The S&P 500 Index is the most commonly tracked investment benchmark in the United States. When you hear about a portfolio manager “beating the market,” chances are it is in reference to outperforming the S&P 500. Read More

With reward comes risk. That’s the painful lesson learned by biotech investors last month.... Read More

With reward comes risk. That’s the painful lesson learned by biotech investors last month. Investors in Arena Pharma (Nasdaq: ARNA), Idenix Pharma (Nasdaq: IDIX), AMAG Pharma (Nasdaq: AMAG) and... Read More

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 mandated the need for disparate telecom networks to be able to communicate with each other. It also prescribed the need for number portability, which allowed consumers and businesses to keep their phone numbers even if they switched to another telecom provider or network. Read More

I recently came across an insightful article that boldly detailed how the Internet is changing the world. The piece offered a number of stats and detailed that 750 tweets are written from Twitter every second, 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook every month, and overall Internet traffic is growing… Read More

It’s been a nutty summer for the nation’s largest operator of book stores. Soon after Memorial Day, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) delivered the sobering news that sales and profit targets would not be met. By late July,… Read More

Legend has it that the term “blue chip” stems from poker, in that it represented the poker chip with the highest value in the game. These days, the term is ubiquitous in the stock market and refers to a large, stable company that is financially sound, has well-known brand and… Read More

In the debate between growth and value investors, it’s usually a contest between high growth... Read More

In the debate between growth and value investors, it’s usually a contest between high growth and higher valuations and low growth and very low valuations. But what should investors do with a... Read More

A common pitfall companies encounter has to do with challenging marketplace conditions, be it changing customer habits or competition from rivals that attempt to steal away its business. Others have a habit of self inflicting their wounds. Changing market conditions, foreign competition, fickle consumers — these are… Read More

In tough economic times, a high debt load can cripple a company. But when business is good, that debt can actually be a real benefit. That’s because equity comprises just a small part of the company’s total enterprise value (… Read More

Cyclical stocks have always been tricky for investors. At the bottom of an economic cycle, they can appear to have fairly high price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios as investors look ahead to better times. When the cycle improves and approaches a peak, the P/E multiple… Read More