Home » Authors » Keenan Hauke

Keenan Hauke

Articles

INVESTING: Don’t be so diversified that you miss the next big thing

Your portfolio is getting thumped lately, but at least you’re taking solace in the fact you bought a few energy stocks over the summer. You feel you have followed the prudent course of advisers everywhere and diversified enough to stay out of trouble. Think again! This is not garden-variety correction, and what we are seeing is just a warm-up for what’s to come. Conventional wisdom from advisers is that you can’t time the market, so don’t try. Instead, spread your…

Read More

INVESTING: Investors: Fear market as you would hungry crocodile

Twenty-one years. Twenty-five years. Sixteen years. This is how long it took the three bear markets over the last 105 years to get back to their pre-bear peaks. We are now more than five years from the peak of the greatest bull market in human history. How much longer will this one take? Judging from the levels of insanity present at prior tops, we could be here a while. It took 25 years to reclaim the 1929 market highs. The…

Read More

INVESTING: Free markets, low taxes power economic engine

The Empire of the Rising Sun has been seeing a lot more sun lately. The Japanese stock market, as measured by the Nikkei Index, bottomed out only a few percentage points higher than the Dow Jones industrial average in March 2003. Since then, our Dow has rebounded 42 percent, but the Nikkei is up 78 percent! While Japan has been a democracy more than 50 years, the culture has not been as individualized as here. There is a socialist flavor…

Read More

How to make money in the bear-market minefield INVESTING Keenan Hauke: How to make money in the bear-market minefield

INVESTING How to make money in the bear-market minefield All year, you’ve been reading my description of what the end of a bull market looks like. Major indexes move higher but fewer and fewer stocks participate in the rally. A case in point: On Sept. 9, the S&P 500 came within two points of its early August high, but 60 percent fewer stocks hit new highs in September than in August. Hmm. Apple Computer is one of those stocks I…

Read More

INVESTING: A small state stock that might be worth a look

I don’t often write about individual stocks, and it’s especially rare for me to discuss small companies. There are two reasons for this. First, a majority of my trading focuses on exchange traded funds, which are baskets of stocks that trade like individual issues. And the second is, individual stocks carry more risk, and I am all about cutting risk as much as possible. Occasionally, a small, relatively unknown company will grab my attention, and I’ll feel the need to…

Read More

INVESTING: Investors beware: More stocks looking bearish

I bet you’d like to know the day this bull market is going to end. You might find it extremely helpful if your crystal ball told you when the S&P 500 was going to reach its top. If you had this information, you would probably hold on to all the stocks you own until the final day, thinking that you will get out of everything right at the top. Unfortunately, market tops don’t work that way. Knowing when the S&P…

Read More

INVESTING: Price controls are not the answer to fuel woes

The cries for rationing are getting louder. About 4 percent of America’s daily oil consumption was taken out by Hurricane Katrina. It will take months to get this supply back, and gas prices at the pump showed immediate reactions. Now with gas over $3 a gallon almost everywhere in the country, some politicians are telling the government to establish price controls and actually take control of the supply chain. The horrors we put ourselves through during the Nixon administration when…

Read More

INVESTING: Strong stocks in strong industries have greatest promise

Let’s get ready to make some money. I know the cocktail party talk is still centered around the crazy real estate world, but nothing beats the stock market if you know where to go. A lot of investors bought into the media hype about selling in May and going away. This easy-to-remember phrase has resonance because, over the last 50 years, stock market performance has been better from November through April than May through October. As an investing strategy, however,…

Read More

INVESTING: Financial stocks lack allure as interest rates increase

Investors in the financial stocks arena are probably nervous that the record string of Federal Reserve interest rate increases will hurt bank earnings. I fall in the d o n ‘t – fi g h t – t h e – trend camp, but there are some interesting situations surfacing. If you are strictly a value investor and I threw this on your plate, you’d be running to buy the stock. A company consistently growing earnings at 12 percent a…

Read More

INVESTING: Powerhouse tech stocks may have more room to run

Technology is cool, especially when you can profit from it in the stock market. There have been all kinds of breakouts in the technology sector the last eight weeks, and with the pullback occurring now, opportunities abound. Let’s start with the big guy, Microsoft. (My fund owns Microsoft.) This stock had been lagging the market this year until it went bananas Aug. 2. The stock broke out that day on almost triple the average volume. It then climbed near $28…

