We saw a host of regional banks report stubbornly high loan losses on Monday, and investors have grown skittish about the regional banks that still have yet to report quarterly results. Sterling Financial (Nasdaq: STSA), Pacific State Bancorp (Nasdaq: PSBC), Midwest Banc Holdings (Nasdaq: MBHI), and W Holding (NYSE: WHI)… Read More

It’s been an extended stretch of misery for companies that supply equipment to wireless and wireline telecom companies. The massive network buildout of the 1990s led to more tepid capital spending in the last decade. But we may be entering a robust new phase of industry spending, according to telco… Read More

Now may be the optimal time to trade the financial sector. During the week of April 16, shares of many financial companies fell, following news of fraud charges against The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS). As a result, many financial… Read More

Retailers of all stripes have fallen back into favor among investors, and many of them have risen +300% or +400% in the last year. The profit outlook is surely brightening for the group, but consumers still remain quite stressed, so these stocks may… Read More

Shares of Hertz (NYSE: HTZ) rose roughly +20% this morning after the world’s largest car rental firm agreed to acquire rival Dollar Thrifty (NYSE: DTG) for a modest premium. Investors in Dollar Thrifty can’t complain: shares are now up twenty-fold since plummeting to… Read More

Back in August 2009, Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) unveiled plans to acquire Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL) in a $4 billion cash/stock transaction. The deal valued Marvel at approximately $50 per share, a +30% premium to the $38.65 it fetched before the deal was announced. Marvel shareholders… Read More

For the past two weeks, I’ve been informing my Mastering the Markets subscribers that a market correction is likely. Could that correction have started last Friday? Quite possibly. (Much more on this topic in my latest issue, so I hope you’ve signed up for that premium service.) However, I am… Read More

With Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) going gangbusters and lifting many other tech firms with it, the S&P Global Technology Index Fund (NYSE: IXN) may be a great idea. IXN’s assets are weighted toward large-cap global tech companies. Other top holdings include Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), IBM (NYSE: IBM)… Read More

As the United States wrestles with the future of nuclear power, it faces a more prosaic concern: What to do with all of the existing nuclear power plants, many of which were built more than 30 years ago and have already exceeded their originally planned life spans. The choice is… Read More

Markets don’t like uncertainty, and a big chunk of it was removed Sunday after Congress passed landmark health care legislation that will extend benefits to 32 million uninsured Americans. As the dust settled the day after America “answered the call of history,” as President Obama put it,… Read More