How does a company worth $60 billion manage to completely shock investors and deliver a 25% one-day gain? That’s the question being asked at traders’ desks across the country after Facebook delivered a rock-solid second quarter that exceeded the most bullish of forecasts. The answer is simple. Facebook, despite its massive size, had largely been forgotten by most investors. Earlier this month, I noted how this once-hot IPO had been steadily falling this past spring, even as the rest of the… Read More

How does a company worth $60 billion manage to completely shock investors and deliver a 25% one-day gain? That’s the question being asked at traders’ desks across the country after Facebook delivered a rock-solid second quarter that exceeded the most bullish of forecasts. The answer is simple. Facebook, despite its massive size, had largely been forgotten by most investors. Earlier this month, I noted how this once-hot IPO had been steadily falling this past spring, even as the rest of the market was in party mode.  Suddenly, this stock is touching 52-week highs again, and if you were savvy enough to own this stock going into the quarter, then this is no time to be a seller. After a quick move to $33, this stock may be headed toward the $40 mark by year‘s end. The Great Second Quarter Facebook’s impressive second-quarter results have been discussed in many other forums, so I’ll only recap the key metrics here: Strong advertising… Read More

Innovation is the most powerful force an investor can harness. It supercharges companies and helps them deliver outsized results. By using a relatively small allocation of your equity portfolio’s assets, you can effectively capture these returns and have the potential to build greater… Read More

What does Paris Hilton have in common with Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens and Henry Kravis, along with a host of other ultra-wealthy people?  I am not talking about anything as obvious as having lots of… Read More

Boring, for lack of a better word, is good. Boring is right. Boring works. You could do worse for investment advice than to paraphrase Gordon Gekko in this way.  Burritos trading at $400-plus a share and a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 37? No thanks. DVDs and streaming content for $260 a share and a P/E of 187? I’ll pass.  No, give me a company that’s been doing basically the same thing for 85 years with very little… Read More

Boring, for lack of a better word, is good. Boring is right. Boring works. You could do worse for investment advice than to paraphrase Gordon Gekko in this way.  Burritos trading at $400-plus a share and a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 37? No thanks. DVDs and streaming content for $260 a share and a P/E of 187? I’ll pass.  No, give me a company that’s been doing basically the same thing for 85 years with very little debt, great management, and a dividend that has grown for 57 consecutive years — over half a century. Those are the types of stocks that make you rich and keep you rich. That’s Genuine Parts Co. (NYSE: GPC). Founded in 1928, Genuine Parts is the leading independent U.S. distributor of automotive replacement parts. Auto parts represent roughly half of the business, with industrial parts accounting for about a third, and wholesale office supplies and electronic materials making… Read More

If you’ve been investing in countries such as South Africa and Brazil, the phrase “bear market” comes to mind. Their stock markets are off more than 20% this… Read More

About a year ago, I set out to find a winning income strategy… A strategy that can generate “Instant Income” in any market environment.  And now seems to be a good time for income investors to start considering it.  Why? Because rising interest rates may hurt some dividend-paying stocks in the months ahead. As Bespoke Investment Group co-founder Paul Hickey… Read More

About a year ago, I set out to find a winning income strategy… A strategy that can generate “Instant Income” in any market environment.  And now seems to be a good time for income investors to start considering it.  Why? Because rising interest rates may hurt some dividend-paying stocks in the months ahead. As Bespoke Investment Group co-founder Paul Hickey put it this week: “It doesn’t take much of a move in interest rates … to make a lot of stock dividend yields quickly look considerably less attractive.”   #-ad_banner-#And as dividend stocks become less attractive, your risk of losing money by holding the wrong ones increases. Sure enough, as USA Today pointed out, high-yielding utilities — an income investor favorite — have lost around 10% since Bernanke’s May 21 announcement that… Read More

The death of cash is one of the hottest trends on the Street. With consumers fleeing cash in favor of the convenience of credit and debit cards, electronic financial transactions… Read More

Will interest rates continue their recent ascent?  If so, many investors will come to question the wisdom of holding dividend-paying stocks. After all, bonds and… Read More

Among traders, George Soros is a legend for making big bets that pay off. His most famous trade — a bet against the Bank of England — made him $1 billion in one day. Since then, Soros has added to his wealth with other timely market calls. Soros analyzes global economic trends and often takes positions when he suspects a trend has gone too far. Few traders have the ability to process information in the way that Soros does, and even fewer have the courage of conviction… Read More

Among traders, George Soros is a legend for making big bets that pay off. His most famous trade — a bet against the Bank of England — made him $1 billion in one day. Since then, Soros has added to his wealth with other timely market calls. Soros analyzes global economic trends and often takes positions when he suspects a trend has gone too far. Few traders have the ability to process information in the way that Soros does, and even fewer have the courage of conviction needed to act quickly and decisively on their analysis.#-ad_banner-# Japan is the latest example of Soros’ investment process. The Wall Street Journal reports that he is using the recent drop in Japan’s stock prices to buy. He is also shorting the yen after its recent rise. A weaker yen would help Japanese exporters increase their profits and is bullish for the country’s stocks. Soros hasn’t confirmed the rumors,… Read More

By now we all know that the Federal Reserve’s suggestion of “tapering” its massive bond-buying program, aka quantitative easing (QE), has caused the return of volatility in both the equity and bond markets. Since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke implanted the tapering bomb into the market‘s cortex on May 22, the markets have gyrated wildly, not just here at home, but also in Japan and… Read More

By now we all know that the Federal Reserve’s suggestion of “tapering” its massive bond-buying program, aka quantitative easing (QE), has caused the return of volatility in both the equity and bond markets. Since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke implanted the tapering bomb into the market‘s cortex on May 22, the markets have gyrated wildly, not just here at home, but also in Japan and emerging markets around the world. #-ad_banner-# The hint that QE could soon be DOA also has caused a massive decline in one market segment that’s thought of largely as a slow, safe asset. That market segment is Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS. TIPS are basically just government bonds with a built in mechanism that allows them to rise along with the most widely followed inflation metric, the Consumer Price… Read More