The Globe and Mail, 5/2/2013
Over the past few years, North Americans have had plenty to worry about. From the U.S. housing collapse and associated financial crisis, to nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, to the recent horrifying bombings at the Boston Marathon, it seems there's been one crisis after another. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 5/2/2013
With first-quarter U.S. GDP growth falling short of expectations and few expecting much in the way of broader economic growth for the rest of the year, investors are once again considering a troubling question: Where will the growth come from? View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/29/2013
Is Apple's run over? That's the question many investors have been asking themselves lately -- and the way they've been treating Apple's stock amounts to a collective response of "yes." View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 4/15/2013
Since the global economic meltdown of 2008, most investors haven't expected much from the economy, and that doesn't seem to be changing. For many, if not most analysts and pundits, the best-case scenario for the U.S. involves "average" growth in coming years; more likely scenarios involve prolonged "tepid" growth; and downside scenarios involve complete and utter financial disaster. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 4/11/2013
In the stock market, it's often all about earnings. Earnings reports, earnings growth rates, price-to-earnings ratios -- when analyzing stocks, investors usually turn to these metrics as gauges of value. View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/3/2013
While U.S. stocks have recently been making all-time high after all time high, the energy sector has been left behind. So far in 2013, energy stocks have returned just 3.65%, according to Morningstar (that's second worst of the 11 sectors Morningstar tracks). View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/31/2013
As U.S. companies have built up huge cash stockpiles over the past few years, many investors have urged them to put those funds to work. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 3/25/2013
Since equity markets peaked in 2007, macroeconomic factors have by and large been the driving force behind stocks. The U.S. financial crisis, the European debt crisis, China's slowdown -- these and many other macro issues have led investors to jump in and out of the market based primarily on their feelings about the global economy. View Full Article
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Forbes, 3/19/2013
Berkshire Hathaway's $28 billion deal for ketchup king H.J. Heinz; Office Depot and OfficeMax's merger; Comcast's takeover of NBC Universal -- dealmaking has picked up sharply in the U.S. market in 2013. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/14/2013
What leads you to buy or sell a stock? If you're like most investors, the answer involves a lot of speculative factors: What are the experts saying? Have shares gone up or down over the past week? On what kind of volume? View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 3/11/2013
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching a new all-time high for the first time since the Great Recession and financial crisis, and the S&P 500 creeping closer and closer to its record high, many investors have been getting worried that the stock market is overheated. View Full Article
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Forbes, 3/5/2013
If you ever watched a magician perform when you were a child (or even as an adult), you know just how magical their powers can seem to be. Watch him pull a rabbit from his hat, or saw a woman in half, or disappear altogether, and your first thought is, "how did he do that?" View Full Article
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Amazon Money & Markets, 3/1/2013
Though he's one of the world's richest men, Warren Buffett has often talked of his penchant for life's simple pleasures, like hamburgers and Cherry Coke. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 2/25/2013
How's the market doing today? How about in the last hour? And your portfolio -- which of your holdings is down today? On the surface, it might seem that knowing the answer to those questions would be a good thing. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 2/21/2013
It's only February and temperatures remain chilly, but one of the first signs of spring has arrived: spring training. It's a time of optimism, as the 29 teams that failed to win the World Series last year start with a clean slate and a chance to improve on the previous season's shortcomings. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 2/19/2013
"Cash is king," the saying goes, but since the U.S. pulled out of the 2008-09 financial crisis, cash has been more like a pauper. With interest rates having remained near zero for the past few years, investors have earned just about nothing on their money market funds. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 2/19/2013
The statistics are daunting. Over the past two decades, while the S&P 500 market index gained 7.8 per cent a year on average, U.S. equity fund investors earned less than half that -- 3.5 per cent, according to the research firm Dalbar Inc. View Full Article
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Forbes, 2/11/2013
Apple plummeting, Netflix surging, BlackBerry back in the game -- big moves by some of the tech sector's biggest names have been dominating the front pages of investment publications in recent weeks. View Full Article
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Amazon Money & Markets, 2/1/2013
While gross domestic product increased at a solid 3.1% rate in the third quarter of 2012, the U.S. growth since the Great Recession ended has been far from gangbusters. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 1/28/2013
Integrated oil and gas firms have had a lot working against them the past few years. The U.S.'s slow economic recovery, Europe's troubled economy, a slowdown in China, numerous political crises and social unrest in the Middle East (including the recent attack on an Algerian gas complex) -- all of these issues and more have led many investors to steer clear of the major oil stocks View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 1/20/2013
With his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sitting on billions of dollars in cash, Warren Buffett has been quite vocal about his desire to find places to put money to work. In early December, Mr. Buffett did just that, with Berkshire making a $1.2-billion (U.S.) investment in a large, well known firm with a lengthy track record of success. View Full Article
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Forbes, 1/18/2013
Time and time again over the past four years or so, the pundits and prognosticators have declared the U.S. consumer dead. High unemployment, slow wage growth, tumbling home prices, potential tax hikes involved in the "fiscal cliff" -- all of these and other factors have been cited as reasons why American consumers just won't be able to spend the way they used to. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 12/26/2012
As the U.S. marches closer and closer to the "fiscal cliff", one of the areas of the stock market believed to be the most vulnerable is high-dividend stocks. If Congress and the President fail to reach some sort of deal before Jan. 1, dividends will be taxed at the same level as ordinary income -- which could be as much as 39.6% for some investors, more than twice the current 15% rate. View Full Article
