The History of the Western World Is the Story of Energy Revolutions Over the past two centuries, every great leap forward has been driven by a corresponding technological advance related to energy. Coal — along with the steam engine and the transcontinental railroad — catapulted the economy into the new industrial age. Electricity lit...
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google don’t recognize any borders; they feel no qualms about marching beyond the walls of tech into retailing, advertising, publishing, movies, TV, communications, and even finance. Across the economy, these four companies are increasingly setting the agenda. There was a time, not long ago, when you could sum up each...
The key to China’s economic growth isn’t “how fast?” or “how much?” The most critical question is “what’s driving it?”. Most people think that China’s current economic status is a mirage created by government stimulus and relies on exports. However, examination of China’s economic growth over time reveals that consumption and gross capital formation...
McDonald’s went public in 1965, selling its shares for $22.50; now its stock trades around $90 a share. Fast food can be an occasional unhealthy indulgence – but fast food stocks can be a healthy dose of profit for your portfolio. Imagine you were one of the first to buy shares of McDonald’s Corp....
Groupon sells “Groupons” that allow its customers to eventually go and get something from the merchant that issues the Groupon. When Groupon sells a Groupon–say, a $25 coupon for $50 of belly-waxing services–Groupon collects the $25 immediately (from the subscriber’s credit card). Then, sometime later, the subscriber generally goes to the belly-waxing salon and...
In the investing world, we talk about bubbles. A bubble happens when stocks in a particular sector are over-hyped, and greed starts driving the market. In a stock market bubble, investors stop thinking about what they’re buying and start looking around them to see who else is buying it. Joe Investor sees a sizable...
What has made the US so great? Free markets? Smart people? Capitalism? Democracy? A two party system? Silicon Valley? Cheap resources? Or was it having the reserve currency of the world since 1945? No, that would not have been enough. Was it taking that reserve currency off the gold standard on August 15th 1971?...
Two rare commodities that quadrupled in 2010 double again in 2011… three reasons they’re just getting started. This is the fifth consecutive month that commodities have outperformed the stock market — their longest streak since 1997. The key reason commodities outperformed stocks and bonds is the weak dollar. In the midst of the longest...
The stock exchanges of Colombia, Peru and Chile agreed last November to merge their trading, giving international investors access to roughly 600 stocks – more than any single country in Latin America. Earlier this month, the trio demonstrated just how serious they were, with the Peruvian and Colombian stock exchanges entering into a full-blown...
Most countries hold their reserves in dollars, which is a safe – haven of sorts, and that is why the dollar is known as the – reserve currency – of the world. To counter deflation’s bad effects, and to stimulate the economy – the US plans to spend billions of dollars over the next...
Facebook has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, which implies that the social media darling is valued at a staggering $50 billion. This reminds me of the valuations being assigned to Internet companies leading up to the “dot.bomb” crash. There’s no way a...
Rare earths are a group of exotic elements of the Periodic Table (Lanthanides, mostly), with unique electrical, magnetic, optical and other properties. Without them there’s basically no clean tech, green tech, advanced electronics, electric cars, and much more. It’s not that rare earths are geologically “rare.” It’s more that they’re so darned hard to...
In her keynote speech on Monday, Nancy-Ann DeParle, Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform, faced a hostile audience as she laid out the case for reform. The audience snickered when she pointed to the recent lower unemployment figures as proof that reform isn’t the job killer...
Just a few years ago, the energy investment idea du jour was to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to handle future imports to the voracious US hydrocarbon market. Remember Cheniere Energy, once the darling of newsletter writers? Now there’s talk of re-tooling some of America’s LNG systems for the exportation of natural gas....
We call this technology the “Chi–Tab”… but in the U.S. it goes by a bunch of different names… Dell calls it the “Streak.” HP has their own version – the “Touchsmart.” Samsung has the Galaxy Tab. Apple of course has the iPad. There’s also the “Ideos” from a Chinese company called Huawei, and the...
The gold price soared nearly 30% last year – punctuating a spectacular decade-long run that has seen the gold price quintuple! So has gold finally reach a “bubble phase?” Is the great gold bull market on its last legs? In a word, No! If gold is in a bubble, then it’s one heck of...
