Michael Steele Teaches Investors About Government Contracting

One of my areas of expertise is investing. In the course of following the news about the companies I own, I will sometimes come across a press release about a company winning a federal government contract. And while I understand perfectly what the company is saying about the contract they won, I worry that some of the details of the language might slip by most investors. Or be misunderstood. Or in some cases, that the wording of the press release makes the value of the contract sound puffed up and more valuable than it really is. Because, you see, one of my other areas of expertise is dealing with the technical side of federal IT contracts.

So, as a public service, I wrote a three part series for the Motley Fool Blog Network about understanding the vocabulary of government contracts for investors:

• Part 1: Fixed Price, Cost Reimbursement, and Time & Materials Contracts, including examples of recent contracts won by Lockheed Martin ($LMT), Booz-Allen Hamilton ($BAH), and SAIC ($SAI)
• Part 2: Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contracts and Modifications, with examples from Amazon.com ($AMZN) and Lockheed Martin ($LMT)
• Part 3: Multiple Awards, Schedules, and Government Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), using examples from Cubic ($CUB), CACI ($CACI), and SAIC ($SAI)

It's a departure from my usual smart-assed financial blog postings, but I promise I will get back to writing those again soon.