If you’re an occasional visitor to the dog track or the horse track, then you’re probably familiar with the trifecta. The thing about a trifecta is you must pick which horses or dogs will win first, second and third, in exact order. So your chance of being hit by a… Read More

If you’re an American consumer with small children, the chances of interacting with something made by toy giant Mattel (Nasdaq: MAT) are probably no less than 99.999998%. Whether you’re always stepping on the cold, die-cast metal of a Hot Wheels car your son always manages to leave out in the… Read More

The stock market is a lot like high school. You have the super popular group (tech stocks, social media IPOs, commodity stocks) that runs the place for the time being. Then you have groups in the middle who really don’t make any waves (like a Wells Fargo (NYSE:… Read More

The late, great alternative journalist Hunter S. Thompson once wrote “… when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Thompson would’ve loved the current market conditions. From a once-unthinkable downgrade of U.S. Treasury bonds and the ensuing global turmoil created by the… Read More

The late Baron Rothschild had a deceptively simple philosophy: “Buy when you hear the cannon. Sell when you hear the violins.” Easier said than done. The old baron had a steady hand and made a fortune during the Napoleonic Wars. Today, ill winds blow through the most… Read More

One of the nastier consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 was an almost instant contraction of credit. While consumer credit contracted as expected, commercial lending evaporated as well. American businesses, primarily small and mid-market businesses, were cut off from access to capital, preventing them from expanding and in some… Read More

Growing up, I spent most of the summer at the neighborhood tennis and swim club. July 4th was a special day and featured the club’s summer tennis tournament, a cookout and fresh watermelon giveaway. There were also pool games. For me, the highlight of the day was what I called… Read More

Walk through your house and rummage through your junk drawers. Buried beneath some old string, a 1996 stand up calendar from your insurance agent and a pair of stretched out reading glasses, there’s a good chance you’ll find an old cell phone that’s long since been retired. There’s an even… Read More

Thanks to space age, cutting-edge design, an enigmatic CEO and rabidly devoted customers, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) can sometimes give off the aura of a cult. After all, people line up at God-awful hours of the night/morning to buy the company’s shiny little gadgets the first day they hit the market… Read More

In the 1990s, not owning a Janus mutual fund in any of your investment accounts was tantamount to having to carry a Waltons lunch box at an all boys school in fourth grade. Believe me, I know what the word “ostracized” means and I… Read More