In my Daily Paycheck newsletter, I buy income-generating securities for the long haul — reinvesting dividends for compound growth and income. But when I see an investment with ridiculous fundamentals, coupled with a repeating trend, it gets my trader’s heart beating. And that’s what I see when… Read More

Warren Buffett and his geeky, bridge-playing sidekick Bill Gates have talked 40 billionaires, including some of the business world’s marquee names, into giving half their fortunes to charity.   It’s an interesting scenario: If the avuncular Buffett showed up at your house and asked you to donate half… Read More

It’s like the senior prom for the aviation business: The Farnborough Air Show in the United Kingdom is a chance for companies to showcase their wares and tout their latest sales. It’s one way for industry players and investors to gauge who’s up, who’s down — and who’s out. Read More

There are so many crosscurrents in the U.S. economy right now that the stock market has no idea where it wants to go. Every trading day, we get a new set of items to digest that sets a short-term trend for the market. As… Read More

The unemployment rate in the United States has only recently experienced some moderately good news, dipping back into the single digits to 9.5% — a slight downtick from 9.7% in May. A 9.5% unemployment rate is still… Read More

Over the course of June, the market swooned on fears that the economy was on a downward path. And sure enough, the economic data have indeed been sobering. Just this morning, we learned that the economy created a paltry 71,000 private sector jobs, and the unemployment rate seems to be stuck in the 9.5% area. When you consider that the U.S. population grows by about two million per year, it’s clear that we’d need to see roughly 200,000 jobs created every month to help bring down unemployment. Read More

Over the course of June, the market swooned on fears that the economy was on a downward path. And sure enough, the economic data have indeed been sobering. Just this morning, we learned that the economy created a paltry 71,000 private sector jobs, and the unemployment rate seems to be stuck in the 9.5% area. When you consider that the U.S. population grows by about two million per year, it’s clear that we’d need to see roughly 200,000 jobs created every month to help bring down unemployment. And that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Yet investor sentiment toward this bleak set of news seems to have made an about face. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were each off around -0.5% on the weak employment news, indicating that fewer investors are fleeing the market whenever a bleak economic report hits the tape. Tepid economic data in the near-term is now to be expected, and as long as the economy doesn’t slide back into recession, investors may actually start to see the glass as half-full rather than empty. It’s important to remember that… Read More

The largest players in the technology space garner the lion’s share of attention. Investors are obsessed with Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), as are consumers who have shifted from snapping up iPods to iPhones and the newest iPad device. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is the other big name that draws attention with its… Read More

We’re just 90 days away from Congressional mid-term elections, so it’s time to think about what that might mean for investors’ portfolios. If it becomes increasingly clear that the GOP will re-take control of one or both houses of Congress, it could provide a… Read More

As I noted earlier this week, the current market environment could prove to be a real opportunity for investors — if the economy sputters to life. And even as there’s ample reason to expect the economy and the stock market to eventually strengthen,… Read More

In the world of high-speed wireless technology, known as 4G, you can bet on two horses: WiMax, which is a long-distance version of Wi-Fi, or LTE, which stands for Long-Term Evolution. Sprint (NYSE: S) has staked its fortunes on WiMax, and has an early head start, while Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T) are expected to roll out LTE later this year and into 2011. Sprint made that WiMax bet after becoming a major shareholder in Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR), a pure-play high-speed wireless provider in the process of rolling out service in major American cities. Read More

In the world of high-speed wireless technology, known as 4G, you can bet on two horses: WiMax, which is a long-distance version of Wi-Fi, or LTE, which stands for Long-Term Evolution. Sprint (NYSE: S) has staked its fortunes on WiMax, and has an early head start, while Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T) are expected to roll out LTE later this year and into 2011. Sprint made that WiMax bet after becoming a major shareholder in Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR), a pure-play high-speed wireless provider in the process of rolling out service in major American cities. Trouble is, Clearwire just announced it is having second thoughts. Perhaps LTE is indeed a solid choice after all, mused company CEO Bill Morrow on a conference call with investors Wednesday night. He conceded what many industry watchers already knew: that LTE is capable of carrying much higher volumes of high-speed data than WiMax. That’s bit hard to swallow for investors, as Clearwire has already consumed massive amounts of capital with its WiMax bet. More customers = more losses Clearwire has been an impressive growth story — as long as you ignore the rest of the… Read More