Stocks to Watch

My wife and I bought a home a few months ago and I was curious about how buying a home affected our credit score. In the course of researching my score, I was looking for a way to get a free copy of my credit score, but I didnt want to sign up for a free trial service. There are a couple companies around right now which offer free credit scores and dont require a credit card (many free trials require a credit card and they automatically enroll you in their credit monitoring service which charges a monthly fee if you dont opt-out before the free trial ends).

The company I used is Credit Karma, which offers a free credit score without requiring you to input your credit card information.

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Mortgage rates held fairly steady this week, amid mixed economic reports that kept them hovering near their all-time lows.

Average interest rates on the standard 30-year fixed-rate mortgage eased back to 4.11 percent, down from 4.12 percent last week, according to the weekly Freddie Mac rate survey. Interest rates on 15-year fixed-rate loans, which have been increasingly popular among refinancers, edged up to 3.38 percent, up from 3.37 percent last week.   Meanwhile, initial interest rates on five-year Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) backed off to 3.01 percent, down from 3.06 percent last week. All three briefly surged last week after dropping to their lowest rates ever the week before.   Factors influencing rates included a report by the Federal Reserve of an overall expansion of economic activity in September, but with dimming outlooks for certain areas of business.   Full post…

Both the NYSE Energy Sector Index (^NYE) and the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index (^NEX) have fallen further than the Dow over the last six months.

The Dow has shed about 6% in that time as volatility has reigned.

The Energy Sector Index fell about 15% while the New Energy Index fell more than 35%.

That doesn’t really foster confidence.

But the truth is energy shares — almost across the board — are currently trading at a discount.

And if you’re in the mood for some easy longer-term gains (and even dividends), you’d be well advised to go bargain hunting over the next few weeks.

Good for the Goose

If you’ve seen some of these recent headlines, you know the energy sector hasn’t been all ho-hum:

• Sinopec (NYSE: SHI) Acquires Daylight (TSE: DAY) for $2.2B in Cash

• Superior Energy (NYSE: SPN) Merges with Complete (NYSE: CPX) in $6.2B Deal

• Statoil (NYSE: STO) Pays $4.4B for Brigham Exploration (NASDAQ: BEXP)

• BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) Buys Petrohawk for $12.1B

• Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMP) Pays $21.1B for El Paso (NYSE: EP)

That last one is one of the biggest energy deals in history. And

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Blackrock’s iShares unit, the world’s biggest ETF firm, rolled out four minimum-volatility equity funds that canvass virtually the investment universe in developed as well as emerging markets, giving investors a way to mitigate risks associated with investing in four broad and widely used MSCI indexes.

Products designed to manage volatility have grown in popularity in the choppy recovery since the market crash of 2008-2009. The

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NEIL IRWIN has written a piece in the Washington Post today on the case for optimistic pessimism. Things are now so bad, he writes, that they’re unlikely to get much worse. There’s a narrative within the piece that seems right to me: essentially, that the fundamentals point toward a steady if slow recovery in the absence of another large shock, like a European collapse. Having said that, this seems like a fundamentally flawed view of the economy:

The U.S. economy has been through a lot in the past few months — an unprecedented downgrade of the government’s credit rating, a debt crisis in Europe that threatens to spread across the Atlantic, and a steep decline in financial markets. Yet most economic indicators have pointed to continued, albeit slow, growth.

It isn’t the resilience of the U.S. economy. Rather, it’s a sign of how bad things have already become. Many of

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CINCINNATI – Apple expects great crowds beginning on Friday as its newest iPhone 4S goes on sale.

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