Investing

  Ed Yardeni is President and Chief Investment Strategist of Yardeni Research. He has been a leading commentator on the economy and financial markets for 25 years, and his daily column has been required reading for Pinnacle analysts for years. Yardeni (at least for the time we’ve been reading him) is known for being generally optimistic about financial markets, which [...]

In our Inside the Investment Committee presentation, I mentioned the great start to the year for high beta, domestic cyclical stocks (“high beta” refers to the volatility of the stock compared to the S&P 500). Small cap, semiconductors, miners, and energy stocks have more volatility when compared to the S&P 500 and therefore a higher beta. These areas tend to [...]

Today marks the second time this year that the Federal Open Market Committee (Fed) will announce its decision on interest rates. On the surface the meeting looks to be somewhat boring: With jobs showing some strength and gas prices getting dangerously close to $4 a gallon, few analysts are expecting the Federal Reserve to announce a new quantitative easing program. [...]

The professor who influenced me most at Towson University was Richard E. Vatz, Ph.D., who teaches classes in Persuasion and Advanced Public Speaking. Vatz is a short, wiry guy with a bushy mustache and a wicked sense of humor. Thirty-five years ago, he began his Persuasion class by telling us a story about his best friend, Bob. He described how [...]

Tuesday served as quite a jolt to investors. The S&P 500 lost -1.5%, its biggest drop since last December. It seems that everyone had gotten quite used to the gentle drift higher that characterized the stock market so far this year, since there hadn’t been so much as a 1% correction in the S&P since the end of last year. [...]