In one old western movie I saw as a kid, a young entrepreneur took a job driving a nitroglycerin wagon down a rocky road to a mine. He was willing to get paid well to do a job no one else wanted to do, so in time he grew rich and eventually bought the mine. Similarly, I like the stocks of companies that do the job no one else wants to do or go where no one else wants to go. The stocks are typically undervalued, but the companies make tons of money and reward their shareholders.  The… Read More

In one old western movie I saw as a kid, a young entrepreneur took a job driving a nitroglycerin wagon down a rocky road to a mine. He was willing to get paid well to do a job no one else wanted to do, so in time he grew rich and eventually bought the mine. Similarly, I like the stocks of companies that do the job no one else wants to do or go where no one else wants to go. The stocks are typically undervalued, but the companies make tons of money and reward their shareholders.  The French oil giant Total (NYSE: TOT) fits this profile perfectly. Formed in 2000 with the merger of TotalFina and Elf Aquitaine, Total operates in over 130 countries and boasts annual sales of more than $230 billion. Shares have gained nearly 20% this year, but the combination of Total’s fundamentals and macro-environmental conditions should send shares even higher in the near future. When I profile large, vertically integrated oil companies, I like to see what veteran investment strategist and energy analyst Bill O’Grady of Confluence Investment Management has to see. O’Grady contends… Read More

Striking it rich in the precious metal business is a goal far older than the United States.   In the 19th century, many Americans’ ancestors traveled west across the country with dreams of building new lives. Some ventured west to find freedom and land, others moved west in search of fortune. It was the lure of riches — in the form of precious metals — that attracted these fortune-seekers to the faraway land of California.#-ad_banner-# Known as the California Gold Rush, over 300,000 fortune hunters traveled from all over the world to find wealth in the form of gold nuggets. Read More

Striking it rich in the precious metal business is a goal far older than the United States.   In the 19th century, many Americans’ ancestors traveled west across the country with dreams of building new lives. Some ventured west to find freedom and land, others moved west in search of fortune. It was the lure of riches — in the form of precious metals — that attracted these fortune-seekers to the faraway land of California.#-ad_banner-# Known as the California Gold Rush, over 300,000 fortune hunters traveled from all over the world to find wealth in the form of gold nuggets. Known as forty-niners in reference to the gold rush of 1849, many of the early gold seekers struck it rich while gold was easy to find and retrieve.   As the numbers of fortune seekers increased, however, it became more difficult to discover new sources of gold. Soon, the equation shifted, with most of the new miners losing money on their venture. The easy pickings were gone forever, and only the merchants selling mining supplies and the dream continued to create wealth.    Today, it is still possible — though far more difficult — to build great wealth in the… Read More

The Lone Ranger was a big fan of silver.  He named his horse after the shiny metal and fashioned bullets out of it. If werewolves ever threatened Wild West homesteaders, I’m sure the masked man and Tonto could’ve taken care of them. Lately, silver bulls probably feel like the Lone Ranger — with the emphasis on the “Lone.” With the recent correction in precious metals prices, silver has been pounded extra hard. Since its top in mid-2011, iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV), which tracks the price of silver, has slid more than 50%. Compare that with… Read More

The Lone Ranger was a big fan of silver.  He named his horse after the shiny metal and fashioned bullets out of it. If werewolves ever threatened Wild West homesteaders, I’m sure the masked man and Tonto could’ve taken care of them. Lately, silver bulls probably feel like the Lone Ranger — with the emphasis on the “Lone.” With the recent correction in precious metals prices, silver has been pounded extra hard. Since its top in mid-2011, iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV), which tracks the price of silver, has slid more than 50%. Compare that with the gold tracker iShares Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD), which has given back less than 30%. Why?  Secondary trades like silver are often afterthoughts for investors. When the price of the popular asset class seems to bid up, buyers will violently pile in to a cheaper alternative. The cheaper the investment, the higher it climbs. They are also punished more severely when things go south. But as always, the herd, in its infinite lack of wisdom, is missing a major point: Silver is useful outside of being a currency proxy. Recently, I discussed a short-term trading idea for GLD  based purely… Read More

When is the best time to focus on a particular industry? When it’s deeply out of favor. Every industry hits the occasional rough patch, which typically leads investors to focus their attention elsewhere. Yet when the rough patch ends, and the skies start to brighten, you have a chance to dig into the group before the crowd returns. That’s precisely the set up in place for a group of companies known as upstream MLPs. These master limited partnerships focus on mature energy fields. These firms don’t focus on the early stage of energy exploration, and instead buy mature oil and… Read More

When is the best time to focus on a particular industry? When it’s deeply out of favor. Every industry hits the occasional rough patch, which typically leads investors to focus their attention elsewhere. Yet when the rough patch ends, and the skies start to brighten, you have a chance to dig into the group before the crowd returns. That’s precisely the set up in place for a group of companies known as upstream MLPs. These master limited partnerships focus on mature energy fields. These firms don’t focus on the early stage of energy exploration, and instead buy mature oil and gas fields that other firms have chosen to sell.  It’s an industry known for a lot of deals, as the key players boost sales and replace existing assets that eventually start to post declining output. Nearly $2.5 billion in transactions were completed in 2010, rising to $5.8 billion in 2012, according to Credit Suisse. And investors were expecting even higher amounts of deal-making in 2013 — until Linn Energy (Nasdaq: LINE) spoiled the party.#-ad_banner-# One of the industry’s most acquisitive firms, Linn has tended to utilize aggressive accounting measures to justify the economics of its deals to investors. That caught… Read More