There is a language of success and a language of distress. There is a language of progress and a language of regress. * Words sell and words repel * Words lead and words impede * Words heal and words kill Aspire will help you understand what words mean in their purest sense and unlock...
The efficient, well-managed rescue of the 33 Chilean miners was an affecting spectacle for the world. It also should remind us that Chile is a well-run country, and that in an era when commodities are ever more important to the global economy, it is becoming an essential part of investors’ portfolios. The Chilean miners’...
There are ads that win awards and there are ads that make money. In this book, Bill Glazer delivers more than 100 case studies with OUTRAGEOUSLY Successful Advertising through traditional offline and online media for 47 industries, plus over 100 of the greatest headlines ever written, and a CD with all the exhibits. The...
The key to making a fortune in stocks (and avoiding getting obliterated) is having a basic idea of when stocks might have a long stretch of gains… and when they might do nothing. This isn’t easy to do. But when you look at it over history, a simple pattern does emerge… Each generation, the...
You get an e-mail saying “Thank you for using our website, since our deaf phone number is not for clients, signed by some Customer Service”. So, how do you really Win and Keep customers? Simply by delivering what matters most to them. Is it that simple? Crucial messages need not be complex. The simple...
Generation Z is one of the names used for the First World or Western generation of people born between the early-1990s to late 2000s. As this generation is still being born, and is still very young, it is hard to describe its characteristics without speculating. Relatively little is firmly established about its composition, character,...
The Internet search giant was trading at 14 times 2011 earnings. While that’s a higher multiple than the average S&P 500 company, it’s not all that expensive for a tech company. The thing is, sales grew at a mere 7% from 2008 through 2010. That’s a huge drop after growing more than 50% annually...
Last weekend, I hosted a poker game with some friends. During one hand, I made a series of bets, which caused my opponent to think hard. One of the other players coached him: “He’s trying to tell you a story with the way he’s betting. The question is, do you believe what he’s telling...
Explosive growth in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina is fueling gains of 125%, 136%, 361% or more… and here’s how to play it… According to the World Bank, the economy of Latin America grew twice as fast as the United States last year. And it’s on track to do the same this year. So while...
“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.” - Harvey Mackay As I describe in my book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, I organize everything with start...
For many years, major corporations and ‘big business’ had a huge advantage over the small business owner and entrepreneur. This was because they could use their big budgets to manufacture brands and positioning in the marketplace, and essentially ‘buy’ the market. It didn’t really matter too much whether their product or service was any...
I’d like to make you a business offer. Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can’t turn me down, as you’ll come to understand in a moment… Here’s the deal. You’re going to start a business or expand the one you’ve got now. It doesn’t really matter what you do or...
“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” - Christopher Morley It was an experimental wine that Thierry had...
Start off on the right foot — preparation is the difference between dropping out of the race and finishing it. I ran my first marathon after my fiftieth birthday. I’ve run nine more since then, including the New York and Boston marathons. I’m proud of that fact for a number of reasons, not because...
In the cellphone world, it’s all about “apps.” In the oil and natural gas industries, it’s all about supplies. And in the healthcare sector, it’s all about pills. Lots and lots of pills: sleeping pills, anti-depressants, anti-oxidant pills. They’re everywhere. It’s big business for Big Pharma and the companies are very good at marketing...
As a teenager, I had the impulses of a junkyard dog. If someone looked at me the “wrong” way, I started barking. This resulted in many scraps — most of them with bigger and more skillful fighters. I managed to “win” a great many of them, however, because I was able to tap into...
Bailout with UPS Is Social Media a Fad? You can either promote your Business or Cause using? Social Media, so people will follow you or keep traditional advertising with big pocket budgets. Video Part 2… Did you know these Human Capital stats? Perhaps the sources and references for the data contained can be argue,...
Forget about Oil… Forget about Gold… Water is the Most Valuable Resource of the 21st Century. The world population is rising by about 80 million people every year. We are expected to reach eight billion people in the next 15 years. That’s a lot of thirsty mouths. In fact, the demand for water is...
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A tiny $8 million company that has discovered $5 billion of uranium where no one else was looking. This is not only a fascinating story, it’s one of the most promising investments I can think of. It’s a small mining outfit that is literally turning trash into treasure. I think this company is going...
