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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
Aldo Leopold Categories
Author Archives: Bernard Condon
Buying stocks now may be less risky than you think
Is it too late? If you’ve stayed out of stocks recently, you might be worried that you’ve missed your chance to get back in. After all, they must be expensive now that the Dow Jones industrial average has risen 120 percent in four years to a record high. Read More
Questions and answers on blockbuster Facebook IPO
Taking a company public isn’t as simple as collecting Facebook friends. Even if the company is Facebook. hen its stock started trading Friday, May 18, under the symbol FB, buyers quickly bid the price up 6 percent. Yet by the time trading ended at 4 p.m. Eastern time, Facebook’s stock had squeaked out a gain of just 23 cents above its initial $38 offering price. Read More
Why safe corporate bonds aren’t so smart anymore
The safest corporate debt isn’t looking so smart anymore. Read More
Once bullish, contrarian Jim Grant likes cash now
Jim Grant quotes obscure dead economists at length. He pines for an earlier time of gas lights and top hats when the dollar was convertible to gold. He wears bowties. Read More
Probe leads investors to wonder: Is game rigged?
The Wall Street insider trading investigation may lead everyday investors — already rattled by a stock market meltdown, a one-day “flash crash” and the Madoff scandal — to finally conclude that the game is rigged.
“A large part of trading has to do with trust, and I don’t have it,” says Mark Swenson, a 43-year-old plumber from New Hampshire who refuses to buy individual stocks. “When a stock moves up 10 percent, you don’t know why,” he added. “We can pretend that everyone has access to the same information, but they don’t.”
Even before news broke…read more Read More
Key gauge says stocks are dirt cheap now
As of August 29, 2010, with the market down three weeks in a row, investors are understandably grim. But there is a silver lining: Stocks are looking almost as cheap as last year when prices hit 12-year lows — at least according to Wall Street analysts.
It was easy to miss the development amid news of falling home sales, a drooping dollar and sluggish orders for big-ticket goods. But stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index now trade at just 11.7 times analyst estimates of operating earnings for the coming year. That is one of the lowest — read cheapest — levels for this key figure . . . read more Read More
Gloomy investors ignore plump profits, dump stocks
Profit is so boring.
That’s one way to characterize investors’ suddenly blase view of Corporate America’s single most important figure. Earnings gushed last week like oil from the ruptured BP well and were greeted like the same gooey mess…. Read More
Nervous investors turn focus to corporate profits
NEW YORK (AP) — Will corporate profits save the stock rally — or kill it?
Most companies won’t announce second-quarter earnings for a few weeks yet. But already Wall Street is buzzing about what might lie ahead. One worry: With investors on edge from bad economic news, the market is riding more than ever on these upcoming reports.
“It’s too early to tell if growth is tapering off,” but people are concerned . . . read more Read More
Frugality among consumers is outliving recession
Even as the economic recovery plods ahead, many American consumers are refusing to come along.
They’re not spending freely — and they have no plans to.
Many of them have steady income. They aren’t saddled by high debts. They don’t fear losing their jobs. . . . read more Read More
Diviners Divided: Economists clash, sow confusion
If you’re confused about the outlook for the economy and stocks one year after the market hit bottom, then you’ve got good company — the Wall Street economists and strategists who are supposed to have this all figured out.
Rarely have the experts seemed so divided about the future . . . read more Read More
Main Street to Wall Street: We don’t buy the rally
Edward Shook can’t resist a bull market.
He rode the one in the late 1990s and lost $350,000 in the dot-com collapse. Shaken but optimistic, he bought into the bull market that followed — and lost another $350,000 from his portfolio’s peak when stocks fell to a 12-year low in early 2009.
Now the 65-year-old roofing contractor from Raleigh, N.C., says “he’s getting smart for a change.” Even though the Standard & Poor’s 500 has climbed 68 percent since March, Shook is largely leaving the stock market “to the crooks that run” it. He’s sold shares and bought bonds instead, with no regrets.
Millions of other Americans are steering the same course . . . read more Read More
