If you're at the beach house this weekend and Uncle Ned tries to tell you stocks are a good long-term investment, counter with this, then have another strong margarita: Adjusted for inflation and dividends, the return on the S&P 500 was negative for the decade that ended on June 30. If my calculations are correct, [...]

Rob Curran of Dow Jones Newswires reports: What this market needs is a strong dose of the heebie jeebies, some traders say: a good, old-fashioned cathartic spike on the VIX coinciding with a purging S&P 500 selloff. That, and only that, they say, would clear the market’s constitution for an intermediate-term recovery. The VIX is where? NOOOOOO!!!!!! [...]

Annelena Lobb reports: The U.S. dollar got some oomph ahead of July 4, surging — patriotically, even — against its major rivals. The euro recently bought $1.5756, from $1.5880 late Monday. The dollar changed hands at 106.41 yen, from 105.99 yen, and at 1.0217 Swiss francs, from 1.0142 francs. The British pound traded at $1.9851, from $1.9928. [...]

Shell-shocked investors looking anywhere for returns have looked into any number of assets by now — corn, soybeans, oil. George Nichols at IndexUniverse is checking out timber. “Timber products touch our lives on a daily basis, though few people have ever considered timber as a potential investment. That is gradually changing, however, as more investors [...]

The reliably quotable J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon went to the Aspen Ideas festival this week. The festival, hosted by Atlantic magazine and the Aspen Institute, featured an interview between Charlie Rose and Dimon. Dimon, whose firm caught, flayed and ate Bear Stearns, had several interesting observations during the wide-ranging conversation. Here are some [...]

John McCain today said patriotism is putting country before all else. On Wall Street, that place of priority is usually reserved for money. Let's try and make peace and put country and money back together, where they belong. In that spirit, here are four for the Fourth. 1. Patriotism and the financials: Shortly after mocking the futility of [...]

In comedy, timing is everything. So why not in mergers? We were reminded of that Wednesday as we talked with someone close to Microsoft's zany on-again, off-again courtship of Yahoo. Yahoo dodged every Microsoft approach as if the process was some kind of $40 billion-plus version of the old videogame Frogger–leaping between shareholders, Carl Icahn [...]

Our earlier post on Penn national and the failure rate of leverage buyouts got us to thinking: What are the largest announced LBOs from 2007 that ultimately ended up on the scrap heap? So our friends at FactSet MergerMetrics put together this list of 15 biggest and now-busted announced LBOs from 2007: Target Acquirer Announced Withdrawn Transaction [...]