Neil J. George

Content Posted by Neil J. George

Hunger for Profits

Right now we’re all hungry for an industry that can keep growing even in recession. And our recipe is one of the basics--food, glorious food.

The Next Bubble

For every modern market collapse, a new bubble has emerged to take its place. This isn’t how things should work in an efficient market, but the fact is that’s been the trend.

What Was and What Could Be

This is just the beginning. And it won’t be too long before we look back at these moves and wonder what we were thinking. Hopefully by then we’ll have moved on to a period where Uncle Sam isn’t a partner in a seemingly endless stream of businesses and industries. But for now, as it relates to your investments, the here and now dictates that you need to gear up to invest right along with Uncle Sam Inc.

Less Risk, More Yield

Who hasn’t experienced firsthand what it means for the S&P 500 to be down 24 percent over the last two months and 33 percent year-to-date? The market’s gut-wrenching implosion is spelled out daily, red numbers all over computer monitors, TV screens, and newsprint.

But there’s more havoc lurking. It’s not drawing much media attention--yet. Wait until investors those investors brave enough to do it open up their brokerage statements. We all know about the share-price declines, but a story that will play out over coming months is the heavy falloff in dividend income. This is the insult after the injury.

Think Big

The next big bubble is already getting pumped up, this time not with easy money via the credit market but through direct investment by Uncle Sam Corp. The Federal Reserve Bank should be renamed Fed Bank, Inc.,Wholly Owned Subsidiary of USC.

Cash Still Works

We’ve never met a man who’s gone broke with regular checks coming in.

Mad Markets? Get Back to Basics

It seems everybody’s getting a helping hand. This week yet another major bank got a huge infusion of public help--$66 billion worth--to keep the doors open for at least a few more weeks.
Zurich-based UBS (NYSE: UBS), announced that the Swiss federal authority in Bern, along with the Swiss National Bank, decided it didn’t want one of its biggest banks going down for the count. Swiss authorities are supposedly taking $60 billion in debt assets with no real assumable value and at the same time buying into the bank with equity capital of $6 billion.

Now What?

Chaos: That pretty much sums up the thinking on global markets. The follow-up is: Get me out of everything. Sell it; I don’t care what it is, or what the price is. Just get me out.

One market opens and folks sell, and keep selling into the close. The next market opens and picks up with the selling. As the world turns, market after market keeps selling.

Volatility and Value

Yes, it’s flat out ugly out there. Stocks are sinking, commodities are getting crushed, real estate is blindly searching for a bottom and even bonds are being bounced over fears of what might be next in the ongoing credit crunch.

Do Your Best

It doesn’t matter what happened on Capitol Hill this week. What does matter is having a plan to get for getting past not just the next several days of ups and downs in the market but the coming year as well.

Comrades

I thought we won the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell, pushed over by Ronald Reagan and his crusade for individual rights and free markets--free from as much government as he could dismantle during his political life.

Powered Portfolio

There are two keys to any game plan for weathering a bear market.

Don't Jump

Just as many of you were looking up at the sky rise towers of the big banks around the nation to make sure that you aren't going to be squashed like a bug by defenestrated bank executives, the government has stepped in with a fix for the whole credit market fiasco.

Buy Bonds in This Battered Market

Embattled investment bank Lehman Brothers is now in liquidation mode. Regulators and what’s left of the street are hoping for a workout or, for some in the latter group, licking their chops like vultures over carrion.

All Water Great and Small

Stocks aren’t sunk, but with major stock market indexes showing losses of as much as 20 percent, it’s harder and harder to remain patient.

The Water Sprites

In part one of our coverage we focused on the mega-capitalized companies that, beyond merely dominating the water industry, are havens in a troubled stock market.

Whose Market Is It?

With all the unfolding shenanigans--from stock analysts pimping companies they know aren’t worth the ink and paper used to report trades on your brokerage statements to hedge funds and prime brokers getting to play by different sets of rules--the market continues to get more and more dicey for the average stock investor.

Work the Problem

Will the stock market ever recover? Where is the bottom for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 or the Nasdaq Composite--which hasn’t recovered since the last market blowup at the start of this decade--and when will we reach it?

