One of the most common mistakes income investors make is to look solely at yields. With the current yield on a 10-year U.S. Treasury Bond barely over 2% and most bank deposits earning… Read More

When it comes to global stock-market performance, strategists often speak of “decoupling,” which means the smaller but faster-growing economies in emerging markets have grown to the point that they are no longer beholden to investor sentiment about… Read More

Many of the big U.S. banks have already reported their financial results for 2011. The overall reports were quite impressive, considering that just three years ago there were major concerns that a number of them wouldn’t be able to survive the credit crisis. The recent financial reports… Read More

Sometimes it’s best to wait for the dust to settle. After the earthquake in Japan last March triggered a deep sell-off in all stocks related to nuclear power, a number of investors started to bottom-fish. Any buying turned out to be premature, as key industry stocks fell… Read More

If you’re frustrated by the paltry 2% yield of the average stock in the S&P 500, you’re not alone. Thankfully, you don’t have to reach for yield by investing in unstable companies or engineer a complex options strategy just to get… Read More

With such a slow economic recovery in the United States, many states are getting creative in how to increase their tax bases. Politicians read the news headlines and are well aware that gambling has taken off in parts of Asia, including Macau and Singapore. Current estimates are that Macau’s gaming… Read More

Over the course of 2011, investors steadily unloaded their holdings in Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) as it became apparent that the maker of Blackberry phones couldn’t keep up with the tag-team onslaught of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), which now collectively control more than 75% of the… Read More

Check out some numbers on one of the most widely owned energy stocks in the market and see what you think. For starters, shares of this $37 billion oil and gas producer have… Read More

They rarely make headlines, but that doesn’t make them sub-par investments. Indeed, the lack of limelight for some large cap stocks keeps their volatility in check and lets them trade at their actual value rather than at the market‘s daily whim — all of… Read More