In behavioral psychology there is a principle called risk aversion theory. The concept states the human mind has a naturally tendency to feel the pain of losses more than the pleasure of gains. For many investors who saw their accounts drop by more than 20% in 2022 they are probably [...]
The late great baseball legend, Yogi Berra, is credited with this quotation: It is tough to make predictions, especially about the future! If there were a perfect field for applying this, investing must be it. Our viewpoint (and that of our favorite economists at First Trust Advisors, LP) remains that [...]
This probably won’t come as a shock to those of you who regularly read my column, but I am a big fan of talk radio. While making the commute to and from work each day I enjoy getting information about what is happening both locally and nationally through this medium. [...]
Years ago now, in 2009 and following, I joined a small minority of economists critical of the Zero Interest Rate Policy chosen by Ben Bernanke and others in charge of the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) to cure the Mortgage Bond crisis. The current crisis is a direct consequence of over [...]
While it will be several weeks before we have a clear picture on total retail sales this holiday season, we do know that it started very poorly with November sales numbers, typically the highest month of the entire year, actually dropping .6% when compared to October. Many on Wall Street have interpreted [...]
Recently the crypto industry was rocked to its core with the collapse of the third largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world FTX, and the still developing scandal revolving around the alleged securities fraud committed by its founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. With a value as high as 32 billion weeks [...]
With Halloween less than a week away, I thought there would be no better time to write an article on the undead. Yes, that’s right. This week I am going to opine on the topic of zombies and warn you all that a zombie apocalypse could be right around the [...]
In the 1980 presidential election debates, Ronald Reagan began his famous quip, Well . . . There you go again! Sometimes it seems we cannot learn from our mistakes. Today I will connect some dots of seemingly unrelated ideas and decisions that have made life in these United States more [...]
This past week on a straight party line vote, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act. Among other things, the law will attempt to fight climate change and lower carbon emissions here in the US at a cost of roughly 370 billion. As someone who believes in the importance of stewardship, [...]
Over the past few years there has been a growing lifestyle movement amongst the Millennial and Gen Z groups called the FIRE movement. FIRE stands for Financially Independent Retiring Early. The basic strategy of this plan is to make and grow as much money as you possibly can early in [...]