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Forbes, 12/18/2012
The world is full of flashes-in-the-pan. The director who makes a fantastic movie, but never comes close to duplicating the feat; the quarterback who has an excellent season or two, and then fades into obscurity; the one-hit wonder who follows up a stellar debut album with a string of failure--all of them may have brief brushes with greatness. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/17/2012
In the half century since Warren Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway, so much has changed in the investing world. From the rise of day trading, to the advent of the Internet and 24-hour financial news, to the high-frequency trading that often dominates today's market, the very nature of how many people invest has shifted dramatically as the decades have passed. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 12/6/2012
While history's greatest investors have come in a variety of shapes and sizes, one quality that the vast majority have had in common is that they are contrarian thinkers. View Full Article
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Forbes, 11/27/2012
"Cliff" -- it's a word that is rife with subtext, most of it the unpleasant variety. In fact, I would bet that when most people hear the word cliff, words like "falling," "danger," and maybe even "death" come to mind. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 11/19/2012
We all know who makes the products that play huge roles in Americans' daily lives -- the Apples and Coca-Colas and Exxon Mobils and Hondas of the world. But do you know who makes the products used to make those firms' well-known products?. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 11/13/2012
In 1897, when rumours that he was gravely ill surfaced, a very-much-alive Mark Twain is said to have declared, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.". View Full Article
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Forbes Magazine, 10/31/2012
From the outcomes of elections and sports events, to changes in stocks and the economy, people make notoriously poor predictions. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 10/24/2012
As Election Day creeps closer, all sorts of pundits and prognosticators are telling us who is going to win the presidency -- and what it will mean for the economy and the stock market. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 10/7/2012
Companies that have big stockpiles of cash got a tongue-lashing this summer from Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, who says such firms are using "excessive" caution that is hindering economic growth. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 9/26/2012
What's better than one investment guru? Two investment gurus, of course.That's what I've found over the years using my Guru Strategies, each of which is based on the approach of a different investing great. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 9/24/2012
"If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring." - Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros View Full Article
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Forbes, 9/18/2012
For years now, Warren Buffett's name has been nearly synonymous with the term "value investing." A disciple of Benjamin Graham - the man known as the "Father of Value Investing" - Buffett has become the world's most well-known investor thanks to his ability to ascertain the value of various securities and then buy them for less, a concept at the core of value investing. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 9/10/2012
When the financial crisis and Great Recession rocked the U.S. and global economies back in 2008, it was supposed to be the death knell for luxury goods companies and their stocks. After all, the U.S. consumer was dying, the pundits said, and who buys thousand-dollar handbags on their death bed? View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 8/28/2012
Don't chase hot stocks. If you're a serious investor, you've probably heard this piece of wisdom hundreds of times. And generally it's good advice -- but incomplete. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 8/23/2012
Facebook, Groupon, Zynga -- the past year has been a rough one for some high profile initial public offerings. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 8/13/2012
Over a third of the Midwest was suffering from extreme or exceptionally dry conditions at the end of July. It's been nearly six decades since the U.S. has seen conditions like this. The result: Corn and soybean prices have hit record highs. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 8/10/2012
Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the accompanying "Great Recession", the investment world has been filled with an unceasing refrain. "Things are different now," it goes; "The old rules don't apply." View Full Article
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Forbes, 8/7/2012
With so much attention on European debt and fiscal cliffs and LIBOR scandals, many investors have overlooked an important occurrence in the stock market over the past year or so. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 8/3/2012
For decades, the investment world operated under two key assumptions -- that risk is defined by volatility, and that taking on greater risk leads to greater reward. Buy stocks that are risky and, over the long run, the market will reward you with greater returns, the thinking went. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 7/30/2012
The end of July is fast approaching, and for Major League Baseball that means one of the most exciting periods of the season: the week or so leading up to the trading deadline. With more than half a season under their belts, contending teams have a good idea of what they have -- and what they lack. View Full Article
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Forbes, 7/20/2012
Over the past 15 years, Bill Nygren's Oakmark Select I (OAKLX) fund has averaged annual returns of 9.4%, more than doubling the S&P 500's 4.3% average. That puts it in the top 1% of funds in its large-cap blend class, according to Morningstar-and makes Nygren someone I pay close attention to. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 7/5/2012
As Europe's debt crisis has flared up and growth in China has slowed from "gangbusters" to merely "impressive" in recent months, basic materials stocks have been hit hard. For the year, the sector is down about 1%, according to Morningstar, lagging all other sectors except energy. And over the past three months, basic materials have been the flat-out worst sector, losing nearly 10%. View Full Article
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Forbes, 7/3/2012
European stocks provoke fear and trepidation among investors these days. Investors lost confidence, with Greece hanging onto its euro zone status by a thread, and Spain and Italy's borrowing costs driving last month hitting unsustainable levels. Hordes of investors in European stocks rushed the exits. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 6/20/2012
If you're like most investors, the nonstop headlines about the European debt crisis have been leading you to cash out a good chunk of your U.S. stock holdings over the past few months. From March through May, investors collectively pulled a net of about $44 billion from U.S. domestic equity mutual funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/11/2012
