Would you pay $1,225 for a gift card worth $400? It sounds ridiculous. No one should be willing to exchange over a grand in cash for nothing more than a few hundred dollars worth of company merchandise — regardless of what store it is. Yet despite the absurdity, that’s exactly what die-hard customers are willing to pay for a highly-coveted Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) limited-edition gift card. #-ad_banner-#The rose-gold covered card, which comes pre-loaded with $400 in Starbucks credit, sold out in seconds when the company first released them early last month — less time than it takes the average barista… Read More

Would you pay $1,225 for a gift card worth $400? It sounds ridiculous. No one should be willing to exchange over a grand in cash for nothing more than a few hundred dollars worth of company merchandise — regardless of what store it is. Yet despite the absurdity, that’s exactly what die-hard customers are willing to pay for a highly-coveted Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) limited-edition gift card. #-ad_banner-#The rose-gold covered card, which comes pre-loaded with $400 in Starbucks credit, sold out in seconds when the company first released them early last month — less time than it takes the average barista to prepare one of the Seattle-based coffee chain’s signature lattes. Don’t worry though. If you’re interested in buying this “limited-edition” piece of Starbucks’ history, you can pick one up for just $1,225 on eBay — more than double what the card is worth in venti Americanos. It’s that kind of brand loyalty that makes Starbucks such a great company… and an even better investment. In fact, Starbucks’ customers are so loyal to their brand that we at StreetAuthority have come to call them some of the “most loyal customers in the world.” They don’t care that… Read More

“The Dividend Party Is Just Getting Started on Wall Street” “It’s Time to Cash In On Dividends” “The World’s Biggest Companies Pay Out $1 Trillion in Dividends” (a new world record) Those were some headlines I saw on CNBC in the past couple weeks. That’s just a sample, too. Lately, the financial news has been flooded with experts touting the virtues of owning reliable dividend-paying stocks. Normally, we would recommend you take these “experts” opinions with a grain of salt. After all, most major media conglomerates are so politically driven that they usually fail to provide any actionable… Read More

“The Dividend Party Is Just Getting Started on Wall Street” “It’s Time to Cash In On Dividends” “The World’s Biggest Companies Pay Out $1 Trillion in Dividends” (a new world record) Those were some headlines I saw on CNBC in the past couple weeks. That’s just a sample, too. Lately, the financial news has been flooded with experts touting the virtues of owning reliable dividend-paying stocks. Normally, we would recommend you take these “experts” opinions with a grain of salt. After all, most major media conglomerates are so politically driven that they usually fail to provide any actionable investing advice to begin with. But, that said, we would be lying if we told you we disagreed about the future of the dividend market. Truth be told, we — like those experts on CNBC — firmly believe dividend stocks will remain some of the market’s best performers over the next several years. Here’s why… #-ad_banner-#Historically speaking, dividend stocks do well when interest rates are low. That’s because low rates tend to reduce the returns on traditional income investments like bonds, savings accounts and certificates of deposit. In order to offset the decrease in investment income, people move their money… Read More

Think about how much money you would have made had you bought property in the Bakken Shale eight years ago… #-ad_banner-#As recently as 2006, an acre of land in this desolate North Dakota region was selling for as little as $500. That means back then you could have purchased a 200-acre plot for no more than $100,000. Then the “American Energy Boom” hit. Suddenly, acreage that was once thought of as worthless farmland instantly became invaluable as people became aware that the Bakken was home to massive amounts of untapped oil and gas reserves. As a result, today that same… Read More

Think about how much money you would have made had you bought property in the Bakken Shale eight years ago… #-ad_banner-#As recently as 2006, an acre of land in this desolate North Dakota region was selling for as little as $500. That means back then you could have purchased a 200-acre plot for no more than $100,000. Then the “American Energy Boom” hit. Suddenly, acreage that was once thought of as worthless farmland instantly became invaluable as people became aware that the Bakken was home to massive amounts of untapped oil and gas reserves. As a result, today that same 200 acres could be worth over $4 million… Landowners weren’t the only ones who would have gotten rich on the deal either. Investors in companies exploring the Bakken were rewarded with small fortunes as floods of new capital poured into the region. For example, Kodiak Oil & Gas (NYSE: KOG), one of the first companies to start drilling here, ran from $0.25 a share in 2009 to $11.81 today — a staggering 4,438% gain over that time. It’s the same story for Continental Resources (NYSE: CLR) and Painted Pony Petroleum (TSX: PPY), two of the other major players… Read More

Last fall, legendary investor Carl Icahn added a “sizable position” of Apple to his $16 billion holding company — Icahn Enterprises. Since he announced his purchase on Sept. 11, 2013, Apple is up 14.9%, handily outperforming the S&P’s 9.7% gain in that same time. After making the purchase, Icahn was quoted saying it was a “no-brainer” investment, citing that the company’s valuation was “extremely cheap” by the numbers. Icahn should know, too. Unlike most of today’s billionaires, he made his fortune entirely by investing in the stock market. Since he founded Icahn Enterprises less than 30 years ago, his company… Read More

