The IPO market has been fairly quiet in 2010, with less than 100 deals coming through the transom. In the boom years, we’d routinely greet 300 or 400 new companies into the public market sphere. In fact, many more companies had hoped to… Read More

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dropped a bombshell in early August.   Unrelenting drought, scorching heat and uncontrolled fires have ravaged farmland and destroyed Russian crops this year. It has been estimated that roughly a third of Russia’s wheat harvest has been lost. So Putin took the only… Read More

After a relatively quiet period when the largest banks in the United States stayed out of the press and were allowed to refocus on running their operations, new allegations arose to suggest that many in the industry were negligent in handling the process for foreclosing on residential houses. Read More

No matter how you slice it, $3 trillion is a lot of money. That’s the amount of money states will need to come up with to pay for the health care and retirement benefits of all of their employees if stock markets fail to rise in coming… Read More

It was not that long ago when it seemed as if some sort of comprehensive legislation to tackle the issue of climate change almost seemed inevitable. But since then, political wrangling and the emergence of more pressing economic concerns have sent the issue to the backburner. Opponents… Read More

Value stocks have long been regarded as safer investments than growth stocks. They tend to sport lower valuations and are often dogged by low expectations. So any stumbles can be taken in stride. But investors need to do their homework before pouncing on a value stock too quickly. A little… Read More

I continue to be very uneasy about the market and believe it could begin trending lower at any time, so my natural inclination is buy inverse exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These are baskets of stocks that move higher when the market moves lower. I gave you a great inverse ETF a couple of weeks ago, ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 (NYSE: SDS). I recommended this ETF because my systems were telling me then, and they continue to tell me now, that this market could move lower in the near term — perhaps a lot lower. But, what… Read More

I continue to be very uneasy about the market and believe it could begin trending lower at any time, so my natural inclination is buy inverse exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These are baskets of stocks that move higher when the market moves lower. I gave you a great inverse ETF a couple of weeks ago, ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 (NYSE: SDS). I recommended this ETF because my systems were telling me then, and they continue to tell me now, that this market could move lower in the near term — perhaps a lot lower. But, what did the market do last week? It moved high enough to stop us out of the SDS trade. But remember: I am a rules-based investor. I have rules for getting into a position and rules for getting out. The rules for getting in are still flashing “Short!” But just because I have a rule that tells me when to short the market, it doesn’t mean that I ignore my rules for getting out of a trade. There is an old saying that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. One of these days,… Read More

Two things happened you should know about: food got cheap and work got easy. Sounds simple when put like that, but it was enough to change the world. Consider a personal example… On my family’s farm in Kansas, my grandfather’s wheat crop was considered… Read More

The economic slowdown of 2008 and 2009 was especially unkind to stocks of smaller companies. Their shares were the first to be sold off when investors panicked, and many of them remain out of favor while economic concerns persist. Indeed many small caps may… Read More

Recent healthcare reforms will add an estimated 30 million new patients into the system within the next few years. That means more office visits, medical procedures — and lab tests. Lab tests impact a very high proportion of healthcare decisions and will also become increasingly important as… Read More