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About once a month I 'lecture' my younger brother on how his portfolio performance would improve if he quit tossing in purchases of junky stocks with his generally conservative portfolio. You know what we mean here-a batch of investment grade preferreds and then a couple penny energy stocks tossed in just for the 'fun of it'.  All of a sudden…

The employment report this morning was a reasonably good report--meeting expectations, and while it was not the blow out number that we feared it was good enough to stimulate more selling in equities.It is interesting to not today that the yield curve is flattening--short rates moving higher and the 10 year-30 year moving lower. This is consistent with what we…

The current stock market is about as dangerous as any we have had in the last year. MLP's are bouncing up and down--with no particular area safe (although obviously the usptream MLPs are the most dangerous). It really doesn't matter whether you own the 'best in class' issues or the real junk--losing 10% in a given day is happening to…

Equity markets are finally beginning to accept that interest rates will move higher in September.  While the ADP jobs report came in below expectations today, the ISM non-manufacturing index came in very hot and the PMI Services Index came in above expectations. After the release of this data and bullish talk from a Fed governor the Dow gave back 100…

The best answer we have to the above question is - nothing, except NGL is a master limited partnership (MLP) and sometimes you get painted with the same brush as those you 'hang' out with.  At this time we can find no reason for these shares to be trading at this level--with the current yield now just over 10%.  Certainly there…