Our move from the Saturday radio broadcast to the new Monday Morning Market Update digital audio broadcast has been even better than I thought it would be. We’ve had a ton of positive feedback from listeners, many of whom love the on-demand nature of the broadcast — and the lack of commercial radio advertising. I’d […]

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“One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”   –Benjamin Disraeli   When you think of investing opportunity, you have to be ready to strike at any moment. In a volatile market like this, it’s essential that you know how much cash you have,

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The new iShares International Preferred Stock Index Fund (IPFF) is a unique exchange-traded fund (ETF) that allows investors access to international preferred shares that trade on foreign exchanges. IPFF, which launched on Nov. 15, gives investors a way to access preferred shares primarily in the financial sector, but also includes smaller positions in energy, utilities,

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  In the days leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, we saw markets make a decided turn south. The S&P 500 Index broke below its 50-day moving average, and the broad measure of the domestic equity market had long since tumbled below its 200-day moving average. The move lower led me to conclude that we

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It’s a holiday-shortened trading week, as the markets will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving. And though markets will be open for a half-day of trading on Friday, we’ve decided to send you the weekly Hotline before you’ve had a chance to stuff yourself with tomorrow’s big meal. This week, it’s been the sellers who’ve […]

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“Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.”   –Henry Van Dyke   It often takes a poet to express what we all feel, and here I think Van Dyke does a great job of capturing the essence of

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While the real estate market has been in the dog house since the beginning of the Great Recession, I found a fund focused on real estate that actually has been holding up reasonably well most of the year. The iShares FTSE NAREIT Residential Plus Capped Index Fund (REZ) has outperformed other real estate exchange-traded funds

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Downbeat news out of Europe largely took a backseat to the disappointing — but not wholly unexpected — news out of Washington, D.C., on Monday that the so-called “super committee” in Congress failed to do its job. The result was a market that got slammed in Monday’s trading, with the Dow down more than 340

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  If there still were any doubts that the trend in the market now has turned decidedly negative, then Monday’s big sell-off effectively should have erased those misgivings. The huge drop in stocks to kick off this holiday-shortened week sent the S&P 500 Index below its short-term, 50-day moving average, the one key technical measure

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Europe, Europe, Europe. The woes in the region really ramped up this week, and the stresses in the eurozone banking system have become apparent to everyone. On Wednesday, stocks plummeted after ratings agency Fitch warned about the potential impact of the eurozone’s debt crisis on the global economy. Fitch cautioned that U.S. banks could be […]

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