I have a game I like to play. A little con. It generally involves two pigeons. One is a friend, the other is Bill Gates. It never fails. I’m always amazed at how little people know about financial information. When I show someone the SEC’s site, for instance, he or… Read More

It’s the classic Cinderella story. Rags to riches. From nothing to something. The big dance begins with a single step — the initial offering of a company’s shares to the public. Thousands of investors try to “get in on the ground floor.” Take… Read More

“Stupid.” That’s what Buffett’s right-hand man Charlie Munger had to say about not investing in railroads sooner. That was two years ago. Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B) now has a stake in three of the four major railroads in the United States. But he is so fond of one, he owns… Read More

Most income investors ignore small companies. Conventional wisdom says that large, mature companies pay dividends and small companies don’t. That’s hardly the case. Nearly 10,000 small caps trade on U.S. exchanges. Of those, 3.3% carry a yield of 6% or more. Believe it… Read More

Gold — at more than $1,050 an ounce — appears to be more expensive than ever. But it isn’t. While it’s true that it costs more dollars to buy gold than ever before, the value of the dollar isn’t fixed. The dollar of decades before is not the same dollar… Read More

Longtime readers of my Dividend Opportunities newsletter know I’m a big fan of master limited partnerships (MLPs). There’s not much to dislike. The partnerships don’t have to pay corporate income taxes as long as they earn 90% of… Read More

It’s no secret that investors place a premium on lofty margins. If one business squeezes $0.15 in earnings from each dollar in sales and another manages just $0.10, the first company clearly has a big advantage. But there’s one thing even better than a… Read More

You could find a boring stock with a solid, dependable dividend. No problem. Or you might want to take your chances with some high-flying, hotshot growth company. Plenty of them have made lots of money, there’s no doubt about it. But the problem is… Read More

The financial crisis felled some banks. Others were left crippled and may never recover. Still others were hardly affected at all. Those institutions are the ones in the best position to profit going forward. Investors should look at these stable… 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