Now I want to tell you a story about a fungus of all things. A fungus that produces enzymes that unlock the sugar found in the cell wall of all plant life. It has already made my readers a ton of money and I expect it will make them plenty more going forward. For...
Gordon Dean was an American lawyer and prosecutor whose distinguished career was fairly typical for Washington types. He went to work for the Justice Department under President Franklin Roosevelt, taught in the law schools at Duke University and the University of Southern California. He was appointed as one of the original commissioners of the...
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The $1.7 5 Medical Technology Stock that Could Break Through $20 Next Year This medical breakthrough stock play is one I feel really good about. Because it’s giving 50,000 people every year a fighting chance against a killer disease. It could be a huge step forward against America’s second-leading cause of cancer death —...
Expect some of the CIVETS economies (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa) to be among the world’s hottest markets in the decade to come. They have the potential to generate the same kind of windfall wealth as the BRIC markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China did over the last 10 years...
“To get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.” - Harvey Mackay Many good ideas have been discovered because someone poked around in an outside industry or discipline, and applied what he found to his own field. For example, Dan Bricklin took the “spreadsheet” concept from accounting and turned it...
Five Trends for the next 10 years in energy savings: 1. Cost-competitive clean energy Coal and oil have had well over a century to get costs as low as possible… Renewables are only now reaching scale, so they will soon be the cheap form of energy. Specially watch solar panel and wind power. 2....
Facebook went after Google Adwords with Facebook Ads, and now they’re going after Google Search with their new Open Graph Search Engine. Most people are excited about this because they love to see someone challenge Google’s empire. But me, I’m excited for a different reason. I can smell a new avenue for some mega-effective...
Take Everything You THINK YOU KNOW About Energy Investing – and throw it out the window. The global energy sector is entering its most-promising stretch in decades – with more new technologies and more investment opportunities than ever before. The result of a global gas market will be shattering volatility—at first, as everyone tries...
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One of the most important skills a professional trader needs to develop is being able to manage his or her psychological state. Effective psychological maintenance can make all the difference between trading success and failure. The Zero-State In my own trading, I have found the essential state of mind I must be in to...
Chile has been a pioneer for the last 30 years of great improvements. Mainly, due to four structural reforms: the creation of a retirement system based on private personal accounts (the AFP system), the opening of the private health insurance system (the ISAPRE system), the redesign of the labor code changing the terms of...
The Investment Opportunity of the Millennium The savvy investor John Templeton seized opportunities wherever he found them. And he built his small investment shop into the renowned money management firm Templeton Investments, now part of the $27 billion investment giant Franklin Resources. Before he died, Templeton made it absolutely clear what he believed was...
Slow Burn: How Stu Trained Himself to Run 50-Plus Miles Every Day Endurance master Stu Mittleman holds the world record for running 1,000 miles in 11 days. Then, at nearly 50-years-old, he ran 3,000 miles over two months—more than two marathons a day for over 56 days! He literally ran across the country from...
Perhaps you’re familiar with the amazing mathematics problem that asks you to figure out whether you’d have more money at the end of one month if you received $3 million on the first day or got a penny on day one and the amount doubled each day thereafter. Most folks would guess that the...
“The almost magical convenience of plastic money is critical to our famously compulsive consumer economy. With more than 641 million credit cards in circulation and accounting for an estimated $1.5 trillion of consumer spending, the U.S. economy has clearly gone plastic.” Mountains cannot meet, but people can In dealing with complex give-and-take issues, I...
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History has not been particularly kind to all manner of experts and their definitive pronouncements: Anglican Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656) researched the dates of Biblical events and painstakingly subtracted all the Old Testament generations. When he finished his calculations, he proclaimed that the earth was created on October 23, 4004 B.C. at nine o’clock...
Does just creating a product make you entrepreneurial if you never do anything with it? What if you take someone’s product and make it a success? That is not entrepreneurial? At what point then are you no longer an entrepreneur? When are you no longer starting up? The concept of business entrepreneurs leading innovation...
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, and those who do not see.” “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” “Iron rusts from disuse;...
The Third Element could soon siphon off $10.4 TRILLION in oil revenues… and replace 148 billion barrels of black gold. The U.S. government is quietly spending billions to control this rare substance as a matter of national and economic security. The key to the world’s energy needs for the next 50 years… Lies under...