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 investors employ when they think a security’s price is going to fall. The two new rules don’t restrict short selling and won’t affect individuals or “short” or “ultrashort” exchange traded funds, at least not yet. The SEC plans an industry roundtable in September to discuss other proposals that could limit the practice, which has come under scrutiny after criticism that it drives down stock prices. Short and ultrashort (read: “leveraged”) exchange-traded funds allow… 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 restrict short selling and won’t affect individuals or “short” or “ultrashort” exchange traded funds, at least not yet. The SEC plans an industry roundtable in September to discuss other proposals that could limit the practice, which has come under scrutiny after criticism that it drives down stock prices. Short and ultrashort (read: “leveraged”) exchange-traded funds allow an investor to bet on a price drop. The funds are popular because they can be held in a typical brokerage account rather than transacted through a margin account, the vehicle through which short sales typically take place. One new rule calls for more reporting of short sales to increase the amount of information available to the public. Wall Street’s self-regulatory agencies will publish daily short-sale transaction reports that detail the total number of a company’s shares were shorted. After a month, the data would be… 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

Art Laffer is the dean of supply-side economics, which holds that the key to any macroeconomic ill is to let people keep their money rather than to tax them. I agree. So did President Reagan, whose landmark tax cuts in the early 1980s were… Read More

Now that we know we want a significant portion of our portfolio outside the U.S. to hedge against the coming inflation, it’s time to consider some specific international stocks that offer exceptional opportunities. I recently used StreetAuthority’s… Read More

Warren Buffett has sold 16% of his 48 million shares in Moody’s Investors Service (NYSE: MCO), which he has held since 2000. It’s exactly the right move. Earlier in the week I wrote that this should happen after reading the lawsuit filed by the… Read More

The largest savings and loan in the United States said second-quarter earnings were up 16% from last year. Net income rose to $127.9 million, or 26 cents a share, compared with $110.7 million, or 22 cents a… Read More

Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) is dying and will bleed out soon. The question isn’t if – it’s when. The company’s eponymous blue-and-yellow video stores are hopelessly stuck in the past. The brick-and-mortar model of video rental has been overtaken by superior technologies that are far more convenient and customer-focused. Video rental… 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