How many times have you looked at a stock chart and thought, If only I had bought shares five years ago? If we all had time machines, we would be millionaires. But we have not had the luxury of playing Monday morning quarterback with our investments. Until now, that is…

Thanks to the recent stock market crash, we have the opportunity to pick up seriously cheap shares that were flying high until mid-September. In some cases, this is a chance to hop into a time machine and buy these stocks before they became household names. Until recently, these stocks were the darlings of Wall Street. And when the market stabilizes, these stocks could quickly return to favor…

There are few defensive plays like health care - after all, people don’t stop getting sick, and health benefits aren’t something that cost-conscious employers can cut without enduring the wrath of angry employees. But despite

...

You probably know John Maynard Keynes as an economist, but may not know that he was also a great investor, maybe the most the successful of the Great Depression era. And for that reason, given all that our own markets are going through, it may be a good time to look at his investment career.

Keynes managed Cambridge’s King’s College Chest Fund. The Fund averaged 12% per year from 1927-1946, which was remarkable given that the period seemed to be all about gray skies and storm clouds - it included the Great Depression and World War II. The U.K. stock market fell 15% during this stretch. And to top it off, the Chest Fund’s returns included only capital appreciation, as the college spent the income earned in the portfolio, which was considerable. I think it must be one of the most remarkable track records in the annals of finance.

Keynes also made

...

Based off the last news reports, without Steve Jobs, the multi-billion-dollar enterprise that is Apple (NYSE: AAPL) would simply cease to exist. Every new report of his health is followed in the market, and Apple’s stock price takes corresponding hikes and plunges.

But Apple isn’t the only corporation with similar founder/leader issues.

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A), and Dell, (NYSE: DELL), for example, both have stocks tied to the brand name of their founders - Warren Buffett and Michael Dell.

And when investors worry about the health of these figureheads, they send the stock price plummeting. But does this mean that the fundamentals of these companies are also in danger?

Far from it.

Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) hasn’t collapsed since Bill Gates stepped down. Martha Stewart’s Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO) hasn’t gone

...

A Question of Leadership at Apple (NYSE: AAPL)

Based off the last news reports, without Steve Jobs, the multi-billion-dollar enterprise that is Apple (NYSE: AAPL) would simply cease to exist. Every new report of his health is followed in the market, and Apple’s stock price takes corresponding hikes and plunges.

But Apple isn’t the only corporation with similar founder/leader issues.

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A), and Dell, (NYSE: DELL), for example, both have stocks tied to the brand name of their founders - Warren Buffett and Michael Dell.

And when investors worry about the health of these figureheads, they send the stock price plummeting. But does this mean that the fundamentals of these companies are also in danger?

Far from it.

Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) hasn’t collapsed since Bill Gates stepped down. Martha Stewart’s Martha Stewart Living

...

Usually I don't post reviews of books at my blog. I did only once for a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://stockweb.blogspot.com/2008/09/warren-buffett-biography-snowball.html" target="_blank"Warren Buffett Biography - The Snowball/a. If you go across internet you can find plenty of books about Warren's life, investing style or strategies. But there is a one book which is undoubtedly the most popular book nowadays.br /br /"The Four Filters Invention of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger" describes basic steps in decision taking for their investments. Buffett and Munger's four filters process was to capture all the important stakeholders in a multi-variable equation or formula. Imagine...Products, Enduring Customers, Managers, and Margin-of-Safety... all in one mixed "qual + quant" formula.br /br /Please see below short video with the book review...br /br /I have screened the cheapest price and you can find a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615241298?ie=UTF8amp;tag=stoceasteurot-20amp;linkCode=as2amp;camp=1789amp;creative=9325amp;creativeASIN=0615241298"the book on Amazon for $29,65/aimg src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=stoceasteurot-20amp;l=as2amp;o=1amp;a=0615241298" alt="" style="border: medium none ! important; margin: 0px ! ...

