The cloud computing market is expected to grow 23.5% a year over the next four years, five times faster than the entire rest of the IT market — all the way to $107 billion, according to industry research firm International Data Corp. (IDC). #-ad_banner-#IDC also expects that by 2017, 17% of all IT expenditures will be invested in the public cloud and 59% will go to cloud services in general. And our Canadian friends to the north are in a position to potentially steal billions of dollars in business away from cloud providers in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Read More

The cloud computing market is expected to grow 23.5% a year over the next four years, five times faster than the entire rest of the IT market — all the way to $107 billion, according to industry research firm International Data Corp. (IDC). #-ad_banner-#IDC also expects that by 2017, 17% of all IT expenditures will be invested in the public cloud and 59% will go to cloud services in general. And our Canadian friends to the north are in a position to potentially steal billions of dollars in business away from cloud providers in the good ol’ U.S. of A. In fact, snooping by the National Security Agency is already costing the U.S. cloud industry a whole lot of business. Soon after the initial leaks, 10% of foreign companies said they had already canceled a project with a U.S. cloud provider, and 56% said they’d be less likely to use one. A study by the Information and Technology Innovation Foundation (ITIF) showed that if American providers lose between 10% and 20% of foreign business over three years, the damage could amount to as much as $35 billion. You’ll recall, last June, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the government agency collected… Read More

It’s an idea that the richest and most powerful people in the business world almost never say out loud. But takeover king Wilbur Ross knows it. So does Herb Allen, the most exclusive banker in the world. And you can bet your boots that billionaire Warren Buffett knows what I’m about to tell you. In fact, he’s often said these are the types of deals he wants to pursue… Here’s Wall Street’s dirty little secret: The best investments in the world — those with the biggest returns and some of the highest yields — are not listed on any stock… Read More

It’s an idea that the richest and most powerful people in the business world almost never say out loud. But takeover king Wilbur Ross knows it. So does Herb Allen, the most exclusive banker in the world. And you can bet your boots that billionaire Warren Buffett knows what I’m about to tell you. In fact, he’s often said these are the types of deals he wants to pursue… Here’s Wall Street’s dirty little secret: The best investments in the world — those with the biggest returns and some of the highest yields — are not listed on any stock market. They’re privately held… #-ad_banner-#According to an investing trade group report, as of March 2013, the private market outperformed the S&P 500 (including dividends) by 2.6 percentage points, 2.2 percentage points and 6.1 percentage points for three-, five- and 10-year periods, respectively. And it’s not limited to just recent performance. A study by professors at Duke and Ohio State covering a period from 1984 through 2010 found that private market investors earned 18% more than the S&P 500. It’s proof that when it comes to investing, the rich really are different — they invest in better companies. But exactly how… Read More

In a bull market that has propped up a wide range of sectors and industries, few have benefited as much as biotech stocks. The bigger biotechs, such as Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) and Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN), have helped the Nasdaq Biotech Index post a two-year return of 120% — triple that of the S&P 500. A few dozen smaller biotechs have even done far better than that. #-ad_banner-#Positive FDA clinical data has boosted once-obscure biotechs such as Puma Biotech (Nasdaq: PBYI), Clovis Oncology (Nasdaq; CLVS) or Acadia Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ACAD), 250%, 300% and 1,500%, respectively, over the past two years. Intercept… Read More

In a bull market that has propped up a wide range of sectors and industries, few have benefited as much as biotech stocks. The bigger biotechs, such as Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) and Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN), have helped the Nasdaq Biotech Index post a two-year return of 120% — triple that of the S&P 500. A few dozen smaller biotechs have even done far better than that. #-ad_banner-#Positive FDA clinical data has boosted once-obscure biotechs such as Puma Biotech (Nasdaq: PBYI), Clovis Oncology (Nasdaq; CLVS) or Acadia Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ACAD), 250%, 300% and 1,500%, respectively, over the past two years. Intercept Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ICTP), which I discussed a few months ago, shot up 400% in just one week. The two-year timeframe is essential if you hope to score those kinds of gains. Any biotech stock that is just a few quarters away from delivering meaningful late stage clinical trial data has already caught investors’ interest, so some of the gains have already been tallied. With a two- or even three-year time horizon, you can try to identify earlier-stage biotechs that are just starting to garner Wall Street chatter. To be sure, this is an industry where it pays to hear what… Read More

