disclosure: Long CJES and CRZO. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

This is the fourth and final article focusing on the stocks with the fastest earnings growth rates for 2012 according to the SteetAuthority report . The first three articles focused on Take Two Interactive ( TTWO ), Patriot Coal ( PCX ), Accuride ( ACW ), and Meritor ( MTOR ). The final article will focus on the better remaining options. All of the companies on the list expect earnings to soar more than 100% from fiscal 2011 to 2012. If the numbers are hit, than any of the picks could provide solid stock returns. The remaining list includes Allstate Corp ( ALL ), with a market cap around $16B, all the way to SMART Modular Tech ( SMOD ), with only $580M in market cap. All of them have relatively low forward PEs considering they expect earnings to expand by triple digits. The key is to determine which stocks have the potential to expand on these earnings beyond 2012. One-off situations such as ALL aren't as appealing. Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclo...