Harold Hamm of Continental Resources was already a critic of the futures market, but seeing it going into the red has him assuming that there must be misconduct involved. Harold Hamm has definitely distinguished himself as someone who knows the oil business. The United States was, not long ago, not all that big of a […]
The stock market bears have been licking their chops since stocks started to rebound, predicting a second fall and a bigger one this time. Stocks are still holding up pretty well. The current bear market started, like all bear markets do, with our wondering just how far we’d be sent down before the panic became […]
Futures contract expiration days can be plenty interesting, and a lot of money can be made, but Monday’s May WTI oil futures trading took us into another universe. A lot of money is made and lost trading oil futures, and there are some epic stories out there already, big traders who got caught on the […]
The S&P 500 is the most popular index fund by far among investors, because they think it’s better to be more diversified, to manage risk. Reality tells a different story though. The world of investing is riddled with so many myths that it would even be fair to categorize the whole thing as mythology. There […]
It is believed that small cap stocks lose more during pullbacks because they are smaller and therefore more sensitive to economic downturns. The real reason is simpler than that. It shouldn’t be as difficult and complicated to understand the movement of stock prices as we try to make it. The issue with small caps unsurprisingly […]
Demand for oil has dropped off so much from the current slowdown that the recent agreement to cut production by 10 million barrels a day hasn’t come close to fixing this. We invest in stocks presumably to make money, although when we look at how oil stocks have done over the last 6 years, there’s […]
Legendary hedge fund investor Ray Dalio is particularly known for his understanding of bonds, and has made billions from them. He now thinks that it is “crazy” for investors to hold them. Ray Dalio’s story is a true rags-to-riches one, where he quit his job one day to venture off on his own with just […]
Burton Malkiel’s influence upon stock market thinking has been remarkable. He’s still promoting market randomness at age 87, and remains pretty bullish. Former Princeton economic professor Burton Malkiel has written a few books on investing, including the iconic A Random Walk Down Wall St: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing. He’s also the father of […]
While there remains some serious questions out there as to where stocks may be headed during the coming economic recovery, Amazon is going up even more now. Stock selection is a lot more important than the great majority of investors realize, and when the market becomes as embattled as it has been, the stakes go […]
While stocks in emerging markets such as India generally lag U.S. stocks considerably, they do have their time and place. This looks like it may be the time and place to act. Many investors don’t put much thought into their decisions, and will instead just follow popular investing ideas just because they are popular, with […]