With the weak economy, drug makers have been scaling back their drug development plans. The slowdown has trickled down to the so-called contract research organizations (CRO), which help pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms manage the necessary clinical trials for a drug to be licensed… Read More

I’m always on the lookout for the right combination of fundamental and technical factors to get a trader’s edge. Look carefully at the following two charts — the first covering the last three months of 2008 and the first three of 2009, and the second covering the… Read More

When Princess Diana died, all I really wanted was a movie rental.   I would have paid almost anything for it: I was in the hospital for an appendectomy, and, after 48 hours of nonstop Diana coverage, I was ready for the doc to remove my brain, too. Read More

What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear “Standard & Poor’s”? It’s likely the benchmark S&P 500 Index. But there’s so much more that Standard and Poor’s has to offer. Read More

Looking at the yields on junk bonds today, I’m reminded of a Joanie Mitchell lyric many years ago: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.” In October 2008, the dividend yields for speculative-grade (junk) bonds were averaging 2,182 basis points above… Read More

I bought a pair of noise-canceling headphones from an airport vending machine. When I put them on and turned the switch, the dim from the airport disappeared. After my flight took off, I put the headphones back on. The hum of the jet engines evaporated. Every investor ought to own… Read More

We all watched in anguish as the S&P 500 dropped -40% from October 2008 to March 2009. Even the most diversified portfolios weren’t immune. For all the talk about foreign economies being “decoupled” from the U.S. economy, foreign stocks tumbled in lock step… Read More

They say what’s past is prologue. So when history starts repeating itself like this, it’s wise to take notice. Mergers and acquisitions are picking up after a drought in activity for much of the past year. On Monday, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) said it would buy computer-services provider Perot Systems (NYSE:… Read More

A good deal of political turmoil has surrounded the exchange-traded fund (ETF) world in recent months. The powers-that-be have been tightening the regulatory noose around certain commodities and leveraged funds. This has created headaches for fund issuers and millions of individual investors that have… Read More

Investors don’t have a crystal ball that can predict the market, but they can study its past performance. History tells us that bull markets follow bear markets and that printing money causes… Read More