It is no secret that Bernie Sanders isn’t too keen on people having massive amounts of wealth, and he wants to appoint himself as the one who decides how much is too much. Democratic politicians are already well known for their love of economic redistribution, what we could call the Robin Hood approach to government. […]

Stocks go up by 4.3% on average during the fourth quarter. If you like to bet on the average of what happens over many years, you can find yourself in trouble on off years. The fact that the stock market tends to go up in the fourth quarter by a fairly nice amount, 4.3% on […]

Carbon taxes and other measures designed to try to reduce our carbon emissions are seen by a great many people as essential these days. They need to think this through more. We’ve seen a lot of what we could call anti-carbon parades this week, with the focus on what we can do and may need […]

Most of us remember what happened in 2007. Sven Henrich of NorthmanTrader thinks the same thing may happen again. Is there any sort of real evidence for this? There are all sorts of articles and views on the stock market, of various qualities. Some articles make more sense than others, but with even the ones […]

It is very much taken for granted that bonds, and especially treasuries, are quite a bit less risky than stocks. This isn’t quite accurate, and it’s a lot less accurate these days. U.S. treasuries are considered so low risk that we even call them risk-free. Nothing is absolutely risk-free but the chances of these securities […]

There are a variety of predictions out there for the final trimester of 2019, with varying outlooks for the stock and bond markets, which indicates that there is lots of guessing. 2019 has thus far been a tale of two trimesters as far as the stock market is concerned. The first four months brought us […]

A fair number of people are critical of the practice of companies buying back their stock, with some even suggesting that this practice be limited or banned. We need to understand this first. Public companies both issue stock and buy back stock, according to their needs and strategies. The practice of a company buying back […]

Donald Trump was already in a class by himself among U.S. Presidents in the category of being bombastic, but his now ordering U.S. companies to pull out of China sets a new standard. Friday was supposed to be all about hearing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell speak about the economy during the central bank’s annual retreat. […]

Back in 2011, the price of gold peaked over $1900 an ounce, an all-time record. This was at the end of a big run up in gold prices. Is gold headed back to that area again? Gold has certainly been on a nice run. In less than 3 months, its price has risen from $1275 […]

We might think that a bill looking to accomplish such things as improving the trade deficit would seem like a fine idea indeed. We need to look behind the rhetoric though. There are a lot of people that look at America’s massive trade deficit and see this as a harm or at least lost opportunity, […]