Storm Shelter

You don't need to hear that the stock market has been toxic for your portfolio over the past year. But we will tell you that there are alternatives to stocks, investments you should buy because they've been working and will continue to work in the months to come.

Let's Dance

Election years bring investors all sorts of anxieties. Aside from the various campaign promises designed to attract us to a particular candidate, we must also consider which nominee’s policy changes threaten to erode our financial well-being. Such considerations give new meaning to the term political plank, and pocketbook politics always hit home during times of economic and market malaise.

Grow It to Keep It

The US Dept of Labor reported this week that consumer prices spiked to a multiyear high. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hit 5.6 percent for the month of July. And the headline number, which includes food and fuel costs, is in fact the focus of many dramatic, eye-grabbing article titles in the print and electronic media.

China's Economic Olympiad

The Summer Olympic Games are supposed to be prime time for China to show off its massive economic, political and social transformation and elevation into the pantheon of elite nations.

Face the Music

The week ended up with a lot of folks all smiles-and-happy faces as they headed out to kick off one of the remaining summer weekends. Oil’s down, the dollar’s up, and the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrials are getting a respite from the downturn plaguing market optimists.

Capitalism Is Competition

Why is it that we can’t seem to allow another country to be successful without demonizing it? Next week marks the beginning of the Summer Olympics in and about Beijing. Although many of us might not care about the competitive sports, we do seem to have an insatiable appetite for news and commentary that takes pot-shots at the Chinese.

Financials: The Fix Ain't In

The thought may have occurred to you last week that all is well again, the bears are back in their cages and the bulls are running free, not through the streets of Pamplona but those of Lower Manhattan.

Short a Bad Market

Just because stocks are down doesn't mean they're cheap. A rational approach helps you know when to buy and when to sell.

Short People

Lots of folks--including Randy Newman--have a problem with short people. And Wall Street and Capitol Hill apparently want to do something to rid us of the pain of dealing with them.

Keep the Checks Coming

The way to avoid getting mauled, slashed and slaughtered by a bear market is to abide by my No. 1 rule of investing: Make sure the foundation of your portfolio is rooted in investments you can count on to send regular checks.

Park Your Cash

The stormy markets are walloping portfolios more than inflation right now. Here are the top cash stashes until the worst blows over.

Article Update

Bond markets have been battered as credit concerns remain of paramount concern to investors, and our mini-bonds haven’t been immune. But we still believe they deserve a spot in investors’ portfolios given their higher degree of security and dependable interest payments.

Send Out the Clowns

Is anyone who lived through and remembers the 1970s working at the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury Dept? How about the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors? You wouldn’t think so the way the feds are clowning around amid the current economic and financial mess.

The Hunt for Stocks

With the leading indexes of the US stock market heading to one of the worst Junes since The Great Depression, it’s getting harder to bird-dog for stocks that won’t just come apart but will actually do something for us.

Food Fight

The soaring cost of food isn’t just hitting families in the US; it’s hitting everyone around the world. Prices have risen so much that, this month, delegates from nearly all nations attended a United Nations-sponsored summit in Rome to discuss the issues of supply and demand and solutions for controlling prices.

Article Update

Coal and natural gas prices are steadily rising as demand growth outpaces production. China continues to rely on coal for most of its energy production, and global demand for natural gas is expected to more than double on global growth and environmental concerns.

How to Pick Stocks

I don’t take my job of picking stocks, bonds and funds lightly. But to hear some of my subscribers tell it, you’d think sometimes I’d grabbed some darts and tossed them at the stock tables in the papers.

Busted Banks: How to Withdraw Profits

Banks aren’t fixed. And for anybody who’s excited about backing up the truck in the hopes of cashing in on a recovery and rebound in regional and local banks in the US, I hope you have a lot of extra cash in your portfolio. It doesn’t look good, and the troubles are far from fully revealed to the public, let alone addressed and fixed.

The Seven Percent Solution

Getting paid has always been the objective when picking through the stocks, bonds and funds that span the investment universe.

