An Intro to Technical Analysis: Seeing Some Structural Weakness

Technical Analysis is the study of charts, chart patterns and indicators.  Purely fundamental investors who study balance sheets and cash flow statements think it’s a complete waste of time whereas chart technicians think it’s all that matters.  I say, why not be well versed in both?  I’ve found it to be extremely valuable in helping…

A High-Yield REIT for Retirement Income Portfolios

A Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is a type of investment structure that allows investors to add exposure to real estate in their portfolio.  REITs receive preferential tax treatment at the company level, where virtually all taxation is passed on to the investors, if they pay out at least 90% of net income as dividends. …

Legalized Marijuana and the Trend Toward Wellness

A lot of people are getting excited about the trend of legalizing marijuana and looking at the area as one of the next big investment themes.  You commonly hear talk about the dispensaries and growers as an easy way to play the theme.  However, I think the recreational use of marijuana will be small pennies…

A Simple Way to Measure Market Overreactions and Turn them into Opportunities

In this post I’m going to show another way you can look at a stock chart to see where a particular stock is trading in relation to its longer term trend by using linear regression channels.  These measure a stock’s trend over a certain period of time, as determined by its best fit linear regression…

Two Ways to Invest in the Changing Shopping Trends

It’s pretty clear that more and more shopping is being done online these days to the point that retailers who were behind the curve or still brick-and-mortar focused are under a lot of pressure, leading to store closings and even a wave of bankruptcies.  I recently made two new investments that I believe are positively…

More on the Index vs. Active Management Debate and How it can Create Opportunities

In this post I’m going to offer some additional points on the whole active management vs index debate, as well as discuss some of the very large distortions that ETFs in particular are creating. I too often hear people arguing for one side over the other but this misses the point.  It’s not a question of…

New “Income” Stock Investments

The move higher in bond yields since the election has slowly been creating some new opportunities in stocks that pay higher dividend yields.  These types of stocks tend to be owned for the dividend income so they are usually more affected in the short-term by changes in the bond market (changes in relative yields) than…