Of the 2,000 stocks that comprise the Russell 2000 Index, 10 of them rose by at least +50% in September. And half of those are the beneficiary of very generous buyout offers (while a sixth name rebuffed an… Read More

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 mandated the need for disparate telecom networks to be able to communicate with each other. It also prescribed the need for number portability, which allowed consumers and businesses to keep their phone numbers even if they switched to another telecom provider or network. Read More

It’s important to keep track of the moves by insiders, as they can point you in the direction of undervalued (or overvalued) stocks. I like to scan the recent buying and selling lists from insiders either daily or weekly, but a monthly look is… Read More

I recently came across an insightful article that boldly detailed how the Internet is changing the world. The piece offered a number of stats and detailed that 750 tweets are written from Twitter every second, 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook every month, and overall Internet traffic is growing… Read More

There are plenty of good reasons to believe inflation is coming. U.S. government debt has surpassed $9 trillion, nearly tripling from $3.4 trillion in 2000. And things are getting worse. The government ran a deficit of $1.42 trillion in 2009 alone. Even as the economy has recovered, the current administration estimates the deficit for 2010 will be $1.5 trillion. [See Nathan Slaughter’s “Shocking Facts About the U.S. Debt Problem…”] How is the… Read More

There are plenty of good reasons to believe inflation is coming. U.S. government debt has surpassed $9 trillion, nearly tripling from $3.4 trillion in 2000. And things are getting worse. The government ran a deficit of $1.42 trillion in 2009 alone. Even as the economy has recovered, the current administration estimates the deficit for 2010 will be $1.5 trillion. [See Nathan Slaughter’s “Shocking Facts About the U.S. Debt Problem…”] How is the government going to pay all that debt? One way is inflation. The Federal Reserve has every incentive to boost inflation because it would in effect reduce the debt, as it would be paid with devalued dollars. Meanwhile, the government is injecting money into the system by basically giving it away. The current discount rate (the rate charged to commercial banks to borrow money from the Fed) is a microscopic 0.75%. To add perspective, the discount rate was 5.25% in 2006 and 19% in 1980. A massive flood of… Read More

It’s been a nutty summer for the nation’s largest operator of book stores. Soon after Memorial Day, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) delivered the sobering news that sales and profit targets would not be met. By late July,… Read More

The numbers are out and it’s official: this year’s summer was the fourth-warmest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Moreover, on a population-weighted basis, it was perhaps the warmest summer on record in the United States. Yet here we are with natural gas… Read More

Although the energy sector has underperformed in the wake of the Gulf oil spill disaster, it will likely be a plentiful source of profitable stocks as the economic recovery grinds ahead. While investors ought to do nicely during the next few years with household names like Chevron (NYSE: CVX), ConocoPhilips (NYSE: COP) and Exxon (NYSE: XOM), I’m anticipating much larger returns from some of the sector’s small- and mid-caps. One mid-cap oil and gas producer I’ve found could more than quadruple your money by 2015 or even sooner. Read More

Although the energy sector has underperformed in the wake of the Gulf oil spill disaster, it will likely be a plentiful source of profitable stocks as the economic recovery grinds ahead. While investors ought to do nicely during the next few years with household names like Chevron (NYSE: CVX), ConocoPhilips (NYSE: COP) and Exxon (NYSE: XOM), I’m anticipating much larger returns from some of the sector’s small- and mid-caps. One mid-cap oil and gas producer I’ve found could more than quadruple your money by 2015 or even sooner. Projections call for a share price of $45 to $70 in three to five years from the current price of about $15. Assuming five years, the annual return would be +25% to +35%. At three years, you’d be looking at something more in the +45% to +65% range annually. All told, the stock could jump roughly +200% to +365% from current levels. The company I’m referring to is called Petrohawk (NYSE: HK). Such ambitious return projections for the stock are feasible, mainly because of its plans to keep ramping up production at its… Read More

During the course of 2010, investors have continually fretted that the solar power industry was headed for severe slump. They worried that too many new factories were set to produce far more solar panels than the industry could absorb. And that supply increase was coming right at a time when… Read More

Canada has been an income investor’s playscape for decades. That reputation is mainly thanks to Canadian trusts, which aren’t taxed at the corporate level as long as they pay out the bulk of earnings as dividends. That’s allowed them to… Read More