Article Update

Bonds have steadily gained favor with investors this year; falling interest rates and a reduced risk appetite have made longer-term issues especially attractive.

Who the Hell Are You?

“You’re trading the commodities markets all wrong. It’s not about you making money; it’s about us making money.”  So go the words of the old guard of the commodities markets.

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

So is the financial crisis over? Are the banks fixed? Is the US economy back up to speed? Now that we’re supposedly beyond all that, and we’re all gung ho on growth, is it time to tighten the money supply and “whip inflation now?”

Seven Buys and Seven Whys

When investing in bear markets, it pays to remember the old saw that it isn’t a stock market but a market of stocks.

Article Update

Despite the upcoming election and speculation on the impact the results will have on America’s war efforts, unmanned vehicle manufacturers will continue to perform well as their products are retooled for civilian applications.

Go for Growth

It may not officially be summer, but this weekend marks the customary start of the vacation season. And getting a jump on the burning of ever-more-expensive fossil fuels for the travel season is none other than Warren Buffett.

Innovation

The way to really make money is to never just follow the market. If you do, the best you’ll get is what the market gives you—or, as is the case for the past few years, takes away.

Hard Money

We’re getting bashed not only by the financial markets but the grocery market down the block as well.

Article Update

Property Profits and Perils, March 14, 2007

Real estate-related investments have taken a beating over the past several months; that portion of the market has been seen as nothing less than toxic. But that opinion has been changing recently, with many REITs coming off the lows they set earlier this year.

Cash in on Global Powers

Crude oil at $125 and climbing? Natural gas at $11 and climbing?

And it’s not just petrol that’s soaring in price or cost, depending on whether you’re buying or selling. Any real good that gets dug up or pumped out the ground is seemingly out of control. Prices continue to spiral upward; the Commodities Research Board’s general commodities index is up 38 percent for the trailing year.

Competition

It seems like a race to the bottom: How quickly can we get US interest rates to zero? Right now, they’re supposedly at 2 percent to borrow money overnight. At least that’s what the US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) would like you to believe.

The Credit Crunch...And You?

When your neighbor loses his job, it’s a recession. When you lose your job, it’s a depression. That old adage is hitting more and more folks around the markets.

What to Buy

What’s wrong with stocks? During good economic times, investors are full of enthusiasm, and stocks can be exciting—in a good way. We tend to accentuate the positives and ignore the negatives, latching onto confirming evidence that lets us avoid thoughts of what may lie in between.

What to Sell

Too many folks on Wall Street and Capitol Hill would have you believe the credit crunch is about a handful of mortgage bankers who got in over their heads and now are getting bailed out. But that’s far from the complete story.

Article Update

The stock markets are showing signs of strain, with gains being wiped out across the board. But even as the broader averages show signs of cracking, commodity prices have continued to rise, despite concerns that demand could fall if economic problems spread.

Lady and the Tramp

In a favorite Walt Disney classic, “Lady and the Tramp,” dogs from two entirely different worlds work to transform one another to deal with their various fates.

Lead Us Not into Temptation, But Deliver Us from Evil

You find out what people really think, what they’re all about, when times get tough. That seems to be validated by our recent experience with management teams and the choices they’ve made in dealing with shareholders. They’ve headed down paths that don’t serve our best interests.

Power and Profit Generators

Now isn’t the time to speculate about the direction of crude oil prices. Instead, we need to focus on sustainability. Which market sector is most likely to make it if, or when, we head into recession?

Send It, Ship It, Buy It

One of the better ways to get through a bear market is to focus on industries that keep the cash coming during boom as well as bust times.

Article Update

The global warming camp gained another piece of ammunition in late March with the revelation that a large part of the Antarctic Wilkins Ice Shelf, spanning more than 415 square kilometers, is collapsing.

Shark Bait?

Individual investors are sometimes reduced to shark bait. You may think we’re the real owners of the companies in which we invest. But for whom does management really work?

Bank on Bonds: We've Only Just Begun

You may be thinking I’m invoking one of the rituals of spring--weddings full of happy people, flowers, pasta salad and garden receptions, but I’m actually alluding to a more dour subject. Let’s take a look at a real doom-and-gloomer, the markets. Anybody think the turning point in the credit crunch and the resulting bear of bears was reached with last week’s bailout of Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC)?

