It's often said that the market hates uncertainty. But plainly speaking, the market is uncertainty, endless uncertainty -- over earnings, interest rates, innovation, management and the countless other factors that help determine prices.
Trading isn't something one can learn through reading books or research alone. Like riding a bicycle or jumping into the deep end of a pool, it's something you've got to engage in to actually understand. There's no substitute for on-the-job ...
As the old saying goes, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". The trouble is that, in the real world, everything isn't a nail. The best tool for the job depends not only on the job itself, but who exactly is wielding ...
Markets aren't oil paintings. They're more like dynamic watercolors that never fully dry. Look at natural gas, which traded as high as $14/MMBtu in 2005 before dropping to $2 in 2012, or Netflix, which fell from $300 to $80 a share in less ...
For all the endless banter in print, online and on TV about what to buy or sell, remarkably little attention is ever devoted to when to buy or sell -- or even more importantly -- how to do it.
Facebook's $1 billion purchase of Instagram, along with the social networking site's own forthcoming $100 billion IPO has many wondering if we're witnessing a bubble.
It's hard to imagine the public's view on precious metals back in the early 2000s, back when companies like Sun Microsystems, and InfoSpace still dominated investor attention, oil traded at $30 a barrel and gold wasn't only unfollowed by ...
It's the classic evasion of reality. We own a losing stock that continues to drop. But rather than sell and take the loss, we stubbornly hold on and wait for a bounce that never comes. The only thing worse would be doubling down along the ...
Whether it's gasoline or groceries, blaming traders because you happen not to care for a market's prices is like blaming the mailman because you don't like the mail. They are price messengers, not manipulators.
There are times when investors ought to take a cue from Congress and try the "do nothing" approach. Because it's never the trading itself that makes you any money; rather, it's making the right trades at the right time ...
In this column five years ago, I called currency markets "the new Wild West" and predicted that foreign exchange trading would "soon become the hottest game in town."
A decade ago, investors who wanted to put money into China, Brazil, Latin America or other now-popular emerging markets weren't seen as contrarian -- but crazy. But after years of growth and massive investor inflows, many once-emerging ...
What does it mean when the Dow crosses another milestone, as it did this week by finishing around 13000? Both a lot and not that much. Prices don't exist in a vacuum, but within the context of their history and that of other asset ...
I vividly remember my parents bringing home our first answering machine, a duel-cassette Panasonic Easa-Phone that was considered state-of-the-art back in the early 1980s.
In an effort to boost the economy, the Federal Reserve announced in January it would maintain short-term interest rates at exceptionally low levels through at least late 2014, more than a year longer than had been previously stated.
It you keep repeating a lie long enough, people eventually start to accept it as truth. So even as the Federal debt hit new record highs and bankrupt entitlement states like Greece collapse, how else to explain the persistent belief among ...
The field now known as behavioral finance was pioneered in the early 20th century by writers like George C. Selden, who in 1912 published "Psychology of the Stock Market" with the then-novel notion that "the movements of ...
Most investors read news reports to evaluate a company's prospects. Bullish or bearish articles naturally impact our perception -- and positions. Yet in most cases we interpret the news in the wrong way. News headlines are, by ...
At any given time, without even looking, I'd gamble that most of the stocks on the yearly new-low list trade under $5 a share. Take a gander today, for example, and you'll find AspenBio Pharama at 80 cents, Qualstar Corp. at $1.80 ...
A decade ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Nasdaq bubble, the term "dot-com" became a slur. Having seen immense fortunes made and lost overnight in companies like CMGI or Webvan, investors burned by Nasdaq 5000 swore off the ...
Ben Bernanke might not see inflation on the horizon, but after years of a high-liquidity diet from the Federal Reserve, historic deficit spending in Washington and little discernible economic growth to show for it, investors are rationally ...
The market exists independently of how we think or feel about it. We buy every stock with the hope and expectation it will perform, but with the humility to admit we could be wrong. That determination is up to the market, not us.
After a disastrous 2011 which saw a financial implosion in Europe and an economic downturn worldwide, risk assets have rebounded strongly so far in 2012, pushing the S&P 500 index to a five-month high. But as we pointed out earlier this ...
Like a once happily married couple that ends up getting divorced, correlations in financial markets routinely change and fade over time. Two assets that were in complete symbiosis and moving in lock-step one year can quickly fall out of ...
When Occupy Wall Street mounted a substantial West Coast protest last week, it wasn't a bank or government office they sought to disrupt, but Oakland's shipping port, the fifth busiest in the country. Also targeted were ports in ...
Pharmaceutical firms are modern-day miracle workers. Not too long ago, leeches were still used for bloodletting and whiskey doubled as anesthesia. Now ailments like diabetes and colon cancer, once death sentences, can be treated or managed.
