The following poll tells me that the average investor is fed-up with this stock market. … [Read more...]
This Investing Fad Never Goes Out of Style
The only investing fad that never seems to go out of style on Wall Street is, well, fad stocks. King Digital Entertainment, maker of the popular…err getting less popular, Candy Crush Saga app is today’s poster boy for fad stocks. If you aren’t familiar with Candy Crush Saga (you’ve dodged one of life’s great hardships), think of it like Angry Birds—lots of levels that get more challenging as you move higher—but less successful. When is the last time you played Angry Birds? Candy Crush is King Digital’s primary source of revenue. And it has been a big winner for the company. King … [Read more...]
Top 10 S&P 500 Stocks: 2014
You can learn a lot about the nature of a stock market rally simply by observing which stocks are leading the market. Below I present to you the list of the 10 best performing S&P 500 stocks since the Federal Reserve officially announced the third round of its quantitative easing program in September of 2012. It is true that the last leg of this bull market started earlier, but since QE3 officially started, the gains have been relentless and the corrections shallow. COMPANY SYMBOL RETURN SINCE 9/13/12 NETFLIX INC NFLX 628.8 MICRON … [Read more...]
The Only Stocks We Buy
You read last week about putting margin of safety to work in your portfolio. I told you about three strategies we use to pick stocks with the margin of safety in mind. The first and most important is that the only stocks we buy pay dividends. Below you’ll read an excerpt explaining the benefits of dividend investing from our free special report, Collecting Rare and Hard to Find Dividends. I’ll detail the other strategies in the weeks ahead. Reduce Risk with Dividend Stocks What’s more, dividends help reduce portfolio volatility. Figure 3 shows that high-yielding stocks have been less … [Read more...]
Who’s the Sucker?
This story doesn't have a happy ending. You see this often in the late stages of a bull market. After missing the bulk of the rally in the stock market from the prior bear market lows, the general investing public gets greedy. Those investors who couldn't find a thing to like about the investment climate become the biggest cheerleaders for a permanent prosperity. The regret of missing most of the bull market gains pushes many to make up for lost time by getting too aggressive. Stocks with questionable business prospects that most wouldn't touch during the prior bear market become the most … [Read more...]
The Biggest Buyer of Stocks
"Stockholders as a class are king. Acting as a majority they can hire and fire managements and bend them completely to their will." - Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor Corporations have been buying back shares at a record pace, buying mores stock than any other group of investors today including: Hedge funds, foreigners, insiders, pension funds, insurance companies, and individual investors. In the first quarter of this year corporations purchased $188 billion of stock—the highest quarterly amount since 2007, according to Birinyi Associates. We all know how stocks did after … [Read more...]
16-Year Bear Market Ahead
A 16-year bear market was what Dick Young faced back in 1965 as he began his brokerage industry journey at Clayton Securities in Boston. It’s hard to imagine a better time then and now to make dividend payers the cornerstone of your stock portfolio. Dick writes: My chart on the Dow portrays the up again/down again Dow track through the 1960s, '70s and early '80s. The Dow ended 1965 at 969 and closed 1981—16 years later—at 875. For what was half a retirement for many Americans, the Dow actually lost 9% of its value. It was a brutal stinker for investors retiring in 1965. How much of an annual … [Read more...]
50 Years of Bear Markets
How would your portfolio withstand a 20% decline otherwise known as a bear market? In the first decade of this century we have had four bear markets. So far, so good in the second decade of this century. But it’s worthwhile taking a stroll down memory lane decade by decade to gauge their frequency. As you can see, beginning in 1960, every decade has had at least one bear market. Think about the environment during each decade. What were the geopolitical risks abroad? What was the economy like? And what was Washington, D.C. up to? Makes one wonder what’s in store does it not? … [Read more...]
Trading Volume Way Down
Trading volume is way down as investors lick their wounds from a brutal tech and healthcare sell-off this Spring. For those of us who don’t participate in heavy trading, it has been a beautiful Spring. It’s fun being able to stay above the fray and collect dividends. And it’s no surprise that hedge funds were in the middle of this latest mess. The WSJ has more on the lower trading volume here : Still, some fast-trading hedge funds have pulled back after suffering big losses in this spring's collapse of richly valued, young technology stocks. Frenetic trading in those shares boosted volumes in … [Read more...]
What Goes Around…
How about these numbers reported last week in The WSJ: Young technology-company stocks fell out of favor in the blink of an eye. But their valuations remain sky-high and many investors say they have a lot more room to decline before bouncing back. Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. has tumbled 72% from its peak March 5, the day the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index hit a 14-year high. Meanwhile, advertising-technology firm Rocket Fuel Inc. is down 61%, software firm Splunk Inc.is off 50%, microblogging service Twitter Inc. is down 41% and electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc.is off 28%. The … [Read more...]
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