Germany Is Delusional To The Point Of Insanity

My Comments: Assertive headlines such as what you see here are usually outside my comfort zone. For one it implies a pathology that I’m not trained to comment on and two, Europe and European values are different from mine, given that I’ve lived here in the US for the past 65 years. (Warning: this post …

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Buy the Rumor, Sell the News

My Comments: As a financial advisor for almost 40 years, you’d think by now I would have this all down cold. That I’ve survived in this profession suggests I have at least a reasonable understanding of how “investing money” is supposed to work. Either that or I’m very good at talking people into doing dumb …

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The Stock Market Is Overvalued, No Matter How You Measure It

My Comments: Some of you will think I’m an alarmist. And perhaps I am. But the signals that have been present for some 18 months are getting louder, much louder. I’ve not included all the charts that appeared with this article as there are too many of them and they are all negative. Here’s a …

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Economic Data Releases

My Comments: These data points come from Guggenheim Partners. For some of you this is meaningless nonsense; for others, a quick review is intented to give you a glimpse of what is happening in the world, including the US. To put some of this in perspective, I saw an article this weekend that compared the …

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Hedge Fund Manager Who Remembers 1998 Rout Says Prepare for Pain

My Comments: This is another example of an article that talks about what might happen to our investments in 2015. For many of us advisors, there is an increasingly pervasive odor surrounding the markets. It has nothing to do with the solid economy developing here in the US. The odor, however, is giving me an …

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2015 PPACA Compliance Checklist

My Comments: It’s hard to believe the PPACA has been around for so long. And in spite of the new Congress making lots of noises about making it go away, it’s not going to go away. Will it change? Most definitely. Are changes necessary? Most definitely. But the overall intent to bring millions of Americans …

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Student Debt Poised To Crimp U.S. Economy

My Comments: I received my undergraduate degree in 1963, which was a long time ago. I had a part time job and my parents covered the rest. Selfishly, I never even thought about any sacrifice they might have been making. It was never an issue. Since then, I’ve spent most of my adult life in …

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House Price Rises Give Birth to Generational Inequality

My Comments: I’ve spoken before about how uncomfortable I get with the increasing divide between the haves and the have nots. That it is real is evidenced by a TV show that features this very idea. What I had not thought about before this was another disturbance in the force between generations. In my generation, …

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A Tale of Two Markets

My Comments: Yesterday the price of oil dropped below $50 per barrel for the first time in a long time. The stock market dropped. In earlier posts about the price of oil, I suggested there was good news and bad news associated with the drop in the price of gas at the pump. Now that …

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Be Careful What You Wish For

My Comments: At this time of the year, there is an almost overwhelming imperative to be positive and cheerful about everything. I asked someone native born in Hong Kong recently about the Chinese people and Christmas. Her response surprised me; she said it was an opportunity to celebrate and enjoy life. So it is with …

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