Given his celebrity status, it can be easy to forget what first made Warren Buffett the world's most-followed investor: His impeccable track record. For decades, Mr. Buffett has produced returns at Berkshire Hathaway that almost no investor can match. But Prem Watsa can. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 6/4/2012
Since the stock market began to turn lower two months ago amid renewed fears about the European debt crisis, small-cap stocks have fared worse than their larger peers. It shouldn't be a surprise -- often when fears hit and the market falls, investors lean toward stocks of larger companies, with the assumption that they will be more stable and steady during tough times. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 5/28/2012
Today I will attempt a feat that few in the investment world have dared in recent years. I will try to write a column about technology stocks without using the A-word-- that is, without analyzing a certain headline-grabbing, California-based "iGiant" that rules over the tech landscape. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 5/22/2012
The annual NFL Draft has become one of America's most widely anticipated sports-related events, with thousands of people flocking to New York's Radio City Music Hall last month to witness the festivities. Millions more watched on TV or followed on the Internet. View Full Article
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Forbes, 5/21/2012
Warren Buffett and his friends at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) have been busy lately--very busy. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 5/15/2012
"Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity," the English author Samuel Johnson once said. Over the past several years, the financial world has seen just how right he was. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 5/10/2012
Warren Buffett revealed last weekend that his Berkshire Hathaway recently came close to buying a $22 billion company before talks broke down, setting off a flurry of speculation about which company it was -- and what other firms might be in Buffett's sights. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 4/26/2012
You are the general manager of a basketball team. Your job is to build a roster of players, without going over your budget. In your search, you find a variety of talented prospects -- big, strong, 7-foot-tall centres; small-but-lightning-quick point guards; smooth, athletic, sharp-shooting forwards. View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/24/2012
Traditionally, stocks of defense industry companies (and other firms that are heavily reliant on the government for their business) are good places for investors to seek safety and play, well, defense. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 4/17/2012
While the stock market has bounced back strong this year following a difficult 2011, investors still aren't exactly pouring into stocks. In fact, many continue to flat-out avoid equities. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 4/17/2012
The industry's bleak outlook is now brightening, thanks in large parts to massive infusions of cash from governments in the United States and Canada, as well as vigorous restructuring. View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/4/2012
How do you become the richest investor in America? By rooting against your stocks-well, sometimes, at least. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 4/2/2012
Ever since the 2008 market collapse and financial crisis, many investors have been suffering from a fear of heights. Whenever the market goes on a nice upward run, they get fearful -- very fearful -- with the still-fresh scars of the '08 crash leading them to think that what goes up will certainly come down. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/26/2012
In his 2011 year-end letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett offered an insight into his investment approach that probably caught most readers by surprise: Sometimes, Mr. Buffett said, he actually roots for his investments to languish. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 3/19/2012
March Madness is upon us and the big question on every college basketball fan's mind is, who will play Cinderella in this year's NCAA tournament? View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 2/28/2012
Last summer, with the U.S. debt ceiling debate turning into a debacle, the European debt crisis lingering, and growth slowing, many believed the U.S. economy was headed for a big tumble. View Full Article
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Forbes, 2/24/2012
After more than a dozen years of studying history's most successful investment strategies, one of the most important pieces of advice I can give you is this: Don't follow the crowd. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 2/24/2012
For just a moment, forget about earnings reports and P/E ratios. Put aside cup-and-handle patterns and debt-to-GDP figures. Beyond all of the day-to-day noise, beyond all of the intricacies of the stock market, what do you really believe as an investor? View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 2/3/2012
Over the past few years, a number of macroeconomic events -- ranging from the 2008 financial crisis to the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East to Europe's debt problems -- have led investors to load up on assets that offer (or at least are perceived to offer) safety. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 12/29/2011
Throughout the second half of 2011, many (if not most) pundits and prognosticators have been waiting for the European debt crisis to spread across the Atlantic Ocean and topple the U.S. economic recovery. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/20/2011
I believe strongly in using cold, hard data when investing. The problem is that any single piece of data can lie. That's why it's so important to consider a variety of information. You might say that, when it comes to the numbers, there is safety in numbers. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/13/2011
We're entering the holiday season, a time of year when bigger is often considered better, whether it be the size of the stack of presents under the Christmas tree, the amount of that end-of-year bonus cheque or the magnitude of this year's New Year’s Eve party. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 12/12/2011
With the world population continuing to rise, global economies running for the most part on non-renewable resources, and central banks injecting huge sums of money into the financial system in recent years, some of the world's most successful investors have been bullish on natural resource-related stocks recently. View Full Article
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Forbes, 12/7/2011
Buy stock in companies that make things that people need: In today's fast-paced, hyper-focused investment world, it’s advice that can seem rather quaint and antiquated. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 11/21/2011
As the euro zone's slow-motion train wreck inches down the track and Congress bickers over how to tame Washington's debt problems, many investors have decided to flee the market. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 11/17/2011
Warren Buffett caught the investment world's eye this week, revealing that his Berkshire Hathaway has been building a $10-billion-plus position in tech giant IBM over the past few quarters, as well as a smaller stake in fellow tech firm Intel Corp. View Full Article
