The line heard in every economic recession, and every single stock market pullback is: this time it's different. Which is usually one of the single best indicators to tell you that the market is putting a bottom in place, and we can only expect the market to move up...
Bank Failures in Nevada and California The headlines this past weekend showed that US regulators took over two banks Friday afternoon and sold them both to Mutual of Omaha bank. This was the sixth and seventh bank failures this year. Before becoming a broker, over 25...
I'm going to paint a word picture for you. Suppose you own a stock that gave three successive buy signals last summer -- in 2007. The stock ran from $28 per share up to $34 a share. Sounds good so far, right? But the stock then broke through the support line, was...
Another theme I'm surprised hasn't been discussed more often will be more foreign firms trying to make acquisitions of US-based companies in the next few years. Here's a few reasons foreign companies -- and US based firms -- may be interested in deals: The value of...
Let's talk about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. How could these two companies be "OK" a week ago --- and now this week they seem on the brink of disaster? If you've heard of these two companies, but you're not really sure who they are and what they do, just understand --...
This article could be titled: Can (fill in the blank) go any lower? I'm not picking on Merck. The reality is you could drop in Merck, Citibank, General Motors, Ford, J.P. Morgan, along with most other names in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and most of the largest...
Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin is the youngest governor in Alaskan history -- and -- the first woman governor of Alaska. Palin was recently interviewed by Larry Kudlow, who is a terrific economist. Larry hosts a radio show on Saturday mornings in New York on WABC ("The...
OK, no names are used in this post! But holy cow! In the midst of the sell off this week, Bloomberg Radio interviewed a money manager about the current condition of the market. The money manager went on and on making predictions about the market. How would he know...
Oh boy, these kinds of headlines are never good. Two former Bear Stearns portfolio managers were arrested this week, not because they did a poor job of managing money. They were arrested because they misled investors in a few ways: They told investors they personally...
Frequent readers have seen earlier posts where I have discussed option expiration week and the volatility that comes with it. But there was scant mention of option expiration at all this week. Options expired on Friday and the Dow Jones dropped 220 points. Instead,...
