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

This week Wall Street has had a lot of its usual fare to digest: Retail sales, housing starts, petroleum inventories, mortgage applications, some minor earnings reports. Those data points… Read More

Investors with a pulse have no doubt heard about Brazil’s potential by now. After all, given the multi-year run-up in Brazil’s main exchange, the Bovespa, and the announcement that the 2016 Olympic Games will be held in Rio de Janiero, it’s a little hard to ignore. But make no mistake… Read More

Here’s a brief three-part history and economics primer, followed by some advice on how to make money from it. The Past Nearly a half-century ago, on Dec. 14, 1960, the United Nations passed Resolution 1514, a declaration on the granting… Read More

Many traders have asked me the same question during my 40 years of trading. What is the key to being successful? Over the years, I have seen a lot of changes in the market, but one strategy has stood the test of time: seeking out attractively valued… Read More

Investors tend to avoid companies that generate too much revenue from one key customer or project. If that project ends, sales could easily plunge. That fear is the key reason behind a sharp sell-off in shares of Dyncorp (NYSE: DCP), a key government… Read More