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Forbes, 11/16/2011
When it comes to big oil and gas companies and their stocks, it’s hard to look past the negatives. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 10/31/2011
This month, consumer confidence hit its lowest point since March 2009, according to the Conference Board. And that has led many pundits to speculate that the holiday shopping season will be a weak one, with fearful consumers tightening their wallets and businesses struggling to meet profit and sales goals. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 10/30/2011
In most of my columns, I focus on the importance of finding value when examining stocks, whether it's by looking at share prices in relation to earnings or in comparison to some other yardstick of intrinsic value. I believe gurus like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch have shown that buying shares of good companies on the cheap is a timeless formula for investment success. View Full Article
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Forbes, 10/18/2011
The U.S. economic recovery continues to be a relatively slow one, with growth mild and unemployment remaining far higher than anyone would like. But amid the sluggish expansion, one area that has shone brightly is agriculture. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 9/23/2011
Over the past several decades, America has shifted consistently and dramatically toward being a service-dominated economy. Fifty years ago, 59% of U.S. private jobs came from the service sector, with 41% from the goods-producing sector; by 1981, the gap had grown to 67.8% for the service sector vs. 32.2% for the goods-producing sector; by 1991, it had shifted even further, with about 75% of U.S. jobs coming from service sector and 25% from the goods-producing sector. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 9/15/2011
Before Hurricane Irene swept onto the East Coast of the U.S. and began battering houses and trees and buildings, the powerful storm was already battering property and casualty insurers' stocks. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 9/12/2011
The European banking crisis, sluggish recent U.S. growth, a burgeoning deficit and national debt -- investors have had a lot troubling issues on their minds lately. View Full Article
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Forbes, 9/7/2011
With Berkshire Hathaway's purchase of Lubrizol (LZ) earlier this year, Warren Buffett says his firm's acquisition gun isn't as heavy as it had been-but it still has plenty of bullets left, and he's ready and willing to pull the trigger. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 8/28/2011
Earlier this month, Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt caused a stir on Wall Street and in the political world. And that wasn't the only poor review that the credit rating agency handed out. S&P also downgraded the debt of a handful of major insurers, and issued negative outlooks on some others. View Full Article
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Forbes, 8/25/2011
In the days leading up to Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt this summer, some in the investment world were fearful that such an action would push the country further down a path toward a debt crisis, and perhaps even a default on some of its obligations. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 8/17/2011
Coke or Pepsi? Magic or Larry? The Beatles or the Stones? Life is full of such "either/or" questions. The investing world is no different, with perhaps the greatest being "growth, or value?" And, like most of those other debates, the growth or value question is misleading by its very nature, presupposing that you must embrace only one or the other -- not both. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 8/14/2011
One key to good investing is knowing who to listen to. Myriad pundits appear on television or in print, but, sadly, many who attract attention are simply those who speak loudly or boldly -- not those who actually have good track records. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 7/28/2011
The U.S. debt ceiling talks are sputtering along, with the deadline for addressing the country's dwindling amount of available credit fast approaching and legislators bickering over how to address the problem. By all accounts, the process has been painfully slow, with both sides proving to be better at political posturing than at legitimate compromise. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 7/25/2011
Since the explosion of the Internet nearly two decades ago, the nature of stock research has changed dramatically. Unlike the old days, when researchers and investors had to pore over stacks of newspapers and dog-ear pages of thick company reports, they can now get stock data almost instantaneously on financial websites, and download corporate reports in a matter of seconds. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 7/12/2011
Cash: It's the lifeblood of any business. That may seem obvious, but it's something that can easily be forgotten - just look at what happened to overleveraged, overextended companies during the financial crisis in 2008. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 7/5/2011
The Federal Reserve's second -- and perhaps final -- round of quantitative easing has ended, and some Congressional leaders continue to talk tough on deficit reduction. But make no mistake: The U.S. is still far from a state of conservative fiscal and monetary policy View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/21/2011
Ever since the Great Recession rocked North America, a large cloud has been hovering over the retail sector. Amid fears that the consumer is tapped out, many analysts have been predicting a bleak future for retail companies - and their stocks. View Full Article
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Seeking Alpha, 6/21/2011
With talk of deficits, debt ceilings and potential budget cuts dominating the U.S. political landscape in recent weeks, a good deal of fear and uncertainty has been swirling around stocks of companies that could be impacted if the government starts slashing its budget. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/14/2011
It's summer blockbuster time for the movie industry, the time of year when throngs of people line up to see the latest big-budget, big-hype films. If you're like me, you've probably had the experience of going to one of these overhyped movies and walking away less than thrilled. View Full Article
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Forbes, 6/8/2011
Ever since the financial crisis and "Great Recession," U.S. companies have been building up huge piles of cash-for S&P 500 companies, the figure is almost $1 trillion, to be exact. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 6/3/2011
June is here, and with it will come a number of things that should make just about everyone happy: warmer weather, the end of school, and the official start of summer, to name just a few. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/1/2011
If you're like most investors, "tech stock" probably brings to mind young, rapidly growing companies that make flashy, exciting products. And there was a time when most technology firms fit that description. View Full Article
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Forbes, 5/25/2011
