I recently delineated my core thesis for Dell Inc. (DELL) in Why Dell Is A Must-Buy: The Comprehensive Bull Thesis. The mainstream viewpoint is that Dell is a laggard in the dying PC industry; my viewpoint is that Dell's business model is misunderstood and consequently, it is inappropriate to pigeonhole it as "just another PC company." While PC makers are undoubtedly facing tough times, Dell's valuation is so low that you can view it as an enterprise solutions provider (think IBM) with a PC division thrown in for free. Many commented, requesting that I analyze Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) in the same "value investing" context, so below is that analysis.

The Collapse That Never Was

When you look at Dell and Hewlett-Packard's stock charts, it's fairly easy to assume that they're goners. Over a one-year period where the S&P 500 (SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF: SPY) saw a solid

Dell is a must-buy. That's all, folks! Thanks for stopping by.

Okay, just kidding - there's a lot more to the Dell Story than that.

Background: State of the Nasdaq

If you'll permit me a gross oversimplification of the tech stock (QQQ) landscape, there are essentially two types of tech stocks/companies. There's "old tech," AKA anything PC-related, and there's "new tech," AKA anything mobile-computing or social-media related.

What's the primary difference? Well, the first group is cheap. The second group is expensive.

So while everyone else is chasing momo growth stocks like LinkedIn (LNKD), Facebook (FB), Zynga (ZNGA), and Groupon (GRPN), I'll take a nice nap in the bargain bin with Dell (DELL), Intel (INTC), Cisco (CSCO), Seagate Technology (STX), and Microsoft (MSFT).

I've articulated my bullish stance on "old tech" several times. My core thesis is based on three bullet

There are a seemingly infinite number of cultural divides where people can be broadly classified into one of two groups. Football or baseball. Republican or Democrat. Coffee or tea. Dogs or cats. And perhaps most critically of all, Coke or Pepsi?

Anecdotally speaking, few people I know are switch-hitters. If you're a Coke drinker, a Pepsi is a meager substitute; if you're a Pepsi drinker, a Coke just doesn't hit the spot. As a native Texan, I must profess that my love is split between Coke and hometown icon Dr Pepper (DPS). But in the investing world, Dr Pepper comes in a distant third to the two major beverage giants Coca-Cola (KO) and PepsiCo (PEP).

I honestly can't stand the taste of Pepsi. And ironically, that's one of the reasons I prefer it as an investment.

Below, I'll be analyzing various reasons why I prefer Pepsi stock

Michael Dell, founder and CEO of eponymous Dell Inc (DELL), was unfairly vilified in a recent MarketWatch article. John Shinal had this to say about Dell's performance as CEO:

At what point will Michael Dell realize he wasn't the right choice to reinvigorate his namesake company? Let's hope soon, for the sake of Dell Inc. investors. Since he returned as chief executive in April 2007, the company's share price has fallen by more than 50%.

That's a severe underperformance compared with the broader market for technology stocks, as the Nasdaq Composite Index (QQQ) is up more than 20% during that time.

Shinal goes on to cite the omnipresent "Apple (AAPL) killed the PC" claim, which I believe is greatly exaggerated. Regardless of your view on the future of the PC, or even your view of the future of Dell, there's a teachable moment here.

Share

When Yahoo (YHOO) stole the talented Marissa Mayer away from competitor Google (GOOG), I was quite interested. I hadn't paid Yahoo much attention previously, but after doing a little digging, I discovered that the shares were pretty cheap. Given Yahoo's enormous userbase (700 million strong), I concluded that if Marissa Mayer could leverage Yahoo's strengths, the stock might have significant upside. However, I recommended that investors wait until the Alibaba deal closed to give the proverbial dust time to settle; this would allow investors a chance not only to see Mayer's initial moves, but also to see how the market reevaluates Yahoo's price after the distribution of cash.

Well, the wait-and-see approach I recommended still looks to be the right one. Marissa Mayer has made some interesting changes - like removing Yahoo's stock price from the company's internal website to encourage employees to focus

Recently, I published two articles analyzing Cisco (CSCO). On July 25th, after Cisco experienced a strong selloff to below $15.50, I concluded that Cisco was in deep value territory and offered significant upside. Cisco is a company with a mountain of cash and strong free cash flow, but the market has had fun beating up on it over the past few months. On August 3rd, when Cisco closed at $16.35, I commented on an underappreciated aspect of the NDS acquisition, reiterating my stance on Cisco's valuation.

