Just because I’m an income investor doesn’t mean I don’t like a good bargain. However, with the S&P 500 Index up about 22% year-to-date, finding bargain stocks has become more of a challenge. If you look at price-to-earnings (… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Back in February, I took a close look at Warren Buffett’s $12 billion stake in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Well, it’s now more like a $10 billion position. He hasn’t sold shares, but the bank’s stock has been steadily dropping, giving the Oracle of Omaha a rare black eye. To understand Buffett’s next move with this massive banking concern, you need to understand why shares are marching backward. The long-term view Buffett didn’t simply start acquiring shares in recent quarters. He’s been doing so for a… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Back in February, I took a close look at Warren Buffett’s $12 billion stake in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). Well, it’s now more like a $10 billion position. He hasn’t sold shares, but the bank’s stock has been steadily dropping, giving the Oracle of Omaha a rare black eye. To understand Buffett’s next move with this massive banking concern, you need to understand why shares are marching backward. The long-term view Buffett didn’t simply start acquiring shares in recent quarters. He’s been doing so for a number of years. But you could argue that his long-term bullishness has been a bit misplaced, or at least a bit premature. He steadily bought Wells Fargo shares in the middle of the last decade, despite signs the housing sector was starting to overheat. More recently, he bought a lot of stock last fall and winter on hopes the U.S. economy was on the cusp of a broad-based upturn. As a result, his buying binges in 2007 and again in late 2010 took place in the low $30s, above the current price.   The appeal to… Read More

This stock is a survivor. In fact, one can argue that in 2007 to 2008, it suffered a near-death experience. As the overall market fell precipitously, Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX) absolutely plummeted. From a peak of $75.21 in October 2007, it fell well more than 99% to a low of $0.79… Read More

#-ad_banner-#Economists love to run a series of experiments based on “Game Theory,” testing whether individuals rationally account for the actions of others before making their own moves. When it comes to companies in the dry-bulk shipping industry, only one player has been acting rationally. Read More

Currency investing by the “Main Street” investor, regular Joe’s and Jane’s like you and me, has exploded in recent years, thanks to the expansion of the exchange-traded fund (ETF) universe. Once the territory of hedge-fund managers… Read More

Billionaire investor George Soros and his team of advisors take a “top-down” approach. This means they seek out big, “macro” investing themes, and then work their way down to the best ways to play that theme. Every quarter, they adjust their stakes in a range of companies, either by loading… Read More

If you want to know where an industry is headed, then just peek inside a few checkbooks. If companies are reining in their spending, then they might be saving pennies for a rainy day. But when an entire sector starts forking over unusually large amounts for expansion… Read More

Whenever the topic of inflation arises, the two words that most often come from investors’ mouths are “gold” and “silver.” And while it’s true that gold and silver are inflation hedges that offer large potential returns, they also tend to carry an equally large… Read More

When it comes to stock-picking, it’s better to be early than late. I’d rather buy shares in a promising company and have to wait for the stock to jump than buy in long after others already have. So from time to time, I like to look back on stocks… Read More

Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari!” The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than take the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country… Read More

Years ago, my dad and I were driving across his farm in his vintage Land Rover, which looks almost exactly like the one John Wayne used in the movie “Hatari!” The heavy-duty off-road tires were having a hard slog through the mud. Dad had cut across a recently plowed field rather than take the long way back to the road. The tires made slow and steady progress — Dad’s old Rover is a tank — and after a few minutes and probably five gallons of gasoline, the nose of the vehicle bounced up and the tires bit into the country lane that circles the property. #-ad_banner-#Dad, clearly pleased with himself for conquering the field, didn’t take his foot off the gas and we were soon going nearly 70 miles per hour down a country road with grass in the middle of it. He looked over to me and grinned. “That’s what happens, son,” he said, “when the rubber meets the road!” It became a sort of catch phrase between us. Whenever something really took off, one of us would say, “Well, looks like the rubber met the road,” and we’d both… Read More