Last fall, legendary investor Carl Icahn added a “sizable position” of Apple to his $16 billion holding company — Icahn Enterprises. Since he announced his purchase on Sept. 11, 2013, Apple is up 14.9%, handily outperforming the S&P’s 9.7% gain in that same time. After making the purchase, Icahn was quoted saying it was a “no-brainer” investment, citing that the company’s valuation was “extremely cheap” by the numbers. Icahn should know, too. Unlike most of today’s billionaires, he made his fortune entirely by investing in the stock market. Since he founded Icahn Enterprises less than 30 years ago, his company has enjoyed total returns in excess of 288,000%. #-ad_banner-#To put that in perspective, if you had invested $1,500 with him back in 1987, the size of your position would be worth over $4.3 million today. That kind of performance is one reason Chartered Market Technician Michael J. Carr recently designed a trading system to leverage the financial genius of investing gurus, like Icahn. By applying his proprietary trading system to stocks that are held by the market’s 20 most successful gurus — including Warren Buffett, George Soros and David Einhorn — Michael has earned big gains… Read More

In Friday’s StreetAuthority Daily, we featured an interview with InvestingAnswer’s newest analyst, Nancy Zambell. In the interview, Nancy explained how she recently discovered a small group of companies currently predicting the future. At the time she couldn’t reveal much because she was still finalizing her analysis. But today, her research is finished. And as a reward for being a loyal customer in good standing with one or more of StreetAuthority’s regular publications, later in this essay we’ll be giving away a free stock pick from her newest premium report, “The Seven Companies Predicting the Future.” #-ad_banner-#Before we do though, we… Read More

In Friday’s StreetAuthority Daily, we featured an interview with InvestingAnswer’s newest analyst, Nancy Zambell. In the interview, Nancy explained how she recently discovered a small group of companies currently predicting the future. At the time she couldn’t reveal much because she was still finalizing her analysis. But today, her research is finished. And as a reward for being a loyal customer in good standing with one or more of StreetAuthority’s regular publications, later in this essay we’ll be giving away a free stock pick from her newest premium report, “The Seven Companies Predicting the Future.” #-ad_banner-#Before we do though, we want to first remind you of her amazing discovery… If you saw Friday’s interview, you’ll remember Nancy told you how a handful of companies are currently hoarding thousands of high-powered supercomputers in tightly guarded compounds scattered throughout the United States. Located in remote areas deep in America’s backwoods, these compounds contain a new technology that can predict the outcome of future social and economic events. She called the facilities behind this technology “prediction plants.” Nancy also told you how using these “prediction plants,” companies could predict things like when the next financial crash will be… if a given retail chain… Read More

  We’re barely a month into 2014, and it’s already promising to be an interesting year. In this month alone, natural gas is up 20%… shares of Apple plunged double-digits after a bad earnings announcement… and emerging markets have gone belly-up. In fact, they have been absolutely pummeled since the beginning of the January. As you can see from the chart above, emerging markets — as represented by the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NYSE: DEM) — have fallen 9% since Jan. 1. Michael Vodicka explains the bearish sentiment towards emerging markets in his most recent issue of… Read More

  We’re barely a month into 2014, and it’s already promising to be an interesting year. In this month alone, natural gas is up 20%… shares of Apple plunged double-digits after a bad earnings announcement… and emerging markets have gone belly-up. In fact, they have been absolutely pummeled since the beginning of the January. As you can see from the chart above, emerging markets — as represented by the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NYSE: DEM) — have fallen 9% since Jan. 1. Michael Vodicka explains the bearish sentiment towards emerging markets in his most recent issue of High-Yield International:       The Fed’s quantitative easing (QE) program supported low borrowing costs in the United States for the past few years. That enabled large institutional investors to borrow at a low rate in the United States and deploy that capital into high-yield securities in emerging markets, such as emerging-market bonds, which are currently yielding around 10% in Brazil. That low-risk carry trade was extremely profitable when the 10-year Treasury was trading below 2%. But now that interest rates are back on the upswing and yield spreads are compressing, this low-risk trade is becoming less profitable. That is… Read More

I want to let you in on a secret… Wall Street doesn’t make most of its money from the stock market. While trading equities constitutes a large part of “big banking,” if you were to add the value of all the stocks in the world it would only come out to $36.6 trillion. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a big number. It’s also one reason brokerage commissions have been the bread and butter of Wall Street firms since the New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1817. But the truth is there’s a much bigger market out there. This market,… Read More

