When a company breaks itself apart, investors get a number of unique opportunities to profit. First, there’s an initial financial information vacuum, since it takes time for the new, independent businesses to report results on their own. Second, spinoffs can result in better-run businesses… Read More

If you haven’t heard about the “North Dakota phenomenon” yet, you will soon. The state is quickly becoming known as a modern-day version of California during the gold rush. People are flocking to the state, seeking their fortune (or at least a decent-paying job), and formerly sleepy farming towns are… Read More

Congratulations to the founders and early investors in Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN). What was just a humble new business idea a few short years ago is now valued at about $18 billion. That’s a higher valuation than RadioShack (NYSE: RSH), The Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO), U.S. Steel (NYSE: X), Whirlpool… Read More

With the market showing no clear direction at this point, it pays to stay focused on long and short ideas for your portfolio. In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to generate more short-oriented ideas for readers, and it pays to stay abreast of… Read More

One mistake novice income investors make is assuming that the best dividend stocks are the ones they’re most familiar with, or the ones most talked about on CNBC or in the mainstream financial press. Sure, well-known dividend stocks such… Read More

The stock market is increasingly looking like a boxing match. In one corner, you have a global bruiser named Greece looking to send stocks down to new lows. In the other corner, you have earnings season, which has been generally — and surprisingly — positive. In fact, quarterly results have been so encouraging, two-thirds of the 350 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results thus far have topped estimates, translating into an average 6% upside surprise. The… Read More

The stock market is increasingly looking like a boxing match. In one corner, you have a global bruiser named Greece looking to send stocks down to new lows. In the other corner, you have earnings season, which has been generally — and surprisingly — positive. In fact, quarterly results have been so encouraging, two-thirds of the 350 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results thus far have topped estimates, translating into an average 6% upside surprise. The earnings theme helped propel the market higher in October, but events in Europe have put a new scare in the market in early November. At this point, however, it’s best to tune out the noise and focus on the company-specific positives. This strategy paid off handsomely for those willing to brave the challenges of August and September, and it will likely pay off again for the patient investor. The charm of earnings season is that it always presents new investment opportunities. So to in order to identify where investors should be focusing now, I’ve dug up… Read More

We first brought this stock to our readers’ attention when we selected it for “The 10 Best Stocks to Hold Forever” report. A couple of months later, in September, I added 350 shares to my $100,000 “real-money” Top 10 Stocks Portfolio. The stock was Intel… Read More

Circle your calendars for Nov. 23. That’s the deadline for Congress to pass — and the President to sign — major budget changes being drawn up by a bipartisan “super-committee.” Recall that the last agreement, struck in early August, tasked this group with a huge challenge: Come up with a… Read More