Over the past thirty years, investors have been pretty discriminating when it comes to decide which stocks to sell when they want to raise cash. Usually, the more speculative the stock, the more likely they were to be sold. But as we saw in the 2008 economic crisis, and as… Read More

Many investors have tired of positioning their portfolios for a housing recovery. Consistently positive growth trends are probably still a ways off, but there is no denying that sales activity remains well below normal levels, making a recovery a matter of not if, but when it occurs. Read More

If someone told you two hundred years ago that an inherently worthless item would be hocked to generations of people, and that the asking price for this item would be several thousand dollars per gram, you probably wouldn’t believe it. But as an investor, you’d probably want a piece of… Read More

When Circuit City went bankrupt in 2008, it should have been immediately clear that rival Best Buy... Read More

When Circuit City went bankrupt in 2008, it should have been immediately clear that rival Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) was set to win a whole bunch of new customers. But the economy was lousy, so investors... Read More

Warren Buffett — and Benjamin Graham before him — made their fortunes off of one simple strategy: buying assets at cheap, undervalued prices and then helping those assets realize their value. It’s a tried and true strategy that’s spawned generations of value investors. For an investor, it… Read More

One thing was abundantly clear in the most recent earnings season: Quarterly results were often terrific as analysts had apparently underestimated the earnings strength of a wide range of companies in a wide swath of industries. And in… Read More

There are literally thousands of companies that have been built on how people behave. Most of the time, these companies exist to serve people’s demands for something convenient, necessary or entertaining. But some companies exist because everyone is prone to mistakes. These are the kinds of investments… Read More

At a weekend get together, I heard from many family members and friends about what they consider to... Read More

At a weekend get together, I heard from many family members and friends about what they consider to be must-reads to stay up to speed on a daily basis. All seemed to agree that weekly news magazines... Read More

The oil industry is in the midst of dealing with one of the largest spills in history. The consequences could be dire for firms focused on offshore drilling, with a current six-month moratorium on drilling in the United States and a slew of new regulations and safety procedures being prepared… Read More

With the market oscillating between down and flat for the year, an old friend of mine, Tom, asked the other day why I was so chipper about the market. He had just received his 401(k) statement and was very disappointed. “I’m up,” I told him. “I’m way… Read More