Private Company

Research, research, research: It is the key to successful investing. The SWOT analysis, which looks at a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, is a model to help you examine all angles of a company and understand its strategic position in the market. Says advisor James Early: “A process you can standardize and apply to all companies is useful to most investors.” Other experts call it a “touchy-feely” model. What’s your thought on SWOT?

Sometimes even Swifties need to take the good with the bad. On August 18, fans tuned in for Taylor Swift's much-anticipated Yahoo Worldwide Live Stream. The next day, cosmetics company Elizabeth Arden blamed its worst quarterly financial results ever on slow sales of celebrity perfumes, especially scents endorsed by Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. It's a reminder that behind every brand is a business working hard to be profitable, and celebrity endorsements can influence success.

The lives of business people and their companies often unfold like dramatic stories, rich with colorful characters and plot twists. Descriptions from these tales can get creative, including everything from “corporate raiders” in the 1980s to the term for today’s hottest tech start-up companies, known as “unicorns.”