Although most of us are too young to remember, imagine what it must have been like during the Great Depression or the Second World War. Shortages at those times had most everyone scrapping for basics like sugar, butter or coffee. Such things may seem unfathomable… Read More

Experienced investors know that no trend — no matter how profitable — lasts forever. The same is true for gold. Gold has risen from below $700/oz. in November 2008 to $1,315/oz. in the beginning of October 2010. That’s an +88% gain in under two years. And while any mention of shorting gold is enough to get a gold bug’s blood boiling, one day the time will come when it’s the right trade to make. Consumer sentiment My daughter is home for a couple of months before she starts work as an attorney. When… Read More

Experienced investors know that no trend — no matter how profitable — lasts forever. The same is true for gold. Gold has risen from below $700/oz. in November 2008 to $1,315/oz. in the beginning of October 2010. That’s an +88% gain in under two years. And while any mention of shorting gold is enough to get a gold bug’s blood boiling, one day the time will come when it’s the right trade to make. Consumer sentiment My daughter is home for a couple of months before she starts work as an attorney. When I asked her if it was time to go short on gold, and she said that she hoped so. Her thought was, “If I’m shorting gold, then I believe the economy is improving, jobs are forming and a brighter future is heading our way.” And that would be terrific news for many of her friends who recently finished graduate school and are still looking for jobs. Her comments very much reflect the effect that confidence has on the economy. If things are looking up, people are willing to invest in risky assets that offer… Read More

You’ve likely been wondering what’s going on with the market. The S&P 500 is up about +12% since the start of September, yet unemployment is still high, the U.S. deficit is still enormous and the overall economic picture is still hazy. What’s behind it all? I think most of the answer lies in QE2. No, not the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. QE2 is what the business media is calling the pending second wave of quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve. To stimulate the… Read More

You’ve likely been wondering what’s going on with the market. The S&P 500 is up about +12% since the start of September, yet unemployment is still high, the U.S. deficit is still enormous and the overall economic picture is still hazy. What’s behind it all? I think most of the answer lies in QE2. No, not the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. QE2 is what the business media is calling the pending second wave of quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve. To stimulate the economy, the U.S. Federal Reserve has set short-term interest rates at all-time lows. But the economy is still sluggish and unemployment remains stubbornly high. To further stimulate the economy, the Fed has stated that it is likely to try a little-used tool called quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is used to hold or push down long-term interest rates. To do this, the central bank buys long-term Treasury bonds, keeping their prices higher — and yields lower. The hope is that by… Read More

One of the best performing markets of the past century is read hot again this century. Warren Buffett said, “The 19th century belonged to England, the 20th century belonged to the U.S., and the 21st century belongs to China. Invest accordingly.” Maybe so, but this… Read More

September and October sure have been kind to investors, with the major indices up more than +10% and some individual stocks up +30% to 40% since late August. Back then, it was easy to spot bargains after a summer swoon. Nowadays,… Read More

Perhaps the biggest domestic market opportunity for investors is the U.S. health care system. The industry already consumes roughly 16% of gross domestic product and that’s likely to reach 19.5% by 2017. Of the total spending, about half goes to hospital care and physician services. But with such large amounts, it is inevitable that there will be wasteful spending and lots of inefficiencies. A report from the Annals of Family Medicine shows that primary care physicians spend about half their work day on activities outside the exam room. Of course, this involves documentation, reporting, billing and so… Read More

Perhaps the biggest domestic market opportunity for investors is the U.S. health care system. The industry already consumes roughly 16% of gross domestic product and that’s likely to reach 19.5% by 2017. Of the total spending, about half goes to hospital care and physician services. But with such large amounts, it is inevitable that there will be wasteful spending and lots of inefficiencies. A report from the Annals of Family Medicine shows that primary care physicians spend about half their work day on activities outside the exam room. Of course, this involves documentation, reporting, billing and so on. Then again, the workflows for physicians are often problematic. They may rely on assistants who are often overwhelmed with records, regulations and rules. And the consequences can be severe. To deal with this, Congress has taken action to help reform the system. Roughly $38 billion in subsidies will be committed to aiding the speedy adoption, and improvement, of electronic medical records by 2016. This is actually part of the 2009 recovery legislation, which created the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). Basically, the law prods physicians to adopt information… Read More

The IPO market has been fairly quiet in 2010, with less than 100 deals coming through the transom. In the boom years, we’d routinely greet 300 or 400 new companies into the public market sphere. In fact, many more companies had hoped to… Read More

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dropped a bombshell in early August.   Unrelenting drought, scorching heat and uncontrolled fires have ravaged farmland and destroyed Russian crops this year. It has been estimated that roughly a third of Russia’s wheat harvest has been lost. So Putin took the only… Read More

After a relatively quiet period when the largest banks in the United States stayed out of the press and were allowed to refocus on running their operations, new allegations arose to suggest that many in the industry were negligent in handling the process for foreclosing on residential houses. Read More

No matter how you slice it, $3 trillion is a lot of money. That’s the amount of money states will need to come up with to pay for the health care and retirement benefits of all of their employees if stock markets fail to rise in coming… Read More