My Comments: On its face, this looks like just another political swipe at the remaining presidential hopefuls on the right. However, as an aspiring economist and financial planner, I appreciate the role played by government in the financial sector and know how critical it is. These comments point to some dubious thinking on the part …
Continue reading The Monetary Madness of Trump, Cruz and Rubio
I’ve long had an interest in place names and how they came to be. I was reminded of this several weeks ago when driving across Texas and saw a sign on a bridge that read “Woman Hollering Creek”. I imagined a surveyor and map maker coming across yet another creek at the end of the …
My Comments: Like me, you don’t have a clue what’s going to happen either. But these charts help give you an educated guess. John Mauldin, Mauldin Economics Dec. 20, 2015 The S&P 500 index is flat for the year, but that hasn’t been due to a lack of volatility. The index has traded within a …
Continue reading 6 Charts Suggest a Stock Market Correction Soon
My Comments: Are you wondering about your investments going forward? This will give you pause. Dec. 4, 2015 by Bret Jensen The market had a huge rally to end the week and clawed back Thursday's large losses. The trigger for the rise was a better than expected November Jobs Report that also had an upward …
My Thoughts About This: Inflation is one of those existential threats I always talk about with clients. But it’s like watching a car rust. You simply don’t notice it on a daily or monthly basis. But the Oh MY God inflation that happened to the Weimer Republic in 1921-24 or perhaps more recently in Argentina, …
My Thoughts: Many of us are concerned about our investments. We don’t want our money under the mattress; we don’t want it all in money markets; we know bonds are going to get hammered when the Fed decides to start raising interest rates; and we know that over the past three months, the stock market …
My Comments: Our standard of living, yours and mine, used to be a function of how well we built our house and how well we managed to feed and clothe ourselves. That was perhaps 250 years ago, a single blip in the passage of time. A blip later it’s a little more complicated. Among the …
My Comments: It’s again a question of WHEN and not IF. Despite the fact that most clients understand intellectually that markets go up and down, whenever there is a drawdown, emotion tends to overwhelm intellect. And it happens to me too. For the past few months the markets have trended down. All the while, volatility, …
My Comments: If you pay for the gas you use in your car, these are good days. If your life depends on a job in the oil extraction industry, no so good. You can argue the merits, or lack of merits, of fracking, but as the worlds largest consumer of oil, we’re increasingly unaffected by …
My Comments: If you accept that life is finite, then luck and a roll of the dice has a lot to do with how your life will play out financially. Saving and investing for retirement over many years is a prudent strategy. Time is mostly on your side and the compounding of returns can help …
Helping Define Your Financial Future 