I want to let you in on a secret… Wall Street doesn’t make most of its money from the stock market. While trading equities constitutes a large part of “big banking,” if you were to add the value of all the stocks in the world it would only come out to $36.6 trillion. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a big number. It’s also one reason brokerage commissions have been the bread and butter of Wall Street firms since the New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1817. But the truth is there’s a much bigger market out there. This market, which is valued at over $790 trillion, has grown exponentially since the Securities and Exchange Commission deregulated it in the 1990s. #-ad_banner-#Unlike most stocks and bonds, which tend to be “boring” and relatively stable, the securities in this market allow investors to make bets on the outcome of certain asset prices. For instance, right now traders are betting $56,880 that the price of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) will be over $610 on March 22 — 21% above its recent price of $506. Investors in this market are also betting over $874,000 that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) will be trading at $1,300 —… Read More

I want to let you in on a secret: Wall Street doesn’t make most of its money from the stock market.#-ad_banner-# While trading equities constitutes a large part of “big banking,” if you were to add the value of all the stocks in the world it would only come out $36.6 trillion. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a big number. It’s also one reason brokerage commissions have been the bread and butter of Wall Street firms since the New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1817. But the truth is there’s a much bigger market out there. This market, which… Read More

I want to let you in on a secret: Wall Street doesn’t make most of its money from the stock market.#-ad_banner-# While trading equities constitutes a large part of “big banking,” if you were to add the value of all the stocks in the world it would only come out $36.6 trillion. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a big number. It’s also one reason brokerage commissions have been the bread and butter of Wall Street firms since the New York Stock Exchange was founded in 1817. But the truth is there’s a much bigger market out there. This market, which is valued at over $790 trillion, has grown exponentially since the Securities and Exchange Commission deregulated it in the 1990s. Unlike most stocks and bonds, which tend to be “boring” and relatively stable, the securities in this market allow investors to make bets on the outcome of certain asset prices. For instance, right now traders are betting $56,880 that the price of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) will be over $610 on March 22 — 22% above its recent price near $500. Investors in this market are also betting over $874,000 that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will be trading at $1,300 — or… Read More

A few weeks ago, StreetAuthority analyst Michael Vodicka stumbled on a compelling pattern while performing some routine research for his new newsletter, High-Yield International. When he and his team of experts ran a stock screen looking for all the stocks in the world yielding over 12%, they found that out of the 118 stocks their analysis identified, only 25 them were located in the U.S. In other words, Michael’s study showed that if you aren’t looking overseas, you’re likely missing out on 79% the world’s highest-yielding securities before you even get started. #-ad_banner-#Unfortunately, even if we dedicated every issue of… Read More

A few weeks ago, StreetAuthority analyst Michael Vodicka stumbled on a compelling pattern while performing some routine research for his new newsletter, High-Yield International. When he and his team of experts ran a stock screen looking for all the stocks in the world yielding over 12%, they found that out of the 118 stocks their analysis identified, only 25 them were located in the U.S. In other words, Michael’s study showed that if you aren’t looking overseas, you’re likely missing out on 79% the world’s highest-yielding securities before you even get started. #-ad_banner-#Unfortunately, even if we dedicated every issue of this newsletter to international dividend companies, I’m willing to bet some of you still wouldn’t get the message. Since most investors associate the word “international” with high-risk growth stocks, our recommendations often fall on deaf ears.  If you’re one of those investors, I urge you not to think that way.  The truth is, in addition to offering the vast majority of high-yield stocks, foreign markets can be just as safe as investing in the U.S. — if not safer. Michael explains why in his recent report “Why You’re Not Hearing About 79% Of The World’s Highest-Yielding Stocks”: In the… Read More

I can’t believe more people aren’t taking advantage of this… With bond yields near record lows and traditional income securities like savings accounts and certificates of deposit earning next to nothing, we’re regularly finding “instant yields” as high as 9.2%… 13.7%… and even some as much as 19.8%. #-ad_banner-#For instance, right now our research is showing an opportunity to collect a $1,575 cash payment from Visa (NYSE: V) for a 7.8% instant yield… a $980 cash payment from Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX) for a 12.8% instant yield… and we’ve even identified an opportunity to earn a $2,070 payment from International Business… Read More

I can’t believe more people aren’t taking advantage of this… With bond yields near record lows and traditional income securities like savings accounts and certificates of deposit earning next to nothing, we’re regularly finding “instant yields” as high as 9.2%… 13.7%… and even some as much as 19.8%. #-ad_banner-#For instance, right now our research is showing an opportunity to collect a $1,575 cash payment from Visa (NYSE: V) for a 7.8% instant yield… a $980 cash payment from Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX) for a 12.8% instant yield… and we’ve even identified an opportunity to earn a $2,070 payment from International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) for a 9.6% instant yield.   And the best part thing about these “instant yields” is that there’s nothing complicated about them. To collect, you don’t have to monitor your brokerage statement daily. Nor do you need a million-dollar bank account and access to a high-powered financial advisor. In fact, all you really need is 100 shares of a single stock — and the willingness to sell those shares for a profit. I’m talking, as you might have guessed, about selling covered calls. If you read this recent issue of StreetAuthority Daily, then you know that a… Read More