Have you ever wanted to own a stake in that fast-growing auto-parts manufacturer on the other side of your town? How about that local bakery chain that draws a crowd every morning? Maybe you’d like to become a silent partner in the nearby road-construction company that seems to always win… Read More

It may be one of the fastest implosions in the history of corporate America. Reviews of the company’s products shifted from (and these are actual quotes): “The only shoe I will ever wear again” and “I love them and never wear anything but,” throughout 2007, to “They’re big and foamy…why… Read More

Being the premier name in a business category doesn’t necessarily make it the ideal investment opportunity in that particular sector. Take McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) for example. While it’s the undisputed king of fast food restaurants, its competitor-crushing edge five years ago led to a dangerous complacency, opening… Read More

Think you’ve got a bead on the best sectors to own? It’s amazing how often assumptions can differ from reality. While most investors may believe the technology or financial sectors tend to offer the biggest returns or the most… Read More

If you follow the news avidly, then you’re undoubtedly aware the pharmaceutical industry is currently running off a so-called patent cliff. Problem is, many of the drugs losing their patent protection also happen to be the blockbuster drugs driving the bulk of Big Pharma’s revenue.  It’s not that these large… Read More

Back in April, when natural gas prices jumped from a multi-year low of $1.98 per MMBtu to May’s high of $2.82, a lot of traders chalked the 42% gain up as a temporary dead-cat bounce. Sure enough, natural gas prices fell back to $2.23 per MMBtu by… Read More

It’s fun to be right, but as they say, too much of anything is still too much.  Take for instance my June 7 bullish call on water utility stocks. At the time, when… Read More

After being in the investment business for longer than I care to admit, surviving two nasty bear markets, experiencing the advent of the Internet, seeing more corporate scandals than I care to remember, and more, I’ve decided there are only two basic kinds investment… Read More

For income investors, one of the first criteria considered when making an investment decision, especially if you’re a dividend investor, is a stock’s dividend yield. And why not? After all, if the whole point is to generate income,… Read More

On Thursday, June 21, credit-ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the debt of 15 major U.S. banks, including Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). Though the move didn’t come as a complete surprise, the credit downgrades could still ultimately crimp… Read More