The Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA) and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (NYSE: SPY) have been on a bull market stampede since March 2009. But the overall American economy has not been feeling as bullish. The policies under Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke favored the stock market.  Low interest rates made stocks more […]

BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP), the world’s largest natural resources company, is restructuring its operations around the world.  This is resulting in change in the business model of the firm as its sells off assets and realigns its strcture. This is naturally causing short term pain in the stock price of BHP Billiton. As a result, […]

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), the Internet retail giant, has done much to make “Cyber Monday” a new American holiday with a global reach like “Black Friday” and “Super Bowl Sunday.” Much of this is owed to the genius of Jeff Bezos, the Chief Executive Officer of Amazon. This has naturally rewarded the shareholders of Amazon.  The […]

The election in the United States was good for the Republican party, which should result in lower taxes. That makes consumer good stocks such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), and others more attractive.  With more discretionary income, or spending money, Americans will be able to buy more products.  This is a major reason […]

There is no denying that uber investor Carl Icahn has been very, very good for the shareholders of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA) and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (NYSE: SPY) are down.  But Apple is up for the last quarter, six months, and year of market action […]

For long term investors, the positive outlook recently issued by BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) is very bullish news. BHP BIlliton is the world’s largest natural resources company. In that capacity, it has operations spanning the globe.  The better China does, the better it is for BHP BIlliton.  China gobbles up many of the industrial metals […]

The bull market rally for the past five years has rewarded those owing such blue chip stocks as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) (chart below), and many others.  For the savvy investor, that naturally raises the question of, “It it time to start buying small cap stocks?”  Legendary […]

Facebook (NYSE: FB) is joining other high tech companies such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in moving into health care. For Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and others, it does not seem as if health care would be in the primary business model of the company.  But health care is the largest sector of […]

McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), the world’s largest restaurant chain, is up for the last week and month of market action on speculation that activist investor Carl Icahn will target the company (chart below). Icahn has done very well going after companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), so McDonald’s is certainly a tempting target. Investors like Icahn will […]

BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP), the world’s largest natural resources company is down for the last week, month, and quarter of market action (chart below). As the business of BHP Billiton is natural resources, that means China is its biggest customer.  China is reporting problems in its housing sector as reported by the Financial Times, so […]