Led by some of the smartest people on earth, the hedge fund industry wields market-moving power. The industry’s assets grew by nearly $229 billion last year, to just over $2 trillion. #-ad_banner-#By following these behemoths of the financial world, investors can obtain an edge in creating their own market-beating returns. Without being an insider, how can individual investors know what hedge funds are buying or selling? The Security and Exchange Commission requires hedge fund managers who manage over $100 million to file a Form 13F every quarter. These documents quietly reveal what hedge funds and other large institutional investors are… Read More

Led by some of the smartest people on earth, the hedge fund industry wields market-moving power. The industry’s assets grew by nearly $229 billion last year, to just over $2 trillion. #-ad_banner-#By following these behemoths of the financial world, investors can obtain an edge in creating their own market-beating returns. Without being an insider, how can individual investors know what hedge funds are buying or selling? The Security and Exchange Commission requires hedge fund managers who manage over $100 million to file a Form 13F every quarter. These documents quietly reveal what hedge funds and other large institutional investors are buying and selling. One of my favorite investment tactics is to look for patterns in 13F filings. Companies that have attracted interest from multiple hedge funds can signal a great buying or selling opportunity. I call these buying and selling patterns hedge fund swarms. My basic definition of a hedge fund swarm is when three or more hedge funds buy or sell a particular stock during a single quarter. Obviously, the more funds in the swarm buying or selling, the more powerful the signal. I recently discovered a company that has attracted a swarm of hedge fund activity in the… Read More

Rising rates have investors spooked from buying real estate investment trusts (REITS), with $384 million of outflows in U.S. REIT funds in January alone. The fear is that higher rates will raise financing costs for highly leveraged real estate holdings, which will in turn limit distributions. #-ad_banner-#This may be true in theory, but investors are overlooking extremely strong catalysts for growth and historical returns that are hard to beat. The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) monitors sector returns. Its index of equity REITs has outperformed the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the… Read More

Rising rates have investors spooked from buying real estate investment trusts (REITS), with $384 million of outflows in U.S. REIT funds in January alone. The fear is that higher rates will raise financing costs for highly leveraged real estate holdings, which will in turn limit distributions. #-ad_banner-#This may be true in theory, but investors are overlooking extremely strong catalysts for growth and historical returns that are hard to beat. The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) monitors sector returns. Its index of equity REITs has outperformed the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the Barclays Aggregate Bond indices over the 10-, 20- and 30-year periods. Over the 40 years to 2010, the NAREIT index has provided annualized income returns of 8.3% and an annualized price return of 5.5%. On that backdrop of strong historical returns, there is one segment of the real estate market that has never really been accessible to retail investors like you and me. Unless you are an accredited investor (or your last name is Trump), you most likely haven’t been able to build a portfolio of single-family rental houses. Private equity and other institutional investors have been pouring money into… Read More

From late December to mid-January, airline stocks made another move higher, thanks to expectations of another banner year in 2014. It’s been quite a run for the major carriers such as Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) and United Continental Holdings (NYSE: UAL), which have surged more than 600% and 900%, respectively, over the past five years. #-ad_banner-#Credit goes to an investor willingness to stop worrying about the next industry bankruptcy. These carriers are now much more financially stable, and the era of booms and busts has likely passed. Share prices no longer deserve to trade at four or five times trailing… Read More

From late December to mid-January, airline stocks made another move higher, thanks to expectations of another banner year in 2014. It’s been quite a run for the major carriers such as Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) and United Continental Holdings (NYSE: UAL), which have surged more than 600% and 900%, respectively, over the past five years. #-ad_banner-#Credit goes to an investor willingness to stop worrying about the next industry bankruptcy. These carriers are now much more financially stable, and the era of booms and busts has likely passed. Share prices no longer deserve to trade at four or five times trailing earnings, which had often historically been the case. Both of these carriers now trade for more than 10 times this year’s earnings. Yet headwinds are beginning to gather for this industry, and United is especially vulnerable. In recent weeks, analysts have been trimming their profit forecasts for the company, mostly due to a large number of flight cancellations as the nation endured a deep freeze. Three months ago, analysts had assumed that UAL would lose $0.36 a share in the current quarter, which is seasonally weak. But the carrier told investors that bad weather has had a deep impact, and… Read More