Since then, Cisco has had quite a nice run up, closing on 8/9/2012 at the highest level seen since May.

CSCO data by YCharts

The strong performance was mostly the result of analyst upgrades. Emphasis mine:

Goldman Sachs added Cisco Systems Inc to its conviction buy list saying its enterprise networking and switching business is growing at a fast

Many readers have asked me to delineate the exact criteria I use for fundamental analysis. That's a somewhat difficult question to answer generally; while there are a lot of common factors like "wide moat" and common techniques like discounted cash flow analysis, I use different criteria for analyzing different companies across different industries.

What I can do, however, is offer some investing adages you can follow when constructing your portfolio. Most or all of them will be twists on classic adages. Today, we'll start off with:

Skyler's Investing Adage #1: Don't Buy What You Don't Know

This adage is obviously based on the now-famous Lynchism "Buy What You Know." Even though Peter Lynch may not have meant that phrase literally, many investors have taken it to heart and bought only stocks they "know." This has led to unfortunate events like retail investors lining up to buy into

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is a perfect example of why serious investors must always conduct their own in-depth research rather than relying simply on the word of others.

At first glance, J&J looks expensive. Go to Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, or a similar website. You'll see that the quoted P/E is 21.73 and that the quoted EPS is $3.14. Dividend growth investors looking to pick up stocks "on sale" might immediately cross J&J off their list. But doing so would be shortsighted.

Take a look at the following chart. Notice the huge divergence in free cash flow and net income over the past few years.

JNJ Free Cash Flow TTM data by YCharts

The situation at J&J is similar to what Microsoft (MSFT) just experienced when they reported a first-ever loss. The loss at Microsoft was due to a write-down and is, if you will, only

In recent years, the art of stock picking has fallen somewhat out of favor. Many investors now prefer passive or "index" investing for various reasons.

I'm certainly not opposed to index investing; in fact, I believe that it can certainly be beneficial for investors in various categories. For example, I recently advised a teenager who saved $500 from working a summer job to invest his savings in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which is obviously an index fund.

Despite the fact that index funds are certainly appropriate in certain situations, it troubles me when I see advice like the following:

Aim to own at least 3 or 4 non-correlating asset classes ... buy only index funds. - Kyle Bumpus, AmateurAssetAllocator.com

I'm not completely against index investing. I personally hold both the Vanguard REIT ETF (VNQ) and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM). Nonetheless, I think

Ever since Einhorn announced his short of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR), the stock has gotten a pretty bad rap. Despite falling over 80% since September 2011, shorts made up 25% of the float as of mid-July. For the reasons I'm about to outline below, at the current price, GMCR might be a good pickup.

My goal here isn't to analyze every aspect of GMCR's business, which has already been publicly picked apart by hundreds of investors. The best recent analysis I can find is Seth Golden's very thorough article Green Mountain Coffee Roasters: The Afterthoughts. The important points are:

• Cash flow is becoming positive
• Partnerships with Starbucks and Folgers, new product launches, and brand loyalty will mitigate effects of patent expiry
• EPS growth will continue at a moderate rate

Seth's ultimate conclusion:

My overall hypothesis for GMCR is that the shorts had it right, but only

In the current low-yield environment, many traditionally defensive investors - like retirees - are turning to unconventional tactics to generate income. Stocks that provide high dividend, like the mREIT Annaly Capital Management (NLY), have been attracting far more interest. As a very nonscientific measure of this level of interest, consider that here on Seeking Alpha, almost 14,000 users are signed up for Real-Time Alerts on Annaly - versus only 4,000 for beverage stalwart PepsiCo (PEP).

Before following the yield crowd into mREITs like Annaly, it's important to know what you're getting into. I'm honored to partner with the very well-regarded Regarded Solutions, Seeking Alpha's most popular retirement author and resident Annaly expert, to bring you a two-part series on Annaly. Here, I'm highlighting some areas of concern that potential or current NLY investors would do well to pay attention to. In Regarded's article, he'll be responding

"Dividend stocks are overvalued."

"Dividend stocks are undervalued."

"Dividend stocks are in a bubble."

"Dividend stocks are the only stocks worth considering."

These are all sentences that have been uttered by stock market commentators. Guess what they all have in common? They're all worthless.

