Risk Rewarded Blog

Academics love to say that the market is efficient and reflects all publicly available information with Vulcan-like logic and lack of emotion.Yet any third-grader with experience in a sandbox knows that's not true. Manias, panics, enthusiasm, dejection, envy and regret cloud traders' judgements, and result in persistent mispricing.It looks like some...

In the two years between late 2012 and late 2014, transportation stocks -- cargo and people movers like UPS (UPS), Southwest Airlines (LUV), and CSX (CSX) --  were the place the be. TheDow Jones Transportation Average gained nearly 90% in a rise that was as unstoppable as a freight train; more than double the...

The setbacks this week have pushed the S&P 500 under its 50-day moving average for the first time since January, and the benchmark index is now down 1% for the year.The damage is getting serious: The percentage of NYSE stocks above their 50-day moving average has declined to just 44%. And this is not a matter of a bunch of nobodies getting hit....

Apple (AAPL) is completing its journey from renegade to matron with the announcement that it would be joining the Dow Jones   Industrial Average, effective  March 19 taking the place of old Ma Bell, AT&T (T). The move was prompted by a 4:1 stock split by Visa (V) which would have reduced the weighting of information technology...

Shares of companies specializing in refining gasoline and selling it via gas stations have proven to be one of the best ways to profit by the plunge in crude oil prices. Gasoline retailers earn their widest profit margins when they can buy crude oil, their main raw material, as cheaply as possible. The development is quite interesting because over...

Some good earnings news emerged Wednesday from fallen dot-com star AOL (AOL), which reported a top- and bottom-line beat for Q2 as well as announced a $150 million buyback program thanks to a 20% increase in ad revenue. Shares gained nearly 8% as a result.Before Amazon.com, before Yahoo!, before Google, before even the term...

Cornerstone Macro analysts were out with a fascinating report this week that tries to explain why retail sales growth is stagnating despite the improvements in hiring and the economy. The short version is that consumers feel so burned by debt over the past twenty years that they are finally taking steps to reduce it in persistent ways.CM analysts note...

To buy and sell stocks efficiently with our services, you will first need to open and fund an account at a brokerage. There are a dozen good discount brokerages, including Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, Etrade and ScotTrade. We like Interactive Brokers because its no-nonsense software platform is easy to use, customer service is good and commissions’...