In today's increasingly global world, a seemingly endless array of variables go into the stock market's movements. On any given day, changes to monetary policy in China, an earnings announcement from Apple, European debt concerns, a drought in Australia, and protests in the Middle East can all push and pull the U.S. market in different directions. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 5/23/2011
Think "small growth stocks", and you probably think of flashy, exciting stocks that may generate high returns -- but not without a lot of risk and a lot of volatility. But it doesn't have to be that way View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 5/10/2011
Companies from around the world have been pushing into natural gas as they try to increase production of this promising source of energy. A string of deals this year, such as Encana Corp.'s quarter-billion-dollar (U.S.) joint venture with Northwest Natural Gas Co. and PetroChina's $5.4-billion investment in Encana's shale gas assets, has thrown a spotlight on natural gas's potential. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 5/9/2011
Despite concerns about skyrocketing gas prices, the U.S. consumer is continuing to prove remarkably resilient, according to the latest retail sales figures. According to Thomson Reuters, same-store sales at 25 major stores jumped an average of nearly 9% in April vs. the same month a year ago. View Full Article
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Forbes Magazine, 5/4/2011
Hindsight can drive an investor nuts. Many, for example, have probably imagined where they would be today if they'd had the foresight (or good fortune) to snatch up shares of Microsoft or Apple back when the technology titans were just new kids on the block. View Full Article
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Seeking Alpha, 4/22/2011
Coca-Cola Company (KO) is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings next week, and investors are sure to be keeping a close eye on the beverage giant and consumer bellwether's results. Did the turmoil in the Middle East, and its impact on gas prices, cause consumers to tighten their belts? Did the tragic tsunami and earthquake in Japan impact global Coke sales? View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/19/2011
With stocks up some 90%+ since their March 2009 lows, a big question on investors' minds is whether the market has become overvalued. Depending on whom you ask, you can get all sorts of different answers. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 4/13/2011
Sometimes, dogs do indeed have their day. In fact, the Dogs of the Dow have had quite a few good days. From 1957 to 2003, the investment strategy returned about 14.3 per cent a year, easily outpacing the 11-per-cent annualized gain on the Dow Jones industrial average. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 4/4/2011
The telecom sector got a big shakeup last week, with AT&T announcing that it will buy T-Mobile in a deal that would boost AT&T's subscribership to almost 130 million -- pushing it past Verizon as the U.S.'s largest wireless carrier. View Full Article
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Forbes, 3/28/2011
While numerous questions remain about the fallout-both literal and figurative-of the nuclear reactor leaks in Japan, one thing seems certain: The tragic events are increasing anti-nuclear-power sentiment across the globe. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 3/16/2011
For much of the two-year-plus stock market rally, the healthcare sector has been left far behind the rest of the market. From the March 9, 2009 low through Feb. 23 of this year, for example, the S&P 500 gained more than 93%; the Healthcare Select SPDR exchange-traded fund, meanwhile, gained less than half that -- just 46.3%. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/15/2011
Warren Buffett believes in the U.S. economy - and he just spent $9-billion (U.S.) to prove it. His acquisition this week of Lubrizol Corp., an Ohio-based maker of industrial lubricants, reflects his bullishness on U.S. stocks, despite the country’s current budget woes and high unemployment. View Full Article
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Forbes, 3/1/2011
As the U.S. government undertook more and more drastic measures to combat the financial crisis and Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, many top strategists - including the great Warren Buffett - said we’d put ourselves on a path to significant inflation. View Full Article
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MSN Money, 2/25/2011
Getting jittery? If you're like most investors, you probably are, thanks to all of the turmoil in the Middle East. Tunisia and Egypt were one thing, but now with Libya -- and its 1.5 million daily barrels of oil exports -- in chaos, investors are feeling the heat. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 2/10/2011
Most investors believe you should invest in countries with high economic growth. Most also believe that forecasters can predict when that growth is going to occur. Both notions sound eminently reasonable - until you examine the evidence. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 2/4/2011
Since 2000, the S&P/TSX composite index has more than doubled, while the benchmark U.S. S&P 500 has only recently nudged back into positive territory. On top of that, the U.S. housing market - hurt much worse than Canada's in the recent recession - continues to struggle. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 1/25/2011
Living in a society that is obsessed with celebrity, it's important not to confuse fame with success. While many of the pundits you'll see on television or read on the Internet have attained celebrity status, few have attained the types of track records that merit that status -- or your attention. View Full Article
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Forbes, 12/31/2010
Wheat-harming rain in Australia, crop-damaging drought in Russia, a buying binge from China to help stem inflation-a variety of factors have been pushing agricultural commodity prices sharply higher in recent months, and it looks like the trend may well continue in 2011. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/31/2010
Even oracles make mistakes. At least, they do in the investment world. And sometimes they're big ones. Take Warren Buffett. The billionaire known as the Oracle of Omaha recently said his biggest mistake was one that by his estimate has cost him $200-billion (U.S.). View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/22/2010
In an investment world filled with high-frequency trading, instantaneous stock quotes, and charting patterns, it's important not to lose sight of a key fact: Behind every stock there is a company, a company that must offer desirable products in order to survive and thrive. View Full Article
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MSN Money, 12/17/2010
As the U.S.'s recovery from the "Great Recession" has progressed, one big driver of the turnaround has been the industrial and manufacturing arena. Industrial production rose in November by 0.4%, according to a new Federal Reserve report, marking the 15th time in 17 months that production has increased. View Full Article
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Forbes, 12/13/2010
The tax compromise reached between President Obama and Congressional Republicans has a number of key provisions, but one that should be of particular interest to investors is the extension of the cap on stock dividend taxes. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/9/2010