Bull

When it comes right down to it, a currency is much like the stock of a country. And right now, when it comes to the US, our stock isn’t finding many eager buyers.

Article Update

Earlier this year, we made a contrarian bet on REITs, contending that the real problems were primarily on the financing side of the business. So far this year, that’s proven to be the case, with well-placed property REITs, actually own and operate properties ranging from apartment communities to data centers, holding their own.

Another World Day: Load Up On Water

The annual global awareness event, World Water Day, is March 22. We’ve all heard about plenty of other pseudo-holidays organized with the sole bent of getting many of us annoyed, but often we just ignore them.

But this one isn’t about a bunch of greenies, pro-global warming fanatics or anti-globalization nuts. This is about one of the most underpriced, precious commodities, one that’s in shorter supply in the face of ever-rising demand.

Resolved: Panic Equals Opportunity

We can debate all we want about whether the US stock market is in jeopardy and whether the US dollar is doomed. We can also argue over why gold is still the last investment I’d be buying right now--agriculture, energy and industrial commodities have so much more going for them.

Dig Deep

It’s this simple: A bear market is when you’re losing money. And it’s a bear market right now for individual investors.

Growing Income

Publicly traded partnerships (PTP) in the industry-benchmark Alerian MLP Index have boosted dividends by an average of 3.4 percent this quarter and close to 12 percent during the past year.

Article Update

Almost two years ago, we went looking for heavy-yielding defensive stocks and turned up six in some unusual corners of the market. Ranging from consumer good maker to gun manufacturers, they offered healthy cash flows and high dividend yields by operating in markets that aren’t likely to suffer in economic downturns.

I Want to Hold Your Hand

How much more can we take? Bad news seems to win the ratings for broadcast and print. So let’s keep it coming, right?

Don't Follow the Herd

We need to stop behaving like lemmings. Whether we’re running with the pack on the way up the hill, full of glee and optimism as we climb ever higher, or whether we’re jumping off the cliff, full of panic and fear amid a new selloff, following the crowd never works out well.

Don’t Worry, We’re Bonded

Mention the words “fixed income” and you tend to get lots of yawns, glances toward the door or keyboard clicks from BlackBerrys.

Article Update

Real estate investments continue to languish with no clear end in sight for the trouble afflicting the US housing market. But that just means we can pick up prime properties on the cheap.

Wall Street's Markdown Sale: Are You Buying the Bargains?

Woe is us. It’s time to gnash our teeth, change our dress to torn sackcloth and settle in for a new dark age.

Come Fly With Me

“Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away…”

It’s a classic, immortalized by the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra. The lyrics tell of a carefree world where Frank and a dame “float down to Peru” and “beat the birds down to Acapulco Bay…where the air is rarified.”

Behind the Credit Crisis

Banking can be a boring business. Everyday you have to do two things: First, convince more folks to lend you money in the form of deposits; and second, convince others to borrow money from you.

Article Update

Our composite materials manufactures have performed well for us overall, though there were some setbacks because of the continuing delays in production of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

Growth Still Increasing?

With a nearly daily barrage of negative bits of economic data selectively dispersed in and about the US economy and markets, including the misreporting and spin on US consumer credit this past week, investors are scrambling to find markets and economies that still are good to grow and, therefore, still a destination worthy of investment cash.

Good Guys?

What kind of service are we getting from our media and from the gurus when it comes to news and information concerning the economy and the markets?

Game Theory

Game theory is the fancy way mathematics-oriented economists attempt to systematize what happens in the real world, whereby folks interact in various situations involving decision-making.

No More Roadkill

Roadkill best describes what many of our favored heavy-dividend-paying companies have looked like the past several weeks.

Article Update

As the presidential campaign heats up, defense—specifically, the war in Iraq—will no doubt be a major point of discussion.

The Meat Grinder

Another day, another pile of money ground up and spit out by the markets. How bad can it get? Well, plenty. All it takes is to put together a few bits of negative data, build a scenario around logical extremes and, presto: a compelling case that the market will head into the cellar, taking the economy with it.

