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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.

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...

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!

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...

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...

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).

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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...

MarketWatch reports that Cabot Market Letter owes its strong performance in 2007 to market timing and stock selection.

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.

The shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is well under way and will accelerate as automobiles using these new energy sources become more competitively priced and more convenient to use—which will bring some creative destruction to the energy industry. (Most people don’t see it coming yet, but that’s typical when it comes to long-entrenched technologies.)