While fundamentals drive stock returns over the long haul, other factors can push stocks higher or lower in the short term. Economic cycles, political events, even weather patterns - all of these and more can have a temporary effect. In most cases, however, these forces are extremely hard to predict. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 12/3/2010
Are you a value investor, or a growth investor? In my dozen-plus years of studying history's most successful investment strategies, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that you can -- and should -- be both. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 11/10/2010
In recent months, several top strategists have been saying that large-cap stocks are offering exceptional bargains. Having substantially lagged their smaller peers for years -- the S&P 600 small-cap index has returned more than 7% annually over the past decade vs. 0.46% for the S&P 500 -- large-caps are now much cheaper than small stocks, investing gurus like Donald Yacktman and Barton Biggs have said. View Full Article
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Forbes, 11/10/2010
In a single day in late October, Todd Combs went from fund-management obscurity to one of the most talked-about investors in the world. That's what happens when Warren Buffett hires you to manage a significant portion of his firm's portfolio-and, many believe, to become Buffett's eventual successor at Berkshire Hathaway. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 11/8/2010
Earlier this fall, Warren Buffett visited China to check on BYD Company, the electric car and battery maker in which Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has a 10-percent stake. And while there, he said that China's size and strong growth make the country a "logical" place for Berkshire to put more money to work. View Full Article
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Forbes, 10/27/2010
"Go where the growth is"-that's the advice many pundits have been offering lately, and many investors are taking it. View Full Article
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MSN Money, 10/22/2010
While many companies continue to post strong third-quarter profits, much of the earnings season talk has centered on concerns about the "top line" -- that is, revenue growth. View Full Article
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Forbes, 10/13/2010
During his recent trip to China, Warren Buffett quashed rumors that he'd soured on his big investment in Chinese electric car-maker BYD - and he indicated that he's on the prowl for more investments in the rapidly growing Asian power. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 10/9/2010
"Buy what you know" -- it's one of the terms you'll often hear associated with the investment strategy of the great Peter Lynch. The former Fidelity manager, who posted a remarkable 29.2% average annual return during his 13-year tenure at the Magellan fund, believed one way to find good investment ideas is to focus on companies you deal with personally -- and like. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 9/29/2010
High-flying technology firms, trendy retailers pitching the latest "must-have" products, companies from the fastest-growing emerging markets - as an investor, it's easy to be drawn to the stocks of "glamour" businesses like these. View Full Article
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Forbes, 9/28/2010
In the past few weeks, the market has bounced back nicely, and individual investors collectively appear to be as optimistic on stocks as they've been in a long time. In fact, in the two most recent weeks, 50.9% and 45.0% of respondents in the American Association of Individual Investors Sentiment Survey have reported being bullish on stocks in the coming six months-the highest back-to-back readings in more than a year. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 9/17/2010
It's now been about a year since the U.S. economy turned upward, and investors are wishing the recovery was going more smoothly. Economic growth isn't quite as strong as it was earlier this year, unemployment remains stubbornly high, and stocks have been in a correction for the past four-and-a-half months. All that, many say, is proof the recovery is about to give way to another bear market. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 9/16/2010
To most investors, the name Thyra Zerhusen probably doesn't ring any bells. It should. While she doesn't get nearly the attention that some other star fund managers get, Zerhusen has quietly compiled an impeccable track record while heading the Aston/Optimum Mid-Cap Equity fund since 1994. View Full Article
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Forbes, 9/10/2010
A key part of my investment philosophy is that you don't need to reinvent the wheel to make money in the stock market. That's why I developed my Guru Strategies (each of which is based on the approach of a different investing great), and it's why I keep an eye on what the market's most successful minds are saying about stocks. View Full Article
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Seeking Alpha, 9/3/2010
It's no secret that individual investors have been taking big chunks of money out of stocks since the market turned downward in late April -- according to the Investment Company Institute, investors removed a net of more than $46 billion from U.S. equity mutual funds from the beginning of May through mid-August. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 9/2/2010
The U.S. economic recovery has slowed a bit in recent months, sparking new fears of a double-dip recession. I think the double-dip fears are probably a bit overhyped. While the pace of the recovery hasn't been as rapid as it was in the second half of 2009 or the first quarter of 2010, several key areas of the economy - including the industrial and manufacturing sectors - are still growing at a solid pace. View Full Article
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Forbes, 8/24/2010
While concerns abound about the rate of growth in the U.S., economies in other parts of the world continue to hum along quite nicely. One of the best examples: Brazil. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 8/18/2010
In the dozen-plus years I've spent researching history's greatest investment minds, one of the things that has struck me is that stock market masters come in all shapes and sizes. Some, like Martin Zweig, live extravagantly. Mr. Zweig once bought the most expensive apartment in New York City, and has a penchant for buying rare - and pricey - pop culture memorabilia. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 8/5/2010
Over the past two years, the stock market has been driven largely by macroeconomic factors. That's not surprising, given just how powerful the economic winds have been. In late 2008 and early 2009, we experienced one of the worst financial crises in the country's history as the credit and housing bubbles burst. Then, the U.S. and other governments around the world sent an unprecedented wave of stimulus around the globe, helping to stabilize and jumpstart the stalled economy. View Full Article
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Forbes, 8/2/2010
In the world of the stock market, a Cadillac is now cheaper than a compact-size Chevy. That's what veteran value fund manager Ron Muhlenkamp, whose Muhlenkamp fund has beaten the market by more than 4 percentage points per year over the past decade, says. Cadillacs-big, high-quality, financially sound companies-are trading at much better valuations than the smaller, lower-quality "Chevys" of the investment world, he recently told Morningstar-something that he says is quite unusual, given that the "Cadillacs" usually sell at premium prices. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 7/28/2010
