The stock has stumbled but remains a leveraged play on rising Treasuries trading   Here’s the lure of our small-cap Fast Track portfolio. It’s that without exception all of today’s big, successful companies started out small and humble. But here’s the rub: not all of yesterday’s… Read More

Internet usage is soaring, a bonanza for E-commerce stocks with the right touch   Tech lives. Yes, the ’90s boom is over. But with worldwide Internet usage climbing sharply, the best-positioned companies in the business of facilitating e-commerce should be stock market winners as their revenues… Read More

John C. Hathaway: Bullish on Gold   John Hathaway heads the Tocqueville Gold fund (our FundFolio’s precious metals fund). We recently talked to him about gold’s near- and long-term future. As it turns out, he sees the world much as we do. In particular, he views… Read More

Before committing, read the fine print   Lately you may have noticed a lot of ads by insurance companies pitching annuities. What are annuities, and why the big push? To answer the second question first, insurers are avid to get their hands on a big share… Read More

Fed chief Alan Greenspan continues to promise measured and modest rises in interest rates. His public stance is that this will suffice to keep the economy perfectly in synch. We certainly hope he’s right when he suggests productivity gains and lower energy prices will lead to a… Read More

When inflation starts to rise, gold mines become, well, a gold mine   We’ve said it before: last decade’s stupendous bull market in the tech-heavy Nasdaq—which soared from 323 on Oct. 31, 1990 to its high of 5100 on Mar. 31, 2000—was not the… Read More

When prices are rising, people look for their fun closer to home   Evidently, we all just want to have fun. At least that’s the message of one of the strongest economic trends of the past 50 years—the growing amount of money Americans spend on recreation. Read More

Major producer Impala offers a high yield and inflation protection   With inflation protection becoming increasingly essential (see front page), we’re adding leading platinum producer Impala Platinum, aka Implats, to our Income Portfolio this issue. Offering a 4.5 percent yield, Impala is one of… Read More

A Vanguard fund expands its mandate and re-opens its doors   As the front page article discusses, all investors should own some precious metals stocks as an inflation hedge. Our FundFolio includes one terrific gold fund: Tocqueville Gold. With an investment minimum of $1,000,… Read More

It’s a high-risk play with enormous upside potential   Elsewhere in this issue we’ve hit hard at the theme of inflation-proofing through precious metals. There’s no reason to exempt FundFinds. To select an appropriate stock, we were particularly interested to see which precious metals stocks are… Read More