An interesting quote by Jean-Paul Kauffmann reminds us that we live in an uncertain world so no amount of technical research can provide an analyst all the right answers: “The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.”  

What do the weather forecast and the daily stock market movements have in common (sounds like an introduction to a bad joke, right)? To illustrate, let me quote a portion from a column I read this week by Vitaliy Katsenelson, the CIO of Investment Management Associates. “Serious business news that lacked sensationalism, and thus ratings, has been replaced by a new [...]

By now, you’ve probably heard that the Standard & Poor’s debt rating agency has downgraded all U.S. government debt with more than a year of maturity, from the top AAA rating down to AA+.  To put that in perspective, now only 17 countries enjoy the AAA rating on their government bonds.  Typically, that means that [...]

Until recently, the U.S. government’s debt ceiling didn’t get a lot of publicity; it has been raised without fanfare 70 times in the last 50 years.  Now that it’s front page news, some analysts are wondering why we have such a thing in the first place.  An article in the August 1 issue of The [...]

Linda Stern, a writer for Reuters, recently published an article discussing the repercussions of the recently decided debt deal and how it is affecting many Americans and their financial situation. The article was highlighted by Yahoo News and can be found here. Stern begins by addressing the questions that should be raised from the debt [...]

Chances are, you noticed that Moody’s Investors Service, the credit rating service, has placed the U.S. government’s sterling AAA bond rating on review for a possible downgrade.  The reason was clear, but Moody’s spelled it out anyway: there is uncertainty whether Congress will raise the U.S. government’s debt ceiling by August 2.  If it doesn’t, [...]

Sometimes it can be difficult to explain the cultural differences between financial planners and wirehouse brokers, especially when many wirehouse brokers give their agents the job title “financial planner”.  However, there are very distinct differences.  Below is a short explanation of the general differences in nature of fee-only financial planners opposed to brokers.  Financial Planners [...]

We are becoming more aware that a lot of Americans are not financially prepared to fund their own retirement, especially with the recent headlines. The difference between being able to afford retirement and not, can be surprisingly thin if you know the right levers to push. A recent article in SmartMoney magazine illustrates the point [...]

If you’re curious about how much, in aggregate, U.S. citizens are worth, and how that worth compares to the value in 2007, you can visit The Big Picture and see a variety of charts, created by an organization called The Chart Store.  The second set of charts on the web site shows that in the [...]

We’re hearing a lot about taxes these days, mostly about the need for Congress to raise or lower them, make them more fair or simpler, or perhaps do away with them altogether. If this feels like a familiar discussion, it is. Since the passage of the Tariff Act of October 3, 1913 (which implemented the 16th Amendment [...]