The Federal Reserve's latest plan to buy mortgage-backed securities, unveiled Thursday, is the kind of event that makes an observer of technology investing want to hang up his hat. What can you say about tech stocks that might shed light on a rally that seems driven purely by animal spirits, kindled by the central bank's decision to pump billions

The bulls have it all wrong, at least in the short run. So opines Jason DeSena Trennert, managing partner of Strategas Research Partners in New York. Forget about accelerating earnings. Corporate profit estimates for next year are too high, he says, and companies need more top-line growth. Throw in the weak economic expansion and the so-called

Ben finally got it. With the world soaking in the swamp of recession and our own economy barely limping along and the dreaded fiscal cliff an increasing threat for the coming year, the chairman awoke to the necessity of doing something radically different from the usual give-the-money-and-run. He festooned his latest package of monetary easing

Mother Nature wasn't kind to Compass Minerals International last year.

Concerns about large-scale cuts in Pentagon spending have weighed heavily on defense stocks in the past year, leaving them at rock-bottom valuations. Shares of small defense companies, in particular, have sold off, as investors have tossed out the good along with the bad.

These are times that try an asset manager's soul. The world's economy is a soft-paste porcelain vase set on a wobbly plant stand in the heart of an active earthquake zone. The Middle East is sending out foreshocks of war. The South China Sea is a smoking caldera of tension. Social unrest in the EU threatens tidal waves. And, according to the

Sitting central bankers no longer speak of easy-money policies as "taking out insurance," just as commercial-bank CEOs won't soon be heard admitting that they are dancing to the tune of easy credit "until the music stops." And never again will a senior administration voice utter: "Deficits don't matter."

Given the way these comments from the

You could almost mistake the headquarters of Ted Cronin's firm for a bed and breakfast. A Cape Cod-style house nestled in the lush Green Mountains of Vermont, it's a world away from the concrete canyons of Wall Street.

More than a century after Nordstrom ^[1] 's founding in Seattle, the upscale retailer maintains its Northwest sensibilities, most notably in its patient sales staff and customer-first policies. And management is still a family affair. President Blake Nordstrom is the fourth generation to lead the company.

Even as the retailer expanded eastward, the