Every spring, the same headline flashes across the screen: “The housing sector is perking up and it’s time to buy.” As time passed, the newfound momentum invariably petered out, leading to the follow-up refrain “wait ’til next year.”  #-ad_banner-#The fact that housing stocks posted solid gains in the past few… Read More

By now, you’ve probably heard about the biggest story in energy. New drilling technologies in natural gas exploration and production have opened the floodgates to new supplies, creating all kinds of possibilities for consumers and investors. [See this article for an example of what I’m talking about.]  But this natural gas revolution has so far been a mixed blessing for producers, as natural gas prices have gone into a tail spin. From highs of $8 per million Btu (British thermal units) four years ago, natural gas prices at the wellhead have plummeted to a recent $2 per million Btu, the… Read More

By now, you’ve probably heard about the biggest story in energy. New drilling technologies in natural gas exploration and production have opened the floodgates to new supplies, creating all kinds of possibilities for consumers and investors. [See this article for an example of what I’m talking about.]  But this natural gas revolution has so far been a mixed blessing for producers, as natural gas prices have gone into a tail spin. From highs of $8 per million Btu (British thermal units) four years ago, natural gas prices at the wellhead have plummeted to a recent $2 per million Btu, the lowest point in more than a decade. As expected, major natural gas producers are feeling the pain. Well-known natural gas players such as Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK), for instance, have lost 50% of their share price in the past 12 months alone (although, to be fair, some of that has to do with bad press regarding revelations of some of management’s practices).  #-ad_banner-#The good news is that in the investment world, for every loser there is also a winner. So you should be thinking about buying shares of the dozens of other… Read More

If I told you about a stock that’s delivered gains of nearly 20% to investors for the past five years, then I imagine you’d be a little skeptical. After all, the past five years have been some of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. And even if it weren’t,… Read More

“They need to get rid of Zuckerberg. Facebook may have a chance if a talented leader is appointed; otherwise it’s a no-go. The guy is a master at the start-up, but he needs to turn the reigns over to someone else to run the company”, exclaimed an under-the-radar Internet insider I recently chatted with in South Florida.  His words proved semi-prescient as the heavily anticipated Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) IPO has gone down in history as providing the worst return of any large IPO in the past… Read More

“They need to get rid of Zuckerberg. Facebook may have a chance if a talented leader is appointed; otherwise it’s a no-go. The guy is a master at the start-up, but he needs to turn the reigns over to someone else to run the company”, exclaimed an under-the-radar Internet insider I recently chatted with in South Florida.  His words proved semi-prescient as the heavily anticipated Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) IPO has gone down in history as providing the worst return of any large IPO in the past decade.  The massive $16 billion IPO was fraught with issues from its launch on May 18. A lack of communication at Nasdaq appears to be the initial trigger of the strife, causing the IPO to be delayed, and some investors complained that their orders weren’t being filled or that they were getting shares at a much higher price than they wanted.  #-ad_banner-#The confusion resulted in about $115 million in losses for the four major market-makers in the IPO: Knight Capital Group, Citigroup’s Automated Trading Desk,… Read More

  I got a chance to catch up with old colleagues at a tech investment conference this past week. And one topic dominated our hour-long discussion: Now that Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) are trading far from their all-time highs, is either one a bargain? More specifically, how… Read More

It’s the largest cell phone provider in the world… It has more customers than AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Sprint (NYSE: S) combined. In fact, with 650 million subscribers, this company has twice as many customers as the United States has people. #-ad_banner-#But I doubt you’ve ever heard of it… The company I’m talking about is China Mobile (NYSE: CHL), China’s largest cell-phone provider. Now before you dismiss this as another risky emerging-market growth stock… let’s see the facts. China mobile is the world’s largest wireless telecommunications company with more than 650 million subscribers. The company controls about… Read More

It’s the largest cell phone provider in the world… It has more customers than AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Sprint (NYSE: S) combined. In fact, with 650 million subscribers, this company has twice as many customers as the United States has people. #-ad_banner-#But I doubt you’ve ever heard of it… The company I’m talking about is China Mobile (NYSE: CHL), China’s largest cell-phone provider. Now before you dismiss this as another risky emerging-market growth stock… let’s see the facts. China mobile is the world’s largest wireless telecommunications company with more than 650 million subscribers. The company controls about two-thirds of the total Chinese mobile phone market and about 45% of the nation’s third-generation (3G) mobile data market. In other words, this is a dominant company. With a $200 billion market cap and $84 billion in annual revenue, China Mobile is just as big as the leading U.S. cell-phone service provider, AT&T. But unlike AT&T, China Mobile has a lot more room for growth. In the United States, more than 100% of the population owns a mobile phone. Even other markets including Brazil, Russia, Turkey… Read More

Opportunities like this are rare… and they certainly aren’t without risk. But if you want the chance to make a lot of money within days — and secure a 14% dividend yield — then I’ve found just the stock that… Read More

In a rising stock market, it pays to focus on a company’s income statement. Each move up in the share price usually correlates to the company’s bottom-line performance. But when the market is in sell-off mode, you should shift your focus to the balance sheet. That’s where you can measure a company’s real worth and get a handle on how much risk the stock can hold.  Although a company’s market value can fall below the… Read More

In a rising stock market, it pays to focus on a company’s income statement. Each move up in the share price usually correlates to the company’s bottom-line performance. But when the market is in sell-off mode, you should shift your focus to the balance sheet. That’s where you can measure a company’s real worth and get a handle on how much risk the stock can hold.  Although a company’s market value can fall below the level of tangible book value on its balance sheet, it is likely to fall much less than most, even if the broader market plunges to fresh lows. That’s no small concern at a time when the European and Chinese economies are now weakening. Fresh reports point to a global economic slowdown, and you should be focusing on defensive “below book” stocks right now. These carry solid upside like growth stocks, but defensive stocks that trade below tangible book value will allow you to sleep better at night.  #-ad_banner-#After reviewing the 1,500 stocks that comprise… Read More

My, how quickly the market‘s tide can turn. By the end of March, we were sitting on a 17% rally. Since then, the S&P 500 has fallen more than 8%, and the future looks troubled at best.  The 180-degree… Read More

The stock market is a temperamental beast. Every year, month, week, day and even hour is different than the one preceding it. Long-term 100-year charts clearly show a substantial upward drift in stock prices, however, there are multi-year periods of very little change and even times of bearish, downward movement. If you begin investing in stocks during the start of one of these down cycles, it can take years just to get back to even, and that’s if you had the luck to buy the right stocks. … Read More

The stock market is a temperamental beast. Every year, month, week, day and even hour is different than the one preceding it. Long-term 100-year charts clearly show a substantial upward drift in stock prices, however, there are multi-year periods of very little change and even times of bearish, downward movement. If you begin investing in stocks during the start of one of these down cycles, it can take years just to get back to even, and that’s if you had the luck to buy the right stocks.  The market is littered with the financial corpses of those who went “all-in” during a bearish cycle or bubble burst of a particular sector. One only has to look back as far as the banking crisis of 2007-2008 or the Internet bubble burst at the turn of the century to find stocks of companies that never recovered. Even the broad indexes are well off their all time highs. Plenty of long term investors bought near the top and are still negative overall in their stock portfolios.  One way to prevent being caught at the wrong time and in the wrong… Read More