Financial Team

Every minute on Wall Street, pundits, traders and investors are looking for the ever-elusive buy signal. A Golden Cross, the Butterfly Reversal, the Climax Low — all are colorfully named signposts that supposedly will lead investors in the right direction if only they heed them. But there’s one indicator with a pretty good track record that almost anyone can follow: Buy a stock soon after that company’s executives do.

Corporate insiders — such as the CEO or members of boards of directors — have been on a buying binge. In August, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was gyrating by hundreds of points each day, officers and directors bought $1.2 billion of their own company’s stock, the most since November 2008.

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A recent study by Mintel Comperemedia, a mouthful of a marketing research firm, found that only one in five Americans would be willing to pay a $2 monthly debit card fee. A full 56% said they would use a different payment method, were they confronted with the fee. $2 is not that much! But consumers won the battle over debit card fees, so the point is moot, right?

Sort of. With customers and regulators patting themselves on the back in post-victorious fashion, some have failed to notice that banks are charging all sorts of innovative, strange fees.

Regardless of whether we think about banking fees in the right way, banks know that they have to tiptoe around the issue. Over the course of the year, banks have created fees for all sorts of services, some of which dont really make sense — but they wont get you upset because they arent for your debit card. L

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