Any shareholder of a company that has been bought out can tell you that takeovers are often lucrative propositions, often delivering quick double-digit gains. But overall, acquisitions have a reputation for destroying shareholder value at the acquiring company. Studies place the failure rate at between 60% and… Read More

The risky part of investors blindly counting on long-standing hot streaks is that when the streaks finally turn cold, the fallout is enormous. On the flipside, the resumption of those winning streaks makes for incredible turnaround stories. There’s no better example… Read More

Once a quarter, investors take note of a wide range of buying and selling by company insiders. These folks can only buy and sell the stock of their respective company for a fixed period after earnings have been released. With many companies rolling out quarterly results about a month… Read More

It always pays to scroll through stocks that have taken a recent pounding, Most of the time, they’ve deserved to take a hit. But sometimes, investors simply over-react to seemingly bad news. And that creates opportunity. Let’s take a look at four stocks from the Russell 2000,… Read More

Uncle Sam’s decision to unload its remaining block of 2.4 billion common shares of Citigroup (NYSE: C) — one quarter ahead of time — has caused many to take a fresh look at the banking titan. A quick survey of analysts’ opinions reveals a stock with +15% or +20%… Read More

The rules of a paired trade are quite simple. Find a good company and make a bullish investment while also finding a lousy company in the same industry and make a bearish short investment against it. That logic surely applies when two companies appear comparably valued. But… Read More

After an impressive two-year surge that has seen its stock rise more than +200%, shares of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) appear to have stalled. The stock has been stuck in a tight range between $300 and $320 for the past six weeks, as bulls and bears have at it. Yet this stock is far too popular and far too controversial to stay stuck in a trading range for very long. The key question for investors now: Will Apple resume its upward climb toward the $400 mark? Or is the long-awaited pullback that brings… Read More

After an impressive two-year surge that has seen its stock rise more than +200%, shares of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) appear to have stalled. The stock has been stuck in a tight range between $300 and $320 for the past six weeks, as bulls and bears have at it. Yet this stock is far too popular and far too controversial to stay stuck in a trading range for very long. The key question for investors now: Will Apple resume its upward climb toward the $400 mark? Or is the long-awaited pullback that brings shares down to somewhere near $250 close at hand? Here are six catalysts to monitor that could move shares this winter. [Read more about catalysts and how they shape the market’s biggest winners] The positives. There’s no shortage of reasons to like Apple. Just ask Wall Street analysts. They universally sing the company’s praises, and most expect shares to eventually climb to $375 or higher. That’s not a huge stretch, as $375 reflects a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 15 on… Read More

Off the radar — but only for a little while longer. That’s the investment thesis I look for when searching for stock ideas. Good companies, doing all the right things, getting set to pop up on more investors’ radars in the coming year. These three companies look… Read More

Oil hit a fresh two-year high this past trading week, reaching upwards of $88 a barrel. One way to profit from the current “black gold rush” is to find growing oil companies that also pay attractive dividends. Marine Petroleum… Read More

In the final stages of the dot-com boom, a number of stocks tacked on stunning gains day after day, in what’s known as a “melt-up.” These stocks were no longer logically valued on any sort of fundamental basis, and instead were squarely in the hands of momentum investors that know… Read More