J.P. Morgan Weekly Market Recap – August 6, 2012

For those of you who pay attention and want to time the market, here’s this weeks best summary:

Stimulate Your Customer’s Lizard Brain to Make a Sale

Or: Stimulate Your (fill in the blank) Lizard Brain to Make a (fill in another blank) Apart from the fact this is a fun photograph to look at, there's a message here that applies to me as a financial advisor looking for new clients, for a politician hoping to get people to vote for them, …

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A Modern-day Depression: The Current Secular Market Cycle Mirrors the Past

My Comments: This article is further confirmation that these are not “normal” times. My efforts to help you manage your money cannot follow the traditional “buy and hold” approach that worked in the eighties and nineties. If you expect to have more money in the future than you have now, you have to be either …

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The Election, the Presidency and Foreign Policy

My Comments: Last Monday I got a call from a client who asked me to close her investment account. Her comments suggested she didn't expect Romney to win and if Obama was elected to a second term, the world was going to come to an end. She wanted her money under her mattress even if …

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Is Another Lost Decade on the Horizon?

My Comments: This article, which appeared in a recent issue of “Producers Web”, an online magazine that caters to the investment and financial planning community, affirms what I have been telling clients and prospective clients now for about five years. Namely, that we are looking at another 5 – 8 years of essentially sideways movement …

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The Only Solution to Our Immigration “Crisis” That Matters

My Comment: Apart from apparently boundless resources, this country’s greatness can be attributed in part to the immigrants who came here looking for a better life than the one they left behind. Millions of immigrants, including me, built our lives in this country. Given the opportunity, I like to return to where I was born, …

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The Medicaid Problem Grows and a (Partial) Solution Emerges

My Comments: I ran across this article a few weeks ago. With the headline recently that Governor Scott was not going to comply with the directives toward the states and Medicaid, I thought it might be helpful to have a better understanding of the implications. The idea presented below is not a full answer, but …

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Cheap Chinese Finance Rolls Into Bahamas

My Comments: They say money is at the root of all evil, and they may be right, but it’s also at the root of how most of us live our lives, and like it or not, in our society, having more money is considered better than having less money. As a result, I’ve made a …

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Thought For The Week

“Save a little money each month, and at the end of the year, you’ll be surprised at how little you have.” Ernest Haskins Roughly four years ago, at this time, we began to feel the ground crumbling beneath our feet (metaphorically speaking) while we watched in amazement. The stock market lost over 1/3 of its …

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Only Half of Americans Financially Prepared to Live Longer

My Comments: I know, I know, I promised to add stuff that was more positive going forward. Only it’s hard to find. And as I age, along with you, I’m reminded that given medical advances, both of us might be dead by now had we lived a 100 years ago. But we’re not, and that’s …

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