NEW YORK (Reuters) – With the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index off to its best January in 15 years, it’s getting tougher to find cheap stocks in the United States. But it’s not much of a problem in Europe.

Sovereign default worries have made the region’s shares the cheapest they’ve been to American investors since 2004.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – With the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index off to its best January in 15 years, it’s getting tougher to find cheap stocks in the United States. But it’s not much of a problem in Europe.

Sovereign default worries have made the region’s shares the cheapest they’ve been to American investors since 2004.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It was just last summer that Charlotte Perkins made the hardest decision of her life as she and her husband Jim were caught in the vise of the housing bust.

Wanting to downsize their lives as they headed toward retirement, they bought a new house in Mesa, Arizona, before they sold the old one, also in Mesa. Their previous home had been appraised at nearly $400,000 at the height of the market, but as the housing crisis ravaged Arizona, they were told they’d be lucky to get $200,000 for it.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The stock market regularly gets caught up in curious fads. One month it’s Chinese Internet stocks, the next it’s solar energy producers, and the next it’s daily-deal sites like Groupon.

But maybe the most unexpected fad of 2011: utilities stocks. The plodding, reliable electricity companies that your grandmother has had in her portfolio for half a century? They caught fire, thanks to investors’ taste for safety and stability in an uncertain world. In fact they were the best-performing sector last year: Utilities funds were up 8.7 percent, according to fund-tracking firm Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company, crushing a flat S&P 500.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In 2000, Carole Brody Fleet was part a group of one million people just like her. By 2006, she was one of two million. Over the next couple of decades, she’ll become one of 20 million.

But it’s a group she never wanted to be a part of.

She’s a baby boomer widow, having lost her beloved husband Mike to Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2000. It was an emotionally tumultuous time, when she felt utterly lost and “completely overwhelmed”. But what hit her maybe most of all: The financial realities of facing life without her longtime partner.

NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) – If you’re an investor in the
stock market, you should cower in fear of Barry Uhl.

Not that he’s a mean or imposing guy. The 59-year-old is
perfectly pleasant and soft-spoken, a branch manager for
discount brokerage Scottrade in Fremont, California who
daydreams about volunteering with animals for the Humane
Society.

Jan 10 (Reuters) – Ask any money manager about people who
don’t invest in stocks, and the answer is probably a little
condescending. They just don’t understand the market; they’re
not thinking about the long-term; they’re unsophisticated,
preferring to stick their money under a mattress.

But Diane Casaretti is no rube. She’s a successful
marketing rep in Stamford, Connecticut, and in her career has
worked with many Wall Street banks and brokerage houses. But
she’s made a conscious, rational decision: Stocks just aren’t
for her.

Jan 5 (Reuters) – Corporate America’s worst nightmare lives
in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, loves browsing in flea markets
and has a lop-eared brown and white pet rabbit named Crackers.

Meet Molly Katchpole. The 22-year-old Washington, D.C.
resident has recently tangled with a couple of billion-dollar
corporations, and cowed them into submission, without breaking
a sweat.

By Chris Taylor

(Reuters) – Corporate America’s worst nightmare lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, loves browsing in flea markets and has a lop-eared brown and white pet rabbit named Crackers.

Meet Molly Katchpole. The 22-year-old Washington, D.C. resident has recently tangled with a couple of billion-dollar corporations, and cowed them into submission without breaking a sweat.

29 (Reuters) – Annie Scranton has a little
problem.

The founder and president of New York City’s Pace Public
Relations is a successful and sober-minded individual, but when
it comes to this one thing, she has a definite compulsion. It’s
the “Like” button on Facebook — she just can’t stop clicking
it.

“I’m totally obsessed with it,” says the 31 year old. “Just
like a lot of people I know. My friends and I call it
‘Like-Bombing’, where you go online and like everything.”