Can Turtles Fly?

I was searching the Japanese stock market (which still keeps dropping) for well-known brands and came across Seiko (TSE: 8050). I'm sure many of you have heard of Seiko, the Japanese watch company. The Japanese market continues to sell off and valuations keep getting cheaper and cheaper. The Japanese Yen has been strengthening and this is going to hurt exporters. Over the last few years Japan has relied on exports so their economy will take a hit. However, my feeling is that the lower valuations will compensate for any weakening of the economy. Seiko is one of the dominant players in the watch industry. I don't know anything about watches (I'm not into them at all) so it's not clear if Seiko has a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Apart from the super-luxury brands, it doesn't seem like there is a huge brand loyalty at the low-end to mid-end area. Furthermore, with all the fake watches floating around, the watchmakers will face a continuing threat. Neverthel...

Here is what I am concentrating on right now. Revlon (REV) I removed Revlon (REV) from the main list of stocks I was tracking as an opportunity. I have some corporate governance concerns. The majority owner, Perlman, may own most of the bonds that are hampering Revlon right now. It is quite possible that Perlman may not care about the stock performance as long as Revlon keeps paying interest on the bonds to him. I took a quick look and I can't tell how true this is, but it is good enough of a concern for me to ignore Revlon as an investment. Spectrum Brands (SPC) SPC has been hammered in the last month (what else is new?) and is finally approaching attractive levels. The company is trading almost at book value now (according to Yahoo Finance numbers (need to confirm manually)). Needless to say, this stock will become attractive if it drops significantly below book value. The debt problems make this a very risky company, but I am attracted by the fact that they are in the consumer s...