Earlier today, Legg Mason, Inc. (LM) reported revenues of $659.9 million in its fiscal second quarter, up 8% sequentially thanks to an increase in the percentage of higher yielding equity assets and higher performance fees.

On a year-over-year basis, revenues were down 32% because of a decline in fees earned due to lower average Assets Under Management (AUM).

Operating margins improved to 21.0% from 20.4% in the prior quarter, spurred by higher assets under management. However, it declined significantly from 29.1% year over year.

Net income came in at $45.8 million, compared to $50.1 million in the first quarter and a net loss of $108.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

EPS of 30 cents easily beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 21 cents.

As of Sep 30, 2009, AUM was $702.7 billion, up 7% sequentially from $656.9 billion, driven by market appreciation and reduced outflows. However, on a year-over-year basis, AUM was down

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Asset manager Eaton Vance Corp.’s (EV) reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $31.2 million, a decline of 37% year-over-year as performance was affected by sluggish fee income amid weak fund inflows. Excluding a charge associated with an IPO, earnings per share came in at 28 cents, matching the Zacks Consensus Estimate. The company stated that quarterly revenue slumped 19% year over year to $228.4 million as investment advisory and administration fees declined 17% to $175.2 million. Distribution and service fees also fell 31% and 26% to $21.7 million and $29.9 million respectively. The slump in fees was caused by a decline in assets under management (AUM) to $143.7 billion, compared to $155.8 billion in the year-ago quarter as clients adopted a cautious approach towards closed-end funds. Eaton’s AUM was particularly affected by equity fund assets, which contracted 21% year over year to $52.9 billion. However, sequentially ...

Legg Mason Partners Capital A (SCCAX) seeks capital appreciation. It is non-diversified.

The fund invests primarily in equity securities of US firms ranging from small capitalization to large companies. It may also invest in equities of foreign issuers, as well as equity-linked and fixed-income securities.

Google Inc. (GOOG), Travelers Co.s Inc. (TRV) and Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR) are among the fund’s key holdings.

Legg Mason Partners Mid Cap Core A (SBMAX) was incepted in September 1998. The investment seeks long-term growth of capital.

The fund invests in equity securities of medium-sized companies within the range of components of the S&P MidCap 400 index or the Russell Midcap index at the time of purchase. It follows a disciplined core investment strategy, combining in-depth fundamental and quantitative analysis.

The fund has been managed by Brian M. Angerame since May 2005. Angerame has over 14

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If you want to do well in today’s market, ignore this rally. Pay all your attention instead to the only class of companies you need to know about. I call these companies the “best of breed.”  They’re probably the least-talked about companies in the market. Many investors are missing the boat. And that’s a shame.

This has been a tough quarter for companies. Compared to last year’s second quarter, profit is down roughly 31 percent and revenue is down even more. Wall Street thought it was going to be even worse. So in one of the worst quarters ever, the market has rallied.

Investors learn all the wrong lessons from a rally like this. Nothing about it makes sense. The smallest companies are outgunning the biggest one. The most heavily shorted stocks are doing better than the least shorted stocks. The companies with the worst analyst ratings are outshining the ones with

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Slothful Investing: How to Beat the Markets With a Lazy Portfolio

by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist

MarketWatch columnist Paul B. Farrell loves to tout the performance of his eight Lazy Portfolios.

They earn their name by being comprised of nothing but low-cost, passively managed index funds - properly diversified - that require nothing but an annual rebalance.

In his latest column, he gushes about how his lazy strategy “keeps beating the S&P 500, as well as popular actively managed funds.”

Here’s my rub: Mr. Farrell doesn’t have a corner on slothful investing.

We’re Going Fishing & Beating the Market, Too!

We’ve got our own version of a lazy portfolio at The Oxford Club. We call it the Gone Fishin’ Portfolio.

And guess what?

It’s outperforming the S&P 500, too. It has ever since we created it six years ago.