I believe dividend growth investing is a great strategy, but I also believe that overgeneralizations are generally bad, if you'll excuse my slightly circular logic.

When talking about "dividend stocks," it's important to realize that the majority of major stocks are indeed dividend stocks. According to an excellent analysis by FactSet, which thoroughly covers all things dividends, 400 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 (SPY) pay dividends as of June this year, making 80% of the S&P 500 "dividend stocks." And according to Heartland Funds, as of December 31, 2009, 45% of the stocks in the Russell 2000 Index

I've always thought that "buy what you know" is a little shortsighted and should be flipped the other way around: "know what you're buying." As an investor, you should always strive to know what you're investing in.

It's not always feasible to fully examine the businesses you choose to invest in—while I own several computers with Intel (INTC) processors, I can't exactly go explore an Intel fab. However, in certain sectors, like retail, it's pretty easy to literally know what you're buying.

Certain retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT) are obviously competent just based on the brand name, but for others, call me old-fashioned, I think it's important to actually walk into a store before you buy one. Thankfully, there are multiple Kohl's (KSS) stores near where I live, which helped me make up my mind to pick up some shares. Outlined below is my investing thesis; it combines

Intel (INTC) is one of my highest conviction holdings by portfolio weight, so I like following developments and analysis from bulls and bears alike. Seeking Alpha contributor Ashraf Eassa recently published an excellent article titled 3 Reasons to Love Intel's Management. In a discussion in the comments section, he brought up the following:

Intel's process advantage will only compound the hurt that a new, smartphone-focused microarchitecture that Intel can put on the ARM ecosystem. Oh, yeah, and the smartphone chips will now be on the "tick-tock" setup -- no more waiting 5 years for a micro-architecture refresh.

Intel's "tick tock" setup is an important issue for investors in Intel and competitors like Qualcomm (QCOM) and ARM Holdings (ARMH), yet it doesn't get enough coverage, in my opinion. For those unfamiliar with the term, here's an introduction from Wikipedia:

"Tick-Tock" is a model adopted by

I recently wrote an article examining repatriation tax impacts (or rather, lack thereof) of the recent NDS acquisition by Cisco (CSCO). My fellow SeekingAlpha contributor Tradevestor commented, bringing up an issue that's often raised by investors:

But something (someone) about CSCO and MSFT bothers most of the investors - Chambers and Ballmer.. The company and stock have gone nowhere under them in the recent years

After further discussion, Tradevestor and I decided to collaborate and write about Microsoft (MSFT) together. Here, I'll be analyzing the bull case for Microsoft, and in Tradevestor's article, he'll be analyzing the bear case. Hopefully, after reading both of our articles, you'll have a thorough understanding of the arguments both in favor of and against Microsoft.

I'll start off with Tradevestor's thesis: that the company and stock have gone nowhere. Let's start with the stock price. At first glance,

As the old adage goes, the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Given the current market, let's add another certainty to that list: uncertainty.

Market sentiment is generally bearish, and stocks are at their most hated level in 27 years. Uncertainty and fear are widespread, and for good reason - there's the European sovereign debt crisis, rampant U.S. unemployment, and the looming fiscal cliff. While I believe these issues will be resolved in time, the general fear is understandable.

With that in mind, this article is going to analyze a sector that is popular in fearful times due to its defensive qualities. That sector, of course, is the utilities sector. This analysis is being conducted in collaboration with fellow Seeking Alpha contributor Joe Springer, who can always be counted on to provide solid, well-reasoned analysis on any issue he chooses to tackle.

Suffice to

"Our elephant gun has been reloaded, and my trigger finger is itchy." - Warren Buffett

I had some cash burning a hole in my portfolio's pocket, so I started looking around for a value. I found one, and - shocker - it's trading at its 52-week high.

Now, regular readers know that I'm the type of guy who "buys the dips." Some of my recent acquisitions this summer include:

• Seagate Technology (STX), picked up at a cost basis of $23.20 after selling off from a high of over $32
• Intel (INTC), which I nabbed in the $26-$27 range after a sell-off from a $29 high
• Dell (DELL), grabbed at a price of $12.22, down significantly from the 52-week high of over $18
• Ford Motor Company (F), grabbed at an even $9 after trading at $13 earlier this year
• McDonald's (MCD), picked up for $89