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Stocks are rebounding in a renewed rise and so far, they’re looking good. The Dow Industrials, for instance, is at a one month high and...

History tells us that the general tendency of the U.S. stock market has always been up in the long run.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who follows equity markets that 2014 wasn’t a fabulous year for growth stocks.

Let’s just say I’m not surprised by the Justice Departments $1.4 billion fine, or what I’ll call a “tap on the wrist” to Standard & Poor’s. Levied as a result of years of bandying back and forth, the fine is S&P’s punishment for giving overwhelming endorsements—AAA ratings (the highest)—to thousands...

There are lots of moving parts to a successful growth stock portfolio. There’s buying, which I always think of as “the fun part.”

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...

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.

Rising interest rates mean danger for more than just bonds. Do you own any of the six asset classes below that are in the line of fire from rising rates?

That constant tug-of-war between the bulls and the bears has been a recurring theme of late. And the back-and-forth market direction has reached historic levels.

NetEase Inc. (NTES, Weiss Ratings: A+) posted a first-quarter jump in profits of 13% while net revenue surged nearly 55%, backed by the high demand for online games and related content. Its shares, up 82% over the past 12 months, were up nearly 7% early...

This morning I went back and looked at how a simple buy-write strategy would have performed in FB if executed the same way each month. The strategy would be to buy the stock and sell a call several dollars out of the money each month once the call initially sold had expired.

Diversification is one of the first portfolio management principles equity investors learn. It’s simple enough to understand; it’s simply an extrapolation of the old advice not to put all your eggs in one basket. And it’s good advice. But most investors have a narrow view of what diversification means.

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...

Biotech stocks have been red-hot this year, and a major reason for it is the glut of promising treatments being developed for diseases that have long been woefully undertreated.

It turns out that rising market rates, and even periods of tightening by the Federal Reserve, aren’t death knells for the stock market. And, rising rates often coincide with powerful bull markets!

On June 18, I received an email from a subscriber to Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report, the investment advisory for which I’m Chief Analyst. Here’s what I wrote back to my subscriber, slightly edited.

Option liquidity is a major issue in a stock like INVN versus GE. On average, GE trades close to 100,000 options per day. INVN on the other hand, only trades a couple thousand contracts a day. The time until expiration is another key component to the option width.