I spent most of Tuesday morning perusing the U.S. Commerce Department’s August retail sales report. It’s not exactly light reading – I’d prefer a Clive Cussler novel any day. Still, this spending barometer reveals quite a bit about the state of the economy in general and carries broad implications for several of my holdings. #-ad_banner-#While the data can be choppy from month to month, it’s pretty clear that the U.S. consumer is in a good mood right now. Various consumer confidence surveys are giving conflicting readings. Taken together, they suggest attitudes remain upbeat, but with a… Read More

I spent most of Tuesday morning perusing the U.S. Commerce Department’s August retail sales report. It’s not exactly light reading – I’d prefer a Clive Cussler novel any day. Still, this spending barometer reveals quite a bit about the state of the economy in general and carries broad implications for several of my holdings. #-ad_banner-#While the data can be choppy from month to month, it’s pretty clear that the U.S. consumer is in a good mood right now. Various consumer confidence surveys are giving conflicting readings. Taken together, they suggest attitudes remain upbeat, but with a growing level of unease. However, that anxiety has had a negligible impact on the collective pocketbook. Retail expenditures climbed 0.4% in August from the prior month. That might sound tepid. But in a $20 trillion economy, even fractions of a percent equate to billions of additional dollars going into cash registers. The growth rate was also double what economists were expecting (which has been the norm lately). Actual results have overshot economists’ projections in four of the past five months. August’s robust growth comes on top of an upwardly-revised 0.8% increase in July, about three times what the market was… Read More

This week, the most important image isn’t a chart of the stock market… It’s a pair of pictures telling a fast-paced story about oil prices. The first is a daily chart of oil futures. The second of the pair is a satellite image of thick black smoke rising from Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility – that explains the price jump at the far right of the futures chart. —Recommended Link— Former Intelligence officer rocks the world of pot stocks with bombshell from SEC In just a few days, we’re going to pull back the veil… Read More

This week, the most important image isn’t a chart of the stock market… It’s a pair of pictures telling a fast-paced story about oil prices. The first is a daily chart of oil futures. The second of the pair is a satellite image of thick black smoke rising from Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility – that explains the price jump at the far right of the futures chart. —Recommended Link— Former Intelligence officer rocks the world of pot stocks with bombshell from SEC In just a few days, we’re going to pull back the veil on the biggest opportunity in pot stocks we’ve ever seen… On September 24 at 1 p.m. we’re releasing an exclusive interview that will rock the world of pot stocks. And anyone smart enough to follow along could walk away with an extra $260,000 in the next 12 months. Reserve your seat now. Here’s the first chart. And here’s the second. You may have seen this image over the weekend. Initial reports indicated Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched drone attacks on the facility, resulting in about half of Saudi’s processing capacity being taken offline. I have a third picture to show… Read More

Ever thought about getting solar panels installed on your roof?  If you’ve ever been interested in seeing what it might cost, or what the payoff would be to install solar on your home, check out Google’s Project Sunroof. Simply enter your address and it will tell you what it will cost to install solar and what the payoff over time would be. It also shows a google map of your house and how much sunlight it receives. Pretty cool, right? I came across this nifty little tool when researching a company in the solar energy space… Read More

Ever thought about getting solar panels installed on your roof?  If you’ve ever been interested in seeing what it might cost, or what the payoff would be to install solar on your home, check out Google’s Project Sunroof. Simply enter your address and it will tell you what it will cost to install solar and what the payoff over time would be. It also shows a google map of your house and how much sunlight it receives. Pretty cool, right? I came across this nifty little tool when researching a company in the solar energy space back in April. My subscribers and I ended up adding it to our portfolio thanks to an even better tool: the Maximum Profit system. Bringing Solar To The Masses The company in question, Enphase Energy (Nasdaq: ENPH) plays an important role in the solar process. In short, they will help you manage, convert and store the energy that those panels collect from the sun. The company’s aim is to help advance the worldwide potential of renewable energy. Over the years, solar power has become a more viable option as the technology has improved, which in turn has lowered the… Read More

Suppose you were a job hunter presented with two options: a position offering a flat $50,000 per year with no pay hikes or one starting at $40,000 with a guaranteed 10% raise each year. If you were only a year away from retirement, the first option would make more sense. But for those with a bit longer to go, option number two would be the better deal. Not only will your paycheck grow each year, but it will do so by an increasing amount — $4,000 after the first 12 months, $4,400 after the next 12, and so on. After… Read More

