U.S. News: Those So-Called Boring Stocks Are Pretty Exciting

By SIMON CONSTABLE

With summer just around the corner, it's easy to yearn for a trip to the beach and perhaps a ride on the roller coaster, like the famed Cyclone at Brooklyn's Coney Island. Whatever else it may be, the Cyclone will certainly give riders a thrill. If that floats your boat, then go for it. But what you shouldn't do is to seek out such thrills from investing.

Many people do, and it's a mistake. There are better, less stressful alternatives. Read more here.

TheStreet: Millennial Educators: Add Finance Classes for Elementary School Kids

By SIMON CONSTABLE

So much for the reputation of millennials being slackers. 

Teachers who were born between 1980 and 2000 are far more likely than their older peers to want financial literacy education added to the elementary school curriculum. 

It's not by a small margin either, with 62% of the younger group advocating the change, versus 51% of non-millennials. The older group tends to believe such education should be conducted primarily at home. Read more here.

pixabay free images, CC BY-SA 4.0, 

via Wikimedia Commons

Forbes: The Three Questions Bad Managers Ask Themselves Each Day

By SIMON CONSTABLE

At business school, our professors taught us that we’d be much more likely to achieve our goals if every day we just did something small towards meeting them.

It was as simple as asking yourself the same question every day: “What one thing can I do to inch myself closer to where I want to be?” If you keep asking that and then doing something in that vein, then eventually you’ll get there. That’s the theory and pretty much the practice.

The same is true for candidates to be the “world’s worst boss.” To make this easier for you I have developed three questions for you to ask yourself at the beginning of each workday. Read more here.

Photo by Jordan Bebek on Unsplash

Forbes: A Change Plan You Can Believe In

By SIMON CONSTABLE

A lot people and companies say they want to change, but then it quickly becomes clear that they don’t want to do anything different to make that change happen. That factor is at the root of a lot of personal and business problems.

Maybe you get stuck in a career you don’t like. Maybe you see the changes that are disrupting your industry, but you get stuck as opportunities dwindle. This happened to people who worked in book stores as Amazon revolutionized the way readers purchase books. When brick-and-mortar retailers finally wised up, it was too late. That’s business!

But for people, it is never too late to change. The only real issue is that to break free of the old and find something new requires an approach that you likely haven’t tried previously. Read more here.

Barron's: It’s Time to Pump Up Your Oil Exposure

By SIMON CONSTABLE

The price of crude oil tumbled to a low of $26 a barrel in February from more than $100 in mid-2014. The spot price of West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $37.26 on Thursday.

Some worry that oil prices could fall again, if heavy production continues in the U.S., Canada, and Kurdish-controlled Iraq and a weak world economy reduces demand. But when all of the risks are weighed, it’s hard not to draw the opposite conclusion: It’s far more likely that crude supplies will tighten, driving prices higher. Investors could play the trend by buying crude-oil futures or shares of the United States Oil exchange-traded fund (ticker: USO), which tracks crude prices. Read more here.

U.S. News: Say Goodbye to Utilities Stocks as We Know Them

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Watch out! Those "safe" utility stocks that you might be relying on for juicy dividends likely won't be so reliable forever. 

The heavily regulated industry is ripe for technological disruption in the same way that the music business, the news media and book publishing were upended over the last couple of decades. As with all disruption, there will be winners and losers. 

The change could be great for consumers, but investors need to be aware of how it might alter the relative attractiveness of different types of stocks. Read more here.

Forbes: For The Ideal Job, Look In The Mirror

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Getting a job of any sort following the financial crisis has been less than easy for many people, let alone landing the perfect position. For some, it has been a time when ideas of ever landing that dream role have been abandoned.

Still, now is the time to rekindle the hope that you can find what you want.

But first, you need to stop looking in the usual places. If such dream jobs ever existed inside a corporation, they almost certainly never appeared in display adverts and they weren’t posted on job boards.

So what should you do? Where should you look for that ideal role?

Try the mirror.

That’s the way one college professor Britain sees it. She wrote a book about how graduates created their own ideal roles. Read more here.