James Glassman

As the stock market falls for the third straight year — something that hasn’t happened since 1941 — I get asked three questions: 1. When will it end? 2. Why is it happening? 3. What should I do? The third question is by far the most important, and...

Al Frank, who died of cancer April 25 at age 72 in Carmel, Calif., was one of the very best stock pickers in America. He never sought the spotlight and few investors recognize his name, but he deserves a place in the investing pantheon with gods like Warren Buffett,...

When you own a stock, you become a partner in a business. And the most important characteristic of a business — a good one, anyway — is that it grows. Over time its revenue and profits rise, and your stock becomes worth a lot more. The prospect of strong...

After any breakdown of a public institution, politicians feel the urge to “fix” things so it doesn’t happen again. Often, however, the cure is worse than the disease. That’s the case with the proposed remedies following the collapse of Enron....

For the past 10 months, the attorney general of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has been investigating Merrill Lynch & Co. Although he hasn’t charged anyone with a crime, he has accused the firm of misleading customers by hyping stocks to win investment-banking...

A visitor to Tokyo just can’t believe that this is what a decade of stagnation looks like. Restaurants are full, shops are bustling, construction cranes are all over the place. Yet on Thursday, a government report showed that Japan’s economy had...

Could the typical small investor have discovered a year ago that Enron Corp. was on the brink of disaster? It’s highly unlikely. Still, if you looked for the right thing, you never would have bought Enron stock in the first place. The right thing is cash. The...

To many investors, the lesson of the Enron scandal is never to trust a company’s earnings reports and balance sheets again. But that’s nonsense. Yes, there are unscrupulous corporate managers and auditors out there, but the best way to protect yourself is...

It was Ronald Reagan who said that “economists are people who see something work in practice and wonder if it would work in theory.” I think this is a wonderful quote. And what is working in practice — or has been working for the last two decades...

When shares of Enron plunged from $84 earlier this year to practically zero, thousands of the company’s employees lost not just their jobs but also most of the value of their 401(k) retirement accounts. For the average employee, Enron stock represented...

In the next few days, the Wall Street Journal will announce the results of its Investment Dartboard contest for the second half of 2001. In the competition, Journal editors ask four market professionals each to choose a single stock for the six months ahead. Their...

Leafing through a recent edition of the Value Line Investor Survey, an excellent research service with a track record for prudence and accuracy, I ran across what looked like the perfect company. Its profits were rising strongly and consistently. It had a solid...

Unlike Emma Bovary and Scarlett O’Hara, Erin Brockovich is a real, live person. She’s a 41-year-old mother of three with a gift for publicity. Julia Roberts won an Oscar playing her in the eponymous movie about a legal assistant who got 650 prospective...

First, a confession. Nearly 20 years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties, I got a chance for the first time to manage my own tax-deferred retirement portfolio. I was confronted with the same choices as the 42 million Americans who now have 401(k) plans and the millions...

The Sept. 11 terror attacks have spawned a new clich

Mary Kay Ash, one of America’s great entrepreneurs, died Thanksgiving Day at 83 in Dallas. She was 45 when she started a company (with just $5,000) to sell cosmetics through home and office demonstrations by sales reps – the best of whom were awarded pink...

In the stock market (as in much of life), the beginning of wisdom is admitting your ignorance. One of the many things you cannot know about stocks is exactly when they will go up or go down. Over the long term, stocks generally rise at a nice pace. History shows they...

Warren Buffett, who was probably the greatest investor of the 20th century, is fond of quoting the salacious actress Mae West as saying, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” In the market, such a motto would lead you to avoid diversification and...