When I began studying the strategies of history's greatest investors more than a dozen years ago, one thing that struck me was how much these gurus relied on "the numbers." Investors such as Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and Benjamin Graham focused their analyses not on hunch-playing, macroeconomic factors, or some sort of investing "sixth sense." Instead, they keyed in on the numbers on a company's balance sheet and in its stock's fundamentals - numbers such as debt levels, returns on equity, and a variety of valuation metrics. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 7/7/2010
I'm not a big believer in "style-box" investing - that is, the practice of dividing up your portfolio into pre-determined portions of certain types of stocks, such as large-cap value or mid-cap growth. To me, the best approach for individual investors is to look for the best values in the market, wherever they may be. View Full Article
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Morningstar, 6/29/2010
While the U.S. government's balance sheet has been getting the lion's share of the attention lately, there's another American balance sheet that deserves investors' attention: Corporate America's. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/27/2010
There are a myriad of lessons investors can take away from the financial crisis of 2008, but the greatest of them may be this: Excessive leverage is an incredibly dangerous thing. U.S. corporations, institutions, and individuals spent years borrowing more than they could afford, and in ‘08 it caught up to them in a very painful way. View Full Article
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Forbes, 6/18/2010
There was a time when dividends were king in the stock market. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that dividends played a much larger role than they have in recent years. From 1975 through 1989, dividend yield was close to 5% for U.S. stocks, according to a recent study by MSCI Barra. View Full Article
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Morningstar, 6/16/2010
We've all heard the reasons to be fearful of stocks right now -- potential spillover from the European debt crisis, questions about the housing recovery's sustainability, a burgeoning national debt and budget deficits. All of those (and more) have been highlighted pretty extensively in the media. View Full Article
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Forbes, 6/14/2010
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, a familiar refrain echoed throughout economic discussions: The U.S. consumer is dead, the pundits said, and his and her demise means the economy has one foot in its own grave. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/7/2010
With the National Hockey League playoffs coming to a climax, it's the time of year that brings to mind history's greatest Stanley Cup moments. To be sure, it's debatable which of those great moments is, in fact, the greatest. But one that has to be in the running is Bobby Orr's 1970 Cup-clinching goal - a moment the Boston Bruins recently immortalized with the unveiling of a bronze statue of the Hall of Famer, mid-flight in the famous celebratory leap he made after scoring his historic goal. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 6/1/2010
Any time Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway releases its latest list of quarterly holdings, the media will set out to dissect every one of Berkshire's moves to try to glean some insight into what the company - and, by extension, the world's most famous investor - is doing. View Full Article
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Forbes, 5/26/2010
While there was much pain in the financial crisis that shook the economy and markets in 2008 and early 2009, there was at least one silver lining amid the troubles. As fear spread like wildfire through the financial world, businesses got leaner and more efficient, wanting to stay as liquid and flexible as possible. And when financial Armageddon did not occur, many companies were left awash in cash. View Full Article
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Forbes Magazine, 5/20/2010
Oliver Stone's long-awaited Wall Street sequel is set to hit theaters later this year, with Michael Douglas reprising one of the great film characters of the 1980s--corporate raider Gordon Gekko
Gekko, who so famously proclaimed, "Greed is good," is still probably who comes to mind when you picture a big-time stock market player: connected, impeccably dressed and more than willing to step on the little guy to get what he wants. But in reality many of history's best investment minds bear little resemblance to Gekko. Benjamin Graham is a good example. Another worth mentioning is Joseph Piotroski, who is more like one of the little guys than like Gekko. View Full Article
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Morningstar, 5/13/2010
Greece's debt woes and their spillover into other parts of Europe have been bad news for the Euro, and they will surely have long-term economic repercussions for both Greece and the European Union. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 5/4/2010
GMO's Jeremy Grantham, the longtime bear who in late 2008 and early 2009 said stocks had become cheap for the first time in more than two decades, is sounding gloomy again. In his latest quarterly letter, released last week, Grantham says he thinks U.S. stocks have blown past fair value and are now "very overpriced". View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 5/3/2010
In the dozen or so years that I've spent researching history's best investment strategies, one of the key things I've learned is that there's not just one way to beat the market. The investment gurus I've studied have used a variety of approaches to produce exceptional long-term returns, each employing a different set of variables and criteria to buy and sell stocks. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 4/22/2010
It's easy to think of history's greatest investors as nearly infallible strategists who rarely make mistakes. After all, if people like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch and Martin Zweig have amassed hundreds of millions - and in some cases billions - of dollars, they must be correct the vast majority of the time. Right? View Full Article
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Morningstar, 4/15/2010
In his book Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation, David Dreman says that the stock market is driven by surprises, and that one of the greatest sources of surprises is earnings reports. Dreman found that analysts' estimates of companies' earnings are rarely on the mark, but that Wall Street nevertheless gives their forecasts a lot of credence. That means earnings reporting days often result in reassessments of a company's prospects--which can mean significant shifts in its stock price. View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/13/2010
Names shouldn't matter, and in a rational world they wouldn't. Hatfields and McCoys, Juliet's Capulets and Romeo's Montagues, even Red Sox fans and Yankees fans--all of them would judge each other on their merits, not their monikers. But while names shouldn't matter, they do when you live in a world of emotional, irrational human beings. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 4/2/2010
