Author: Jenna Lofton

Updated: May 6, 2026 Key Takeaways Stock prices are driven by one thing above everything else: the gap between what investors expect and what actually happens. Earnings beats move stocks more than earnings growth alone. Macroeconomic conditions — GDP growth, interest rates, inflation, and unemployment — set the ceiling for how high the overall market…

Updated: May 6, 2026 Key Takeaways Your credit score is calculated from five factors: payment history (35%), credit utilization (30%), length of credit history (15%), types of credit (10%), and new credit (10%). Payment history is the single biggest lever. One 30-day late payment can drop a good score by 60 to 110 points overnight…

Updated: May 6, 2026 Key Takeaways Selling decisions should be driven by your original investment thesis, not by price movement alone. When the thesis breaks, sell — regardless of whether you are up or down. Profit-taking, portfolio rebalancing, and tax-loss harvesting are three distinct strategies with different triggers. Conflating them leads to poor timing decisions….

Updated: May 6, 2026 Key Takeaways A bear flag is a bearish continuation pattern that forms during a downtrend. It consists of a sharp price decline (the flagpole) followed by a brief consolidation that slopes slightly upward (the flag). The upward slope of the flag is a temporary pause, not a reversal. It reflects short-covering…

The first time a position hit its trailing stop loss in my Power Gauge Report portfolio, I almost didn’t sell. The stock had dropped but “felt” like it was about to bounce. I told myself I’d give it one more week. I sold anyway because the system said sell. The stock dropped another 15% the…

Every Sunday morning I spend about 15 minutes in the Power Gauge members area before my coffee gets cold. That’s it. No spreadsheets, no complicated analysis, no staring at charts for hours. Just a quick routine I’ve built up over the past four years of subscribing to Marc Chaikin’s Power Gauge Report. I’m going to walk…