A blip in the bull market? Or is more selling ahead? A look at some opinions. Sooner or later, a bull market experiences a correction: a decline of at least 10% from a peak. We’ve now seen the first correction in the present bull market: the Dow went below 10,000 on May 25 (and rebounded).1 [...]

How will this impact the real estate market? The Fed pulls out of the mortgage market. On March 31, 2010, the Federal Reserve halted its 15-month-long program to buy up toxic mortgage-linked securities.1 Of all the things the Fed did to try and heal the economy and financial markets, this may have been its most [...]

Meet diversification, patience and consistency. Any investor would do well to call on three friends during the course of his or her financial life: diversification, patience and consistency. Regardless of how the markets perform, they should be a part of your investment philosophy. Diversification. The saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” has [...]

A look at how the markets have rebounded through the years. The stock market is amazingly resilient. You might be surprised at how fast the stock market can change … for the better. Let’s look at how the market has recovered remarkably – and quickly – from some notable downturns. 2008-2009. The collapse of the [...]

Stocks that tend to pay sizable dividends. Institutional and individual investors buy preferred stocks because they offer fixed dividends – in fact, dividend yields are typically greater than those of common shares.1 Preferred stocks are occasionally called hybrid securities, because they have characteristics of debt instruments as well as equities. Let’s review some of their [...]