After starting the year on a high note, economic worries and uncertainty over the current earnings season have caused volatility to return to the stock market. As a result, the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) remains tepid. And recent performance statistics place overall IPO returns in negative territory so far in 2010. Despite the tough IPO market, there are still a number of stocks that have done quite well. Below is an overview of the most popular and best performing IPOs during the… Read More

After starting the year on a high note, economic worries and uncertainty over the current earnings season have caused volatility to return to the stock market. As a result, the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) remains tepid. And recent performance statistics place overall IPO returns in negative territory so far in 2010. Despite the tough IPO market, there are still a number of stocks that have done quite well. Below is an overview of the most popular and best performing IPOs during the past year. Better yet, they still have plenty of room to run as the business cycle heats up and each firm has the ability to expand its market reach significantly after raising funds from their recent offerings. Tesla Motors Inc (Nasdaq: TSLA) Business: Auto Manufacturing Trailing 12-month Revenue: $111.9 Million Tesla’s IPO was one of the more widely covered and popular IPOs of the year. The firm is still tiny by many measures, including revenue just over $100 million during the past year and a market capitalization of… Read More

70 million represents a lot of people for a country, much less for a bank’s customers. It’s nearly a quarter of the United States’ population. In fact, you could add every person in California and Texas together and still not reach the 70 million mark. And that… Read More

A recent spat between the two largest drugstore chains in the nation has sent the shares of each company to the bargain bin. In the case of one, the stock has approached levels not seen for a decade even though sales and… Read More

Many investors have tired of positioning their portfolios for a housing recovery. Consistently positive growth trends are probably still a ways off, but there is no denying that sales activity remains well below normal levels, making a recovery a matter of not if, but when it occurs. Read More

Stock market volatility has caused many investors to question their commitment to buying individual stocks. This combined with a decade of flat to slightly negative stock market returns has stoked a debate over whether buy-and-hold investing makes any sense going forward. Defensive-minded investors looking to lower equity… Read More

The oil industry is in the midst of dealing with one of the largest spills in history. The consequences could be dire for firms focused on offshore drilling, with a current six-month moratorium on drilling in the United States and a slew of new regulations and safety procedures being prepared… Read More

The past decade has been tough for stocks, with the bursting of the Internet and housing bubbles creating share price volatility too extreme for many investors. As for blue chip companies, sky-high valuations in 2000 have left little in terms of total stock returns, even though… Read More

The major credit ratings agencies continue to be caught in the crossfire of finger pointing that has occurred since the housing bubble burst and fanned the flames of a major credit crisis in late 2008. There has been much talk of increasing regulation of these firms, and very recently the… Read More

In investing, boring can be beautiful. Many investors like to chase stocks with hot new products from the likes of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), with the tradeoff being that emotions can create volatile stock prices as greed and fear play as much a part as underlying business… Read More

Stocks with scant analyst coverage often offer opportunity for individual investors to exploit market inefficiencies. The small-cap arena is usually the most fruitful place to uncover these opportunities, but every now and then a firm with a larger market capitalization will fail to get… Read More