Suppose you were a job hunter presented with two options: a position offering a flat $50,000 per year with no pay hikes or one starting at $40,000 with a guaranteed 10% raise each year. If you were only a year away from retirement, the first option would make more sense. But for those with a bit longer to go, option number two would be the better deal. Not only will your paycheck grow each year, but it will do so by an increasing amount — $4,000 after the first 12 months, $4,400 after the next 12, and so on. After just five years, you would be pulling down about $64,000 per year. And if the base compensation alone didn’t sway you, what if I also mentioned that the second job offer was from a prosperous, growing company that also offered nice incentives such as generous 401(K) matching? I’m guessing that would only reinforce your decision. If this simple analogy makes sense, congratulations — you’re already a step ahead of the yield-hungry crowd and that much closer to financial independence. —Recommended Link— Ground-Breaking interview unveils secret to success with pot trading On September 24 at 1… Read More

This might be the most unpopular thing I tell people about investing. It doesn’t win me a lot of friends by saying it, but it’s true. A good stock pick really isn’t that hard to find. In fact, sometimes it’s stupidly simple. You heard me right… —Recommended Link— What to Do Before Stocks Sink 57% With the stock market hitting record highs, most people think we must be in pretty good shape. But hold on a minute. According to Yale professor Robert Shiller, stocks are 57% too high. That’s 14,000+ points on the… Read More

This might be the most unpopular thing I tell people about investing. It doesn’t win me a lot of friends by saying it, but it’s true. A good stock pick really isn’t that hard to find. In fact, sometimes it’s stupidly simple. You heard me right… —Recommended Link— What to Do Before Stocks Sink 57% With the stock market hitting record highs, most people think we must be in pretty good shape. But hold on a minute. According to Yale professor Robert Shiller, stocks are 57% too high. That’s 14,000+ points on the Dow. Shiller won a Nobel Prize for his work on stock prices. And if he’s right, millions of investors could be about to see their investment accounts crushed. Don’t let that happen to you. Click here to see how you can avoid the same fate. The fact of the matter is we just tend to make investing too damn complicated. We overthink. We overanalyze. We worry too much over what we can’t control. We try to time everything just perfectly. Therein lies the rub. We’re our own worst enemy. If we can just manage to… Read More

Some of you may remember back in June, I wrote about Hoegh LNG Partners (Nasdaq: HMLP), saying it was one of the rare 10%-yielders that was actually worth buying. I didn’t say that lightly. After all, as I frequently tell my High-Yield Investing subscribers, if a stock is yielding double digits, it’s for a reason.  After all, yields go up as prices go down. Logically, if a company were on truly healthy long-term footing, in most cases enough investors would be interested in buying shares to snatch up a healthy yield as the stock sold off on whatever short-term missteps… Read More

Some of you may remember back in June, I wrote about Hoegh LNG Partners (Nasdaq: HMLP), saying it was one of the rare 10%-yielders that was actually worth buying. I didn’t say that lightly. After all, as I frequently tell my High-Yield Investing subscribers, if a stock is yielding double digits, it’s for a reason.  After all, yields go up as prices go down. Logically, if a company were on truly healthy long-term footing, in most cases enough investors would be interested in buying shares to snatch up a healthy yield as the stock sold off on whatever short-term missteps occurred before things get too out of hand. So with this in mind, I thought it would be prudent to check in on HMLP to see where things stand today. HMLP Recap For those of you who missed my previous discussion on HMLP, let’s briefly go over the business model…  Hoegh owns floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs). Basically, these are ships anchored off the coast that have been mounted with regasification equipment. In the simplest terms, they turn liquefied natural gas (LNG) back into a usable product, which is then pumped via pipeline to the shore where it… Read More

For the past few weeks, I’ve been closely monitoring sentiment. Sentiment indicators measure what investors think about the markets. This class of indicators includes the weekly survey conducted by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). I’ve noted several times recently that this survey dates back to 1987. For an average week, 38% of investors are bullish, 30% are bearish and 32% are neutral. I believe it’s important to consider those long-term averages when looking at the current readings. Last week, just 28.6% were bullish, almost 40% were bearish and 32% were neutral. —Recommended Link— $5… Read More

For the past few weeks, I’ve been closely monitoring sentiment. Sentiment indicators measure what investors think about the markets. This class of indicators includes the weekly survey conducted by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). I’ve noted several times recently that this survey dates back to 1987. For an average week, 38% of investors are bullish, 30% are bearish and 32% are neutral. I believe it’s important to consider those long-term averages when looking at the current readings. Last week, just 28.6% were bullish, almost 40% were bearish and 32% were neutral. —Recommended Link— $5 Stock To Rake In $4.6 Million A DAY In 5G Patent Royalties Apple, Samsung, LG, and others will owe one under-the-radar company up to $6.65 billion in 5G licensing fees. potentially sending this $5 stock to Google levels or higher. Early investors could see $5,000 turn into $117,385 in the next 12 months. Stake your claim before this company’s name hits the evening news. Click here for full details. Source: AAII.com Currently, the number of bulls remains unusually low. More than 70% of… Read More