Whether dividends are safe is on most income investors’ minds, and for good reason. The final quarter of 2008 was the worst for dividends in a half-century, according to Standard & Poor’s. The first half of 2009 has seen even more cuts: 367 companies have reduced dividends since Jan. 1. Read More
Results
In a bid to protect investors from an often misunderstood financial instrument, UBS, Edward Jones and Ameriprise Financial banned clients from purchasing leveraged ETFs this week. Company Available Broker Sales Merrill… Read More
The Dow recently crossed the 9,000 mark on the back of a solid start to the second-quarter earnings season, while the S&P is up +10% for the year. The market couldn’t have made it to this point without a few stocks seeing substantial gains. Here are three stocks that have posted triple-digit gains this year. After analyzing how they did it, I’ll tell you three more companies that will follow suit. OshKosh (NYSE: OSK) YTD Gain: +191.5% Industrial equipment maker OshKosh faced major headwinds due to the economic downturn,… Read More
The Dow recently crossed the 9,000 mark on the back of a solid start to the second-quarter earnings season, while the S&P is up +10% for the year. The market couldn’t have made it to this point without a few stocks seeing substantial gains. Here are three stocks that have posted triple-digit gains this year. After analyzing how they did it, I’ll tell you three more companies that will follow suit. OshKosh (NYSE: OSK) YTD Gain: +191.5% Industrial equipment maker OshKosh faced major headwinds due to the economic downturn, and its shares sank as low as $4.95 in March. But just when things seemed to be at their worst, OSK posted strong growth, and the shares began to climb. The catalyst was a $1.05 billion contract to build military vehicles for use in Afghanistan that protect against roadside bombs. The contract, initially for 2,000 vehicles, could lead to as many as 10,000 vehicles and $4 billion to $5 billion in revenue. The shares are now trading near $27. How it Got There: A major catalyst thanks to Uncle Sam. General Cable (NYSE: BGC)… Read More
Talk about a rough ride: The nation’s nine major airlines lost -$671 million in the second quarter. We’ve all heard plenty of talk about how no one is flying anymore. Maybe it feels that way, but the airlines are still bringing in plenty of revenue. The total top line for… Read More
Stocks and bonds too dicey? Commodities out of reach? Options too complex? Then forget about all those investments. Right now, you can earn up to 4.5% with FDIC protection. Now, 4.5% isn’t too tough to beat with other investment classes, but each of them… Read More
The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued new rules about short selling, a strategy investors employ when they think a security’s price is going to fall. The two new rules don’t restrict short selling and won’t affect individuals or “short” or “ultrashort” exchange traded funds, at least not yet. The SEC plans an industry roundtable in September to discuss other proposals that could limit the practice, which has come under scrutiny after criticism that it drives down stock prices. Short and ultrashort (read: “leveraged”) exchange-traded funds allow… Read More
The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued new rules about short selling, a strategy investors employ when they think a security’s price is going to fall. The two new rules don’t restrict short selling and won’t affect individuals or “short” or “ultrashort” exchange traded funds, at least not yet. The SEC plans an industry roundtable in September to discuss other proposals that could limit the practice, which has come under scrutiny after criticism that it drives down stock prices. Short and ultrashort (read: “leveraged”) exchange-traded funds allow an investor to bet on a price drop. The funds are popular because they can be held in a typical brokerage account rather than transacted through a margin account, the vehicle through which short sales typically take place. One new rule calls for more reporting of short sales to increase the amount of information available to the public. Wall Street’s self-regulatory agencies will publish daily short-sale transaction reports that detail the total number of a company’s shares were shorted. After a month, the data would be… Read More
In a perfectly efficient market, we could never buy a stock at a discount or sell one at a premium. Every security would be perfectly priced, all the time. It’s only through irrational, emotion-driven selling that value investors will occasionally get the chance to pick up a $50 stock for… Read More
Art Laffer is the dean of supply-side economics, which holds that the key to any macroeconomic ill is to let people keep their money rather than to tax them. I agree. So did President Reagan, whose landmark tax cuts in the early 1980s were… Read More
Now that we know we want a significant portion of our portfolio outside the U.S. to hedge against the coming inflation, it’s time to consider some specific international stocks that offer exceptional opportunities. I recently used StreetAuthority’s… Read More
Warren Buffett has sold 16% of his 48 million shares in Moody’s Investors Service (NYSE: MCO), which he has held since 2000. It’s exactly the right move. Earlier in the week I wrote that this should happen after reading the lawsuit filed by the… Read More