DJIA 12819.97-56.34S & P 500 1401.72-1.86NASDAQ 2486.34-2.1510-YR TREAS 3.879%+0.104EURO 1.5494

We are an online investment community where members contribute opinions and advice on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, financial planning, estate planning, building wealth and the ways of Wall Street.

Learn More »

Market News

Hewlett-Packard to buy EDS for $13.9B to create IT giant

Hewlett-Packard Co. will buy information-technology giant for $13.9 billion in a deal that will significantly expand its services business and help it challenge IBM.

Financial Stocks: Gloom from Oppenheimer hurts brokers

Shares of the nation's top investment banks slip after an Oppenheimer analyst cut her earnings forecasts for the firms and says their short-term future is "far more bleak than that reflected in the market."

GM president: Auto sector is in recession, more risk ahead

Recession is a word that many are hesitant to use, but General Motors President Fritz Henderson is not one of them, at least not when describing his business.

More market news »

Latest Articles

The Secrets of Picking Great Growth Stocks

Reprinted with the permission of the American Association of Individual Investors Why is it that bright, educated people who come across stocks that could make them wealthy for life, so frequently fail to capitalize on golden opportunities—not enough brains or education? No, not even close. Two things are responsible: Beating ourselves, and a lack of knowledge. Beating ourselves [...]
Read more »

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

Reprinted with the permission of the American Association of Individual Investors What can you learn from three decades of monitoring investment newsletter performance? Plenty. It was nearly three decades ago that the Hulbert Financial Digest (HFD) began independently monitoring the performance of investment advisory newsletters. I’m devoting this column to a couple of the most important investment lessons [...]
Read more »

Understanding Closed End Fund Discounts

When I went to business school a few years ago (OK, maybe it was more than a few years ago) I remember my finance professor telling the class that it was a mystery why closed end mutual funds traded at a discount. Presumably he was tapped into all the latest academic research about such matters so I assumed it was a mystery. It wasn't until years later that I came to believe that there really isn't much of a mystery - and my theory isn't that complicated, though putting it into words is difficult.
Read more »

Latest Blog Posts

Investing Adventures » Coal And Oil Are Expensive; Gas Is Cheap

Natural gas is cheap, that is. A couple of recent articles in the WSJ have alerted me to the price discrepancies between coal, oil, and natural gas. On April 18 the WSJ ran on article on changes in the natural gas markets which I found quite intriguing. Here are some of the highlights:Natural gas in the US is considerably cheaper than in other parts of the world. They provided the following graphi...
Read more »

Investing Adventures » More Opportunity Arbitraging Oil Instruments

I'm determined to squeeze every last dime out of the MacroShares. As I reported last week, I closed out my arbitrage on these shares for a nice profit once they triggered early termination. I was hedging the Up MacroShares (UCR) with a short on the United States Oil Fund (USO) but this became a rather sloppy hedge once oil started to get really close to $120/barrel and the early termination trigge...
Read more »

Latest Forum Posts

The Stock Market » Capitalizing on High Food Costs

I'm a big believer in investing in macro-economic trends. I've been quite successful at it. I owned DE for a long time. Still own CAT, though that's more of an infrastructure play. With regard to food, I think the markets have pretty much caught on to that and a lot of it is priced into the market. I suspect though that genetic engineering companies focused on food may not be fully priced in. I ha...
Read more »

The Stock Market » Capitalizing on High Food Costs

I did find a very un-sexy investment opportunity with Kroger the other day. We received an advertisement in the mail from our local store promoting a gift card offer. If you purchase a gift card in certain $100 increments, they will add an additional 10% cash value onto the gift card. Two days later, I filled up both my vehicles at their gas pumps and the pump shut off because it had reache...
Read more »