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Tennis balls are stocks that might drop for a few days when the market is getting hit, but then they bounce right back, just like a tennis ball. Then there’s eggs.

Markets are all about buying and selling, and the market itself will happily let you know if your strategy, your tactics, your rules and your intuitions are up to the task. But year in and year out, the lesson the market is fondest of teaching is about selling. I know, I know, you’re probably weary of investing experts who always want to talk about when to sell. It’s the Great Mystery for novice growth investors and the Prime Directive for veterans.

It’s a critical time for Greece, its countrymen, the nations that hold its debt and its investors. The big question is: Will Greece default on its 1.5 billion euro debt payments that are due tomorrow on the 322 billion euros that it owes to other countries?

Diversification is especially important for long-term buy-and-hold investors. If you plan to hold most of your investments through multiple market cycles, you’ll want to do whatever you can to make sure your portfolio doesn’t get wiped out by one event or sector correction.

from The National Investor Despite some of our gains on Preferred Apartment Communities, Inc. (APTS) evaporating in the recent past as investors have indiscriminately sold REITs and other rate-sensitive groups as Treasury yields creep higher, this company remains a strong “BUY.” Though headlines suggest that the housing market is strong, it’s much...

Cultures are harder to change than borders , but no country lasts forever. This doesn’t mean I think this is the end for Greece, but simply that the trends there are unfavorable. Instead, I’d put the money in a country that is enjoying increasingly positive perceptions about its long-term economic prospects. Hint: it’s not Greece!

There is pretty good evidence that the correction has ended. Just 4% peak to trough. Our VIX work confirms, so the name of the game now is to monitor the rally for evidence that it is strong enough...

Put-Write strategy, also called “naked puts” by some, is used when a rise in the price of the underlying asset is expected or, at least, a significant decline is not expected.

Markets are used to all kinds of stressful events, and for the past year or so have taken the Greek debt crisis pretty much in stride. Up through last week, what we saw in the market was an unemotional averaging out of all investors’ estimates of the probability of a Greek default and the likely fallout (including Greece’s exit from the Eurozone).

Believe it or not, millennials have now surpassed Baby Boomers as America’s most populous living generation. Many of those millennials are starting families - and that’s good news for the baby market.

June 19, 2015 An Opportunity to Get Smarter and Richer “Knowledge itself is Power,” said Sir Francis Bacon in his 1597 Bacon’s Meditationes Sacrae, and I would venture to say, that phrase is even more important in today’s data-driven world. Imagine if we had perfect knowledge—we would always be in the right...

I’m tempted by the idea of finding a stock at the bottom of a correction. I’ve given up on the idea of recognizing a bottom in the market. Market bottoms are idiosyncratic, sometimes bumping along for weeks or months, sometimes forming sharp Vs and other times W-shaped patterns. As I always say, the only people who consistently sell at the top and buy at the bottom are liars.

Despite the Greece debacle, the IPO market has been on fire of late. Here’s what you need to know.

Micron Technology (MU) is a stock that we have traded in the past, and it’s held by many top hedge funds. The company reported earnings last night, and option activity in the stock has been interesting lately.

from Capitalist Times In its fiscal third quarter ended March 31, 2015, Student Transportation (STB) grew its revenue by 13% and its cash flow by 20%. Operating margins also widened to 20.6% from 19.3% a year ago, thanks to lower fuel costs and efficiency gains. In recent years, the company has sought...

Utilities, often considered to be the most safe and conservative sector, got whacked for a 4.1% loss last week. There is nothing safe, conservative, or defensive about that. The Russell 2000 Index of small-cap stocks, often considered to be...

I often write that “XYZ stock is showing a good set-up” or “is set-up nicely.” What exactly do I mean? That’s a question I’ve gotten a few times during the past couple of weeks, so I thought I’d add some color to it here.

Our Spotlight stock, Textura Corporation (TXTR)—a company that is using cloud-based technology to make project management more cost-effective and efficient—reminded me of my experiences in building a couple of homes over the years. While I ended up with some very nice homes, despite the best intentions—and a lot...

Today brings the third installment about my recent 17-day 4,218-mile road trip to and through the American Midwest and back—which I’m presenting not chronologically but thematically. Today’s theme is art, not least because my wife is an artist, and the one concrete reason for this trip was an opening reception at the “Minnesota Center for Book Arts” in which she had work.

Few things get the attention of investors like a good old international crisis. This time around, the culprit is Greece, a country that has been teetering on the edge of default for nearly five years. I’m not an economist, so I won’t comment on what Greece’s potential downfall could do to interest rates, economic growth, unemployment and the like. But I am a student of the market, and I have three thoughts to offer.