More than 200 years of research shows that owning stocks, which represent an ownership stake in a business, is the best way to generate long-term wealth. Our stock investing guides will explain how common stocks work, what preferred stocks are, how to understand dividends, stock basics for new investors, and advanced stock trading techniques for those who are ready to learn the deep knowledge of finance.
As the United States returns to a normalized interest rate environment, things are going to get interesting. A few of my personal thoughts on the situation in which we, as a country, now find ourselves.
The news has been filled with stories about GameStop and other stocks with high “short” interests being squeezed in recent weeks so there is no point in me rehashing the specifics. There is a lot I could cover about the actual procedure for how trades settle, how short squeezes happen, who is innocent and guilty, and a host of other relevant topics. Enough ink has been spilled, digital and print, that I’m going to focus on the bigger picture, instead. This whole situation is not good.
Mondelez International, maker of Cadbury Chocolate and Oreo Cookies, has launched a takeover bid for The Hershey Company. Long-term owners should not be happy about it.
Nestlé dividend day has come and gone for both the owners of the Swiss shares directly in Zurich and the holders of the ADR here in the United States. The board continued its tradition of hiking the dividend.
Market Timing, Valuation, and Systematic Purchases I have a lot of work to do but I’m sitting at my desk, the snow is on the ground outside, I have a fresh cup of coffee in front of me, and I don’t really feel like diving into my task list quite yet. This is going to…
Almost five years ago, Tiffany & Company was glittering at time when much of the corporate world was still mired in misery from devastating losses and the implosion of Wall Street. Based on the annual report for the prior year, 2010, worldwide net sales had risen by 12% on a constant-exchange-rate basis, reaching $3,085,290,000. After-tax profits were up 39% from the year before, 2009, when the developed world had gone through the worst meltdown since the Great Depression, coming in at $368,403,000.
One of the major themes running through my body of work, both on this site and at Investing for Beginners, can be summed up in the statement, “Know your risks”. I hammer it home all the time; “risk-adjusted return”, talk about remote-probability events, explaining how much of wealth building is learning to “tilt probabilities in [your] favor”, admonishment to never invest in something you don’t fully understand and couldn’t explain to a Kindergartener in a couple of sentences. Consider this real-life tragedy a morality tale that can help you protect your own family.
After making the rum raisin ice cream recipe, we decided to try our hands at a white chocolate ice cream recipe, which used whole eggs (rather than egg yolks), a 1/3rd increase in the heavy-cream-to-whole-milk ratio, left out the brown sugar, granulated sugar, and salt, and a few other tweaks in terms of the order in which the ingredients were assembled.
Johnson & Johnson is one of the most successful businesses in global history but its rise to preeminence resulted in an ugly family battle that left a wake of victims behind the misbehavior of two deeply flawed brothers.
I’ve received a significant number of requests over the past few months asking that I discuss what is happening with oil, natural gas, pipeline, and refining companies; to explain how I look at the situation and the sorts of things Aaron and I discuss when we’re allocating our own capital or the capital of those who have entrusted their assets to us. It’s a big topic with a lot of niche considerations but I want to take some time today to address the oil majors; the handful of mega-capitalization behemoths such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips / Phillips 66, and BP.
