On May 4, more than 30,000 investors descended upon downtown Omaha, Neb., to join the “Oracle of Omaha” at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. Like a rock concert mixed with the evangelical zeal of true believers, this meeting has earned its label as the “Woodstock of capitalism.” Not bad for an event that started in 1982 with just 15 investors in an insurance company lunch room. Not only has the annual meeting expanded, but Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) has grown exponentially to become the most expensive… Read More

On May 4, more than 30,000 investors descended upon downtown Omaha, Neb., to join the “Oracle of Omaha” at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. Like a rock concert mixed with the evangelical zeal of true believers, this meeting has earned its label as the “Woodstock of capitalism.” Not bad for an event that started in 1982 with just 15 investors in an insurance company lunch room. Not only has the annual meeting expanded, but Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) has grown exponentially to become the most expensive stock in the United States at more than $167,000 a share. Not to mention, the book value per share has increased an astounding nearly 600,000% over the history of the insurance conglomerate‘s lifetime. As Carla Pasternak, Chief Strategist of our High-Yield Investing newsletter, recently pointed out, Berkshire Hathaway shares don’t yield a dividend, even though the company’s holdings paid out $1.35 billion in dividends in the past… Read More

Adding to the bullish case are all of the sell signals that have failed to work. Prices have failed to heed the Hindenburg Omen and the Titanic Syndrome, among other bearish indicators. Even when signals don’t work as expected, they can still offer insights into the direction of the trend. Failed Sell Signals Are Bullish Jack Schwager interviewed some of the greatest traders in the world for his… Read More

Adding to the bullish case are all of the sell signals that have failed to work. Prices have failed to heed the Hindenburg Omen and the Titanic Syndrome, among other bearish indicators. Even when signals don’t work as expected, they can still offer insights into the direction of the trend. Failed Sell Signals Are Bullish Jack Schwager interviewed some of the greatest traders in the world for his Market Wizards books. In later writings, he distilled some of their best ideas into trading rules. Among his rules is that “a failed signal is more reliable than the original signal.”#-ad_banner-# This year, a number of sell signals have failed, and they could now be pointing toward additional gains for stocks. SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) is up 15.3% since the beginning of the year, adding 1.27% last week. Considering just the… Read More

Editor’s Note: This article is brought to you by Sean Hyman, editor of Newsmax’s advisory service The Ultimate Wealth Report. The “Oracle of Omaha” and “America’s Greatest Investor” are well-earned nicknames for the renowned Warren Buffett. Through a… Read More

In today’s fast-moving markets, investors are always on the prowl for stocks that can deliver rapid gains. It wasn’t always thus.#-ad_banner-# Back in the days of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd — known as… Read More

For income investors, the problems continue to mount. Most recently, the yields available on junk bonds broke to record lows. Barclays U.S. High Yield Index fell below 5%. At this level, there seems to be little protection… Read More

Typically, investing is about making choices: growth versus value, long versus short, domestic versus international, or cyclical versus staple. Rarely do we get the best of both choices. Fortunately, the stars have aligned for one… Read More

Beta is one of the most commonly used measures of risk in the financial markets. Beta measures the volatility of a particular stock relative to the broader… Read More

All across Europe, power companies are being forced to mothball natural-gas power plants. In just the past few weeks, renewable-energy companies such as Germany’s E.ON and Norway’s Statkraft have done so as well, as a key dynamic taking place in the United States starts to have a global effect. That dynamic: abundant production of natural gas. As U.S. power producers have shifted their multi-fuel plants from coal-burning to gas-burning (known as coal-to-gas, or C2G), demand and pricing for coal have collapsed.#-ad_banner-# Coal is now so cheap that European electricity producers now realize it’s far cheaper to switch back to imported… Read More

All across Europe, power companies are being forced to mothball natural-gas power plants. In just the past few weeks, renewable-energy companies such as Germany’s E.ON and Norway’s Statkraft have done so as well, as a key dynamic taking place in the United States starts to have a global effect. That dynamic: abundant production of natural gas. As U.S. power producers have shifted their multi-fuel plants from coal-burning to gas-burning (known as coal-to-gas, or C2G), demand and pricing for coal have collapsed.#-ad_banner-# Coal is now so cheap that European electricity producers now realize it’s far cheaper to switch back to imported coal rather than continue burning pricier gas. Call it the gas-to-coal movement. In fact, the C2G trend, a key theme in the United States over the past few years, has run its course. And a switch back to coal has been the new response from some U.S. power producers as well. There is a multi-month lag time regarding power-plant usage, but UBS’s analysts noted in a May 1 report that “Coal once again appears to have continued to regain market share in… Read More

I’ve been investing for 20 years, and for the first half of my investing career, I repeatedly made the same mistake. I’d buy beaten-up stocks, they’d barely budge for an extended period, and I’d finally give up and sell my investment for a modest gain or loss. Invariably, when I looked back on that stock a few years later, it had greatly appreciated in value — long after… Read More

I’ve been investing for 20 years, and for the first half of my investing career, I repeatedly made the same mistake. I’d buy beaten-up stocks, they’d barely budge for an extended period, and I’d finally give up and sell my investment for a modest gain or loss. Invariably, when I looked back on that stock a few years later, it had greatly appreciated in value — long after I had given up on it.#-ad_banner-# Any time a stock falls sharply, it’s awfully tempting to jump in. We’re simply conditioned to pursue items when they are on sale, so a 50% or even 70% plunge can get our juices flowing. You’re probably right that deep value exists when a stock has sold off sharply. But that doesn’t mean you should jump right in. Turnarounds are one of the few types of stocks in which you can double or triple your… Read More

Remember the “super spike”? That phrase entered our vocabulary five years ago this month when crude oil prices suddenly surged to $120 a barrel. By July 2008, prices surged to $140 a barrel, which surely played a role in pushing the global economic into a deep crisis.#-ad_banner-# Consumers had to slash discretionary spending to have enough money to fill up their gas tanks, airline carriers were hit with a rising tide of losses, and many companies saw their profit margins squeezed as costs rose faster than… Read More

Remember the “super spike”? That phrase entered our vocabulary five years ago this month when crude oil prices suddenly surged to $120 a barrel. By July 2008, prices surged to $140 a barrel, which surely played a role in pushing the global economic into a deep crisis.#-ad_banner-# Consumers had to slash discretionary spending to have enough money to fill up their gas tanks, airline carriers were hit with a rising tide of losses, and many companies saw their profit margins squeezed as costs rose faster than revenues. Though crude oil prices tumbled to just $40 a barrel by year‘s end, the global economic damage was already done. Now, as the U.S. economy starts to percolate again, some have expressed concern that the world’s largest economy may again lead a surge in demand — and prices — for crude oil. Yet a pair of factors implies that it’s quite unlikely we’ll see another super spike and we may in fact be on the cusp… Read More