As was surely inevitable, volatility has returned to the markets after an historically quiescent couple of years. As this is being written, markets in Europe are down nearly 5% after a similar drop in the US on Monday. What should we make of this and…
Having risen from $1,000 per coin to a high of nearly $20,000 in the past 12 months (although as we write, it has fallen back to $11,000), Bitcoin has garnered more than a little attention and spawned a host of imitators. We recently came across…
This is the title of a recent article by economist Robert Shiller in which he discusses current economic and market conditions in the U.S. and compares them to prior times when markets declined. Shiller is notable for having published a book titled “Irrational Exuberance” in…
We’re writing once again with one more round of information on securing your identity online, this time we’d like to talk about “freezing” or “locking” your credit reports. This is different from filing a Fraud Alert, which is added to your record for 90 days…
Ever since the Dow crossed the 20,000 mark, we’ve been hearing from various quarters that the party is, most assuredly, over. As we noted at the time (Market Note: Dow 20,000), that milestone is just a number. And, of course, the Dow represents just 30…
The Dow closed above 20,000 for the first time on Wednesday, repeating the feat the following day. There are headlines any time the Dow crosses a 1,000 mark and that’s especially true of this latest milestone. Here’s our take. First of all, and to state…
The markets, which is to say investors, hate surprises, though that’s pretty much all we get day-by-day. It’s called news. But some years carry bigger surprises than others and 2016 surely falls into that category. From economics to markets to politics, 2016 provided one plot…
Whatever your politics, it has been clear in recent weeks and months that the prospect of a Trump presidency held enough uncertainty to make investors and world leaders alike more than a little nervous. No one likes uncertainty. So here we are, asking ourselves what’s next?…
Although we’ve borrowed our title from Hunter S. Thompson’s book of essays on the 1972 presidential race, we’re here not to comment on Nixonian high jinks but on the closing days of the present contest. Fear and loathing seems an appropriate description of the public…
A few days after the first presidential debate, University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers published a piece in the New York Times titled, Debate Night Message: The Markets are Afraid of Donald Trump. In it, he predicted that stock markets would fall 10% – 12%…