Right now corporate America has a huge problem on its hands. I’m not talking about another banking crisis, real estate crash, or hedge fund manager running a Ponzi scheme… And I’m not talking about any sort of ominous regulations being handed down by the U.S. government, either. I’m not even talking about the growing levels of debt being accumulated by Uncle Sam each and every day — not to mention the lack of progress from our leaders in Washington in finding a solution to fix it. Actually, the “problem” I’m about to tell you about is really a once-in-a-lifetime investing… Read More

Right now corporate America has a huge problem on its hands. I’m not talking about another banking crisis, real estate crash, or hedge fund manager running a Ponzi scheme… And I’m not talking about any sort of ominous regulations being handed down by the U.S. government, either. I’m not even talking about the growing levels of debt being accumulated by Uncle Sam each and every day — not to mention the lack of progress from our leaders in Washington in finding a solution to fix it. Actually, the “problem” I’m about to tell you about is really a once-in-a-lifetime investing opportunity. The problem? #-ad_banner-#Corporate America has spent the last few years hoarding money like it was going out of style, effectively creating what I call a “Dividend Vault.” Why?  Companies have seen the same problems you and I have over the years — a mounting debt crisis, gridlock in Washington, a dot-com bubble burst from the early 2000s, a devastating real estate bubble burst a few years later, two recessions…  They continued to face these challenges year after year. But instead of sitting still with future uncertainties, they took action. That’s why for the past 12 years, they’ve been adding… Read More

Toiling in the shadows of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and many other tech stars in California’s Silicon Valley, a team of 1,500 technologists are hard at work on behalf of an unlikely employer: Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). #-ad_banner-#The retail giant has belatedly understood that simply having website for e-commerce won’t cut it in the era of social media and mobile surfing. In response, the company is now committing serious resources to its digital efforts. Will those 1,500 Wal-Mart staffers help turn the company into a leading-edge tech firm? Probably not. But they can identify hundreds of small ways to… Read More

Toiling in the shadows of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and many other tech stars in California’s Silicon Valley, a team of 1,500 technologists are hard at work on behalf of an unlikely employer: Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). #-ad_banner-#The retail giant has belatedly understood that simply having website for e-commerce won’t cut it in the era of social media and mobile surfing. In response, the company is now committing serious resources to its digital efforts. Will those 1,500 Wal-Mart staffers help turn the company into a leading-edge tech firm? Probably not. But they can identify hundreds of small ways to improve the online shopping experience. After all, consumers now carry the Internet in their pocket, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones. As Gibu Thomas, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of mobile and digital, recently told The Atlantic magazine, “IBM published some data about what retail traffic comes from mobile devices, as a kind of benchmark, and Wal-Mart’s numbers are a lot higher than the industry norm.” He adding that with the use of technology, “we can combine the breadth of online and the immediacy of offline to create an experience that means we can be a one-stop… Read More

There is no question that one of the safest and surest ways to build long-term wealth in the stock market is through dividend reinvestment. This reinvestment allows for a form of interest compounding to take place that builds up the portfolio’s value over time. #-ad_banner-#While this makes perfect investing sense, there is more to it than simply buying high-dividend stocks. I learned this the hard way, but my experience helped me to develop an easy three-step method to determine the best dividend-paying stocks for a dividend reinvestment portfolio. First, here’s what happened to me. I bought Sandridge Mississippian Trust (NYSE:… Read More

There is no question that one of the safest and surest ways to build long-term wealth in the stock market is through dividend reinvestment. This reinvestment allows for a form of interest compounding to take place that builds up the portfolio’s value over time. #-ad_banner-#While this makes perfect investing sense, there is more to it than simply buying high-dividend stocks. I learned this the hard way, but my experience helped me to develop an easy three-step method to determine the best dividend-paying stocks for a dividend reinvestment portfolio. First, here’s what happened to me. I bought Sandridge Mississippian Trust (NYSE: SDT), an oil and gas royalty-earning company that pays a tremendous dividend, in February 2013 at $14. At the time of my purchase, the dividend yield was around 10%. The yield is now over 20% — yet I lost money on the investment. SDT has dropped 50% over the past year, to its current trading range near $7. My buy decision was based purely on the high dividend yield, nothing else. What I failed to take into consideration is the fact that yield is a function of the stock price. With everything else being equal, the lower the share price,… Read More