Bernie Madoff was a stock broker "managing" client accounts. He was never part of the hedge fund industry. His firm was "regulated" and fraud is already illegal. He did not charge 2 and 20 and had no prime broker, proper auditor or independent administrator. Few sophisticated investors invested directly with so many red flags. Due diligence ITSELF is an alpha source. Diversification with NUMEROUS strategies and managers is MANDATORY. Despite his "performance" Bernie was not a billionaire. With those "returns" on that asset size he should have been a stalwart of the Forbes 400. The chart below is the Madoff feeder, Fairfield Sentry, versus Gateway, GATEX, a mutual fund running the same strategy. Suspicious outperformance in the 1990s went from bad to worse in 2001. Split strike conversion is a ...

IMDB.com, also known as Internet Movie Database, publishes STARmeter ratings of anyone who has ever had anything to do with show business. I'm still not clear about how they calculate this, or what it really means, but here is a list of several people connected to the stock market along with their STARrating change from last week. br /br /Suze Orman -26%br /T. Boone Pickens -19%br /Jim Cramer +3%br /Timothy Sykes +6%br /Dylan Ratigan +20%br /George Soros +26%br /Warren Buffett +127%br /The a href="http://Stockerblog.com"Stockerblog/a proprietor +193%br /br /How my rating increased so much, I can't even guess. Go figure.div class="blogger-post-footer"div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;' script type="text/javascript"!-- google_ad_client="ca-pub-2427831169011625"; google_ad_width=300; google_ad_height=250; google_ad_format="300x250_as"; google_ad_type="text"; google_ad_channel ="8681602088"; google_color_border="FFF3DB"; google_color_bg="FFF3DB"; google_color_link="1B0431"; google_color_url="1B0431"; google_color_text="29303B"; //--/script script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" /script /div

Here is a trivia question for you. What billionaire investor appeared as himself on a soap opera?br /br /br /br /Hint number 1: The Soap Opera is All My Childrenbr /br /br /br /Hint number 2: This billionaire appeared not once but twice in this TV seriesbr /br /br /br /Hint number 3: He plays himself in this showbr /br /br /br /Hint number 4: He also played the part of James Madison in an animated TV series called "Liberty's Kids: Est. 1776"br /br /br /br /Give up? Who else but Warren Buffett. He appeared in the All My Children Episode 9869 on May 8, 2008 and Episode 9870 on May 9, 2008. He has also appeared in five documentaries. More interesting trivia about him is that his IMDB STARmeter Rating has gone up by 127% since last week.div class="blogger-post-footer"div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;' script type="text/javascript"!-- google_ad_client="ca-pub-2427831169011625"; google_ad_width=300; google_ad_height=250; google_ad_format="300x250_as"; google_ad_type="text"; google_ad_channel ="8681602088"; google_color_border="FFF3DB"; google_color_bg="FFF3DB"; google_color_link="1B0431"; google_color_url="1B0431"; google_color_text="29303B"; //--/script script type="text/javascript" ...

I.O.U.S.A. & The Coming Entitlement Meltdown

by Alexander Green, Chairman, Investment U Investment Director, The Oxford Club Monday, December 22, 2008: Issue #905

During the current economic crunch, top executives at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and other financial giants received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation… just before their firms keeled over.

This is galling to many. But the excessive and unwarranted compensation at Bear Stearns and Lehman doesn’t bother me, personally. Why? Because I never owned a share of either one of them.

However, we all have a stake in the future of the U.S. economy. No one can afford to ignore how Uncle Sam spends money. Fiscal policy will play a key role in determining the strength of the economy, the performance of our financial markets and the value of the dollar.

The incoming Obama administration is talking about spending up to a trillion dollars - a temporary shot in the

...

Who can honestly say he isn’t enjoying this financial crisis? It has unhorsed cavalier fund managers …it has turned the masters of the universe into servile waiters…it has made Nobel Prize winners look like morons. The rich…the proud… the pompous…the vain…the incompetent…Wall Street - surely there is a God…an ‘invisible hand’…giving them all a whack on the head!

And there are the regulators too! Under their very noses the biggest scams in history went unnoticed. America’s SEC alone - to say nothing of the countless other cops on the financial beat - had 3,371 employees playing the piano in 2006. If you can believe it, not a single one of them noticed what was going on in the back room. Even after rummaging through Bernard Madoff’s back office twice in the last three years, they still didn’t know. They must have been like pets watching an orgy…with no idea what to

...