One of the key parts of my investment approach is finding and learning from strategists who have proven long-term track records, something that can be hard to do in an investment world filled with unproven pundits and talking heads. And, when it comes to a long-term track record, few can match the one compiled by James Simons. View Full Article
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Forbes, 4/1/2010
After recently popping up as a guitar-wielding, long-haired, Axl-Rose-type rocker in Geico's latest commercial, Warren Buffett is doing what most rock stars might do--he's buying booze. Lots of it. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/30/2010
As the dust begins to settle after the U.S. adopted its landmark health-care legislation, investors are scrambling to determine which areas of the sector stand to benefit, and which could be harmed. View Full Article
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MSN Money, 3/19/2010
The strategies I base on the writings of investment gurus Ken Fisher and Joel Greenblatt are in agreement on a couple intriguing plays right now View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/16/2010
In recent years, one of the biggest developments in the investment world has been the internationalization of stock investing. The Internet and online trading platforms have made trading on foreign exchanges more convenient for investors than ever before. View Full Article
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Forbes, 3/9/2010
Selling stocks in the middle of a financial crisis and terrible bear market is never a good idea. But because the crisis of 2008 was one of liquidity, and stocks are a liquid asset, many colleges and universities ended up dumping significant portions of their stock portfolios to free up cash. Among them was the school with the largest endowment in the country, Harvard University, whose U.S.-traded stock holdings fell from almost $2.9 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2008 to just $566 million at the end of the fourth quarter, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 3/2/2010
When the United States plunged into a financial crisis in late 2008, Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC bond guru Bill Gross advised investors to "shake hands with the government." That is, Mr. Gross advocated investing in companies that were getting major support, through bailouts or stimulus packages, from the government. View Full Article
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MSN Money, 3/2/2010
Warren Buffett released his year-end 2009 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders over the weekend, and, as usual, the Oracle of Omaha's comments are filled with a good deal of wit and candor -- where else could you hear a Fortune 500 CEO say he enjoys issuing new stock "about as much as we relish prepping for a colonoscopy"? View Full Article
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Forbes, 2/24/2010
In the decade-plus that I've been studying history's most successful investors, I've noticed some key similarities among the stock market's greatest gurus. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 2/17/2010
Throughout his incredibly successful investing career, Warren Buffett has made money investing in a number of different types of companies. He's found big winners in consumer products firms like Coca-Cola; financials like American Express; food-related companies such as Dairy Queen; insurers like GEICO; and many others. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 2/8/2010
Back on July 22, Morgan Stanley announced dreadful second-quarter 2009 results. Earnings per share were negative for the fourth straight quarter, and revenues were less than half of what they were a year earlier.
That same day, Apple posted glowing second-quarter results, with earnings jumping more than 60 percent and revenue rising almost 30 percent. In part because of those strong figures, Apple's stock went on to return 30.9 per cent in the next three months, about double the broader market's gains. View Full Article
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NASDAQ.com, 2/1/2010
Not long ago, the great Warren Buffett said in an interview that "investing is simple, but it's not easy". If that sounds confusing, all you need to do is look at the investing style of Joel Greenblatt to understand exactly what Buffett means.
Back in 2005, Greenblatt, a successful hedge fund manager, published The Little Book that Beats the Market, a small, concise book that shows how investors can produce market-beating returns using a formula that has two -- and only two -- variables. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 1/19/2010
Intense fear at the time may have obscured the fact for many investors, but it's hard to argue that stocks weren't extremely cheap back at the end of March, 2009. U.S. equities were close to 50 per cent off their highs and selling at their lowest levels in more than a dozen years. Canadian stocks were at levels not seen since 2003. And on top of that, interest rates were at or near historic lows, making stocks even cheaper compared to bonds and fixed-income investments. Even well-known, long-time bears such as Jeremy Grantham and Steven Leuthold were calling equities cheap. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 1/12/2010
With the major U.S. and Canadian indexes between 50 and 80 per cent above their March lows, a rising tide has lifted the vast majority of stock market ships in 2009 - though certain types of stocks have really ridden the wave.
One of those areas: so-called junk stocks - those that have the worst balance sheets and fundamentals. According to some analysis, the lowest-quality stocks (based on factors such as earnings history and debt level) have outperformed the highest-quality issues by a greater than two-to-one margin since March. View Full Article
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Forbes, 12/21/2009
The historically low, near-zero interest rates that the Federal Reserve has kept in effect for the past year or so have been a boon for companies and corporate profits as we emerge from the credit crisis of 2008. Those low rates have a dark side, of course: They've made money market accounts useless for those looking to growth their cash and they've also made it tough to find nice yields among investment grade corporate bonds. View Full Article
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The Globe and Mail, 12/17/2009
The holiday gift-buying season is in full swing, with determined shoppers scouring stores and the Internet to try to find the hot-ticket toys and gizmos at the top of their loved ones' lists.
This annual race for the hottest gifts got me thinking about what Peter Lynch wrote in his classic book One Up on Wall Street.
Mr. Lynch - perhaps the greatest mutual fund manager of all-time - offered a tip that he said could give individual investors an advantage over the big guys: Invest in what you know. View Full Article
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Forbes, 12/4/2009
Just as it has been a good year for stocks, 2009 has also been a solid year for commodities. Since mid-February, oil prices have more than doubled, and in more recent months gold and silver have surged.
A big reason for the bullish run in commodities has, of course, been the anticipation of inflation. With the government deficit skyrocketing, notable investors including hedge fund guru John Paulson and the great Warren Buffett have said they see major inflation on the horizon. View Full Article
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