Stephen Leeb

Stephen Leeb, Ph.D. is the Chief Investment Strategist of The Complete Investor and Real World Investing.

Dr. Leeb’s books have been notable for predicting the secular bull market that started in the 1980s (Getting in on the Ground Floor, Putnam, 1986); the tech stock crash and rise of real assets, including oil and gold (Defying the Market: Profiting in the Turbulent Post-Technology Market Boom, McGraw-Hill, 1999); and the surge in oil prices (The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself and Profit from the Coming Energy Crisis, Warner Books, 2004). His national bestseller, The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel (Warner Books, 2006), co-authored with Glen Strathy, outlined the biggest challenges facing the US economy, and accurately predicted the 2008 sub prime mortgage crisis as well as the vicious subsequent economic cycle requiring massive infusions of government stimulus, near zero interest rates and much higher federal debt levels. Game Over: How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy (Business Plus, 2009) predicted a permanent peak in global commodity production. Dr. Leeb’s eighth and latest book, Red Alert (Hachette, 2011), outlined China’s growing prosperity and the ways in which its demands on increasingly scarce resources threaten the American way of life.

Among his many speaking engagements, he has been the keynote speaker at both a JPMorgan Chase energy conference and a Royal Bank of Canada commodities conference.

Dr. Leeb received his bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He then earned his master’s degree in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Illinois in just three years, an academic record that stands to date. He is frequently quoted in the financial media, including Investors Business Daily, USA Today, Business Week, The New York Times, NPR and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, Dr. Leeb is a regular guest on Fox News, Bloomberg, CNN and Neil Cavuto.

Analyst Articles

Infrastructure spending will propel commodities By Stephen Leeb Possibly no group in recent market history has presented such an enormous divergence between its short-term performance—dismal—and its long-term potential—dazzling—than the beleaguered commodity stocks. Their slide, not surprisingly, stems from the sharp drop in commodity prices since their 2011 highs. For investors,… Read More

Vale and Anglo American could regain their 2011 levels By Stephen Leeb This issue we’re spotlighting the three most speculative commodity plays from the p.2 table: Vale, Anglo American, and Glencore. All three will offer outsized returns if commodity prices embark on a sustained uptrend. Each also tries to adhere… Read More

But both stocks offer income plus mega growth potential By Stephen Leeb One of our favorite commodity stocks, silver streaming company Silver Wheaton (SLW), has suffered in the market lately after the Canadian Revenue Agency indicated it might have tax liabilities for the 2005-10 period. While the CRA has yet… Read More

Refocusing Our Focus By Stephen Leeb Ph.D. Real World’s overarching mission is to keep you secure—to put you into investments that protect you financially and let you sleep well at night no matter what crisis erupts in what part of the world—and, in fact, if… Read More

Profiting by sharing their expertise By Stephen Leeb One of the great economic mysteries of recent years has been the ongoing decline in productivity growth. This unfortunate trend has continued this year with a sharp 3.1 percent decline in worker productivity reported for the first quarter. Productivity refers to how… Read More

Buying Altera should prove a key turning point By Stephen Leeb This issue our Spotlight stock is one of tech’s most storied names, Intel (INTC) (Growth Portfolio). During much of the past decade, this dominant chipmaker had ceased to be a dynamic growth stock. Instead, with its abundant free cash… Read More

Taking the angst out of shipping goods around the world By Stephen Leeb This issue to streamline Growth Portfolio and eliminate some overlap we’re abolishing its aggressive category, which had contained two stocks. We’re selling one of the stocks, Denbury, while continuing to follow NovaCopper (NCQ) in Small-Cap Portfolio (p.10),… Read More

Digital hasn’t rewritten the script By Stephen Leeb In the 1960s Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan issued his famous dictum “the medium is the message”, arguing that television’s rising ascendancy over radio would change the nature of, and the way people respond to, news and entertainment—what today we call “content.”   Today… Read More

Pioneer and Newfield are poised to surge as oil rises By Stephen Leeb Investment nirvana is finding a relatively small company positioned to jump on a big opportunity. Here we offer two such stocks—and both, believe it or not, are frackers, notwithstanding our oft-expressed (and ongoing) skepticism about fracking’s… Read More

And big upside in Televisa’s captive Spanish-language audience By Stephen Leeb At the recent gathering of Buffett votaries in Omaha at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, Charlie Munger, Buffett’s longtime No.2, noted that Berkshire Energy currently generates well over 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly wind. Read More