It’s trouncing the most popular actively managed funds. That includes the wildly

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After better-than-expected numbers from Goldman Sachs and Intel set off a broad weekly rally on Wall Street, stocks lacked direction Friday and ended the day little changed as investors braced for fresh corporate announcements.  Also fueling the rally was analyst Meredith Whitney’s bullish stance on Goldman as she assigned a “buy" rating on the bank.  That set the stage for a 7% market rally in just five sessions with the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 index posting their best weekly performance since the week ending March 13.

For the week, the DJIA jumped 597.42 points, or 7.3%, to 8,743.94 points and the S&P 500 rose 7% to 940.38.  The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose for eight consecutive sessions, its longest run since 2005, ending the week up 131 points, or 7.4% to 1,887.

As Goldman announced earnings of $4.93 a share, well above analysts’ estimate of

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Universal Tracking Solutions Inc. is an enterprise solutions based provider of telemetry and GPS fleet systems. The company is focused on the profitable mid-level GPS fleet tracking space in North America and provides its customers with unparalleled mapping technology that is considered to be the best in the industry.

It is always important for a company to have a solid board of advisors to help guide them. Universal Tracking has a trio of strong advisors with diverse business backgrounds and experience. Here are brief biographies of the company’s advisors:

Don M. Schilling – Mr. Schilling is currently the director for implementation and engineering of the “broadband over power lines” or BPL project for Mountain Telecommunications Inc. His responsibilities include equipment design and installation of BPL facilities for delivery of services to residential customers of Mountain Telecommunications’ power company partners. Mr. Schilling has previously

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In last week's edition of Trading Tools, we examined The Coca-Cola Company (KO), after the Zacks Unusually High Option Volume screener revealed the blue chip was the target of a ratio vertical put spread. Utilizing the same filter for today's column, Baltimore-based asset management firm Legg Mason, Inc. (LM) piqued my curiosity, as it was the apple of both call speculators' and put traders' eyes on Thursday, Jun 25.

< ?DART(15);?> Before we begin, let's explain the contrarian stance that makes Schaeffer's so unique. When searching for a bullish pick, we like to see heavy skepticism toward an outperforming stock, as this leaves ample room for upgrades or other positive catalysts to fuel the stock higher. When searching for a bearish pick, on the other hand, contrarians are looking for significant bullish sentiment toward an underperforming stock, as we believe an excess of optimism is

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A surprise rise in demand for durable goods and Oracle's better-than-expected earnings pushed equity markets higher yesterday, but stocks pared gains as policy makers at Federal Reserve decided to keep the benchmark interest rate between zero and 0.25%.  The S&P 500 index edged up 0.7% to 900.94 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 23 points or 0.3% to end the day at 8299.86.  Tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 1.6%.  Boeing (NYSE:BA) continued to trade lower after announcing that it had again delayed initial test flight of its 787 Dreamliner program.  Volume on the NYSE was light at 1.10 billion with advancing issues outpacing declining stocks by a seven-to-three margin.  Crude price eased 0.2% to $68.53 as weekly US stockpile reports were ahead of estimates.  The absence of Fed plans to extend or increase its $300 billion debt buyback program sent Treasury prices lower, with the 10-year, which influences interest rates

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A batch of gloomy economic reports during the past few days suggested that recent optimism about a global recovery might have been premature. This caused Doug Kass to warn that “stock prices have moved ahead of fundamentals” and Kenneth Langone to caution that “investors seem to be getting ahead of themselves”, although he maintained that the long-term outlook on the market was positive.

Big banks across the US announced large common stock offerings and plans to repay the government, and the US administration attempted to bring transparency to the credit derivatives markets and also crack down on the credit card industry.

In addition to Kass and Langone, commentators featured on camera in this post include Elizabeth Warren, Meredith Whitney, Alan Greenspan, Peter Boockvar, Giles Keating, Jim Rogers, Barry Ritholtz, Dennis Gartman, Abby Cohen, Peter Eliades and Laszlo Birinyi.

The

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