Investing

Stocks took another beating last week as the scope of the coronavirus shutdown started to sink in. The S&P 500 was down 15% last week with most of that coming on Monday after the Fed’s emergency rate cuts. Our accounts performed much better than that, but were...

Stocks have gone up a lot in this expansion but so have earnings – on an almost one for one basis. But earnings are volatile and we’ve seen this plenty of times before. In this article at Project Syndicate, Robert Shiller compares the current period to the 1920s and other...

Its fairly common for people to boast about their “winners”. Happens in all facets of life. I'm sure you have heard it… “My kid made Varsity basketball!" (and he's got a solid C average). "I won a 4 team parlay Sunday!" (and lost money every other week this season). And...

Tuesday's election result was about as expected as you can get in markets. The accepted wisdom going into the election was that Democrats would take control of the House of Representatives and Republicans would retain control of the Senate. Sure, there were scattered articles by Democratic partisans predicting -...

One of my favorite financial writers, Edward Chancellor, has posted this article over at ThinkMarkets, an NYU economic blog. Chancellor is the author of Devil Take The Hindmost: A History Of Financial Speculation, by far the most literate book ever written on financial manias. Yes, Chancellor says, the US is...

How do you know if your financial adviser is acting in your best interest? It’s ashamed that the question even has to be asked—but it does. Are you truly working with a financial adviser, or are you dealing with a financial salesman? In its simplest form, a financial...

Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, has an intriguing opinion article in the Sunday New York Times about the link between big business and fascism. He makes the case that a lack of anti-trust enforcement has contributed to the rise of populism around the world. I don't know...

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the number of businesses that will not reopen after the coronavirus pandemic—businesses that were only surviving because customers walked in the door everyday—businesses that failed when customers were required to stay home. COVID-19 isn’t the cause of these business...

Howard Gold had an article last week at Marketwatch: Why is the US stock market weak? Because the economy is too strong. What does it mean for the economy to be "too strong"? Isn't growth supposed to be good for stocks? Gold's reasoning is that Fed tightening is driving up the...

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my kneesI went to the crossroad, fell down on my kneesasked the lord above "have mercy, now save poor bob, if you please"Yeoo, standin' at the crossroad, tried to flag a rideooo eee, i tried to flag a ridedidn't...