Analyst Articles

The stock market has been insane the past few years, so many financial advisors are understandably steering clients toward safer blue-chip stocks. It’s a sound strategy. Because of their dividends, blue chips are often a lot less volatile than the overall market and… Read More

Judging by the first few weeks of trading in 2012, investors may assume that recent dominant themes remain in force. If so, then you’d simply hold to what you’ve been holding and avoid what you’ve been avoiding. But in many respects, 2012 is likely to play out quite differently than… Read More

The Department of Energy estimates that the United States holds as much as 2.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is enough to meet domestic energy demand for at least a century. Great advances in extraction techniques, including fracturing, or “fracking” of shale rock formations by drilling sideways, have… Read More

Billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn is no fool. When he makes his multimillion dollar investments in companies, he’s done a lot of homework and has a high degree of confidence that he stands to profit. During the summer of 2011,… Read More

Big-picture risks dominated markets in 2011, and stocks across most markets and sectors tended to move as a herd in response to news events. For example, when the yield on Italian debt spikes, European banks sell off because many have significant… Read More