It’s Nov. 7. Staffers on one presidential campaign are packing their bags for Washington, D.C., while those at the other campaign are posting resumes on Monster.com. Meanwhile, as TV political pundits wallow in post-game analyses like a pig wallowing… er … in whatever pigs like to wallow in, investors are actually relieved. The unknown is now known. And now it’s time to reposition their portfolios based on the change or lack of change in the political landscape. Personally, I’ve never been a huge believer in reactionary trading based on election outcome. Read More

It’s Nov. 7. Staffers on one presidential campaign are packing their bags for Washington, D.C., while those at the other campaign are posting resumes on Monster.com. Meanwhile, as TV political pundits wallow in post-game analyses like a pig wallowing… er … in whatever pigs like to wallow in, investors are actually relieved. The unknown is now known. And now it’s time to reposition their portfolios based on the change or lack of change in the political landscape. Personally, I’ve never been a huge believer in reactionary trading based on election outcome. However, there are sectors that will undoubtedly perform better or worse based on which administration is driving the bus. Some are relatively predictable. Some may surprise you… Either way, even if you don’t plan to restructure your portfolio any time soon, it’s important to know which types of stocks could shine or dive in the next presidential term. President Willard Mitt Romney It’s pretty easy to guess which sectors would benefit from a Romney victory… Big Oil — Historically, Republican presidential… Read More

I’d like to declare a moratorium on Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) IPO carping. The stock has gone from $38 to roughly $19. Everyone’s upset: Facebook employees, the financial-media talking heads, individual investors, even people who have never logged on to Facebook.  But that’s the nature… Read More

When Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, the U.S. financial system locked up and proceeded to plummet in a classic deflationary spiral. As the value of overpriced, overleveraged assets came back to Earth, the banks that had lent money and accepted those assets as… Read More

When it comes to investing, there’s an old saying: “No one rings a bell and tells you when it’s time to buy.” This is especially true in cases where a pretty strong rally has already been underway for quite some time. After all, who wants to buy a richly-valued stock… Read More

The classic business book The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley and William Danko, depicted a quiet lot of wealthy entrepreneurs who made their fortunes in unglamorous, under-the-radar enterprises such as paving contracting, scrap-metal processing, plumbing or industrial supplies. These individuals clearly know how to… Read More

Historically, successful value investors have always bought stocks when blood is running in the streets. Unless you’ve been on a total news fast this summer, then you probably know the streets of Europe are knee-deep in type A-negative. As expected, value hunters have been watching that… Read More

Rising energy prices, the threat of global warming, political instability in the Middle East and a host of other factors have made renewable energy methods such as solar and wind wildly popular in the past few years. But while there’s no question that green… Read More

During the 1970s, perhaps one of the strangest decades for American fads, CB radios and trucker-style entertainment blew up big. From cheesy novelty radio hits like “Convoy” to movies like “Smokey and the Bandit” and TV shows like “B.J. and the… Read More

I live in hurricane country and have personally witnessed my share of Category 3s, as well as a handful of tropical storms. One main point safety officials stress is concerning the eye of the storm. Although it brings a relative period of calm, depending on how big the eye of… Read More

Around this time last summer, I emphasized the rare opportunity to lock in safe, handsome dividend yields ahead of rising interest rates.  Around this same time last year, the benchmark 10-year Treasury was paying a sky-high 3.0%. Today, it yields around 1.6%. This means,… Read More