Facebook (FB) stock is expected to take a big hit Wednesday when existing stockholders sell off a huge quantity of shares, but the message the stock market sends to onlookers may be the wrong one. The share dump everyone expects to happen tomorrow has nothing to do with Facebook's … [Read more...]
Why Pipeline Infrastructure Matters More for Monster Caps
Filed Under: Investing Trends by
Over the year, we’ve seen a great deal of debate occurring over the environmental feasibility of the Keystone pipeline project. This project proposes to build a massive new pipeline from Canada, which will transport petroleum products all the way throughout the USA. While … [Read more...]
The Basics of Dynamic Hedging
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
Over the course of the week I’ve been describing all the nuance of a specific options strategy known as a strangle position. While the position is extremely cash intensive, it does provide an interesting thought experiment that might provide some additional insights into how it is we … [Read more...]
Investment Risk and Understanding When to Sell or Hold
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
When we sell a security, we are doing so with the understanding that we can re-invest the proceeds in a way that will maintain our nominal returns. The logic behind this is fairly simple, in that we wouldn’t sell the security if we didn’t feel as though there was a long-term benefit … [Read more...]
Understanding Value Investing
Filed Under: Value Investing by
In the interest of continuing the ongoing trend of examining accessible investing strategies for running personal portfolios, I’m going to dedicate the next few posts to examining how it is that the pursuit of value can fortify a portfolio’s returns. Specifically, I’m going to break … [Read more...]
Doomsday Scenarios Systemic Risk of Investing
Filed Under: Doomsday Scenarios by
Systemic risk has a bad reputation in the marketplace. As an investor, it represents all of the aspects of your portfolio that are beyond your control (ie. Cannot be hedged or diversified out of existence), and therefore represents the risk of your portfolio. However, I find that … [Read more...]
32 Holdings Equals a Diversified Investment Portfolio
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
Diversification is a confusing topic for some investors. More often than not, it simply acts as a media buzz word to sell investors more securities into their portfolio than they need. However, there can be no argument against the effectiveness of diversification as a means of … [Read more...]
Factors that Could Make the Euro Crash an Aberration in 2012
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
In the last article I discussed how it is that relativity comes into place when looking at a currency decline. In the case of the Euro, an investor needs to understand that both the USD and the Euro were decreasing in that time period, meaning that the decline in the value of the Euro … [Read more...]
Building Good Credit History
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
While building up credit lines to demonstrate an ability to access credit for additional loans acts as a fantastic strategy for building up long-term credit from a respectable starting point, it can sometimes seem particularly difficult to build up credit from a negative position. If … [Read more...]
The Top 6 Ways That Obama is Ruining Our Economy
Filed Under: Finance by
Back in 2008, Democratic President hopeful Barack Obama fielded criticisms for the tax plans he proposed for the American people if he got elected. They were deemed ‘socialist’ by his Republican rivals. Today, President Obama faces stark criticism of the very same tax policies from … [Read more...]
Investing in Real Estate Income Trusts: Apartments
Filed Under: Investing Trends by
If you look back as far as immediately after the crash of 2009, one of the best investments you could have possibly made would have been into undervalued hard-assets. Between foreclosed homes being bought, renovated, and flipped for 360% returns over a year, and gold sky-rocketing by … [Read more...]
FBR & Vanguard Utilities Index Funds
Filed Under: Fund Analysis by
In this week’s fund analysis I’m going to dive into a pair of high quality Utilities funds. Known for their ability to produce consistent incomes from distributions, while holding consistent prices, Utilities are a must-have for any income-focused portfolio. However, since all of … [Read more...]
How DRIP Dilution Can Hurt Your Investment Portfolio
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
Dividend Re-Investment Plans are an excellent program for an investor to build up a nominal position in a company over time. They allow an investor to opt out of cash dividends in favour of distributions that are composed of more stock. If the stock is expected to rise more over the … [Read more...]
Switching Equity Yields for Corporate Bond Yields
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
In the last post, I showed you how a simple bank transaction (a currency swap) can unlock some extremely attractive foreign bond yields, while maintaining a risk level that is remarkably similar to their domestic equivalents. Today, I’m going to take the same train of thought one … [Read more...]
Credit Score Factors: Account Diversity
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
Upon having established a firm payment history, a borrower is able to begin making strategic choices about how it is that they’re going to pursue bringing their rating up from a mediocre grade to a good one. Because of the way in which the incremental savings that a 1% decrease in a … [Read more...]
Stabilizing ETF Yields
Filed Under: Personal Finance by
As discussed in the last article, ETFs inherit many of the pricing attributes of a derivative, on top of their value as mutual funds. This means that the value of these assets comes indirectly from the underlying assets of the security itself, as well as the market’s perception of how … [Read more...]
Research in Motion Value Play
Filed Under: Business Value by
In the past, we’ve discussed how it is that value investments are those opportunities that allow us to invest in assets that are trading below their true worth. In the interest of trading dimes for dollars, a value investor is often considered to be a contrarian, because a security … [Read more...]
Combined Statement Analysis Evaluations
Filed Under: Value Investing by
Now that we’ve taken the time to understand how it is that the various fundamentals within discrete financial statements can be used to build a basic value investing model, I’d like to take our evaluations one last step further. Specifically, I’m going to show you how the evaluation … [Read more...]
Earning Income Through Purchase Transactions
Filed Under: Investing Strategies by
One of the most difficult parts of investing is making the decision to buy or sell a position. It’s not so much even a question of whether or not we have the technical/fundamental understanding required to make such a decision, as much as it is an issue of emotion. Have you ever been … [Read more...]
How Do Patent Companies Create Value?
Filed Under: Business Value by
One of the hottest sectors to invest in over the last decade has been the technology space. However, technology securities are also notoriously volatile, and dangerous. It takes a sophisticated investor, capable of quickly dealing with new information as it arrives, and interpreting … [Read more...]
