Retirement planners usually advise investors to hold a combination of stock market and fixed income investments in their portfolio. Investments could include mutual funds,… Read More

Just a few quarters ago, an increasing number of data points yielded an impression that the Chinese economy might soon be in distress. The housing sector looked overbuilt, the banking sector was carrying a rising number of… Read More

My bull call for 2013 is well on its way to becoming a reality. The first several weeks of January have been amazingly bullish for the… Read More

I once had a huge research report due for clients and the deadline was quickly approaching. My computer had just frozen and I thought the best thing to do at that point was to reboot. But my computer wouldn’t start up. That was my only computer and the document, which had about 100 pages, hadn’t been backed up in quite some time.#-ad_banner-# It turned out I needed to reinstall the operating system, which would wipe out my current hard drive. At that point, getting access to my document had become priceless. That episode taught me an important lesson: Save early… Read More

I once had a huge research report due for clients and the deadline was quickly approaching. My computer had just frozen and I thought the best thing to do at that point was to reboot. But my computer wouldn’t start up. That was my only computer and the document, which had about 100 pages, hadn’t been backed up in quite some time.#-ad_banner-# It turned out I needed to reinstall the operating system, which would wipe out my current hard drive. At that point, getting access to my document had become priceless. That episode taught me an important lesson: Save early and often.  Well, this lesson doesn’t just apply to backing up data. It’s also a key ingredient for successful investing. Just like certain documents and pictures, in business, a few irreplaceable assets have significant value and no adequate substitute. Take pipelines for example. Once they have been built, it’s simply not feasible for another company to come along and build a new pipeline next to the existing one. Add the fact that pipelines have a valuable use as they carry oil, natural gas, fuels and other commodities across the country, and it really becomes… Read More

Market breadth indicators are based on the number of stocks going up or down and the Advance-Decline (A-D) Line is the simplest way to measure breadth. Every day, the number of stocks that closed higher (advancing… Read More

If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Nowhere is this more true than in the stock market.  The late years of the 1990s were a great example of this. Internet stocks with little to no earnings were burning up the charts, pumping out huge gains and leading many investors to believe that an early retirement was close at hand.#-ad_banner-# The housing boom of the early to mid-2000’s also showcased… Read More

If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Nowhere is this more true than in the stock market.  The late years of the 1990s were a great example of this. Internet stocks with little to no earnings were burning up the charts, pumping out huge gains and leading many investors to believe that an early retirement was close at hand.#-ad_banner-# The housing boom of the early to mid-2000’s also showcased this dynamic. Everyone and their grandmother became an expert at speculating in real estate. The narrative on the Street was that “housing prices never go down.” We all know exactly how both of those stories ended. Investors jumping on the bandwagon looking for quick and easy gains turned out to incur huge losses. But now, a few years down the road, there is another kind of investment that is gaining critical mass. With yields on… Read More

Let me share with you three disparate items from my news clip file that, taken together, point to game-changing opportunities for one of our top commodity plays… Item #1: Smog is alive and well. Even after years of progress, air quality in Los… Read More

If you look out into the middle of the decade, then you can make the case for increasingly robust economic growth that could fuel heady top- and bottom-line gains in a number of sectors. But we’re not there yet.#-ad_banner-# Recent economic signs point to an eventual economic brightening, though there… Read More

Retirees are being confronted with a huge dilemma. In the past, investors on the verge of retirement could simply shift into fixed-income assets and still generate plenty of income to support a comfortable lifestyle.#-ad_banner-# Take the 10-Year… Read More