James Glassman

The stock market has been rising impressively, but practically all I hear these days are complaints about low interest rates. Readers lament that they can make only three-quarters of a point in a money-market fund such as Merrill Lynch Ready Assets, or just 1.3...

Over the past few months, the stock market has put on one of those frequent demonstrations that show exactly why smart investors buy stocks and hold on to them -- or, better yet, why they consistently buy more. The economic news has not been good, with unemployment...

Our story thus far. . . . After rising from 777 in the summer of 1982 to more than 11,000 in the spring of 2000, the Dow Jones industrial average declined for three years in a row, descending to 7524 on March 11, just before the start of the Iraq war. Then stocks...

"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," wrote Tolstoy in "Anna Karenina." You could say the same for stocks. All happy stocks are pretty much alike, while unhappy stocks lose their value for all sorts of reasons -...

Six years ago, after tobacco companies agreed to settle lawsuits filed by the states, the Wall Street Journal published what seemed at the time to be a hilarious parody by Mark Bernstein. It was titled "A Big Fat Target." The parody claimed that junk food sellers...

The war is over, the hummingbirds are back, the dogwood's blooming white and pink. It's spring, and, after a long, hard winter, it's a refreshing and comforting change. So it's time to give your investment portfolio a thorough spring cleaning. Get rid of the mess,...

"Have They No Shame?" screamed the headline of the cover story of one of the magazines, adorned with a picture of five ravenous pigs eating cake amid piles of money. The subhead: "Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than ever. Here's how...

"Have They No Shame?" screamed the headline of the cover story of one of the magazines, adorned with a picture of five ravenous pigs eating cake amid piles of money. The subhead: "Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than ever. Here's how...

The SEC is investigating possible abuses by the "specialist" firms that match buyers and sellers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The probe comes after revelations that the exchange itself had launched an investigation last year that is now reported to...

Although he's in Houston and I'm in Washington without one of those phone cams that the Iraq war made famous, I can see Marshall Adkins jumping up and down with enthusiasm. "Rigs are going to go berserk for the next five or six years!" "Gas is going to be five, six,...

Mutual funds, which were invented roughly 80 years ago and have boomed in the past decade, are a triumph of financial democracy. They give small investors access to the sort of money managers who once worked exclusively for the wealthy. Funds also offer broad...

Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, now HealthSouth. Will the scandals ever end? Frankly, no. There are more than 6,000 companies listed on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange alone, and a few always will be led by unscrupulous managers who lie, cheat and steal. The U.S. has...

As the season for annual meetings begins, activists are presenting shareholders with resolutions seeking social change and better corporate governance. A few of the proposals have merit; most are obnoxious but harmless. And nearly all will be rejected - mainly because...

The entire op-ed page of the New York Times on March 1 was consumed by six pieces under the general heading, "The New AIDS Fight." So far, so good. But take a look

Among financial scholars, it's an article of faith that the vast majority of investors can't beat the stock market regularly. According to the traditional academic literature, if you invest long enough, spread your money around in a diversified portfolio, and hang on...

Three months ago, President Bush proposed reviving the economy with a package that would cut the tax bills of 92 million Americans. The president has had other things on his mind since then, and the opposition of only a few Senators pared the package back in the...

I was shocked and disgusted by an op-ed piece I read today in the New York Times. No, it wasn't by Paul Krugman. It was far more serious: Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, revealing what the headline called "The News We Kept to Ourselves." The news concerned...

Two years ago, journalists - hot for a story - began calling John Banzhaf, the telegenic George Washington University law professor who led the anti-smoking legal crusade from its early stages. "Would tobacco-style lawsuits," he was asked, "now be aimed at food...

Last year, investors pulled $25 billion out of stock mutual funds and added $125 billion to bond mutual funds. You can hardly blame them. It's scary out there, and, as war nears, it's getting scarier. My view, as readers of this column have heard many times, is that...

As war nears, it's become clear that two of its instigators are Jacques Chirac, the president of France, and Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector. If Chirac had stood with the United States and other nations in enforcing Resolution 1441 immediately...

The question I get asked most these days is, "What will be the effect of war with Iraq on the economy and the stock market?" It's a fair question, but it is also disturbing. That's why I was grateful when, during a live discussion Feb. 26 on washingtonpost.com, I...