Business - Investor's Business Daily

If good things come in small packages, this should be quite a season for holiday gift giving.

The legendary problem of doctors' poor handwriting should become a lesser issue as more health practitioners move to electronic records.

When video sharing Web site Stage6 went live two months ago, DivX (NASDAQ:DIVX - News) executives watched little dots representing new users pop up on a computer monitor in San Diego.

World War III: As the report of the Iraq Study Group is released, it is worth noting that James Baker several times before did the bidding of tyrants and sold out seekers of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

Drug Costs: The incoming speaker wants Congress to come up with cheaper medicine, and fast. A giant pharmaceutical firm has just shown why she's off base.

In what has become a dogfight, American, Continental, United and Northwest all claim to be the best carrier for seven new weekly passenger flights to China.

Cash is king for Chuck Schwartz and Sentinel Small Company Fund.

Energy is perhaps the most basic input to any economy. Each of us burns some form of fuel 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Demand is relentless. How much that demand grows depends on the economy.

Web browsers, biogenetics, iPods -- many shining investment opportunities hinge on new, uncharted technologies, industry sectors or geographic regions.

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU - News), the Web's No. 1 search service in China, plans to expand next year into Japan, where it will compete directly with rivals Google (NASDAQ:GOOG - News) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO - News).

LSI Logic, already strong in the storage chip market, just got much stronger. On Monday, the company revealed plans to buy chipmaker Agere Systems -- catapulting the combined company to perhaps No. 1 in storage.

If you've never heard of Heelys, you probably don't know any 10-year-olds. If you do know any 10-year-olds, you may have heard more about Heelys than you care to.

Johnny Unitas understood that the boss can't be one of the boys -- and on the field he intended to be the boss.

Latin America: Amazing how well totalitarians tend to fare in elections. Venezuela's was a big win for Hugo Chavez that, in the absence of fraud, the world is likely to approve. But that doesn't make it all free or fair.

United Nations: Ambassador John Bolton, along with all he represents, has become the first victim of the new Democratic Congress.

If you're bold enough to pry open your computer, you can bet you will find a chip made by SMSC (NASDAQ:SMSC - News) hidden deep inside.

A minimum wage increase will be among the first things the Democrats tackle when they assume control of Congress next year.

As tamer-than-expected inflation and the Democrats' retaking of Congress vied for investor attention in November, U.S. stock mutual funds notched another monthly gain.

Donald Hodges sees himself as an old-school investor. He uses a go-anywhere strategy, a flexible style that was more common decades ago in the industry.

There might come a day when U.S. investors don't have a hopeless crush on Chinese stocks, but that day won't come soon.

The reason you're reading this is probably because you use IBD to get stock ideas and educate yourself about the stock market.

With carriers looking to the youth market for growth -- and children as young as 6 getting their own handsets -- perhaps it was inevitable that cell phones would become an issue in schools.

Like many in the software business, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR - News) is no stranger to fast growth.

Clothing retailers are finding high tech fits especially well during the holidays.

Despite a humble upbringing, few social graces and little formal education, Frick became one of the most powerful men of his time. Like fellow steel magnate and one-time partner Andrew Carnegie, he helped build the foundation for turning post-Civil War America into a major world power.

War On Terror: Hezbollah supporters flood the streets of Beirut in an attempt to shut down Lebanon and force its freely elected government to resign. The West's motto: Don't just do something, sit there.

Iraq: With a blue-ribbon panel's recommendations due any day, the U.S. appears to be edging closer to talking to Iran about our getting out of Iraq. We've been down this road before, so we ought to know better.

The best performing tech group this year is a field of 22 publicly traded stocks most people would have a tough time identifying.