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Lloyd Blankfein is wrong about Europe
The desperate patchwork of fixes for Europe is deluding the best financial minds, including Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, into believing that the euro is virtually certain to survive.
FORTUNE -- In an interview published last Saturday in the German national newspaper Welt am Sonntag (World on Sunday), Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein declared that the risk of a euro breakup has faded in the past year. Blankfein went on to argue MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - May 21, 2013 11:45 AM ET -
Stocks are too expensive
Equities are actually pricey, just when the "experts" are claiming they're cheap.
FORTUNE -- On Friday, May 3, the S&P 500 powered past 1600 for the first time in its history. The latest surge lifted the index's gains since the start of 2012 to 28.3% and fortified the prevailing view that this mighty market will roar far into the future.
What the optimists -- almost everyone you hear in the analyst community MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - May 7, 2013 5:00 AM ET -
Thriving on the dividend and buyback diet
Why it's more important than ever to focus on the dividends and buybacks that companies return to shareholders.
FORTUNE -- Dividend-paying stocks have generated intense debate in recent years. Has the rising market made their prices too high and their yields too low -- or is a dividend-heavy portfolio still the best way to garner superior returns? For Chris Brightman, that discussion misses the point. Brightman is the head of investment MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Feb 14, 2013 5:00 AM ET -
Do the math: Facebook is not a buy
If Facebook wants to return even 10% annually to shareholders for the next ten years, it would need revenues approaching $70 billion by 2022, and 31% earnings growth annually. Good luck.
FORTUNE -- Facebook's stature with investors, severely diminished following its botched IPO in May, is enjoying a remarkable revival. Since sliding to less than half its offering price in September, the shares have surged 60% to over $28. Its fourth MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Feb 5, 2013 11:17 AM ET -
The simple reason why so many Apple investors got burned
Among Benjamin Graham's nuggets of wisdom: Never judge a stock based on its past twelve months of earnings performance. Big spikes never last.
FORTUNE -- While riding the exercise bike at my health club during lunchtime, I've been pedaling through Benjamin Graham's classic, The Intelligent Investor. Last week, I read a passage that made me pedal faster. In Chapter 12 of the updated 1973 edition (with excellent notes by Wall Street MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Jan 22, 2013 9:52 AM ET -
Sorry, middle class. The VAT may be inevitable.
If the government fails to enact structural reforms in spending, an entirely new source of revenue will be needed. The most likely one is a value-added tax that would crush the middle class.
FORTUNE -- You can't blame middle-income Americans for wondering whether the new "fiscal cliff" deal really protects them from big tax increases in the future. That's essentially what President Obama promised in championing the hike in rates for MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Jan 14, 2013 10:21 AM ET -
The euro crisis no one is talking about: France is in free fall
The euro zone's second-largest economy is suffering more than any other member from a shocking deterioration in competitiveness. And it's doing nothing to stop it.
FORTUNE -- Given investors' confidence in its sovereign debt, and its image as Germany's principal partner in the sturdy, sensible "northern" eurozone, you'd think that France endures as the co-guardian of the endangered single currency. Indeed, the rate on France's ten-year government bonds stands at just MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Jan 9, 2013 9:26 AM ET -
4 solid muni bond bets
Municipal bonds still have a role to play for smart savers.
FORTUNE -- There are legitimate reasons to fear a municipal bond bubble, as my colleague Allan Sloan warns in his column. A torrent of money is pouring into the sector, hiking up prices and lowering yields. But if you're smart about your strategy, investing in the $3.7 trillion market for tax-exempt bonds can still provide strong and safe after-tax returns.
Here MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Dec 12, 2012 5:00 AM ET -
Alexandra Lebenthal: The new queen of Wall Street
Irrepressible muni bond scion Alexandra Lebenthal is building a thriving new family firm.
FORTUNE -- The history of Wall Street is marked by the rise and disappearance of famous firms and the loss of their proud traditions. In the past two decades Salomon Brothers, E.F. Hutton, and Paine Webber, to name a few, were absorbed by megabanks that retired their names. The trend quickened in the financial crisis as the likes MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Dec 12, 2012 5:00 AM ET -
How to turn customers into fans
A new book offers lessons from Vernon Hill, the most creative, contrarian, tradition-busting banking executive on the planet.
FORTUNE -- Three years ago, at a Manhattan cocktail party sprinkled with Wall Street celebrities, I became intrigued by a figure standing alone, nattily attired in a gold collar pin and two-tone dress shirt, cradling a Yorkshire terrier. Instead of working the room, the gentleman was feeding the Edwardian-coiffed canine hors d'oeuvres. I MORE
Shawn Tully, senior editor-at-large - Nov 30, 2012 10:26 AM ET
Shawn Tully has been writing feature stories for Fortune since 1980. He's covered stories as varied as the Vatican's finances, the exile of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, and the disastrous merger between Guidant and Boston Scientific. He specializes in banking, federal budget and spending issues, and health care. Tully holds a B.A. in English from Princeton University, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and a master's in Applied Economics from the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.
