Investors often make one key mistake: They look to bag profits after an investment has made an impressive move. That makes sense — if the reasons to buy that stock have changed, or if the stock is now too pricey in relation to future earnings. But there are… Read More

Back in the 1980s, Peter Lynch, the famed head of Fidelity’s flagship Magellan fund, stumbled across an industry that he found to be undervalued and underfollowed by Wall Street. To paraphrase his analysis in his popular Beating the Street book, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Philip Morris had nearly 50 analysts… Read More

In order to make money in stocks, you’ve got to invest. Not just money — you’ve got to invest time to watch and watch and watch a gathered list of stocks and be ready to pounce when opportunities present themselves. Here are three stocks that have been on my watch list and now look like promising buys. 1. Couer D’Alene Mines Corp. (NYSE: CDE) At the start of each year, investors fret that this may be the year that China finally cools. But that’s been a bad bet recently and I’m betting that this year’s China… Read More

In order to make money in stocks, you’ve got to invest. Not just money — you’ve got to invest time to watch and watch and watch a gathered list of stocks and be ready to pounce when opportunities present themselves. Here are three stocks that have been on my watch list and now look like promising buys. 1. Couer D’Alene Mines Corp. (NYSE: CDE) At the start of each year, investors fret that this may be the year that China finally cools. But that’s been a bad bet recently and I’m betting that this year’s China scare will also prove to be unwarranted, despite possible troubles in that country’s housing sector. The rest of the economy simply has too much momentum, which is why I agree with commodity bulls that China’s insatiable demand for all kinds of metals and minerals will keep this asset class on the rise in 2011. My favorite current commodities play is Couer D’Alene, an 80-year-old company that is ramping up production of gold, silver, zinc and iron ore. It’s been a “show-me” stock lately as it starts to boost output at some new mines. Read More

On Tuesday I told you about one of the easiest ways I know of to make a fortune in stocks. In short, the idea is to take a tiny chunk of your discretionary cash and “swing for the fences.” I’m talking about investing in a few small stocks with the potential to return many times your money. Just one big winner — one home run — could more than make up for losses on your other bets. Here’s what I mean… In just four days, one of the… Read More

On Tuesday I told you about one of the easiest ways I know of to make a fortune in stocks. In short, the idea is to take a tiny chunk of your discretionary cash and “swing for the fences.” I’m talking about investing in a few small stocks with the potential to return many times your money. Just one big winner — one home run — could more than make up for losses on your other bets. Here’s what I mean… In just four days, one of the stocks I featured in my article: “3 Small Stocks That Could Make Investors Rich” is down 3%. Another is down 5%. But the third, BioLase Technology (Nasdaq: BLTI), has already jumped 96%.   Let’s say you had put $1,000 into each of these stocks. With your $3,000 investment you’d be sitting on $3,880 today — an $880 profit in less than a week. And that came from getting only one out of three stock picks right. Not bad. I don’t know of any other way to… Read More

For the courageous souls willing to jump into stocks in March 2009, it’s been a bonanza: The S&P 500 has risen about 90% since then, equating to annual gains of more than 40%. But this widely-held index has been a loser if you go farther back. In the past… Read More

When this stock underwent its IPO in 1986, four of the company’s employees became instant billionaires and 12 thousand of the firm’s employees were millionaires. The share price continued to soar. But the tech bubble of the early… Read More

Oil, technology, minerals and banking. Those are the industries that are host to the world’s most richly-valued companies. In fact, with a market cap of more than $250 billion, these companies are larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries such Portugal, Egypt or Chile. Read More

Pop Quiz: This versatile metal, which is light enough to float on water and soft enough to be cut with a knife, has commercial applications ranging from pharmaceuticals to rocket fuel. If you said lithium, go to the head of the class — and bonus points… Read More

In my recent article, “5 Stocks That Could Win in the Digital Age,” I examined five large media companies that were poised to not only survive the onslaught of the Internet and the Digital Age, but thrive. A couple of my picks in that article have more than one class… Read More

As investors continually seek out new investment ideas, it can get very tiresome. Just when you’ve found certain appealing stocks, they move up to your price target or lose operating momentum, and you’re compelled to find the next idea. But what if you could hold a stock for the whole year, a whole decade or even a whole generation? Well, that’s how people used to invest. My grandmother bought shares of AT&T (NYSE: T) in the 1950s — and never sold them. The dividend income was surely appealing. And the capital appreciation helped… Read More

As investors continually seek out new investment ideas, it can get very tiresome. Just when you’ve found certain appealing stocks, they move up to your price target or lose operating momentum, and you’re compelled to find the next idea. But what if you could hold a stock for the whole year, a whole decade or even a whole generation? Well, that’s how people used to invest. My grandmother bought shares of AT&T (NYSE: T) in the 1950s — and never sold them. The dividend income was surely appealing. And the capital appreciation helped her stay well ahead of the forces of inflation. But if my Grandma were alive today, would she still be able to find a “forever stock?” After all, in recent years, even stalwarts such as AT&T have lost their luster: Ma Bell’s shares have fallen by half since 2002. You can still find “forever stocks” if you know where to look. The key ingredient is to seek out companies with long operating histories, that sell goods or services that won’t become obsolete, and routinely generate solid rates of return on their deployed capital. Read More