In the spirit of keeping up with current events and providing a contrarian take on popular consensus I wrote the following piece about China.

Sometimes being a dividend investor sucks. As part of my overall investing strategy, I state that 'dividends are half the journey'. This essentially rules out any potential investments that pay a very small, and/or non-growing dividend. There are a few stocks, with stories that I believe in long term that were eliminated from my watchlist because of this fact.

Starbucks has lost its mojo. Customers are not coming back with the same frequency and new customers are proving harder to find. The world’s leading drug company unintentionally brought this on themselves when they forgot who they were.

JMBA's new line of Ready To Go drinks have a lot of potential. Their partnership with Nestle got them instant global distribution. Remember what happened when JSDA hit the shelves at Target? Learn more...

In the eyes of many, the Oracle of Omaha -- whose Berkshire Hathaway holding company owns or has major stakes in many iconic brands, including Fruit of the Loom, Kraft Foods and Johnson & Johnson -- looks like a brand investor...

Is Starbucks the next AOL? Maybe. There is talk about a turnaround for the brand, but so far, everything I have heard from the company does not seem to indicate what I would be looking for in a possible turnaround.

Starbucks finally admits McDonalds and Dunkin are the competition, in an SEC filing... too much

This is a follow up to Vitaliy's initial blog post on Starbucks' European operations.

Vitaliy Katsenelson shares his international experience with Starbucks stores. The discussion that follows the post is very interesting, especially the analysis of the Austrian market.

Rumors of Starbucks' demise are greatly overdone, but that doesn't mean you should buy the stock.

A dozen out-of-favor stocks that could rebound this year according to Barron's.

Some great calls and some really lousy ones....

A look at investors unrealistic expectations and realistic earnings in a lot of stocks.

Three things I've taken away from Andrei Schleifer's book "Inefficient Markets" and how they relate to recent market events.

Todd Sullivan looks at an analyst call on Starbucks that confuses the price of a stock with the value in it.