Long before Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and even Friendster, online dating was the most prominent social experience changed by the Internet. Since the early '90s, this $1 billion business has transformed courtship.
On popular cooking shows, contestants use state-of-the-art equipment to create intricately complex cuisine. Yet most cooks have little everyday use for an immersion circulator or an Anti-Griddle.
With so much of the economy now dictated by Washington, not Wall Street, the 2012 Presidential election will have an unmistakable and otherwise disproportionate impact on the capital markets.
There's no egalitarianism in economics. Not every stock is created nor performs equally, in fact quite the contrary: we count on many investments being losers. And, while we can't control or reliably always predict the markets, we ...
With current yields near 0.01%, average money market funds will double your investment in 7200 years. Patience, dear saver. So when savings accounts, certificates of deposit and government bonds also pay next-to-nothing, savers and investors ...
As the Congressional Supercommittee announces its failure, one unexplored solution looms large: privatization of state-owned property. From Amtrak to interstate highways, the U.S. government's balance sheet is bloated with assets ...
Amid high-frequency trading and politically-driven markets, basic money management techniques should never change. None of us are right all of the time so what matters most isn't always in what you invest, but rather how you invest. ...
When I'm committed to a long-term investment or trade, I presume that a rising tide lifts all boats. To that end, simply buying a single stock might not cut it. In a bull market, you want to own as many stocks for which your thesis ...
The last wave of country defaults and currency crises made hedge fund managers into both stars and scapegoats. But, now, almost a decade removed from the last major sovereign debt disaster in Argentina, almost any investor can wear those ...
With Greece's 1-year Treasury notes yielding more than 200% to maturity, a default or severe haircut is a lock. For months, though, politicians sought to obfuscate the fiscal struggles, clearly predicted by free markets. Calls for ...
Volatile markets -- hinging every day on fiscal policies in Europe or economic results out of China - offer temptations, teasing you into taking a risk.
After a summer sell-off, stocks are set to end October with their biggest monthly gain since 1974. At the same time, interest rates rose every week during the month, capping the longest losing streak for bonds in two years. The yield on the ...
The Occupy Wall Street movement is built on overt disapproval for corporations and the pressure they exert on governments. But this position runs right past the actual structure of a corporation.
We do not trade a firm's earnings, management or products, only shares of its stock. Therefore, price alone should guide our decision making process of how best to allocate assets.
Being a contrarian is lonely. People think you're crazy. Consider the cases of gold and Apple. "There is still a small minority of people out there that believes the world is coming to an end and that gold is the only place to ...
European markets are showing signs of severe distress. Short-term government bond yields in Greece now top 90% in Greece and 17% in Portugal. German and French stocks ended the third quarter down more than 25%. Italian stocks dropped nearly ...
Many of the world's most successful investors have endured losing streaks. Warren Buffett and other value investors trailed the markets during the tech bubble and then came roaring back. Carl Icahn, a noted agitator for change at major ...
I've passionately argued against bailouts, government intervention and entitlement spending for a decade. But unlike the protestors blocking traffic in New York, my brand of vigilantism involves trading, not occupying.
There's something rather sad about the "Occupy Wall Street" protests which have been underway for over two weeks in New York, Chicago, Boston and other major US cities.
From Gordon Brown's gold sale to the U.S.'s unprofitable position in GM, governments are awful traders. As we've pointed out numerous times over the past few years, efforts to prop up, stimulate and interfere with markets ...
There's something tauntingly accessible about "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," the 1989 Stephen Covey self-help book that's sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. Not surprisingly, the prospect of ...
Much like a Salvador Dali painting or Samuel Beckett play, there was a grand absurdity to President Barack Obama's unveiling of his jobs bill this month. It wasn't just bewildering that the president, who has never created a ...
"The United States has been downgraded, and this is how bad it is: Even Greece won't talk to us," joked Jay Leno last month. Indeed, Greece, like the other big European entitlement states, teeters on bankruptcy. European ...
From the fastest high-frequency funds to the smallest E*Trade accounts, investors are all looking to do the same thing: trade in a free marketplace with the goal of making a profit.
In today's choppy markets, some investing pros argue that the strategy of buying and holding stocks, bonds and other investments is dead. The way to make money, many now claim, is by actively jumping in and out of different asset ...
There's a fine line between being persistent and early. A number of months ago I highlighted shipping stocks as a distressed industry with profit potential. But like other risky assets, they instead took a painful fall over the summer, ...
Earlier this week we outlined some basic strategies for looking at the market. Yet what ultimately matters to our bottom line isn't "the market", per se, but our positions in it. Just as there are a few indicators to monitor ...
