In many races, the fabled tortoise always beats the hare. That’s the lesson learned by diversified miner Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO), which tried to race ahead, stumbled badly, and is now running the race at a more moderate and safer pace. At the height of the commodities… Read More

I have a little quiz for you. I’ll describe one of the most lucrative commodity plays I’ve ever seen, and you tell me which one I’m talking about. Ready? This commodity is one of the most versatile on the planet. It… Read More

One of the most interesting indicators used in the financial markets is the Baltic Dry Index (BDI). The index, created and maintained by the London-based Baltic Exchange, measures the price of shipping raw materials such as iron ore, coal and grains around… Read More

Thanks to a confluence of events, prices for corn, soybeans and wheat have been surging recently.... Read More

Thanks to a confluence of events, prices for corn, soybeans and wheat have been surging recently. And that has set agricultural equipment stocks afire. Shares of irrigation equipment maker Lindsay... Read More

I feel the same way about gold right now as I did about tech stocks in the late 1990s — that it’s far too late to get in. Just the fact that no one can agree if there’s a gold bubble is enough to turn me off to the yellow… Read More

The late-1970s was witness to one of the most remarkable gold rallies in history. From a low of $100 per troy ounce in 1976, prices rose to a then-record $873 by 1980. The culprit? Double-digit rates of inflation. Read More

There are plenty of good reasons to believe inflation is coming. U.S. government debt has... Read More

There are plenty of good reasons to believe inflation is coming. U.S. government debt has surpassed $9 trillion, nearly tripling from $3.4 trillion in 2000. And things are getting worse. The... Read More

The numbers are out and it’s official: this year’s summer was the fourth-warmest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Moreover, on a population-weighted basis, it was perhaps the warmest summer on record in the United States. Yet here we are with natural gas… Read More

Although the energy sector has underperformed in the wake of the Gulf oil spill disaster, it will... Read More

Although the energy sector has underperformed in the wake of the Gulf oil spill disaster, it will likely be a plentiful source of profitable stocks as the economic recovery grinds ahead. While... Read More

During the course of 2010, investors have continually fretted that the solar power industry was headed for severe slump. They worried that too many new factories were set to produce far more solar panels than the industry could absorb. And that supply increase was coming right at a time when… Read More