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Stock prices are determined by people. People who drive stocks to irrational heights and sell them to irrational depths. Take Crocs for example.

Microsoft (MSFT) bid $45 billion to buy Yahoo! (YHOO) back on February 1. My investment perspective on these companies is two-fold. First, every investor in America knows these companies. It’s going to be very hard to beat the market by investing in them. Second, those companies are going down the same road traveled by IBM decades ago.

I’ve received a bunch of questions regarding the Visa IPO this week. Many believe, because MasterCard (MA) turned out to be such a good investment, that Visa is probably a good buy. My answer to that is ... maybe. From a technical perspective, the game plan is obvious: Do not buy the Visa IPO, but do keep an eye on the stock. If it can form a relatively tight consolidation and if the market can show real signs of turning up, then you could consider taking a position on a breakout. It takes some work, but the rewards can be worth it.

After visiting San Francisco and touring Alcatraz, Timothy Lutts found a company that specializes in privatized prisons, and seems like a good investment opportunity.

A true solid growth stock must adhere to all three criteria of the SNaC selection method: Story, Numbers and Chart.

As I’ve written in recent weeks, there are ample signs that the market’s bear phase is close to (or has already reached) its end point. I won’t rehash all the signs here (double-bottom in the indexes, new lows divergence, Bear Stearns bad news, etc.). Instead, I want to take a few paragraphs to dispel a common belief among most investors-that you must get in as quickly as possible to make big money in a bull market.

The market appears ripe for a short-term bounce ... but so what? The reason most people want to pick bottoms isn’t really to make money; that’s part of it, of course, but not the sole purpose. The reason they want to pick bottoms is to feel like they outsmarted the market and most other investors. There’s nothing shameful about that, but in the market, wanting to prove that you’re right usually costs you money.

For almost everything we buy in life, price matters. From gasoline to automobiles, cheeseburgers to chateaubriand, we’ve learned that the lower the price, the better the deal.

So which book leads to the investment idea, the book by the dreamers or the book about the doer? There’s no surprise here; it’s Carnegie, the doer. Because today’s idea is about steel and iron ore, once again in great demand by the world. For Carnegie, demand came from the expansion of the American railroad system. For this company, demand comes from the global building boom, particularly in Asia.

Microsoft wants to pay $44 billion - perhaps the largest technology purchase ever - to buy Yahoo! Why? To compete with Google! But does it make sense? Well, from a big-picture point of view, anything that can thwart Google’s dominance of Internet search and advertising probably makes sense for Microsoft, and if they’ve got the cash, there are worse places to spend it. But does this make for an attractive investment opportunity? Do you want to own a piece of Microsoft/Yahoo!, recognizing that the Microsoft part is eight times the size of the Yahoo! part?

I have always believed that cutting losses short is, by far, the #1 rule when investing in fast-moving growth stocks. So much so that my stops are often less than 10%, even 5%, as I try to buy a leader near a logical support level.

Cabot Benjamin Graham Value Letter editor J. Royden Ward is back today writing his second Cabot Wealth Advisory and recommending a great value stock.

We got a great response to Wednesday’s Cabot Wealth Advisory about Peak Oil, and many of the responses are reproduced in today’s issue.

Intellectually, everyone knows that the right time to get into the market is at the bottom. Stocks are cheap and there are bargains galore. Unfortunately, figuring out when a bear market is going to bottom is about as easy as knowing when a long-winded speaker is going to quit talking. It can’t be done. Maybe it’s fairer to say that you can’t see a market bottom by looking forward through the windshield. It’s something that can only be seen in the rear-view mirror.

If I try to think rationally about this problem, here’s what I get. Debt is bad; equity is good. Consumers and businesses are already working to reduce their debt loads, and as they continue, they will develop stronger balance sheets and greater financial health, which is a good thing. (One aspect of this that is often forgotten is that this debt shrinkage is right on schedule for aging baby-boomers.)

The topic is Peak Oil, the theory that global oil production will peak somewhere between 2006 and 2010 and then decline “until all recoverable oil is completed within several decades.”

Each year end, I review my investing strengths and weaknesses, examining stock charts of previous buys and sells, comparing them to market action, and so on.

Today I want to review the expansion and subsequent shrinking of the Internet stock universe, and then relate that to the growth of today’s alternative energy stocks. The best time to invest in a sector, such as Alternative Energy, is when it is uncategorized and indistinct.

Value investing is about finding undervalued stocks that the market has not correctly priced, and these 10 steps can help give you an edge.

When the technology bubble burst in 2000, many investors held onto their stocks even as they plummeted, believing in the mantra of time, not timing. In the end, it’s market timing indicators and having sell disciplines in place that count.