You have undoubtedly heard that various components or asset classes of the market are, from time to time, manipulated. “Manipulating the market” means that by some purposeful and sometimes with nefarious intentions, a market that should move higher, moves lower… or, as in the case of September, the market moved… Read More

In recent weeks, stock market pundits have been wrestling with a curious phenomenon. Trading activity has fallen sharply, which these market-watchers presume to mean that investors have lost interest in stocks. Mom-and-pop investors have likely become more gun-shy this year. But the main culprit for lower trading volumes: Wall Street’s… Read More

With reward comes risk. That’s the painful lesson learned by biotech investors last month. Investors in Arena Pharma (Nasdaq: ARNA), Idenix Pharma (Nasdaq: IDIX), AMAG Pharma (Nasdaq: AMAG) and Vical (Nasdaq: VICL) all saw their investments plunge by nearly a fourth– or more — thanks to bad news on the drug approval front. Of the top four losers in the Russell 2000 last month, all are in biotech — an industry for which you’ve got to have a strong stomach. Company (Ticker) Recent Price September Loss 52-Week High 52-Week Low Catalyst Arena Pharma (Nasdaq: ARNA) $1.54 -76% $8.00 $1.51 FDA… Read More

With reward comes risk. That’s the painful lesson learned by biotech investors last month. Investors in Arena Pharma (Nasdaq: ARNA), Idenix Pharma (Nasdaq: IDIX), AMAG Pharma (Nasdaq: AMAG) and Vical (Nasdaq: VICL) all saw their investments plunge by nearly a fourth– or more — thanks to bad news on the drug approval front. Of the top four losers in the Russell 2000 last month, all are in biotech — an industry for which you’ve got to have a strong stomach. Company (Ticker) Recent Price September Loss 52-Week High 52-Week Low Catalyst Arena Pharma (Nasdaq: ARNA) $1.54 -76% $8.00 $1.51 FDA spurns company’s anti-obesity drug Idenix Pharma (Nasdaq: IDIX) $3.14 -48% $6.11 $1.81 Setback in Hepatitis C trials AMAG Pharma (Nasdaq: AMAG) $17.85 -32% $52.49 $16.70 Disappointing results for anemia drug Vical (Nasdaq: VICL) $2.21 -29% $4.43 $2.20 Poor results from blood-vessel growth drug Flagstar Bancorp (NYSE: FBC) $1.86 -26% $7.85 $2.91 False start on a capital raise Genoptix (Nasdaq: GXDX) $14.39 -20% $39.00 $13.51 Pre-announced tepid Q3 results Virginia Commerce Bank (Nasdaq: VCBI) $4.81 -17% $7.69 $3.01 Being acquired by Discover Arena looks unlikely to rebound, as the FDA made it clear that Arena’s weight-loss drug offered too… Read More

Of the 2,000 stocks that comprise the Russell 2000 Index, 10 of them rose by at least +50% in September. And half of those are the beneficiary of very generous buyout offers (while a sixth name rebuffed an… Read More

It’s important to keep track of the moves by insiders, as they can point you in the direction of undervalued (or overvalued) stocks. I like to scan the recent buying and selling lists from insiders either daily or weekly, but a monthly look is… Read More

I recently came across an insightful article that boldly detailed how the Internet is changing the world. The piece offered a number of stats and detailed that 750 tweets are written from Twitter every second, 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook every month, and overall Internet traffic is growing… Read More

It’s been a nutty summer for the nation’s largest operator of book stores. Soon after Memorial Day, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) delivered the sobering news that sales and profit targets would not be met. By late July,… Read More

Legend has it that the term “blue chip” stems from poker, in that it represented the poker chip with the highest value in the game. These days, the term is ubiquitous in the stock market and refers to a large, stable company that is financially sound, has well-known brand and… Read More

As anxiety over U.S. economic performance increases, so too does the price of gold. Surging to more than $1300 per ounce, the precious metal hit a new record the September 20th trading week, following news that the Federal Reserve may undertake quantitative easing to combat the threat… Read More

My top-rated stock this week (out of more than 6,000 stocks and ETFs) is a basic materials company that focuses on industrial metals, minerals and oil and gas. In general, I like the basic materials segment of the global economy and even more so… Read More