There are two sides to every options trade since there is always a buyer and a seller in every market transaction. On options trades, the seller is said to be writing an option, and from the writer’s… Read More

Utilities stocks occupy a unique niche in the investment world. No one who wants to get rich buying shares of Exelon (NYSE: EXC) or Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) is expecting to double their money in a few months. That’s because stocks in this heavily-regulated industry tend to be predictable and rarely produce outsized gains.#-ad_banner-# If you are a dividend investor, however, then utilities stocks have a… Read More

Utilities stocks occupy a unique niche in the investment world. No one who wants to get rich buying shares of Exelon (NYSE: EXC) or Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) is expecting to double their money in a few months. That’s because stocks in this heavily-regulated industry tend to be predictable and rarely produce outsized gains.#-ad_banner-# If you are a dividend investor, however, then utilities stocks have a lot to offer. Many stocks in this sector carry impressive yields… 4-6% yields are very common. The margin of safety these generous yields provide make utilities stocks especially well-suited for a long-term buy-and-hold strategy. In fact, some of them are perfect candidates to be what we call “Retirement Savings Stocks” — stocks that provide a safe, stable and reliable source of high income even if the… Read More

Retirement planners usually advise investors to hold a combination of stock market and fixed income investments in their portfolio. Investments could include mutual funds,… Read More

My bull call for 2013 is well on its way to becoming a reality. The first several weeks of January have been amazingly bullish for the… Read More

I once had a huge research report due for clients and the deadline was quickly approaching. My computer had just frozen and I thought the best thing to do at that point was to reboot. But my computer wouldn’t start up. That was my only computer and the document, which… Read More

If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Nowhere is this more true than in the stock market.  The late years of the 1990s were a great example of this. Internet… Read More

Retirement planners usually advise investors to hold a combination of stock market and fixed income investments in their portfolio. Investments could include mutual funds,… Read More

Just a few quarters ago, an increasing number of data points yielded an impression that the Chinese economy might soon be in distress. The housing sector looked overbuilt, the banking sector was carrying a rising number of… Read More

My bull call for 2013 is well on its way to becoming a reality. The first several weeks of January have been amazingly bullish for the… Read More

I once had a huge research report due for clients and the deadline was quickly approaching. My computer had just frozen and I thought the best thing to do at that point was to reboot. But my computer wouldn’t start up. That was my only computer and the document, which had about 100 pages, hadn’t been backed up in quite some time.#-ad_banner-# It turned out I needed to reinstall the operating system, which would wipe out my current hard drive. At that point, getting access to my document had become priceless. That episode taught me an important lesson: Save early… Read More

I once had a huge research report due for clients and the deadline was quickly approaching. My computer had just frozen and I thought the best thing to do at that point was to reboot. But my computer wouldn’t start up. That was my only computer and the document, which had about 100 pages, hadn’t been backed up in quite some time.#-ad_banner-# It turned out I needed to reinstall the operating system, which would wipe out my current hard drive. At that point, getting access to my document had become priceless. That episode taught me an important lesson: Save early and often.  Well, this lesson doesn’t just apply to backing up data. It’s also a key ingredient for successful investing. Just like certain documents and pictures, in business, a few irreplaceable assets have significant value and no adequate substitute. Take pipelines for example. Once they have been built, it’s simply not feasible for another company to come along and build a new pipeline next to the existing one. Add the fact that pipelines have a valuable use as they carry oil, natural gas, fuels and other commodities across the country, and it really becomes… Read More