Wednesday, January 1, 2025
For 2020, the S&P 500 index returned 18.40%, so if you didn’t earn almost 20% in your stock portfolio, you might be wondering what happened. But just because the overall returns are high, it doesn’t mean all stocks are performing the same way. For example, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) managed to earn just […]
Quarterly earnings reports are often the only way you can get real actionable news about companies, their dividends, and potential stock price moves. However, you want to avoid the Wall Street game of whether a company meets or beats the analyst forecasts. For dividend investors, you need to dig into the numbers to find the […]
The need for instant gratification has spilled over into the world of investing. The GameStop (GME) saga was the culmination of a world in which both the financial media and social media focus on short-term news and “advice.” I hear it from many of my subscribers who see the news and hype around stocks like […]
I am surprised about how many questions I get concerning investments that may lose money. For many investors, the first question about any investment recommendation is how it can lose money. In one way, the concern makes sense since my focus is on income-producing investments. On the other hand, I wonder if they have been […]
If you watch financial news, you are probably aware of the short squeeze initiated by retail traders that drove share prices of stocks like GameStop Corp. (GME) up more than 800% in a few days. It was the biggest story last week. I do not think the news reporters did a very good job explaining […]
There is a wide range of stock market investing experience among the subscribers to my Dividend Hunter service. From the emails I receive, I know that it is easy for both beginners and more experienced investors to have trouble keeping up with how companies announce dividends and when you actually see the cash in your […]
I have been watching with great interest the successes and failures of different state and local coronavirus vaccination plans. I am struck by the inability to adjust to changing conditions brought on by a bureaucratic mindset. It varies greatly from the “flexibility is the key to air power” mindset that I formed in my days […]
For income investors, the last 11 months have been, to paraphrase Dickens, “the best of times, the worst of times.” The February-March 2020 market crash was especially brutal on the high-yield investment sectors. Without a lot of information, I had to analyze my Dividend Hunter recommendations and decide which were best to sell and which […]
Every earnings season, I check the results from hundreds of publicly traded companies. In the past, for most companies, a quick scan of the earnings results would show whether or not a company remained on its expected trajectory. The 2020 fourth-quarter earnings results will be very different. They will tell the tale of a very […]
Unless you subscribe to the “greater fool” theory, it is hard to pick up shares of most stocks at current prices. While much of the U.S. economy remains throttled by the pandemic, the major stock indexes and popular tech stocks continue to set new record high prices. While the popular stocks and sectors appear extremely […]
