“There is no magic formula to make trading or investing easy,” starts Jeffrey Hirsch in The Little Book of Stock Market Cycles.  “Nothing can replace research, experience, and a healthy dose of luck.” History, however, can be a useful guide in understanding the environment in which you are investing.  This is the focus of Mr....Read More

In recent weeks, I’ve written that Microsoft ($MSFT) will ultimately muscle-out Apple ($AAPL) as the leader in smartphones and tablets.  It will be a long war of attrition, but Apple has no durable long-term advantages—what Warren Buffett calls “moats”—to keep most of its customers loyal.  And Apple’s insistence on controlling every aspect of both its...Read More

This is the time of year for giving thanks, and we all have quite a bit to be thankful for.  Though we complain about having a divided country, we live in a place where power changes hands without violence.  And for all the angst about rising taxes, at least we live in a country where...Read More

The fiscal cliff has been getting most of the media attention these days.  And when not fretting over U.S. political gridlock, investors have turned their attention to Europe. But the real crisis brewing—and the one that no one seems to notice—is in Japan.  The land of the rising sun is a ticking time bomb, and...Read More

If Warren Buffett is doing it, it must be good, right? That’s actually horrendously bad advice. Warren Buffett is one of the greatest investors in history, but you should never blindly follow any investor–not even the Sage of Omaha. You don’t know what their rationale for buying was or what their sell criteria is, and...Read More