Energy Transfer Partners shares have been dogged since last summer, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) charged it with manipulating markets following 2005 hurricanes. Read More

The news keeps getting more disturbing for America’s financial system. Just minutes after the US Federal Reserve slashed rates by half a point this week, the market turned its focus to the following announcement.  Read More

Running with the herd certainly beats trying to run against it—and getting trampled in the process. But it comes with a cost: surrendering your own common sense for “group think” that often makes no real sense at all. Read More

Sixteen years ago, I was fortunate to work on what I still consider to be one of the best guides to understanding the stock market for US investors: Market Timing for the Nineties by Stephen Leeb. At first glance, this book is dated automatically by its title. Its basic premise, however, applies to any decade. Read More

You don’t have to be a professional analyst to perceive the panic in this market. Any company showing any vulnerability to a possible US recession is sold off. Any stock that sells off is at risk of a waterfall drop, as panicky investors leap out before they look to see what caused the selling. And on days when the public is especially pessimistic, virtually every stock takes a hit. Read More

Is energy cheap or dear? Oil prices cut above the once-unthinkable level of $100 a barrel for the first time ever this week. One of the biggest questions as we move into 2008 is what kind of impact that will have on the wider markets and the US economy. Read More

It wasn’t a great year for the market. But 40 of 51 Portfolio holdings are up for the past 12 months. Utility fundamentals strengthened across the board, “green” turned to gold, and we reaped spoils from comeback companies and takeover candidates. Read More

Utility stocks haven’t gone straight to the moon in five years. But they’ve come pretty close: The index of 20 electric utilities traded on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange tripled from late-2002 lows and are 50 percent above their 2000 peak. Read More

Thirty-two Portfolio stocks raised dividends in 2007, with an average increase of 18.1 percent. None reduced dividends, and all put themselves in better positions for future growth. Read More

Rising credit ratings or robust dividend growth, but not both: That’s been the rule for utilities since the 1960s. Last year, however, 142 How They Rate-listed utilities hiked distributions—75 percent of dividend payers—with 61 increasing at least 10 percent. Read More