Well, the geniuses running the world’s top pension funds did it again. Once again they managed to avoid investing in the things they should have been investing in, while investing in things they shouldn’t have been investing in — with the all-too-predictable result that the insight you really wanted to hear a year ago wasn’t a list […]
Read MoreBeing a contrarian investor can mean a few different things. One is that contrarian investing is often correlated with value investing, and I think that makes sense in a lot of ways. That includes the reality that all price trends – up or down – are finite in length and duration. That means that eventually, […]
Read MoreYears ago, as I began my career in the investing world, I was introduced to a book written by famous mutual fund manager Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street. In it, Mr. Lynch outlined some of the methods he used to identify the stocks that helped him build the Fidelity Magellan Fund into the […]
Read MoreInvestors, like the entire the market, and like all of us seem anxious to find some kind, any kind of reason to see hope in the future – either for the prospect of seeing some form of a “return to normal” for the U.S. at large. Get the kids going back to school, churches open […]
Read MoreYears ago, as I began my career as an investor, I read a book by Peter Lynch. Mr. Lynch had made his name, and his fortune, as the manager of Fidelity’s flagship Magellan fund in the late 70’s and ’80’s, and his incredible performance was one of the big reasons Magellan, at the time, was […]
Read MoreAs I’ve studied the market over the years, one of the intriguing contrasts comes in the way different analysis methods take in the “big picture” of the market. That includes the way that fundamental investors and analysts look at the market versus those that prefer to work on strictly technical terms. I like to work […]
Read MoreThere is a common idiom that states, “a rising tide lifts all ships.” For investors, that saying suggests when the broad market is going up, most stocks should go up as well. On a more macroeconomic level, the same principle applies on a sector basis; if a sector is showing signs of strength, most investors […]
Read MoreOne of the challenges that most people have to grapple with if they’re new to investing is the volume of data that generally needs to absorbed to determine if a stock is a useful investing opportunity. Depending on who you talk to and the investing method they prefer, you’ll find that there are as many […]
Read MoreThere are a lot of different ways that you can track the market and pull information to find stocks that might make attractive investment opportunities. One method that I find useful is to periodically check the movement of individual sectors versus the broad market. The saying, “a rising tide lifts all ships” for many is […]
Read MoreBank of America Merrill Lynch (NYSE: BAC) has joined a growing list of prominent voices on Wall Street warning that the U.S. economy is in the late cycle stage, or the phase just before the economy slides into recession. The note, titled “U.S. Economy bull/bear: Most signs point to late cycle,” was sent to clients […]
Read MoreIn yesterday’s post, I wrote about the Materials sector as a segment of the economy that seems have started to attract the interest and attention to institutional investors. Sector rotation is an approach to market analysis that suggests that if you want to find good investments in any market, it’s a good idea to pay […]
Read MoreThe stock market has seen a lot of turmoil and turbulence since the beginning of October, with all three major indices touching, or coming very near to the 10% level that most technicians consider correction territory. What you may or may not be aware of, however is that at nearly the same time the stock […]
Read MoreThroughout most of this year, semiconductors have been perhaps the most distressed sector of the market. Before bottoming at the end of the October, the sector had dropped a little over 21% from its high point in mid-March as measured by the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), and is still down nearly 15% as of Thursday’s […]
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