Earnings season is an emotional time on Wall Street, and I think it’s the perfect time to revisit Ben Graham’s famous description of “Mr. Market.” Ben Graham was Warren Buffett’s business school professor. Graham wrote several books explaining how he thought about the markets, and in one of those books, he compared the market’s price swings to the lunatic ravings of Mr. Market. In Graham’s description, when Mr. Market is happy, he will bid the price of stocks up. But suddenly and often for no apparent reason, Mr. Market will fall into a deep fit of despair. Then he wants… Read More

Earnings season is an emotional time on Wall Street, and I think it’s the perfect time to revisit Ben Graham’s famous description of “Mr. Market.” Ben Graham was Warren Buffett’s business school professor. Graham wrote several books explaining how he thought about the markets, and in one of those books, he compared the market’s price swings to the lunatic ravings of Mr. Market. In Graham’s description, when Mr. Market is happy, he will bid the price of stocks up. But suddenly and often for no apparent reason, Mr. Market will fall into a deep fit of despair. Then he wants to sell all of his holdings at low prices, and he won’t take no for an answer. Graham explained that it’s important to ignore Mr. Market and make buy and sell decisions based on value. This can be difficult to do because it’s easy to get caught up in the market’s reaction. But both Graham and Buffett achieved success by ignoring the market swings and focusing on value. Sometimes, Mr. Market’s judgment is entirely rational. Selling may seem to come from nowhere and be extreme, but it may actually be the right response. This is especially true during earnings season. Read More

Biotechnology is among the most exciting and lucrative sectors for investors. Perhaps the only market that provides greater volatility and profit potential is the derivatives market.  With prices driven at a breakneck pace by research and FDA approvals, today’s golden company can be tomorrow’s stock market disaster. But the opposite has also proven to be true.  Sometimes the forgotten dogs of the biotech world can quickly morph into great long-term investments.  I have identified 3 biotech companies that have fallen on hard times, but have recently experienced a rash of buying by large stock market players. Make no mistake, these… Read More

Biotechnology is among the most exciting and lucrative sectors for investors. Perhaps the only market that provides greater volatility and profit potential is the derivatives market.  With prices driven at a breakneck pace by research and FDA approvals, today’s golden company can be tomorrow’s stock market disaster. But the opposite has also proven to be true.  Sometimes the forgotten dogs of the biotech world can quickly morph into great long-term investments.  I have identified 3 biotech companies that have fallen on hard times, but have recently experienced a rash of buying by large stock market players. Make no mistake, these stocks are very risky, but they have tremendous upside potential, and clearly I am not the only one who thinks so. What Caused The 2016 Biotech Bear Market? If you own biotech stocks, you know that 2016 was a difficult year for the segment. Riding high from averaging 34% annual returns from 2012 to 2015, the biotechnology index gave up 16% in 2016. And the 16% loss included a substantial recovery from the devastating plunge of 28% in January 2016.  #-ad_banner-#The primary cause of the 2016 biotech bear market was shifting investor sentiment. Fear of new regulations that could… Read More

The hacker group known as Shadow Brokers publicly released a set of tools on the social network platform Medium in April. Called EternalBlue and EternalRomance, the tools allow hackers backdoor access for remote control of infected computers.  While the market hasn’t reacted to the news of the release, Sean Dillon of cybersecurity firm RiskSense Inc. told Bloomberg that these tools are “10-times worse” than recent viruses like the Heartbleed bug that infected computers at Yahoo and Amazon.  We’re talking about government-quality hacking tools — and they’ve just been spammed out to every hacker with an internet connection.  Dillon says the… Read More

The hacker group known as Shadow Brokers publicly released a set of tools on the social network platform Medium in April. Called EternalBlue and EternalRomance, the tools allow hackers backdoor access for remote control of infected computers.  While the market hasn’t reacted to the news of the release, Sean Dillon of cybersecurity firm RiskSense Inc. told Bloomberg that these tools are “10-times worse” than recent viruses like the Heartbleed bug that infected computers at Yahoo and Amazon.  We’re talking about government-quality hacking tools — and they’ve just been spammed out to every hacker with an internet connection.  Dillon says the tools are, “the kind of thing [security analysts] see used very rarely on very special, covert cybermissions.” He’s already found computers infected in dozens of clients from startups, government agencies and Fortune 100 companies. That means it’s only a matter of time before reports of large-scale and sophisticated cyberattacks start flooding the news. When it happens, expect a pop in the shares of cybersecurity companies. Cybercrime Headline Risks Move To Red Alert Corporate America prepared for years against the potential for hacker threats related to the Y2K bug. Headlines screamed warnings in 2014 for dangers related to the Heartbleed… Read More

Monthly gains of nearly 70%, 100%, and even nearing 200% occur on a regular basis in this market segment. I’m not talking about options, futures, or risky foreign stocks of any kind. The gains are homegrown right here in the United States and can be had for under $5 per share. These stocks, which typically represent new, growing companies, are in the small-cap sector. And I’ve found three stocks under $5 that are set up to be great buy opportunities. How Small-Caps Produce Outsized Gains The definition of a small-cap stock is not set in stone — it depends… Read More

Monthly gains of nearly 70%, 100%, and even nearing 200% occur on a regular basis in this market segment. I’m not talking about options, futures, or risky foreign stocks of any kind. The gains are homegrown right here in the United States and can be had for under $5 per share. These stocks, which typically represent new, growing companies, are in the small-cap sector. And I’ve found three stocks under $5 that are set up to be great buy opportunities. How Small-Caps Produce Outsized Gains The definition of a small-cap stock is not set in stone — it depends who you ask. But according to the most commonly accepted definition, small-caps are any public company with a market capitalization of $500 million to $2.5 billion.  I know this sounds like big money, but in the world of public enterprises, it is indeed minuscule. To put things in perspective, microcaps are any stocks with a sub-$500 million valuation, and midcaps are widely considered to have a capitalization greater than $2.5 billion but less than $10 billion. Anything over $10 billion places the firm in the large-cap space.  Over time, the small-cap sector outperforms the overall stock market. However, this tried… Read More

