Wall Street bets on companies by buying their stock. It bets against them by shorting their shares. A short seller borrows shares, sells them and waits for the price to go down. When it does, the shares are repurchased at a… Read More

Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, once described his strategy as “buying dollars for 50 cents.” He would have loved this market. Graham had several tricks to determine whether a company was undervalued. One of them was assessing its book value, a figure… Read More

Talk about a rough ride: The nation’s nine major airlines lost -$671 million in the second quarter. We’ve all heard plenty of talk about how no one is flying anymore. Maybe it feels that way, but the airlines are still bringing in plenty of revenue. The total top line for… Read More

Stocks and bonds too dicey? Commodities out of reach? Options too complex? Then forget about all those investments. Right now, you can earn up to 4.5% with FDIC protection. Now, 4.5% isn’t too tough to beat with other investment classes, but each of them… Read More

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued new rules about short selling, a strategy... Read More

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued new rules about short selling, a strategy investors employ when they think a security’s price is going to fall. The two new rules don’t... Read More

In a perfectly efficient market, we could never buy a stock at a discount or sell one at a premium. Every security would be perfectly priced, all the time. It’s only through irrational, emotion-driven selling that value investors will occasionally get the chance to pick up a $50 stock for… Read More

Yesterday’s earnings wrapup suggested three best bets, Caterpillar, Merck and UnitedHealth Group. All three companies exceeded expectations and posted strong gains. Caterpillar rose nearly 8%, Merck was up +6% and UnitedHealth gained 3%. The Dow and Nasdaq, by contrast, were flat for the… Read More

Early March 2009 is not only notable for its cheap stocks. It’s also the strongest the dollar has been since 2006. It’s also the strongest it will be for quite some time. At its high on March 5, it took $1.25 to buy a euro. The dollar has since lost… Read More

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) turns in its quarterly report card this evening after the closing bell. Its earnings, like any company’s, are all about the past. With Apple, the direction to look is forward. First, the basics: Apple… Read More

When it rains, it pours. And we’ll see how that bodes for the market as Wall Street is deluged with second-quarter earnings reports today, led by five Dow components during the day and culminating with results from Apple after the… Read More