The rule currently being considered by the SEC to prevent illegal ......... trading activities is by no means foolproof: imposing a deadline that a trade must be received by 4 p.m. EST by the mutual fund company would not prevent it from conspiring with traders to manipulate the deadline.

Predictions have prompted investors to take a ......... on all manner of podcasting businesses;more than $40 million has gone into the sector in the last two years, yet many podcast businesses are trying to make a buck with a mostly untested business — selling airtime to advertisers in a medium that hasn't yet established a set of common measurement metrics.

In the investing world, the ......... instinct is often blamed for unsubstantiated rallies or sell-offs; but we are, after all, social animals, and many aspects of that mentality are beneficial.

Defense stocks should continue to ......... in 2007: Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Raytheon Co., and General Dynamics Corp. shares are all up around 33% over the year, and according to LMT spokesman Thomas Jurkowsky, they "certainly don't foresee any change".

Today, we are living in a transition period to a new ......... defined by global competition, rampant change, faster flow of information, increasing business complexity, and pervasive globalization; the pace of change is so rapid that it has taken a different type of firm to be dominant and marks an entirely new era of business.

In periods of depressed stock valuation and sluggish economic times, unscrupulous venture capitalists — often referred to as ......... capitalists — often take advantage of entrepreneurs.

Proponents of the ......... effect argue that that is when some of the greatest crashes in stock market history, including 1929's Black Tuesday and the 1987 stock market crash, occurred; while statistical evidence doesn't support the phenomenon that stocks trade lower then, the psychological expectations of the effect still exist.

Wall Street financial analysts are bullish on the proposed merger between auto maintenance giant Jiffy Lube and fast food bluechip McDonalds; this deal has ......... written all over it — just in economics of scale the merger is bound to increase the value of the combined stock by a factor of five.

Product line ......... is a powerful technique to improve profits, free valuable resources, and simplify operations by examining product lines to eliminate or outsource products that are problem prone, have low sales, have excessive overhead demands, have limited future potential, or may really be losing money.

Six company and three gold ......... stocks, including Boeing, General Motors, and Pegasus Gold, have the potential of providing rewarding returns despite their lackluster performance in recent months; the market has danced on without them, but someday they could be the life of the party.