Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) has a market cap of more than $22 billion and is an important company. As one commentator recently noted, “Twitter makes and breaks careers. It makes and breaks lives. Perhaps most saliently, the platform shapes news cycles, which, in turn, shape how people see the world. Because journalists spend disproportionate time on the website relative to most of their audience, outlets increasingly amplify Twitter’s viral stories, and seemingly without questioning their broader relevance. It’s a pattern that distorts perception on both sides of the political spectrum, and everyw...

There’s an ancient Chinese saying: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. It may seem like stocks go nowhere for long periods at a time. But many companies can use those periods to continue growing their dividends for shareholders. When that happens, buyers see the amount of cash they get rise every year. Over a long enough timeline, they could even see dividends rise to a point where they get more cash payouts every year than what they originally paid. This secret is a simple math equation known as the “yield on cost.” It involves the current...

Most investment research is based on one thing, and one thing only: Finding the best opportunities to buy. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a good thing in and of itself. After all, if you don’t make a good buy in the markets, you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose money. But what happens when things go well? That’s where the trouble starts. That’s because most investment research doesn’t tell you anything about when to sell a position you hold—whether it’s gone up or down. Many investors use rules like stop-loss orders. But that also causes them to lose their shares whi...

Companies come and go. The last component of the original Dow Jones Index, General Electric, got booted last year. But you could have been out of that name for far longer if you had followed a simple rule: Only invest in companies that deliver increasing income to shareholders every year by increasing their dividend. Following that rule would have gotten you out of a lot of stocks before they really took a dive—and kept you in some of the best wealth-building stocks of all time. In the end, researching the market for stocks that deliver great returns to investors over time will of...

Imagine you had a penny that doubled in value every day for a month. Sure, after a week, you’d only have a paltry sixty-four cents. That’s not even enough to buy something off the dollar menu at your favorite fast-food joint. After another two weeks, you’d have less than $10. But if you can hold out for just two more weeks, the doubling power will turn that starting penny into $1.3 million dollars. That’s the power of compounding. Now, we don’t have magic pennies (that I know of). But we do have the next best thing: Dividend stocks. When companies pay their shareholders mone...

Tech stocks in 2000. Gold in 2011. Cryptocurrencies in 2017. Pot stocks in 2018. They all followed the same pattern. They had massive gains. They started from small rises, but over time, they started to rise at a faster and faster rate. Speculation and greed took over. Any attempt to curb prices on the way up were swamped with buy orders instead. Along the way, a parabolic chart pattern started to unfold. That’s a tough pattern to trade—once every investor who wants in has gotten in, early investors reap large rewards. Once sellers start to outweigh buyers, the prices deflate near...

Apple has been in the headlines lately, but close readers of the news may have noticed Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) is also capturing attention. One reason is related to the important question of censorship by tech companies. The Associated Press noted, “Netflix faced criticism…from human rights groups for pulling an episode in Saudi Arabia of comedian Hasan Minhaj’s “Patriot Act” series that criticized the kingdom’s powerful crown prince. The American comedian used his second episode, released Oct. 28, to criticize Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi an...

Charts can provide plenty of profitable trading patterns time and again. But they can also be deceiving. That’s because most charts don’t share key data. It can tell you a price point on a given day—which is handy. But there’s more to a price chart than price. For instance, if a stock keeps moving higher day after day, it may look like a good trade. But if it’s bouncing around during trading hours and only barely heading higher, it may not look like the slam dunk that it could be. To find these extreme intra-day moves, and to get an idea of where the bulk of the trading money i...

Most folks just think of investments as things that go up or down (and even then hopefully just up). But the fact of the matter is, any asset can have a long period of time where it trades in a sideways range, bouncing between a high and low. Recognizing these ranges from a chart pattern is a good way to find short-term trades. It may not be the big grand slam of catching a major move up or down, but it can give you consistent profits time and again. These types of patterns occur in the markets all the time. They’re known as consolidation patterns, and they tend to keep a position...

There’s a great old saying on Wall Street: The trend is your friend. But what happens when the trend ends? After all, nothing lasts forever. That’s when things can become troublesome for investors. At least, for those who don’t know the signs. That’s because a stock’s pattern can give you a clue that a long-running trend is about to end. And whether that means a stock that’s been going up is about to go down, or a declining stock is about to rally. This is called a reversal pattern. And being able to catch one successfully is one way to grow and preserve your wealth—in any market ...