It’s tried-and-true wisdom on Wall Street that yesterday’s laggards are often tomorrow’s outperformers. That’s exactly what’s shaping up for the energy, metals and basic materials sectors. These stocks were laggards in 2011, but now they look to… Read More

U.S. investors are always in search of “the next Google (Nasdaq: GOOG),” hoping to latch on to a stock that can appreciate smartly over many years. In China, they’ve already had their Google moment. The country’s leading search engine provider, Baidu.com (Nasdaq: BIDU) has seen its… Read More

Clean energy has been one of this president’s favorite topics. Mr. Obama calls his strategy “All of the Above” and has vowed to continue to fund energy research and development even if it fails. This is a bold statement considering the heat he took for losing more… Read More

More often than not, a successful investment usually involves a good, basic business that sells a lot of something everybody needs. It’s a path that guys like Warren Buffett have taken time and time again to score huge long-term returns. This should also be the kind of… Read More

Although it may seem that most fund managers are simply glorified stock pickers, their task is actually quite different. They don’t beat their benchmarks by simply cobbling together a set of compelling investments. They take a snapshot of the U.S. and global economies and then decide the best ways to… Read More

Investors have been loading up on dividend stocks for good reason: These stocks are trouncing the puny 2% yield on Treasuries. In fact, more than 200 stocks in the S&P 500… Read More

The U.S. economy is seven times larger than Brazil’s economy. Yet the U.S. stock market is 12 times larger. That’s simply the result of the fact that most global investors want exposure to the United States, relatively… Read More

There may be no better time than right now to invest in  energy stocks — particularly in one of my favorites. This stock is a large and well-known oil and gas producer, and is doing markedly better than the energy sector as a whole, jumping about 18% already this year,… Read More

When Forest Oil (NYSE: FST) announced in late 2010 that it would spin off its Canadian energy fields in a new company called Lone Pine Resources (NYSE: LPR), investors shrugged. But investors who bought the parent of the spin-off when the deal was completed on Oct. Read More