Opinions

One of the most speculative parts of the equity market is biotechnology. These stocks come to market generally overpriced, and they usually require a lot more capital to develop anything material.  But while investment risk is super high with these stocks, a drug that’s in demand and has high barriers

How do you calculate ROI on investment conferences? They often require travel expenses, time away from the office and some eating of rubber chicken with mysterious sauces. But the right conference can result in a whole new way of looking at your portfolio. To evaluate the recent Altegris/Mauldin Strategic Investment

Growth for the sake of growth is over, but that doesn’t mean mergers and acquisitions in the mining space are finished, says Ian Parkinson, director of equity research-mining with GMP Securities L.P. Parkinson expects a fresh round of takeover bids for underperforming single asset producers and developers that could move

This stock market continues to show material resilience as financials have turned a bit and are helping the S&P 500 index.  Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) just hit a new record-high on the stock market with a forward price-to-earnings ratio of just under 12, offering a 2.8% current dividend yield. 

The U.S. housing market is in trouble again, and as crazy as it sounds, it won’t surprise me to see home prices decline soon.  Here are three reasons why:  Existing-home sales have been declining since July of last year. The annual rate of existing-home sales in July of 2013 was

My stock screens have been displaying up signals over the past few days, but I’m still somewhat apprehensive about the most recent stock market rally—and you should be too.  The stock market appears to be edging higher again after the S&P 500 closed above 1,900 at another intraday high on

Sometimes hindsight can lead to foresight. Casey Research’s Louis James says now that the market seems in agreement that December was the bottom for gold, the value of these companies is becoming evident to investors and majors that could start going on a shopping spree. In this interview with The

Yesterday was an amazing day for the markets.  Gold bullion hit a three-month low despite: 1) inflation rising rapidly in North America; and 2) the Chinese buying half of this year’s world gold production.  The stock market was up to a new high despite: 1) corporate insiders selling like mad;

There’s not a lot of value around in this stock market, and it’s difficult to be a buyer when a lot of stocks have already done extremely well the last few years. However, this isn’t the case for all stocks.  One company I’ve looked at before in this column is

Godzilla (2014) is running wild at the box office, as this classic B-movie remake has delivered a record opening weekend for specialized movie theater operator IMAX Corporation (NYSE/IMAX).  If you have ever had the IMAX experience, you likely agree that Godzilla was probably as life-like as possible through the big-screen

Jeff Wright of H.C. Wainwright & Co. doesn’t anticipate a major shift in the price of gold near-term, so he doesn’t expect the gold price to provide momentum for mining company stocks. Instead, he’s looking at companies that can provide their own upward movement. Wright, an analyst, finds some promising

The spot price of oil has been eerily steady for quite some time; this is quite unusual for the world’s most traded commodity.  It’s been a peculiar year in capital markets, and there’s definitely an uncertainty in sentiment, especially in the equity market with no real trend for investors to

There’s a big problem brewing…one that I started warning about two years ago: food and basic commodities prices are skyrocketing.  In April, the Producer Price Index (PPI), an index that tracks prices paid by producers for commodities, increased by the most in 19 months. The month-over-month change was 0.6%—yes, that

The global airline sector is probably at its brightest point in history, having seen a significant improvement following the effects of 9/11 that nearly killed the industry.  The factor that’s pushing up the airline sector has been the renewal in the global economy, particularly the massive buildup of newfound wealth

Straggling earnings reports are revealing more weather-related issues for specific industries (home improvement, for example), but several retailers have been posting really good numbers.  Tiffany & Co. (TIF) soared on news of its fiscal first quarter producing global sales growth of a solid 13% to $1.0 billion. Bottom-line earnings grew

When we asked our readers what they enjoy reading the most on Profit Confidential, less than 10% of them said they like to read about the eurozone. We understand it’s not a topic of interest with the majority of our readers, but I can’t stress enough that what’s happening in

If you hold Google Inc. (NASDAQ/GOOG) in your portfolio, you own one of the best companies in the world and a top investment opportunity.  The company just surpassed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ/AAPL) to become the most valuable brand worldwide with an overall value of $158.84 billion, compared to the $147.9 billion

The housing market has enjoyed a boom that’s lasted several years as prices have ratcheted upward toward the 2008 highs, prior to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Now, while the housing market has been fairly steady with above-average price appreciation potential in homebuilder stocks, I still think we could be headed

The flow of capital into the stock market continues to be directed toward lower-beta large-cap stocks and blue chips, and far less into growth and technology stocks.  The comparative performance of the large-cap versus smaller-cap stocks also exhibits a movement of capital into bigger companies as the stock market adopts

Pierre Lassonde revolutionized investing with the creation of the first gold royalty company. Three decades later, he is as confident in this model as ever, especially considering the difficulties of the majors in discovering large, high-grade reserves. In this interview with The Gold Report, this director and former chairman of the World