James Glassman

President Bush announced an economic recovery plan built on tax cuts. A Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, also faced with national security threats and a big stock-market decline, came to the same conclusion. On Dec. 14, 1962, JFK urged Congress to ”reduce...

Now that President Bush has named his new economic team, he’s expected to turn his attention to a stimulus package. I hope not. Growth, yes. Stimulus, no. “Stimulus” implies a goose to the economy – or, more politely, the quick boost you get...

My favorite curmudgeon, the Scrooge of Stocks, is a former National Geographic photographer named Charles Allmon. He lives in Potomac, manages about $100 million for clients, and is the founder and editor of Growth Stock Outlook, now in its 38th year. When I first met...

In January 1995, I started offering readers a list of 10 stocks to consider for the year ahead, making my selections from the choices of market pros whose opinions I value. In five years of this exercise, my lists returned an annual average of 24 percent, compared...

With phony profits now expected to top $9 billion, WorldCom, Inc, the Mississippi-based telecommunications company, has earned the distinction of committing the worst accounting fraud in American history. As a result, investors have marked down WorldCom’s stock...

Tom Daschle tried to turn the election into a referendum on the economy, blasting the Bush administration for “the worst performance in terms of real economic growth that we have seen in the last 50 years.” However hyperbolic, he raised a paradox: If the...

Despite the miserable performance of the stock market in recent years, the number of Americans owning mutual funds continues to rise. At last report, 48 million families owned stock funds. That’s roughly half of all U.S. households – up from only about...

In turbulent times, tastes typically turn to the tried and true. For instance, investors usually flee volatile stocks in favor of shares in the big drug companies, which keep churning out good profits, whatever the economic conditions. After all, people get sick...

“There remains an illusion among investors, especially professional money managers and analysts, that with enough digging and number-crunching, uncertainty can be conquered.” Unfortunately, it can’t. That’s the thrust of one of the best essays...

Not to take anything away from Jimmy Carter, the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a far better ex-president than president, but, when it comes to saving lives, no one can compete with Norman Borlaug. Norman who? Borlaug is one of the great humanitarians of the 20th...

A stock-picking system that can consistently beat the market has always been the Holy Grail of investors – desirable, tempting, but unobtainable. Investing just couldn’t be that easy. But a few years ago, James P. O’Shaughnessy, a financial adviser...

In the good old days, foreign stocks provided balance. Typically, if U.S. stocks were having a bad year, non-U.S. stocks would be having a good year. One study found that for the 25 years between 1970 and 1995, foreign stocks beat U.S. by a wide margin in 12 years,...

Harvey Pitt had to go. He had lost the credibility to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, President Bush should move swiftly to replace him. The SEC has too much on its plate for dawdling. What the country needs is someone who has the guts and stature to...

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Money magazine recently crunched the numbers and found the 30 stocks that had returned the most, in price and dividends, since the magazine’s founding in August 1972. The No.1 stock was, of all things, an airline –...

You probably know the old joke: “How do you make a small fortune in the stock market?” “Start with a large fortune.” After three years in which the market has lost between a third and a half of its value (depending on your favorite index), this...

“My message is as follows: stocks stink and will continue to do so until they’re priced appropriately, probably somewhere around Dow 5000, S&P 650, or Nasdaq God knows where.” That’s what Bill Gross, the usually mild-mannered managing...

At a time when more than 8 million Americans are unemployed, business investment has stalled and the recovery is still tentative, Congress is considering a tax hike. Even more surprising, the misguided proposal is sponsored by Republican Rep. Bill Thomas of...

Now in his 12th year, Will Danoff is running Fidelity Contrafund, and, as usual, he is running it brilliantly. In 1996, I conducted one of those exercises to which idle minds are often prone, attempting to find the best core mutual fund – that is, a fund that...

If you’re thinking of bailing out of the stock market, you’re not alone. Frantic investors are moving their money out of stocks and into bonds and money-market funds – that is, out of equity and into debt. Investing demands choosing, and, instead of...

If the current bear market hurts, it should. It’s the fourth-worst in modern market history. But here’s balm for aching portfolios: The smart folks at Sanford Bernstein & Co., a value-oriented investment-management firm, tell us that “the key...

The test of a good system is not whether failures occur but whether they are remedied with speed and certainty. Despite the hysteria generated by media and politicians, the U.S. securities-trading system has clearly met that test. Since a series of corporate...

In what may be the best signal yet that the stock market has hit bottom and is on its way back up, this week I am going to write about bonds. Regular readers know that I am not fond of bonds as long-term investments. History has convinced me that they return far less...

If you are having a tough time deciding whether to dump a stock you own, don’t despair. You aren’t alone. In investing, nothing is harder. Nothing. Some people offer a simple formula — such as, always sell a stock if it has dropped 20 percent or if...

For years, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer was noteworthy for being both exceptionally witty and consistently wrong. Times have changed. The newsletter, edited by James Grant, who has written wonderful books on such topics as the life of Bernard Baruch and the...