“You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.”  Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” earned the silver-bearded singer a gazillion dollars and carried him on to fame and fortune as a rotisserie chicken magnate. But when it comes to trading — especially when it comes to trading gold — it’s really darn good advice. Now, as I wrote a few months ago, I’m no fan of the shiny yellow metal. But after a merciless pounding this summer, gold is due for a near-term rally. The best way to play this bounce is through the SPDR… Read More

“You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.”  Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” earned the silver-bearded singer a gazillion dollars and carried him on to fame and fortune as a rotisserie chicken magnate. But when it comes to trading — especially when it comes to trading gold — it’s really darn good advice. Now, as I wrote a few months ago, I’m no fan of the shiny yellow metal. But after a merciless pounding this summer, gold is due for a near-term rally. The best way to play this bounce is through the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (Nasdaq: GLD). The weekly chart explains it all. After blowing through $170 around this time last year, GLD has taken a nasty tumble of over 30%. Apparently, the fear trade can be scary on both sides of the table. When shares pierced $120, they bounced nicely by 18% — and immediately proceeded to give most of that gain back. However, looking at the chart, it seems that a double bottom is in place for GLD.#-ad_banner-#​ Typically (and technically), a double-bottom formation can be a bullish signal. Besides… Read More

Ken Griffin, a wunderkind of Wall Street, was managing a million dollars while still in college. After launching Citadel Investment Group with just over $4 million, Griffin’s fund is now among the largest in the world, with over $40 billion under management. His fund is among my favorites for investment ideas. Griffin recently made an unusual investment: He just took a nearly 6% stake in the newly public Global Brass and Copper Holdings (NYSE: BRSS).#-ad_banner-# The company specializes in fabricating, processing and distributing specialized brass and copper products. While the company has existed since 2007, its books have been open… Read More

Ken Griffin, a wunderkind of Wall Street, was managing a million dollars while still in college. After launching Citadel Investment Group with just over $4 million, Griffin’s fund is now among the largest in the world, with over $40 billion under management. His fund is among my favorites for investment ideas. Griffin recently made an unusual investment: He just took a nearly 6% stake in the newly public Global Brass and Copper Holdings (NYSE: BRSS).#-ad_banner-# The company specializes in fabricating, processing and distributing specialized brass and copper products. While the company has existed since 2007, its books have been open for scrutiny only since its May IPO.  Global Brass, which recently posted impressive second-quarter results, appears solid, and Citadel’s investment increases my confidence. However, whenever I consider investing in a base metal fabricating company, I am reminded of my first experience in the field.  I made my first copper fabrication investment at 9 years old. I lost 99% of my capital, not counting transaction costs, on the investment. This experience was the first of many in the never-ending learning curve of the financial markets. Here’s what happened: At that age, I was a voracious reader of pulp magazines and comic… Read More

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Over two days in November, more than 150 companies in the United States, Canada and Mexico will find out what it’s like to experience an electrical outage more massive than anything in our lifetime.#-ad_banner-# Scary proposition, huh? Well, it’s actually a first-of-a-kind drill organized by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. to simulate an enemy attack that wipes out chunks of the power grid and leaves continentwide areas without electricity for weeks. It’s attracting a virtual who’s who of military, corporate, academic and utility personnel. We already know… Read More

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Over two days in November, more than 150 companies in the United States, Canada and Mexico will find out what it’s like to experience an electrical outage more massive than anything in our lifetime.#-ad_banner-# Scary proposition, huh? Well, it’s actually a first-of-a-kind drill organized by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. to simulate an enemy attack that wipes out chunks of the power grid and leaves continentwide areas without electricity for weeks. It’s attracting a virtual who’s who of military, corporate, academic and utility personnel. We already know how portions of the electric grid perform when severe storms strike. Eight million people in the Northeast lost power during Hurricane Sandy last year, making a disastrous situation that much worse. However, the drill, set for Nov. 13-14, is unlikely to reveal anything that disproves what physicists, nuclear scientists, electrical engineers, utilities and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, have been warning of for years. The U.S. grid is a century old. It consists of a patchwork of 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5,800 major power plants. The average substation transformer is two years older than its… Read More

This may come at a surprise to many of you… But I’ve been looking at trimming down my portfolio holdings in the oil and gas sector over the past couple of months. Why would I do that when every week a new report comes out claiming the United States is… Read More

The notion of “peak oil” has been thoroughly debunked. Repeated predictions of the world’s oil shortage in coming years simply failed to account for our ability to tap into deeper, more complex seams of energy, buried under the ocean floor or the Arctic tundra. It may become more expensive to… Read More

Sometimes I feel as if I have the best job in the world, especially each time the calendar turns. You see, this is when most of the fruits of the team’s labors come together here at StreetAuthority. It’s when we publish many of the newsletters we’ve been… Read More