The investment markets offer no guarantees; you lay your money on the table and take your chances.  In the first quarter, those who placed their bets that U.S. stocks would enhance their wealth–plus, of course, those of us who stayed the course with our investment portfolios–were rewarded handsomely. When you look at global returns, it [...]

With this week’s Presidential and Congressional elections, you might sometimes get the idea that certain voters line up reliably behind certain policies. In fact, the biggest stereotype has been that people with above-average wealth (i.e., the “one-percenters”) never want to pay any taxes.  But in the real world, business leaders are trained to apply business logic [...]

People living in New Jersey, New York city and surrounding areas are recovering from under the worst storm ever to hit the U.S. north of the Carolinas.  The rest of the country has been looking at terrible pictures of the flooding and property damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Continuing power outages for more than 8 million [...]

One of the most common ways to measure the health of the stock market is to calculate the earnings per share of the stocks in an index–like, say, the S&P 500.  The mathematics is not hard: you simply divide each company’s after-tax profit divided by the number of shares outstanding.  Theoretically, this tells you how [...]

On September 13, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed would undertake a new program “QE3″ to stimulate the U.S. economy.  But what, exactly, is it, and how is QE3 likely to affect you and the rest of us?  ”QE,” stands for “quantitative easing,” a term which refers to a simple tool that [...]

What is this fiscal cliff? Why are economists so frightened of it? The term refers to a sudden change in a lot of different tax policies that is scheduled to take place automatically at midnight on December 31st. As soon as the clock strikes twelve, the Bush-era tax cuts will expire, eliminating the 10% tax [...]

An interesting article by John Hussman, who runs the Hussman Funds, that provides insight into his management strategy. His belief that companies are over-valued because “Wall Street is quite happy to look at the ratio of prices to near-term earnings estimates and conclude that valuations are satisfactory. But stocks are not a claim on one year [...]

Here’s a trivia question to startle your friends with. According to International Monetary Fund statistics, what country has the highest government debt levels, compared with its economic output, in the world? You might be inclined to guess troubled or developing nations like the African nation of Eritrea (134% of its 2011 GDP), Lebanon (136%), or [...]

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 [...]

With inflation continuing to rise in today’s economy, how do we best plan clients’ portfolios to combat this issue? There is no surefire way to beat the inflation problem, but there are several strategies which can help defend against the current economic situation. With CPI currently running upwards at 3% and rising, there definitely needs [...]