Forget Jon's Rage: Analyze the Market

(NEWSER) - Jon Stewart, take note: Jim Cramer is not that bad at picking stocks, the New York Times reports. A study of Cramer’s televised market advice shows that the former hedge fund manager beat the market in 2005-07. The raw numbers from the fictional “Cramer portfolio” outperformed the S&P and other indices. With the addition of other factors, the CNBC host was merely so-so. More»

Farhad Manjoo thinks Apple still has nowhere to go but up

(NEWSER) - You might think that with its stock north of $500 a share, after rising 30% in six months, that Apple has peaked financially. But you'd be wrong, writes Farhad Manjoo of Slate . Apple's price-earnings ratio is still a humble 14—cheaper even than Google, Amazon, and even beleaguered Yahoo. And "not only is Apple not peaking, it is likely not even close to reaching its potential earnings," which are almost too vast for investors to comprehend. "The numbers are just too big." More»

Country's 'economic future' unchanged, says investing guru

(NEWSER) - There’s no need to panic about Japanese markets post-earthquake, says Warren Buffett: Such cataclysmic events often create a “buying opportunity,” he tells Reuters from South Korea. “It will take some time to rebuild,” but the market plunge “will not change the economic future of Japan.” Put it this way: “If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them.” More»

Steven Pearlstein: Get in while lots of people are still out

(NEWSER) - Bullish advice today from Washington Post economic columnist Steven Pearlstein: Get back in the stock market, specifically in "shares of large, solid dividend-paying companies." His "gut" tells him the market's pretty much done bottoming out. Why be optimistic? Because "so many other people are so pessimistic." Investors have shifted hundreds of billions from stock mutual funds into safer bond funds, and the resulting bond bubble is going to burst eventually. More»

Market 'genius' also took illegal bribe to tout penny stock

(NEWSER) - Lenny Dykstra, the fraudster Jim Cramer unwittingly turned into a stock-picking star, accepted an illegal bribe to pimp a penny stock on his TheStreet.com newsletter, Randall Lane of the Daily Beast reports. Dykstra secretly accepted $250,000 worth of Automated Vending Technologies shares in exchange for a plug in the newsletter and a promised meeting with Cramer, according to a former adviser to Dykstra, a retired baseball star. More»