Market News

Stradivarius made some 900 violins, over 600 still exist. Red varnish was employed in his “golden period,” from 1704 to 1720. This coating still holds fast on many instruments played on today. Professionals like the charming soloist Elizabeth Pitcairn, who now owns this red violin, was gifted it by her grandfather back in 1990.

more...

The DividendRank formula at Dividend Channel ranks a coverage universe of thousands of dividend stocks, according to a proprietary formula designed to identify those stocks that combine two important characteristics — strong fundamentals and a valuation that looks inexpensive. Owens & Minor, Inc. (NYSE: OMI) presently has an above average rank, in the top 50% of the coverage universe, which suggests it is among the top most "interesting" ideas that merit further research by investors.

more...

Canadian investors are now weighing in on potential manipulation of silver markets, as a new $1 billion class-action lawsuit was recently filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

more...

Oil & gas have been the dominant source of energy for more than a century. From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, America’s dependence on the Middle East and other foreign sources to meet its energy needs was rising. Over the past seven years, the U.S. has become much more energy independent. Get the facts in this article as we look at U.S. production, consumption, and net petroleum imports from 1949 through 2014!

more...

Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, has something to celebrate. More Chinese customers are coming to its restaurants.

more...

The goo’s new bandwagon bulls have it all wrong: OPEC isn’t driving short-term oil prices. Nor is the latest “technical breakout.” There’s one overriding factor most investors aren’t even aware of – and it’s about to send crude 30% lower quite soon.

The problem these days with moving averages, trendlines and OPEC rumors is that every money manager on the planet has the same information. Think you see something on a price chart, or an OPEC meeting transcript? Odds are somebody else already caught the same thing – and traded off it!

It may sound tough to make a buck in this patch, but in reality it’s never been easier. Reason being, most money managers are trend followers. When oil goes up, they buy. And they buy more and more as the price goes higher – until eventually the majority of them are on the “long side” of the market.

more...

Foreign investors have been waiting, with growing impatience, for Vietnam to make a colossal change: let them own majorities of the country’s hot but elusive listed firms. This month a slew of companies you might want to invest in – as proxies of the fast-growing Southeast Asian economy – are holding their first annual general meetings where it makes sense to discuss opening further to foreign funds. In June, after two years of on-again, off-again discussion, the government approved a decree allowing Vietnamese companies to go as high as 100% foreign, in principle. Says one investment research firm in Hanoi, “a lot of companies” will get approval at their early 2016 annual general meetings to extend foreign ownership limits.

more...

Coffee drinkers in the U.S. drove Starbucks' latest quarterly results.

more...

In this series, we look through the most recent Dividend Channel ''DividendRank'' report, and then we cherry pick only those companies that have experienced insider buying within the past six months. The officers and directors of a company tend to have a unique insider's view of the business, and presumably the only reason an insider would choose to take their hard-earned cash and use it to buy stock in the open market, is that they expect to make money — maybe they find the stock very undervalued, or maybe they see exciting progress within the company, or maybe both. So when stocks turn up that see insider buying, and are also top ranked, investors are wise to take notice. One such company is ONEOK Partners LP (NYSE: OKS), which saw buying by VP & Chief Accounting Officer Sheppard F. Miers III.

more...

After a brutal six months, David Tepper (Trades, Portfolio) - 11% stake in Terraform Power Inc. is swinging to a profit after it issued a statement Thursday that the bankruptcy of SunEdison (NYSE:SUNE), its sponsor company, would not materially impact its business.

more...