Haven’t We Seen This Before?
"It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked."Mobster Al CaponeWe thought we were in a "New Era." We thought the party would never end. Saving was out. Why save when stock prices were going up so fast. For almost eight straight years the stock market knew only one trajectory and that was up. "Buy now and pay later" defined not just a financial strategy but a lifestyle. And not only for the rich and well-off. Everybody was convinced that they could get...
Read More >>China Businesses Exercising Caution
China's Ministry of Commerce reports that exports and foreign direct investment both fell in November because of shrinking demand overseas.Exports dropped 2.2% to $114.99 billion last month, the first monthly decline in seven years. FDI fell 36.52% year-on-year to $5.3 billion, the Ministry said.The country's trade surplus, however, still soared. It was up to a record $40.09 billion in November despite the fall in exports. That jump was due to the fact that imports fell, too, by 17.9%...
Read More >>Gold is in Play
Very few investments held up as well as gold in 2008. Gold started the year at $838. It closed the year above that level, which means it has closed higher in nine out of the last ten years! That is a powerful bull market. It is just now getting warmed up.The precious metals were tripped up last summer. Bailouts and monetary chaos had them on the launching pad last July when two US investment banks pulled the rug out from under the gold market. The paper price for gold is set by the Comex market...
Read More >>Is the American Dream Fading?
We're in a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" economy. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Our economy floats on the whims of the American consumer. When they feel confident about the future, they spend. The more they spend, the better the economy does. This is oddly true even if 80 percent of the spending is on goods from Asia. Right now the American consumer isn't feeling so confident and the economy is suffering as a result. But if we spend more, we go more into...
Read More >>The Future of the Auto Industry Is Already Written
In early June, CNN Radio called and asked me about gas prices and autos. The first question was more like a statement. The radio host said that people were forsaking big cars and flocking to smaller models. And wasn't that great? He added that the American consumer should be congratulated for being so willing to save on energy. He couldn't see me shaking my head in disagreement. I told him we haven't turned into a nation of tree-huggers yet. And congratulations are a little early. Consumers are...
Read More >>Who Elected These Guys?
This week's election is naturally the nation's main focus. What will an Obama Presidency mean for your investments, taxes, career, family and future? Is there any hope for America after 20 years of Bush/Clinton/Clinton/Bush/Bush? That's a knockout combination of punches if there ever was one. No mas, please. You likely know I didn't vote for the Demopublicans. Each major party demonizes the other and then goes about its business of further indebting us, stripping our liberties and dumbing us...
Read More >>A Balanced Approach
Reacting to market moves guarantees you will be on the losing end of the equation. Jumping in and out of investments as the market swings up and down is the absolute worst way to invest. It amounts to market timing with a broken clock. Sometime around the late eighties, a real brain found a way to quantify what we in the investment business had been recommending for many years, a balanced portfolio. He called it asset allocation. What asset allocation did for investors is to prove, once and for...
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