Read More

INVESTING: Thank Apple for putting music industry back on feet

As a tool of creative destruction, the Internet did a job on the music industry. For a few years, the largest consumers of music were obtaining the product for free, and stocks in the sector suffered as a result. Today, the industry is getting back on track, and investors are making money again. Music executives worldwide should be lavishing Steve Jobs of Apple with bottles of champagne and cigars. After courts shut Napster down, other illegal download services popped up…

Read More

INVESTING: Adventurous investors could get thrill riding surf stocks

Surf’s up! Because I love surfing, those words have been music to my ears for more than 25 years. Now, Wall Street is showing some enthusiasm for the sport, too, as well as the culture that surrounds it. The California surf culture has been setting fashion trends across America for decades. The sport of surfing has witnessed consistently strong growth since the Beach Boys and Gidgett exploded into the mainstream in the 1960s. For evidence of the incredible reach of…

Read More

INVESTING: Investment strategies abound, many fraught with risk

One of the advantages of living in the world’s best free-market economy is the incredible number of choices we have. It is astounding how many types of places there are to eat in New York City. Rome has the best Italian food in the world, but that’s all you can get there. In America, you can get nearly the best the entire world has to offer, and people keep coming up with new things all the time. The stock market…

Read More

INVESTING: Performance of stock indexes hasn’t told whole story

The S&P 500 finally broke out of its seven-month trading range, and there are stories coming out that the bull market is on again. To us, the bull market never left. It all depends on your perspective. Since the late 1990s, the structural makeup of the major averages has served to mask the underlying action and confuse the average and professional investor alike. By the spring of 1998, the vast majority of stocks on both the New York Stock Exchange…

Read More

INVESTING: Rising rates could create opportunities for profit

Interest rates are interesting, right? Well, to a market geek like me, maybe. I know the rest of you take a glancing look at borrowing costs maybe once a month, and you might have even stopped doing that, given that rates have been pretty much unchanged over the past year and a half. A quick bond primer: When you watch CNBC and someone says bonds are falling, that means interest rates are rising, which causes bond prices to fall. When…

Read More

INVESTING: Profiting from the current market takes hard work

The stock market is having a great year. (You just checked the latest info, though, and you saw the Dow is down over 4 percent for the year. I must be nuts, right?) I’m not crazy. Remember that since August 2004 I have been pounding the table for the midcap stocks. While the Dow is down 4.5 percent so far in 2005, the midcaps are up 4.01 percent. Throw in a few higher-performing issues, and bam! It’s a great year….

Read More

INVESTING: Embracing China thorny issue for government, markets

International trade issues abound. There are both long- and short-term stock market implications to these deals, along with political and social effects. China is the overwhelming player in most of the stories, but some closer neighbors are also in the game. A major Chinese oil firm called CNOOC made an offer for Unocal, which was in the process of being bought out by Chevron. The CNOOC offer is higher by a few billion dollars, and it is cash, but there…

Read More

INVESTING: If dominoes fall, Dow could crack all-time high this year

Do a quick check on the emotions and thoughts that just went through you after that first sentence. Good. Here are a few guesses as to what you experienced. First, you went through a quick panic, thinking about how much you have in the market and whether it is enough if the Dow really does hit a new high. Then you had a sense of relief because the stock market is such a massively controlling force on our economy that…

Read More

INVESTING: Markets seem to hold bears at bay as bulls run ahead

As this rally hums right along, let’s check under the hood to make sure there aren’t any gremlins lurking that will eat all our profits. We can look at this as a diagnostic check for you engineering types. The sell-off that began in early January for the NASDAQ and in March for the rest of the market bottomed out in mid- to late April, with a mild retest that finished on May 8. This correction brought the major indexes down…

Read More

INVESTING: With oil prices sky high, Hoosier ethanol knows no limit

Oil prices are acting stubborn by staying above $50 a barrel. Our economy is adjusting to these high gas prices, but every consumer in America would like to see some kind of solution. In August, Congress is expected to vote on an energy bill that has some quences for us. The mainstream media will spend most of the time talking about the drilling rights in Alaska, but there is a shorter-term and higher-impact portion of the bill that can offer…

Read More