It's not that Bryan White thinks he's smarter than other investors. Rather, the Fool analyst has an excellent sense of when the echo chamber that is the market is distorting reality. Today, he sees four outstanding buying opportunities in which the market has missed something, read something wrong, or wildly blown something out of proportion.
A Garden party
The New York Knicks are comfortably positioned to make the NBA playoffs. Madison Square Garden is selling out with fans who are suddenly not expecting their team to implode. Best of all, Isiah Thomas seems not to be in a position of influence any longer. Things couldn't be better for the myriad assets of Madison Square Garden (Nasdaq: MSG).
"I think this is one of the best possible investments for large amounts of capital," Bryan says. "Most investors are missing everything there is to this company and how all the assets are performing. If you understand all the assets and you can avoid selling in a panic if the company misses earnings by a penny or Carmelo Anthony sprains an ankle, I think the array of assets almost eliminates long-term downside risk."
The stock trades around $28 per share now, and Bryan's boldly predicting that MSG head James Dolan will take the company private in about two years at $50 per share.
FedEx ready to roll
Although FedEx (NYSE: FDX) isn't a screaming bargain right now, Bryan feels now is the time to start building a position in the shipping leader for long-term wins: "All three divisions -- Express, Ground, and Freight -- are ripe for margin expansion. There are an unusual number of ways for this company to increase its margins."
Additionally, the company has made a lot of investments in its overseas expansion, and it has yet to reap the benefits. "Improvement in any one of its divisions or its international operations seems likely and would mean a nice improvement in the business. If they show promise on more than one, the company could really get rolling," Bryan says.
3-D to be
But the area that really gets Bryan fired up is home electronics, particularly the purveyors of the next generation of televisions. Although the 3-D TV revolution has yet to ignite, Bryan's confident that it's delayed, not defused. Management at Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and hhgregg (NYSE: HGG) made some assumptions about the effect 3-D TV sales would have on earnings, and they missed the mark so far.
"Don't get me wrong; they deserve the beat-down they got," Bryan says. "But then everyone started to pile on -- people aren't going to pay up for 3-D; Internet retail is going to take over; nobody goes to stores to buy DVDs and video games anymore -- and the story got a little out of hand."
Bryan makes the technological parallel to HDTV. Back in the early days, there were only a couple HD channels (primarily showing nature footage that showed off the quality but didn't exactly make for must-see TV), and people didn't immediately see the need to upgrade. Today, HD isn't optional. As Bryan puts it:
The TV cycle will happen, but they have to educate the consumers. Most people don't even know that the 3-D TVs have incredible 2-D quality -- even if you don't want to put on the glasses, you're not paying up much for the capability and you're getting the best picture. And once sports starts going 3-D, everyone is going to need to have it.
And while Best Buy has taken a hit from online retailers eating away at the smaller items on their shelves, both companies can take comfort in the fact that high-end TVs and huge appliances aren't going to be swept up by their Internet rivals for a very, very long time. "It's fun to take someone's mistake, add on rumors, make some inaccurate assumptions, and predict doom and gloom, but that doesn't make for smart investing," Bryan says. "These companies are ridiculously cheap because investors are caught up in the mythology and the innuendo instead of the facts."
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