investments

It took a special kind of incompetence to get to where we are today. After years of "producing" billions of dollars using sophisticated financial instruments, investment banks and nominal retail banks alike got crushed by the consequences of excessive leverage and convoluted investments.

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to forget what life was like before the Internet.

"As stock markets slid in March, Judy Brady lay awake at night thinking about her portfolio. 'My retired friends who had all CDs and gold, and they were still making money, and my investments just kept going and going,' she said. 'I thought: I can't afford to lose all this.' So the 70-year-old retiree in Schaumburg, Ill., sold most of her stocks."  -- The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2009

We all love great, profitable companies, but the managers to whom we entrust our investments could be robbing our companies blind in a completely legal way. Research now suggests that high executive compensation is one of the clearest signs of a company's long-term underperformance. That means that if you're looking for great stock market gains, then you have to dig much deeperthan the traditional financial metrics. As time goes by, these overpaid managers will kill your returns if you don't spot them.

Boycott? What boycott? Judging by its most recent quarterly results, it looks like Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) is doing just fine, despite last summer's highly publicized furorover CEO John Mackey's views on health care, which led to some vocal protests regarding Whole Foods stores. So much for those threats.

It's tough to beat gold, isn't it? There's no better medal to win in the Olympics. For many people, there's no better component of jewelry. And when it comes to investing, quite a few folks think that other investments just aren't as safe or lucrative.

The hottest investments in 2009 have been, in no particular order: