They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and that means, to an economist, that sometimes it’s easier to communicate something complicated with a chart or a graph rather than a lot of explanatory text. So it is with three charts and a picture, selected for the eye-opening perspective they offer. The first, in the […]
Low interest rates and added regulation designed to head off another global financial crisis has made it more expensive and complicated to run a banking operation these days. Gone are the heady days when banks were building 200 new brick and mortar locations a month in the U.S. market, leading up to the market top […]
Have you ever wondered what stock market professionals and equity analysts talk about in their spare time? Recently, the Bloomberg website featured a debate about something that is getting a lot of attention recently: the historically high, and still-rising U.S. stock market valuations. People have been willing to pay more, and more, and more for […]
Chances are, the market barometer you most often hear about is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Every evening, the Dow’s ups or downs are soberly reported as if they reflect something important. They don’t. A recent online article noted that the 37-year-old index only reflects the performance of 30 U.S. multinational companies, and it doesn’t […]
2017 Second Quarter Report The U.S. stock market has more than tripled in value during the runup that started in March 2009, and the most recent quarter somehow managed to accelerate the upward trend. We have just experienced the third-best first half, in terms of U.S. market returns, of the 2000s. The Wilshire 5000 Total […]
What does it mean when your portfolio is up 10%? You receive portfolio performance reports every three months—a form of transparency that financial planning professionals introduced at a time when the typical brokerage statement was impossible to decipher. But it might surprise you to know that most professionals think there is actually little value to […]
Friday, June 9 quietly marked/will mark an historic day in the financial services world. On that date, all financial advisors will be required to forego any sales agenda and give advice that would benefit their clients or customers—or, if they decide otherwise, to explain how and why they intend to give advice that instead primarily […]
It’s tax time again, and as you look over your tax payments for calendar 2016, you’re undoubtedly wondering where those dollars are being spent. The Wall Street Journal recently published a chart which breaks down spending for every $100 of tax receipts—and concludes that the U.S. government is actually a very large insurance company that […]
Are we in the late stages of a bull market—that time when the market suddenly takes off like a rocket for no apparent reason? Over the last eight years, the S&P 500 index has returned more than 300% But the tail end of this run seems to have accelerated the trend. The first quarter of […]
One of the strangest investment vehicles ever designed is something called the Bitcoin, which is at once an exciting new technology for managing online transactions and an alternative currency to national currencies like the dollar, yen and euro. Last week, people who owned bitcoins discovered that electronic “coins” worth $1,350 were suddenly worth just under […]
