Investing insights range far beyond the arcane world of financial statements and Federal Reserve policy decisions.
The foundation for investment is an economic order based on private property rights, the sanctity of contract law…and most importantly…
Peace and Stability
I’m now tracking a highly volatile global security issue that threatens to be the dominant theme for the next […]
It might, or might not comfort you to learn that brokers handled their own money as poorly as they did their clients in the recent debacle.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal article - “After 27% Fall, FINRA Plays it Safe” (9/25/09, page C1), The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority saw its $1.6 billion hoard tank […]
One of my favorite commentators is Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes. You can follow him in print every bi-weekly issue, as well as catch him doing the talking head circuit on the cable news shows.
By being based in Silicon Valley, he maintains his pulse on the new economy…while keeping his jaundiced eye on the decaying, […]
That’s the title of a must-read article in the September 21, 2009 issue of Forbes…by Marie-Josee Kravis, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
You know the drill by now. There are three kinds of lies.
Lies… Damned Lies…and Statistics.
The statistic du jour that is bruited about to disparage our present health care system is the comparison […]
First…a confession.
I collect random statistics the way some hobbyists collect stamps or coins.
I find them irresistible.
Glancing through the InvestmentNews issue of September 7th, 2009, I immediately flipped to the inside back page, going directly to the column labeled “Go Figure.” Always good for a half dozen statistical oddities.
This one absolutely floored me.
“$64—The amount of money […]
Anyone who tells you that they have a reliable method for calling market tops–or bottoms–is either a fool or a knave.
Mostly, its a comfort just to know that you called it reasonably close.
The past ten or twelve years has witnessed the steady lowering of term insurance premiums…to the point that you always felt you had […]
Younger readers will not be familiar with the term.
In years past, small factory or mining towns, dominated by one major employer, would often pay the employees in scrip redeemable only at the company owned store.
Of course, they abused their monopoly pricing power, and held the hapless employees in thrall to their meager, overpriced menu of […]
Individual investors are once again proving to be remarkably consistent and predictable in their collective response to the historic bear market of 2008-2009.
By which, I refer to their unerring instinct to buy at the top…and sell at the bottom.
It was just a year ago that the world was coming to an end. Stocks were in […]
