Commodities are markets that many individual traders have ignored in the past. They have been traded with futures contracts in a market that is in some ways riskier than stock markets. Futures can have unlimited financial risk… Read More

We’re in a new era. I call it the era of scarcity. Around the world, literally billions of people are all fighting for the same limited resources. Once you burn a barrel of oil or a ton of coal, it’s gone forever. Demand… Read More

I’m going to do something I thought I’d never do — recommend an airline stock. Like many investors, I’ve never liked airline stocks because they’re ridiculously volatile and notoriously easy to lose money on. Take the nation’s fifth largest airline, U.S. Airways Group (NYSE: LCC). U.S. Airways has gone bankrupt… Read More

Hedge-fund manager David Einhorn is a true American success story.  Starting with just $900,000 in 1996, he has grown the assets of his fund, Greenlight Capital, to more than $6 billion. The fund has earned an average return of 22% since its launch, thanks to Einhorn’s prescient long and short… Read More

A great deal of attention has been paid to the “looming fiscal cliff” in recent months, and now it’s time to broaden your scope and track a series of key economic data points that might really spell out which kind of stock… Read More

Stocks started this week off strong, with the major averages surging nearly across the board. The gains in the market also included stocks in the tech sector, which haven’t kept pace with the broader market in recent weeks. Yet one subsector… Read More

While long-term investors usually think of volatility as a way to measure the risk of an investment and often try to reduce it, short-term traders should consider maximizing their exposure, because volatility is also a way to describe the magnitude of price moves.#-ad_banner-# High-volatility stocks tend to make large moves… Read More

In grade school, my teacher had an old 1960s Vietnam War protest poster taped to a filing cabinet that read: “What if they gave a war… and nobody came?”#-ad_banner-# If we applied this rationale to today’s market, then it would be… Read More

If prices at the pump are killing consumers, then food prices are about to kick them while they’re down. After the worst drought in 90 years wreaked havoc on domestic agriculture production this summer, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) released a report concluding that food prices are… Read More

The words “government” and “efficiency” rarely go in the same sentence. How can one reduce “wasteful” spending, and alter or replace “inefficient” government programs in an efficient manner, while keeping everyone happy? We surely will see another heavyweight title showdown within Congress as Republicans and Democrats fight over the tens… Read More