During this century’s first decade, investors had to cope with the uncertainties surrounding 9/11; huge corporate failures
including Enron, Worldcom, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers; and volatility wrought by both the tech and housing
bubbles.
Gold has maintained its long-term bull-market run that began in 2001, and it doesnâ??t look like any major interruption is coming soon.
The word “tax” tends to immediately raise the blood pressure of most Americans. And while the purpose of most
taxes is to raise revenue for the assessing government body, taxes can also be targeted toward changing individual and corporate
behavior.
One of the strongest messages the broad market is sending us today is that investors are looking for liquidity.
Macroeconomic forecasting is a tough â??science.â?? One may have the economy completely right, but that doesnâ??t mean it will make you any money as an investor.
As if Wall Street needs another black eye, an expanding probe into insider trading threatens to elevate public cynicism
over whether there’s a level playing field in public markets and raise skepticism about the ability of regulators to
police them.
The market often stays wrong much longer than the early investors stay solvent.
Making investment decisions based on where a stock price has been in the past or betting on where it may go in the future is futile and foolish unless the investor has determined the value of the stock.
For a while, everyone seemed to think the iPhone was unassailable, but Motorola, Google and Verizon are about to give it their best shot. And investors are placing their bets now.
The early signs point to meek efforts by the Obama administration to address gaping regulatory issues.
If I were working with the SEC, I would exercise some caution before issuing new regulations about these dark pools.
The financial media have the corks ready to pop as the Dow Jones industrial average re-crosses what pundits claim is the â??psychologically importantâ?? 10,000 level.
The two largest stock market crashes occurred in October.
Who is “investing” in these stocks and why? It is safe to say they are not
investors who have done the exhaustive work of valuing the assets and liabilities, who then reached a conclusion that they
were getting good value for their money.
Hello, operator? Yes, we seem to have a disconnect. Everyone still has their foul-weather gear on, but the stock market
is calling for blue skies. Can you try the line again, please?
Nowhere else on the stage of global economics was financial boom and bust more surreally scripted than in the small isolated
country of Iceland.
This September
will give me 15 years as a professional in the securities industry. My firm will celebrate 10 years this November.
Every Friday after the markets have closed, my e-mail starts getting dinged by the FDIC. That is when the government agency
publicly announces the names of banks that failed during the past week.
People keep asking me
to explain the stock market advance over the past five months. There are usually comments at the end of the question, like,
“The economy sucks. How can the market go up when there is nothing going on out there?”
If you never got around to opening that Swiss bank account, you might want to wait a bit longer—at least until after
Sept. 23. That is the date the IRS has set for any tax-evading American to come forward regarding 52,000 accounts held at
Swiss banking giant UBS under a Voluntary Disclosure program.
