Oil entered another bear market after falling approximately 21 percent from the recent high in May, although you can see that the current bear market for oil is nothing like the one that occurred at the end of last year. The rout in Chinse stocks is partly to blame because China is the world’s largest oil importer and second largest oil consuming country and an economic slowdown would further cut… Read More
One of the bedrock ideas behind Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is that diversification lowers risk. A simple view of that concept is that a portfolio of many stocks is less risky than a portfolio that contains one stock because the impact of a failure like Lehman Brothers or Enron won’t blow apart your whole portfolio. Of course, all stocks can go down substantially, like they did in 2008, so diversification… Read More
We are pleased to provide a digital copy of Portfolio Insights, our quarterly newsletter. Table of Contents: Protect Yourself From Fraud Inside the Economy Stock Market Summary Maximizing Social Security Is Janet Yellen Bluffing? Click here to read this issue: 2015 Q2 Portfolio Insights
While Greece is getting all of the headlines, the bubble in mainland Chinese stocks that I wrote about in April and June is now bursting (click here or here for refreshers). The Shenzhen index is down -38.5 percent from its peak on June 12th through yesterday and the Shanghai index is down -27.9 percent over the same time period. The following shows these two indexes in yellow and orange compared to the S&P 500 in blue… Read More
While I’m dying to take a break from the ongoing financial crisis in Greece, I also want to show how the calamity isn’t destabilizing markets so far. Importantly, US stocks barely budged yesterday in response to the news, although stocks overseas didn’t fare as well. The FTSE Developed Markets ex North America index fell by -1.61 percent while the FTSE Emerging Markets Index dropped -1.98 percent. While prices tell us… Read More
In what could easily be described as one of the highest stakes showdowns in the world today, the Greek people resoundingly voted ‘no’ to accepting conditions set by their creditors for a third bailout. More than 60 percent of Greek voters rejected terms for additional aid set forth by what is colloquially known as the ‘Troika,’ a triumvirate made up of the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary… Read More
The end of the second quarter is always a relief for me because for the past six years, it has meant that we are finally through getting our CEFEX certification. As you probably already know, we serve our clients in a fiduciary capacity, which means that we are required to act in the best interest of our clients. You may think that everyone in the financial services industry has to… Read More
As I wrote yesterday’s edition of Daily Insights on Sunday night, it was ‘obvious’ that stocks would respond poorly to the news and that bonds would fare reasonably well. In a sense, I’m not surprised at the market reaction yesterday. That said, I would also not have been surprised if markets had been much worse than they were. After the fact, I can say that the response is what I… Read More
After nearly five years of kicking the can down the road, it appears as if the situation in Greece may be at an inflection point. Yesterday, the European Central Bank (ECB) said that they would not provide any additional emergency funding to the nation’s banking system. Without the new funding, most people in and out of Greece believe that there will be a run on the banks. People in Greece… Read More
I was reading in the Wall Street Journal that homes with 15 or more bedrooms were becoming very fashionable and, in a different article, master suites are now so large that they feature media rooms, offices, gyms, kitchenettes and laundry rooms. In other words, housing is back! Okay, maybe those things and the race to build a $100 million spec home (yet another article) signal that the rich are doing… Read More
