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A humorous look at the companies that caught our eye, for better or worse, this week.

Penn West Petroleum


PWT (TSX)

  Aug. 1, 2014 close: $8.30
  down $1.56 or 15.8% over week

An exploration of Penn West’s financial records produced some unsatisfying results, as the company said nearly $300-million in operating expenses were classified improperly, making the company’s numbers for the past two years look better. Now along with digging up oil, the company will have to figure out where the bodies are buried.

Open Text


OTC (TSX)

  Aug. 1, 2014 close: $60.12
  up $8.85 or 17.3% over week

The outlook is cloudy in Waterloo, Ont. No, we’re not talking about that handheld-device maker – we’re referring to Open Text, which hit an all-time high after an earnings surprise and commentary that suggested more profits are coming from trendy cloud computing. At a market capitalization of almost $7.4-billion, Open Text is now 40 per cent bigger than BlackBerry.

Twitter


TWTR (NYSE)

  Aug. 1, 2014 close: $44.13 (U.S.)
  up $5.97 or 15.6% over week

Soccer is “the beautiful game”? Meh. We’ll take the brutal poetry of hockey. But the executives at Twitter probably disagree, seeing as how the World Cup led to a record number of tweets and huge earnings at the social media site.

Call it Twitter 1, Skeptics 0 – perfect, because that’s about how many goals get scored in a soccer match.

Family Dollar Stores


FDO (NYSE)

  Aug. 1, 2014 close: $75.85 (U.S.)
  up $15.19 or 25% over week

U.S. dollar stores’ shares have been suffering because of concerns customers are too cash-strapped to shop even there. That didn’t stop a number of hedge-fund billionaires from betting on them – and reaping hundreds of millions in profit when Dollar Tree said it would buy Family Dollar. If poor Americans can ante up a few more dollars each week for plastic kitchenware and off-brand foods, the billionaires will make even more!

El Pollo Loco


LOCO (Nasdaq)

  Aug. 1, 2014 close: $41.20 (U.S.)
  up $17.17 or 71.4% over week

Have investors gone loco? That’s the question market mavens asked when a 40-year-old chicken restaurant company became the latest hot IPO on Friday last week in the U.S. Some see El Pollo Loco as the next Chipotle, but after these gains, investors who flock in might see poultry returns. (Sorry. I’m just winging it until Heinzl returns.)