Americans are a materialistic people. We like our home theatres, our furniture and our appliances. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford a new refrigerator or television, so they choose to rent instead of buy. The great news for investors is that this turns out to be an extremely… Read More

Over the past thirty years, investors have been pretty discriminating when it comes to decide which stocks to sell when they want to raise cash. Usually, the more speculative the stock, the more likely they were to be sold. But as we saw in the 2008 economic crisis, and as… Read More

Many investors have tired of positioning their portfolios for a housing recovery. Consistently positive growth trends are probably still a ways off, but there is no denying that sales activity remains well below normal levels, making a recovery a matter of not if, but when it occurs. Read More

If someone told you two hundred years ago that an inherently worthless item would be hocked to generations of people, and that the asking price for this item would be several thousand dollars per gram, you probably wouldn’t believe it. But as an investor, you’d probably want a piece of… Read More

When Circuit City went bankrupt in 2008, it should have been immediately clear that rival Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) was set to win a whole bunch of new customers. But the economy was lousy, so investors were in no hurry to go after shares of Best Buy. They should have been. Just a few quarters later, Best Buy was delivering great results, and shares, which had fallen below $20 in the market swoon of early 2009, jumped past $40 by the middle of 2009. Read More

When Circuit City went bankrupt in 2008, it should have been immediately clear that rival Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) was set to win a whole bunch of new customers. But the economy was lousy, so investors were in no hurry to go after shares of Best Buy. They should have been. Just a few quarters later, Best Buy was delivering great results, and shares, which had fallen below $20 in the market swoon of early 2009, jumped past $40 by the middle of 2009. We’ve seen this all before. When Chrysler and GM had to radically shrink to survive, it was clear that Ford (NYSE: F) could pick up market share. It did, and shares, belatedly, quadrupled. Only recently, we saw Pier One (NYSE: PIR) boast that business has never been better, now that Linens & Things is out of business. But Linens & Things closed up shop more than a year ago, and any market share shift took a few quarters to become apparent. Investors may have a chance to… Read More

Warren Buffett — and Benjamin Graham before him — made their fortunes off of one simple strategy: buying assets at cheap, undervalued prices and then helping those assets realize their value. It’s a tried and true strategy that’s spawned generations of value investors. For an investor, it… Read More

One thing was abundantly clear in the most recent earnings season: Quarterly results were often terrific as analysts had apparently underestimated the earnings strength of a wide range of companies in a wide swath of industries. And in… Read More

There are literally thousands of companies that have been built on how people behave. Most of the time, these companies exist to serve people’s demands for something convenient, necessary or entertaining. But some companies exist because everyone is prone to mistakes. These are the kinds of investments… Read More

At a weekend get together, I heard from many family members and friends about what they consider to be must-reads to stay up to speed on a daily basis. All seemed to agree that weekly news magazines such as Time and Newsweek seemed to be losing their relevance, moving too slowly in a world that has ever-shortening news cycles. Others noted that the Internet keeps them informed, but acknowledged that there is still a large credibility gap between journalism and blogging. And a few others noted that their local papers in cities such as Minneapolis or Miami were losing their… Read More

At a weekend get together, I heard from many family members and friends about what they consider to be must-reads to stay up to speed on a daily basis. All seemed to agree that weekly news magazines such as Time and Newsweek seemed to be losing their relevance, moving too slowly in a world that has ever-shortening news cycles. Others noted that the Internet keeps them informed, but acknowledged that there is still a large credibility gap between journalism and blogging. And a few others noted that their local papers in cities such as Minneapolis or Miami were losing their ability to broadly cover important events as they continue to gut their newsrooms. And all seemed to agree that News Corp.’s (Nasdaq: NWS) The Wall Street Journal, New York Times Company’s (NYSE: NYT) The New York Times, and Gannett’s (NYSE: GCI)  USA Today  still managed to maintain devotees with their respective foci on business news (WSJ), international and domestic politics and policy (NYT), and consumer-friendly sports, entertainment and “light news” (USA). Yet many investors have concluded that these publishing powerhouses are facing a mortal decline, and are still dubious of these stocks, even as… Read More

The oil industry is in the midst of dealing with one of the largest spills in history. The consequences could be dire for firms focused on offshore drilling, with a current six-month moratorium on drilling in the United States and a slew of new regulations and safety procedures being prepared… Read More