You Can Thank Ben Bernanke for 100% of the Stock Market Gains Since 2009

My Comments: I've been a supporter of the PPACA or if you prefer, ObamaCare, since the beginning. My belief in it is based on the trend in place where health care costs consumed an ever increasing share of our national GDP and sooner or later would come a sticky end. Whether the PPACA solves the …

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How Strong Is The Stock Market?

My Comments: For many years, more than I care to remember, I searched for wisdom from among the many magazines and more recently, the many emails that cross my desk on a daily basis. How and what was going to happen and how could I help my clients benefit from the insights that surely came …

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Checking In On The 1929 Stock Market Parallel

My Comments: The other day, on February 17th, I had a post that explained how today is NOT 1929 all over again. If you found that story, and this chart interesting, then here is a follow up. Hopefully, it will help you navigate the waters as they are flowing today in 2014. Chris Ciovacco, Ciovacco …

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Treading Water: Four Economic & Market Trends Likely to Continue in 2014

My Comments: Understanding how markets work over time is a very helpful skill set if you are advising clients about their money. Especially if they are worried about where money will come from to pay their bills far into the future. For many, the short term “noise” that comes from what one reads in papers …

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Bad Is Stronger Than Good

My Comments: Yesterday, I reposted an article that claims virutally all economists are in agreement that the stimulus pushed by this administration served to keep us from falling into a drepression, and that the major argument was whether the stumulus should have been stronger. Here is an article from last week that considers the mental …

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The American Public’s Indifference to Foreign Affairs

My Comments: I am almost always amused by those who shout “Take Back America!”. But it’s not really amusing, is it? Take it back to when? Take it back from whom? Before women had the right to vote? When the average life expectancy was about age 50? Many of us, who today are over 60 …

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The Future Still Belongs to the Emerging Markets

My Comments: As someone who has helped clients manage their money for almost four decades, I’m still often caught up in the "crisis de jour", what's happening TODAY, as opposed to stepping back and looking at things from further away. Our society has become obsessed with WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW, and often fails to put …

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Is A Welcome Surprise Coming For Mortgage Rates?

My Comments: There are millions of us who worry almost every day about the state of our finances. And most of us have few clues how to react when we read or hear stuff that seems to be alarming. The default state for us, therefore, and especially with what happened in 2008-09 so close to …

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Why North American Oil Prices Are Set For A Big Drop

My Comments: The price of gasoline in this country has a huge influence on whether the economy grows or shrinks. (It is NEVER static.) We’ve all heard that with access to incredible reserves of natural gas, we as a nation are going to become a net exporter of fuel over the next decade or so. …

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5 Simple Reasons The U.S. Market Will Go Straight Up From Here

My Comments: Yesterday, my blog post gave you lots of reasons to believe the world was coming to an end., at least for a while. Did you read all of it? Today, you only have to look at the headline above to think I’m either a raving lunatic or as puzzled as you and the …

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