Profit Opportunity: Profiting From What Governments Do Best

Disasters have a way of creating big investment opportunities in their wake. It happened last April after the massive Gulf oil spill. And now it’s happening again in Japan. Following the Macondo Gulf blowout in 2010, the main concern was how to make the production of offshore oil less dangerous. I knew this would mean…

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The Hidden Dangers Behind the New American “Exchanges”

A dangerous group of American exchanges is attracting money from thousands of investors. These exchanges are nothing like the Dow Jones Industrial, Nasdaq, or S&P 500. You can’t buy well-known companies like GE or McDonald’s on them. Nor can you buy the small high-tech companies found on the Nasdaq. But they claim to give you…

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Who Is Celebrating the Euro’s Fall?

Up, Down, or Sideways By Jason Holland There is a certain type of investment that will thrive whether the market is going up, down, or sideways. In today’s essay, Andrew Gordon, Research Director of our sister publication, Investor’s Daily Edge, tells you what it is. And he introduces you to the expert he goes to…

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Why Peak Oil Is a Crock

The good news about the oil supply? Peak oil is a crock. There’s plenty of oil. It’s just harder to get to it now than it was 20 years ago. The oil is deep underground or below miles of sea or mixed with sand or in places where the underground pressure to bring it up…

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The Next Black Monday?

On Black Monday, in October 1987, the market plunged over 500 points. It happened because the big trading companies weren’t able to shut down their computerized trading programs. And it could happen again. But thanks to much more powerful computers, it would be far worse. These powerful computers allow the giant brokerages to process trades…

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A Sure Way to Play Uranium

No commodity has disappointed more than uranium. But don’t let that put you off. Now is the perfect time to become a uranium buyer. (I’m assuming that you’re not the head of state of either North Korea or Iran!) Prices hit $136 in 2007 and then began a long pullback to around $40. They bottomed in April and have since rebounded to the $50 per pound level.

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Why China Can’t Save Us

De-coupling lives again, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Remember when it made the rounds over a year ago? The idea was that even if the U.S. economy caught pneumonia, the rest of the world would at worst get a bad cough. It was argued that Europe and China were much less reliant on the U.S. economy than ever before. And China, with its massive import needs, would also keep economies from Brazil to Australia humming.

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The Banks Are Back… or Are They?

Their profits are up. Their write-downs are lower. The government is riding shotgun for them. And the worst is over. The banks are back, right? Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and even Citigroup all reported profits for the first quarter of 2009. But a closer look under the hood reveals some “creative accounting”…

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Make Margin Trends Your Friends

When investigating companies to invest in, I look at several margins – gross, operating, pre-tax, and net profit margin. But I focus on operating margin. Operating margin is the difference between how much you make and how much you spend to operate the business. If the “making” is at least 15 percent higher than the “spending,” I’m interested.

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