We think of the stock market as simply a listing of corporations and shares prices, but in reality it's so much more than that. In fact, every human being in the world is directly part of it. Even if you've never traded a stock in ...
Hard to believe given this month's horrific mob violence, but there was a time when England's economy and currency were the undisputed pillar of world dominance. Countries ranging from Australia to Jamaica to South Africa utilized ...
Since the industrial revolution, we've had an irrational fear of technology. Despite its undeniable ability to make life better, many of us remain paranoid that technological advances will end up destroying or replacing us. From ...
You have to go back to the summer of 2008 to find the last time we saw shares of multi-billion dollar banks moving 20% of more and plumbing new lows -- as Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Sun Trust Banks and others have in recent ...
With the U.S. stripped by Standard & Poor's of its triple-A credit rating, investors worldwide are looking for alternatives. When it comes to choosing a country in which to allocate assets, the most private economies are ...
Imagine you had a huge losing position in a stock that was falling fast and you desperately needed cash to pay your bills. You'd probably sell your stock.
As the nation's debt swells and economy flounders, politicians of all stripes push a myriad of plans and proposals, as if it's only the right Excel spreadsheet that's needed to determine how best to allocate and create ...
Among skydivers, there's an old adage that it's the second jump that's the hardest. We've already survived one dangerous, near-death experience, so the thinking goes, so why push our luck with another plunge?
Written in the 6th century, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" remains one of the most widely quoted and most beloved books on investment strategy, most recently immortalized by Michael Douglas's Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film ...
I'm not a bottom fisher, value buyer or knife catcher. Because markets are never wrong, but opinions often are, I hold fast to the philosophy that one must acquiesce to the market -- not argue with it. To that end, I see a security ...
When you trade shares of Cisco, no one is sacrificing himself on your behalf. You're a willing buyer, someone else is an amenable seller, and you voluntarily agree to transact at a mutually beneficial price. Both parties get what they ...
Market biases are deeply engrained, a reality often evidenced by the public's slow adoption of new investment ideas. Just as it took a decade of growth to finally convince investors to add gold to their portfolios, currency ETFs, ...
First loves aren't remembered, but memorialized. I can still picture Samantha's slightly mischievous 20-something smile, her smooth, lightly freckled face peeking out from shoulder-length auburn hair. Yet we move on -- she's ...
It was just over three months ago when Japan experienced its worst nuclear disaster ever and the Nikkei 225 stock index plunged the most since the 1987 crash. Not exactly good times.
Technical analysis has never been given the same respect as fundamental analysis, mainly because it's only concerned with a stock's price, while the latter looks a whole host of issues including a company's sales, earnings ...
We tend to think of the Federal Reserve Chairman as an omnipotent deity, but at his Wednesday afternoon press conference Ben Bernanke admitted even he's somewhat bewildered as to the economy's continued lethargy in spite of ...
In the markets, losing trades are unavoidable even for the most accomplished investors. As Carl Ichan put it recently, "In my business, if losing money shakes you up, you won't last until spring, let alone become a raider in ...
With the markets poised to perhaps drop for a seventh consecutive week, the longest losing streak in a decade, it's starting to feel as if stocks won't ever rally again. Amid turmoil in Greece and in Washington, investors have ...
By now you've probably seen enough -- literally -- of Anthony Weiner, the New York City Congressman embroiled in a scandal involving online relationships with several women, including his sending suggestive photos taken from the House ...
In a weak stock market, one of the worst performing names has been General Motors, now down 22% this year to a new post-bankruptcy low of $28.40 earlier this week.
A compelling new study makes a rather startling claim: the construction of record-breaking skyscrapers can predict stock returns. Using data reaching back to 1871, Gunther Loffler, a professor at Germany's University of Ulm, found U.S. ...
Since their launch in 2006, volatility-linked options, notes and funds based on the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, have generally been a losing bet for investors. The assortment of funds and notes, of which there are now nearly a dozen, ...
If you're like an increasing number of Americans, the first thing you attend to every morning is your smartphone. A recent study by Ericcson ConsumerLab indicated that more than one third of Android/iPhone owners use the device before ...
My idea of an economic nightmare isn't a stock market crash, but a currency crisis which destroys the value of an entire country's wealth.

There's no better time to start than today.
A few steps to take to manage your property tax bill.
Now playing: sequels, 3-D reruns and long ads.
Need an alternative to the $25,000 to-do? Introducing the stealth approach, where couples quietly trade "I dos" in a host of public forums.
Technology stocks have rebounded and are once again the darling of the market. Can the resurgence last?
Arends: That 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds your adviser is pushing might not work.