There’s really nothing like a little bit of volatility in the stock market to make people sit up and take notice. Whether you’re a seasoned, everyday investor or a relative neophyte putting a couple of hundred dollars each month into a 401(k) account, the last couple of days have prompted just about anybody that is trying to make their money work for them with the stock market wonder what is going on. More →
Introduction
I was really bullish on copper when it was around $2 per pound a year ago, but now I’m not that bullish anymore as it is above $3. More →
Introduction
Something that’s easy to forget is that the current financial environment is rigged and not many discuss this because it’s done in a legal way.
In today’s article, I want to quickly explain what has been going on in the financial environment over the last decade and how natural market forces are distorted in order to increase asset prices and enable the economy we live in to continue as it has for at least a while longer. More →
At the beginning of this century, London Business School professors Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh, and Mike Stauton wrote a seminal book on stock market investing titled Triumph of the Optimists where he described what has happened over the past 100 years.
Today, we’re going to go through his findings and through his updated findings that he publishes annually for Credit Suisse in order to see what we can expect from long term investing returns.
We all think the stock market is the best and only thing one should invest in, but is it really and were the last 100 years just the triumph of the optimists? Let’s find out. More →
Introduction
After yesterday, many are expecting a stock market crash. And by looking at what happened in 2000 and 2009, it seems pretty logical that the market will crash as things are looking ridiculous. More →
Introduction
I love Davos because there is always a Bloomberg interview with beautiful mountain scenery and a freezing Ray Dalio.
Perhaps because of the cold, Dalio always wants to keep the interview as short as possible and spits out all his thoughts on the economy, markets, etc. Some of it will be misinterpreted by the market, but the key message is always extremely important to hear. More →
Introduction
Financial bubbles are always repeating. Sometimes they are small, just like the meal delivery businesses (like Blue Apron) craze of the last two years. Sometimes they are a bit bigger, like cryptocurrencies have been lately. Sometimes they are huge, just like the current stock or debt markets. More →
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my research on financial markets, it’s that you always have to expect the unexpected. Nothing is linear, everything works in cycles and what monetary policy makers say is usually wrong.
Last week when the FED raised interest rates, Janet Yellen said: “We’re in a synchronized expansion. This is the first time in many years we’ve seen this.”
That might be true, but the fact is that every economy today is a global economy and the global economy isn’t synchronized. At some point, it will crack somewhere as it always does. The important thing for us is to be prepared for something like that and to see how to best position our portfolios for the consequences that a financial shock might create. More →
Introduction
An often overlooked part of investing and portfolio strategies are currencies.
The easiest way to look at it is to say that it all evens out over time and that the only thing important is to be diversified. By owning the S&P 500 or companies that have global revenues, we could say that a portfolio is well diversified. More →
Introduction
To see whether the stock market will crash in 2018 or not, we have to first see what makes a stock market crash and the best way to do that is to look at the 2001 and 2008 market crashes because the financial environment prior to those crashes resembles the current market environment. More →