With the S&P 500 touching another 52-week high on Monday, investors need to be increasingly careful. Any new stock buys could be coming in the later stages of a mini-rally that began around Labor Day weekend. So it pays to move down the risk curve by focusing on cheaper stocks… Read More
Results
The day will come when a public company becomes worth $1 trillion. It’s a big number to swallow, but I think it’s possible… When I say a company will one day become “worth $1 trillion,” I’m referring to when a company reaches a… Read More
Even with all of the hype around clean energy, a wide number of solar stocks have never been able to find much affection on Wall Street, settling for single-digit price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples. Blame it on Germany. The country has been such a huge supporter… Read More
In a recent column on billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, I detailed that tracking the moves of a high profile investment manager can be an extremely valuable strategy for individual investors. At the end of the day, coming to your own conclusion on whether an investment makes sense is most… Read More
In global economics, there are several emerging truisms. Growth is likely to be somewhat muted in the West as efforts to reverse massive budget deficits will create a drag as governments tax more than they spend. A second truism: emerging market economies have come a very long way in a very short time, and they’re unlikely to revert to their old habits that stifled growth. [See: “Forget About BRIC — Buy These Emerging Economies Instead”] The third truism: these upstart economies are likely to stumble on their way to a higher plane. The biggest concern:… Read More
In global economics, there are several emerging truisms. Growth is likely to be somewhat muted in the West as efforts to reverse massive budget deficits will create a drag as governments tax more than they spend. A second truism: emerging market economies have come a very long way in a very short time, and they’re unlikely to revert to their old habits that stifled growth. [See: “Forget About BRIC — Buy These Emerging Economies Instead”] The third truism: these upstart economies are likely to stumble on their way to a higher plane. The biggest concern: inflation. It’s just appearing now, and could well get much worse in 2011. And if that happens, many of the world’s hottest stock markets — many of which have doubled or even tripled in the past two years — could be hit by profit-taking. In recent days China has expressed increasing concern that inflation is starting to percolate. The government is seeking to rein in bank lending and has also started to impose price controls on key foodstuffs. But China is lucky. Its economy has so many hidden strengths, its… Read More
Oil hit a fresh two-year high this past trading week, reaching upwards of $88 a barrel. One way to profit from the current “black gold rush” is to find growing oil companies that also pay attractive dividends. Marine Petroleum… Read More
With interest rates near the lowest point in generations, the hunt for high yields continues in haste. Right now, strong income investments can increasingly be found in an unlikely place — real estate. Real estate investment trusts or REITS have typically been solid income investments… Read More
The coming year marks the 20th anniversary of the first use of “Dogs of the Dow” as an investment strategy, which focuses on the 10 highest-yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). In theory, these high yielders have been oversold (as… Read More
Despite the recent financial crisis, worldwide industrialization is increasing at a never before seen pace. Asia and Latin America are the fastest growing regions of the world, led by China and Brazil. These two hyper-growth regions make perfect trading partners. China doesn’t have enough raw materials to… Read More
The impressive trading action on Wednesday holds an important lesson for investors. In the absence of any dire economic news, investors are playing a bullish hand. Earlier in the week, economic woes in Europe had pushed many to the sidelines. With a sense that a fresh crisis… Read More