In spite of the fact that our national economy continues to chug at a painfully slow annual rate of plus or minus 2 percent, it thus far refuses to stall into recession. Even though the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has not fallen in a quarter since early 2014 with that [...]
As I have described before, this calendar is destined to be unusual in one way or another. The January indicator, looking at the first few days plus the month as a whole, gave us a prediction of being a lousy year for the stock market. On the other hand, the [...]
I personally like studying history because, as written in Ecclesiastes 1:9, What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. This week we have learned the Greeks would rather not pay their debt owed mostly to European banks. [...]
There are two primary schools of thought about investing in modern markets. The first and dominant is what I call Live Long and Prosper with deference to the late Leonard Nimoy, Dr. Spock of Star Trek. It prescribes being fully invested at all times no matter what is occurring. If [...]
Last Monday at the international Million Dollar Round Table annual meeting, New York Times columnist and author, Tom Friedman talked about his soon-to-be-published book. His talk entitled The World Is Flat 3.0 had something for everyone. His original work, The World Is Flat, published in 2005 stressed that many past [...]
My longtime Rotarian friend, Dick Puhr, late sportswriter par excellence for this newspaper, used to write an occasional column he called Dissa and Datta, if I remember correctly. Today I am following his lead with some information and opinion on a variety of topics, but all related to economics and [...]
Mr. Market is often fickle in the short term. I have already complained about the roller coaster rhythms of 2014 leading many (including me) to be too cautious, as it turned out. Last weekend, a Kansas RIA colleague and I were consoling each other about being judged by the exact [...]
First let me say that nothing in life, not even life, is guaranteed to any of us. And of course, let’s all say it together: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Period. End of story. But then tell me, What is a better predictor of the future than [...]
Regular readers of this column know I often discuss the four year presidential cycles and their effect upon stock market performance. Although I knew intellectually that 2014 had every statistical right to be difficult and negative—the worst of each cycle—that does not seem to help much if one is perfectionistic. [...]
I had a conversation yesterday with a reader, whom I’ll call John, of this column and apparently many other newspapers. I often get nice comments, but those are usually from friends and acquaintances. John and I had some trouble connecting over the past couple of weeks, but I wanted to [...]
