After falling interest rates, the biggest surprise of 2014 is the dramatic selloff in oil prices. One of the great things about having a Bloomberg Terminal, is that you can go back in time and look at forecasts as of some date in the past. So, I entered my time traveling machine to see what the professional forecasters had to say about what oil prices might do in 2014. Spoiler… Read More
I love Wall Street soap operas. I’ve written about Bill Gross’ departure from PIMCO two times (here and here) and, for me, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. There was another long exposé on Bloomberg yesterday but I decided not to write about it hoping that you aren’t afflicted by the schadenfreude that sometimes gets me. Yesterday, it was reported that an activist investor is going after Jim Cramer,… Read More
The question about when interest rates will rise has been a big question around here for several years, and we still don’t know. Most investors are worried about rising interest rates and most people, including me, have been very surprised this year to see the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note fall from 3.00 percent to 2.29 percent, as of yesterday. The direction of interest rates matters when you… Read More
After shopping-centric Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s refreshing to know that today is Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is actually a relatively new effort – the first one was in 2012 and it is actually part of November’s nonprofit awareness month. But giving in the US is not new at all. In fact, the US is one of the most generous countries on earth. Here are some of the facts… Read More
I was emailing a friend who works in the industry on Friday about asset classes that are giving us trouble this year. We both have diversified portfolios for our clients and when you’re truly diversified, something is always giving you a headache. For us, for example, micro cap stocks as measured by the Russell Microcap index are a real aggravation this year, down -1.85 percent this year through Friday compared… Read More
On Wednesday, I met with a client that I’ve worked with for more than 10 years. In fact, we signed the new account paperwork the night before my second daughter was born. As you might expect, my wife was not thrilled. In the late 1980s, this couple made a substantial investment with an extremely well known investor – someone I grew up watching on Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser…. Read More
When Mitt Romney ran for President in 2012, he was required to disclose information about his net worth, which was around $250 million. The most interesting element to me, though, was that he had more than $100 million in his IRA. IRAs are an important element of our clients IRAs and some have large balances, but nothing, obviously, like Romney’s. I don’t begrudge Romney and have no interest in getting… Read More
The mantra coming out of the 2008 financial crisis was that banks that are ‘too big to fail’ are simply too big. Our government passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Protection Act and the countries from the G20 got together to create the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in an effort to create a safer banking system. One of the great ironies of the too big to fail problem is… Read More
Not a single major Wall Street economist forecast that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Japan contracted in the third quarter, so yesterday’s economic release that showed an annualized loss of -1.6 percent came as a real surprise. The average forecast, according to the Wall Street Journal was for a positive gain of 2.25 percent. The chart below shows the growth of the US and Japanese economy from an equalized starting… Read More
Hopefully, The Department and Labor (DOL) and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) will continue to move towards placing employees first in company 401(k) plans. One step they are considering in raising the legal bar on the advisors to 401(k)s. Acropolis fully supports a stronger fiduciary standard, the lowering of plan fees, and encouraging more effective employee education, as profiled in Financial Advisor Magazine article below. Click here to read the… Read More
