Barrick Gold (ABX) is the world’s largest gold mining company. Despite a tremendous drop in the past years, from its all-time high around $50/share in 2011 to $8/share, it remains the biggest player in its industry sporting a $9 billion market cap.

Gold has had a rough run of it lately, falling from its all-time peak of $1900/oz down to $1100/oz today. Barrick has dropped with the tide, its high debt load being a key problem for the company’s outlook. The company’s debt is a real concern, and until recently, I felt shares were not yet a bargain.

All that changed, however, in July, as Barrick shares plunged from $10 to $7 in the space of just three weeks.

Despite the latest plunge in the share price, the company’s core business seems to be stabilizing. The company produced 1.4 million ounces of gold in Q2, and is on pace to produce about 5.5 million ounces for the year. It is producing at $895/oz all-in cash cost, leaving significant space between the cost of production and the current $1100/oz gold price. And that cash cost was down smartly from the $927 it cost the company to mine an ounce of gold in Q1.

Barrick was profitable in Q1 and lost just one penny per share in Q2 of this year; its operations are going fairly well despite the low current gold price. And the company managed to put up $525 million in operating cash flow in Q2 – a solid jump from the $316 million it managed in Q1. The company ended the quarter with $2.1 billion in cash on hand, plenty to weather any near-term storms.

Furthermore, the company is continuing to execute on its long-term turnaround strategy that will ensure the company’s survival through the current doldrums.

This strategy is focused on several points, all of which will shore up the balance sheet. The company is selling off non-core assets, it reduced the dividend, it will be cutting the long-term debt load by $3 billion, and it is reducing expenses by a hefty $2 billion target for 2016.

The dividend cut was disappointing for long-term shareholders but for new owners, it’s a clear positive. The dividend going forward will be 2 cents per quarter/8 cents per year. This amounts to a 1.2% yield, and is reasonable given the company’s current headwinds. While a dividend is nice, the real upside here comes when the gold cycle turns upward and Barrick shares double off the bottom.

Barrick is selling off assets to raise cash. The cash is being used to reduce the debt load. Already, the company has paid off $250 million in debt during the first half of 2015. And this rate promises to increase, since the company just finalized a deal that will bring them a more than $600 million upfront payment for a royalty stream on their Dominican Republic-located Pueblo Viejo mine.

Barrick gets $610 million in cash now, plus a portion of the spot price for the gold and silver produced at Pueblo Viejo. In all, the deal gives Royal Gold (RGLD), the buyer, 7.5% of the gold and 75% of the silver from the mine for the first several years of production at a sharply discounted price, and then 3.75% and 37.5% of the silver from the mine thereafter.

While this deal may benefit Royal Gold in the long run, particularly if the prices of gold and silver rise substantially, it gives Barrick a large sum of capital now which it can use to shore up its liquidity and pay off a good chunk of debt.

This royalty stream comes on top of the company’s recent move to sell 50% of its Zaldivar Copper mine in Chile for $1 billion in cash. With the price of copper plunging (it has a much uglier chart than gold), this seems like another sound move.

While cutting the dividend, selling assets and reducing headcount seem like discouraging moves, it all makes sense with a long-term perspective. As the world’s largest gold miner, Barrick is taking the painful but necessary steps to ensure its survival.

When the cycle turns – rest assured, it will – Barrick will still be the world’s most important, turning out 6 million ounces a year at less than $1,000 per ounce. Should gold turn back up to say, $1,500/oz, Barrick would be positioned most favorably to capitalize. The asset sales and dividend cut may seem ugly in the present, but in the long run, Barrick is making exactly the right moves. Buy the shares now, when the gold sector turns upward, you’ll have a big winner on your hands.

Skepticism is justified given the recent run-up in shares of Target (TGT). Shares are up more than 30% over the past year, beating both the market and direct competitors such as Wal-Mart (WMT) by a fat margin.

However, a deeper dive into Target’s business shows reason to question the rise. While Target has a fine brand, a long history of growing its dividend, and runs a well-liked chain of stores, its stock price appears to have gotten well ahead of its fundamentals. Several glaring negative points dampen the company’s outlook.

First and foremost is the embarrassing fiasco that was the Canadian expansion. Target bought out Zellers, a chain of 124 existing stores largely in mediocre locations. Target rebranded the stores and analysts hoped that Target would be able to – at last – spread its powerful American brand abroad.

Instead, it ended as a $7 billion failure. Target Canada filed for creditors’ court protection – the equivalent in Canada of Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed all its Canadian stores. Just 26 months after it arrived, Target came limping back to the states with its tail between its legs and $7 billion poorer.

To put that in perspective, Target’s whole market cap is just $50 billion. As such, the company piddled away 15 percent of its entire valuation in a disastrously-managed international expansion. Stated another way, the company wasted 4 years worth of its annual dividend payments on its Canada misstep. For yield-seeking investors who own the stock largely because it’s a Dividend Aristocrat that pays a reliable dividend, that’s a sorry waste of funds that could have gone to shareholders.

Moreover, it serves as a reminder of the low ceiling on Target’s business. If they can’t cut it in Canada, they certainly aren’t going to have success in more volatile emerging markets. While Wal-Mart is out trying to conquer the globe – stores in 27 countries and counting – Target is stuck being a #2 player in its domestic market with no prospects for international expansion.

Furthermore, Target is still weighed down by the disastrous hacking scandal from 2013. In the weeks following Thanksgiving of 2013, hackers broke into Target’s database and took information on 110 million(!) Target customers. That’s more than 1 out of every 3 Americans. The hackers got access to names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Target’s same-store sales dropped significantly following the scandal, and for obvious reasons, customers continue to be wary of shopping through Target’s online website. As of December 2014, only 37% of Americans had visited Target’s website or a physical store in the preceding month, down sharply from 53% in 2007.

