Jim Pearce

Jim Pearce is the Chief Investment Strategist of Personal Finance, our flagship publication, and manages two trading services, PF Pro and Mayhem Trader. He began his career as a stockbroker in 1983 and over the years has managed client investment portfolios for major banks, brokerage firms, and investment advisors. Jim earned a BA from The College of William & Mary and the CFP designation from the College of Financial Planning.

Analyst Articles

Usually when one company acquires another, the share price of the acquired business increases while the acquirer’s stock value decreases to reflect the premium paid by the buyer to get the deal done. However, every once in a while a transaction makes so much sense that both company’s see their share prices rise, such as the situation involving last week’s rumor that QUALCOMM (QCOM) has reached an agreement to acquire NXP Semiconductors (NXPI). Read More

Two weeks ago we criticized the appalling lack of accountability by senior management at Wells Fargo (“Wells Fargo Sins, But…”). Looks as though others agree with me. Just yesterday Wells CEO John Stumpf morphed from bank executive into a blue-suited, silver-haired piñata before the House Financial Services Committee. And not only has… Read More

Earlier this month Argos Therapeutics (ARGS) participated in the annual “NewsMakers in the Biotech Industry Conference” hosted by BioCentury, an industry media and publishing company. The purpose of the conference is to bring together corporate executives, journalists and investment banking firms to discuss current issues and new developments in… Read More

The Rapids Profits Matrix (“RPM”) is quite complex, but we make it easy for you to use. RPM employs three complimentary steps to help you profit. The first is a set of expert calculations that have beaten the S&P 500 for decades. The second is a proprietary tool that gets… Read More

I am often asked why our algorithmic, or formula-based approach to picking stocks for Systematic Wealth, works so much better than most other investing systems. The answer is complicated, but also helpful in understanding why a passive approach to investing in the stock market will no longer work as well… Read More

Martin Zweig may not have been born a great investor, but it took him less time than perhaps any other guru we follow to start making himself into one.Thanks to a birthday gift from his uncle of six shares of General Motors stock, Zweig was just 13 years old when… Read More

Say the words “great stock market strategist” to most people and the image that probably pops into their heads is some variation of Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas’s slick, egomaniacal, Armani-wearing, greed-is-good-preaching character in the movie Wall Street. They’ll likely envision a smooth-talking wheeler-dealer, someone with more cash than he knows… Read More

In his 1996 book What Works on Wall Street, James O’Shaughnessy detailed what may be the most in-depth quantitative stock market study in history, one in which he used Standard & Poor’s high-powered Compustat computer database to back-test the performance of dozens of stock-picking approaches over more than four decades,… Read More

When it comes to the great Peter Lynch, you don’t need to look too far past these three pairs of numbers to understand why he’s known as one of history’s greatest investors:8 and 29.2. From 1977 to 1990, the period that Lynch oversaw Fidelity Investments’ Magellan Fund, the S&P 500… Read More