Bank Stocks: It's The Baby and The Bathwater All Over Again

It’s getting pretty gloomy out there, and I’m not referring to the absolutely crummy weather the nation’s endured for seemingly weeks on end.

With or Without Us

Shanghai, China--With China’s economy growing at 11.5 percent annually, it doesn’t take a finance degree to know that this is a market in which you must invest.

A Little Warmth

Let the climatologists, the activists and the politicians debate the issue of global warming as what most of us really care about is cashing in on the global question of climatic changes. Whether or not you side with the likes of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic or former Vice President Al Gore on the question of global warming, you can still pursue the green.

Sad Songs

We’re closing the quarter and the year with many tears and much gnashing of teeth. Too many quality stocks and funds that pay hefty dividends are being treated like trash in the markets.

Destination USA

Banks are taking charges, investors are dumping their shares, and the dollar is hitting long-term lows against a pile of currencies.

Article Update

The Vice Fund (VICEX; 40.6 percent return) celebrated its five-year anniversary in September by being ranked in the top 1 percent of Lipper’s multi-cap core category.

Christmas Shopping

With stock markets in a tizzy, bonds are booming. The trouble is getting them through the door of our own portfolios. We find the fit that pays.

Give Us A Break

How much worse can it get? Every day, it seems, another financial company comes clean and announces a charge for “X” billion dollars.

World-Class Stocks

You never have to limit yourself to owning crummy companies just because everybody else does. We’re speaking of the ones that make up the S&P 500 as well as the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Article Update

Despite the market crisis seemingly enveloping the rest of the world, China’s economy continues to grow at a brisk pace; GDP growth is projected to approach 11 percent for the second half of 2007.

Every 10 Minutes

Every 10 minutes, something’s grabbing the headlines, sucking up our attention and riling the markets. Recently it seems those somethings aren’t of the sort we dream about showing up in our Christmas stockings.

Come on Feel the Noise

Are we done with the hullabaloo yet?

Every day, it seems, there’s a bunch of noise signaling that we’re doomed, that any second the market will meet its end and the economy will soon follow. Then…poof, all that hysteria’s set aside and folks back up their trucks, screaming with glee that everything’s OK. And for whatever reason--be it some Federal Reserve rumor or petrodollars from the Persian Gulf--all is well.

Bite-Sized Big Yields

It seems that each year we’re faced with periods when even the most basic of big-dividend-paying companies come under needless fire in the stock market.

Article Update

Immigration raids coupled with tough sentencing guidelines for drug crimes have continued to fuel the boom in prison populations. And although there’s a move afoot to address sentencing disparities, any reforms in that arena are still years away.

Don't Get Squeezed

It seems right now that companies or investment funds paying decent dividends are the equivalent of stuff folks scraped off the bottom of their shoes. What happened? Companies operating in some of the most boring businesses have been trashed in the stock market as if they're subprime mortgage specialists invested solely in downtown Detroit.

Keep the Cash Coming

This year some of the best stocks, bonds and funds that pay us piles of cash have seen some trying times. And whether it’s some of the best well-run bond funds made up of very well-performing and paying bonds or some of the big dividend payers in a variety of industries, it seems that if the investment pays any decent yield, the market has been eager to dump it

We Deliver

The old adage “when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold” provides convenient cover for the Gloomy Guses of the financial markets.

Article Update

Agriculture is a booming business, with corn and wheat prices soaring and foodstuffs becoming generally more expensive. That’s largely due to two factors...

Watching the Hen House

Several issues continue to worry investors, and we’ve seen these past few weeks that the stock, bond, currency and energy markets are far from ready to settle down. That said, we continue to keep an eye on all our favorites across a variety of heavy cash-generating investments.

Firmly Resolved

I’m resolved to finding successful investments in industries and markets that don’t always get enough coverage. And I rely on the work of comrades and researchers to make it all happen, people such as my contributors to Personal Finance: Yiannis Mostrous, Roger Conrad, Elliott Gue and Ben Shepherd.

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