Over the past decade, the company’s net income margin has fallen by more than half, dropping from 4.5% to 2%. That means the company is only earning a net profit of 2 cents on every dollar of product it sells, whereas it used to pocket almost a nickel. Similarly, the company’s earnings, which topped out at more than $3 billion in the early 2000s has fallen to just half that today.

Shares topped out in 2007 at $70 each before dropping during the Great Recession. Until late 2014, shares lingered well below that figure – as you’d expect with its profit margin and earnings falling.

However, optimism on the new CEO, the closure of the failed Canadian experiment, and investors’ general desire to chase higher-yielding stocks irrespective of underlying fundamentals has bolstered Target shares recently. Now they sit near their all-time high despite an eroding, or at best flat, business. I’d say it’s a pretty easy choice: Sell here and roll the profits into Wal-Mart or another such retailer whose shares have already sharply fallen from its 52-week highs.

I’d be remiss not to mention the positives, as it isn’t all bad news for Target. First up is the new “City Target” initiative. It’s getting positive feedback – particularly for the inaugural Boston location – and it may give Target a big leg-up against its biggest competitor. Wal-Mart has largely been locked out of the urban market, both due to size constraints and due to political opposition to its brand.

Target’s only serious domestic competitor, Wal-Mart, is thought to be an inferior store by most customers. Target is able to charge significantly higher prices for many of its products than Wal-Mart without hurting sales. In particular, the store is viewed as having better clothing and a much stronger pharmacy.

Still, that’s not enough to justify Target trading to all-time highs with its underlying business so weak. With its brand damaged from the enormous hacking scandal and the possibility of international growth now on ice, there’s simply not enough reasons to stay long Target. This $79 level is a good place to take profit.

Kinder Morgan (KMI) is a very attractive stock on at least one basis. The company currently pays $1.96/share per year in dividends, working out to a 6% dividend yield. In a world of zero interest rates, that’s a rather generous payment.

What’s better, the company has promised to grow the dividend at a 10% annual rate out through 2020, which would take the dividend to $3.16/share over the next five years. Based on the current $34/share price, that’s a yield of more than 9%. Juicy.

Since May though, it hasn’t been all roses for Kinder Morgan’s shares. They’ve fallen from $44 to $34 during that time. Clearly the market is showing some skepticism toward the company’s outlook.

Some of that decline can be attributed to general weakness in the energy sector. Oil prices are falling again, hitting new post-2009 lows, and it’s clearly weighing on sentiment.

But some of the decline is specific to Kinder Morgan. Previously, its shares had held up despite energy’s struggles last winter. Kinder Morgan likes to remind investors that it is not particularly exposed to energy prices. Its business is largely driven by volume; they get paid for product passing through their pipelines regardless of the end value of the oil or natural gas using their system.

The company estimates it loses $10 million in distributable cash flow per $1 fall in the price of oil. Based on the $50/barrel or so drop from last year’s pricing, that’s $500 million slashed off Kinder Morgan’s cash flow that they can pay to shareholders. Given that the company pays about $4 billion a year in dividends, $500 million is a sizable hit to the company if oil prices stay this low, but it isn’t a knockout blow by any means.

So energy prices aren’t enough to take down the Kinder Morgan structure. The bigger concern at this point is financial leverage. Kinder Morgan is running around 7 times net debt to annualized EBITDA, based on results for the first half of the year. That’s rather aggressive. Looking at other energy firms that trade at this strained debt/earnings level, one wonders if Kinder Morgan will be able to maintain its investment grade debt rating. The company’s debt is currently at BBB-, just one notch away from being lowered into junk territory.

This is a pivotal challenge for Kinder Morgan. The company has $21 billion in construction backlog. Backlog are projects that it intends to buildout to generate future earnings growth and support the promised dividend increases. However, the company needs access to further cash to be able to build out its backlog. $21 billion is no small sum.

The company can, and periodically does, raise more money selling stock. However, it would be hard to get anywhere close to the required $21 billion from the equity market without severely impacting the company’s share price. Thus, the better solution for the company is to take out more debt to build new projects. This would become much more difficult and expensive if the company could not maintain its investment grade credit rating.

Keep in mind with oil prices where they are now, the company generate very little free cash flow beyond merely what is necessary to pay the dividend.

By no means is the picture all bad, however. Richard Kinder has established a tremendous industry track record, and he continues buying more shares in the company. Insider buying is always a good sign, particularly in a battleground stock.

And while the company is financially strained with lots of debt, its core operations remain firmly profitable and largely untouched by the ongoing energy bust. The company has many one-of-a-kind assets and is a key piece of the overall American energy infrastructure. That is to say, the company isn’t going anywhere despite the near-term problems in the industry.

So is the stock a buy today? It’s certainly a better deal now at $34 than it was at $44 not all that long ago. It’s still a risky play here though. Until we see how the energy sector bust plays out, it is hard to call a bottom on shares.

If prices stay low, Kinder Morgan will likely struggle to fund its backlog, maintain existing operations, keep growing the dividend as planned, and hold on to its coveted investment-grade rated debt. Any uptick in the energy sector could resolve this issue quickly, however.

While the 6% current yield and 9% promised future yield are enticing, I’d hold off until shares fall a little more and/or oil prices turn upward. There’s no rush to buy the stock with the prospects for the next few quarters still so murky.