It looks as if we’ve dodged a bullet, and the U.S. economy will be able to avoid another deep slump. But tepid growth may be the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future. Yet beyond our borders, growth should prove more dynamic,… Read More

The objective: buy low, sell high. Sounds easy enough. But old Wall Street pros would say, “not so fast.” A stock trading at or near its 52-week low has not necessarily hit bottom — nor is it necessarily a bargain. What investors might think of as a… Read More

Markets don’t like uncertainty, and a big chunk of it was removed Sunday after Congress passed landmark health care legislation that will extend benefits to 32 million uninsured Americans. As the dust settled the day after America “answered the call of history,” as President Obama put it,… Read More

My systems are telling me that stocks will likely move higher into mid-April, so potentially we’ve got a few weeks to make some money in an upwardly trending market. Helping the rally in stocks in April will be what I believe could be… Read More

You probably know the name Bill Miller. Aside from Warren Buffett, he might be the closest thing the investment world has to a rock star. Every year, millions of investors set out with one goal in mind: to outperform the S&P 500. Miller’s Legg Mason Value Trust… Read More

During the past few years, companies have sought to cut all non-essential expenses. Office equipment was among the many items that saw a sharp slowdown in demand. But like all other hard goods, copiers and the like tend to wear out over time. So as the… Read More

Tech stocks are notoriously stingy dividend payers. Typically, these companies use earnings to fuel growth and to keep up with the competition, not to pay shareholders. In fact, the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index yields just 0.8%… Read More

You can’t blame all of the vast stock sell-offs in 2008 and early 2009 on the lousy economy. Sometimes, share prices plunged simply due to management ineptitude. MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR) was a perennially respected leading supplier of those big disks — known… Read More

Tax time is rolling around. And it’s one more time when I’m reminded about how much I pay — and potentially still owe — the government. So I thought this was a fitting time to turn the tables — and get a government to pay me for awhile. Read More

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the market’s March 9 bottom. Since then, the S&P 500 has risen from 676.53 in the darkest days of the financial crises to a close of 1159.46 on Tuesday. That’s a whopping +71% gain in just over a year. Now… Read More