I want to share with you something that’s been bothering me for a while now… Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of banking giant JPMorgan Chase, recently released his annual letter to shareholders. Dimon is, as you might imagine, smart as a whip. In fact, Buffett says he considers Dimon’s shareholder letters indispensable reading. Two lines stuck out from Dimon’s latest missive: “The United States of America is truly an exceptional country… But it is clear that something is wrong — and it’s holding us back.”  I’ve got to be honest… this has stuck with me for… Read More

I want to share with you something that’s been bothering me for a while now… Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of banking giant JPMorgan Chase, recently released his annual letter to shareholders. Dimon is, as you might imagine, smart as a whip. In fact, Buffett says he considers Dimon’s shareholder letters indispensable reading. Two lines stuck out from Dimon’s latest missive: “The United States of America is truly an exceptional country… But it is clear that something is wrong — and it’s holding us back.”  I’ve got to be honest… this has stuck with me for weeks. It’s something I’ve been thinking long and hard about for the past few years, and I’m willing to bet you’ve at least felt it on some sort of visceral level yourself.  —Recommended Link— How Jim Cashed $13,784 In Daily Paychecks Experimenting With This Wildly Successful System Jim took a cool $13,784… Annie grabbed $2,194 in one month… and Curtis cashes $4,200 in daily payments every month. It’s all perfectly legal. Their fortunes have been documented. See for yourself how easy it will be for YOU to start collecting paychecks each and every day… Dimon offered little in the… Read More

I’ve looked at bond inventories (bonds for sale by various firms all along the street) on, more or less, a daily basis for the past 20 years. It’s a habit. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to buy something. The main purpose of the exercise is to get a feel for the bond market that goes beyond looking at where Treasury bond yields are for that particular day. I see what investors are willing to pay for bonds based on multiple factors, the most important being yield and safety. In recent years, it seems that most investors have been more… Read More

I’ve looked at bond inventories (bonds for sale by various firms all along the street) on, more or less, a daily basis for the past 20 years. It’s a habit. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to buy something. The main purpose of the exercise is to get a feel for the bond market that goes beyond looking at where Treasury bond yields are for that particular day. I see what investors are willing to pay for bonds based on multiple factors, the most important being yield and safety. In recent years, it seems that most investors have been more concerned with quality and capital preservation than yield. That’s no surprise in light of the volatility financial markets have experienced since the Financial Crisis of 2008. Accommodative Federal Reserve policy and investor fear have kept rates at historical lows for nearly a decade. But now that’s changing — albeit slowly. The unexpected election of Donald Trump, while inspiring a tangible rally in stocks, has sparked an upward movement in bond yields (prices go down) due to anticipated inflationary pressure from possible infrastructure spending and tighter foreign trade policy. The Federal Reserve gradually shifting away from its zero-rate federal… Read More

Most investors have been trained to think that earning 6% or 8% a year on their trades is admirable. And the old saying is true: No one ever went broke taking a profit. But that doesn’t mean they got rich that way.  You can bet Wall Street traders don’t settle for such meager returns, and your average trader doesn’t have to either. The same methods used by Wall Street’s elite are available to average traders. It’s just that they often don’t know about them or are too scared to try them.  For instance, there is a way to potentially amplify… Read More

Most investors have been trained to think that earning 6% or 8% a year on their trades is admirable. And the old saying is true: No one ever went broke taking a profit. But that doesn’t mean they got rich that way.  You can bet Wall Street traders don’t settle for such meager returns, and your average trader doesn’t have to either. The same methods used by Wall Street’s elite are available to average traders. It’s just that they often don’t know about them or are too scared to try them.  For instance, there is a way to potentially amplify those 6% to 8% gains into 30%, 50%, even 65% windfalls or more in a matter of months, weeks or even days. And I’m not talking about buying micro-cap stocks that no one has ever heard of. You can make these returns from some of America’s biggest and most well-known companies. —Recommended Link— A Young Woman On Her Way To Lunch… (What Happens Next Is UNBELIEVABLE) You see a lot of CRAZY things living in the city of Baltimore — but what happened to this woman is simply outrageous. She was… Read More

The more things change, the more they stay the same. We are undergoing tremendous changes in government, the tax system, and even in our lives. Everything seems to be getting faster. Even the stock market is not immune to the rapid-fire changes taking place. Despite the all the changes, the one thing that remains the same is the process of identifying the best dividend stocks. It’s a straightforward and consistent formula that is not affected by high-frequency trading, computer algorithms, or any of the other newfangled trading strategies. When it comes to identifying the… Read More

The more things change, the more they stay the same. We are undergoing tremendous changes in government, the tax system, and even in our lives. Everything seems to be getting faster. Even the stock market is not immune to the rapid-fire changes taking place. Despite the all the changes, the one thing that remains the same is the process of identifying the best dividend stocks. It’s a straightforward and consistent formula that is not affected by high-frequency trading, computer algorithms, or any of the other newfangled trading strategies. When it comes to identifying the best dividend stocks of 2017, the same criteria that have worked for decades can be used. It doesn’t matter who the President is, the state of the economy, or even how high or low the Dow moves. If you have not started on your path to creating a passive income from the stock market, don’t worry, it’s not too late. Even during this year’s craziest days, you can still find incredible value and reliable income. Identifying Quality Income Stocks The first sign of a top-notch dividend-payer is consistency in paying dividends. Earning a… Read More