Protect Your Future Today
Markets had been pricing in a December Fed rate hike all year. But with President Trump’s comments expressing his disappointment at the Fed’s hiking of rates this year, and Fed Chairman Jay Powell’s comments attempting to placate both the markets and the President, many on Wall Street were hopeful...
Investing orthodoxy likes to state that investors can’t time markets. In one sense that’s true, in that the likelihood of an individual investor being able to sell right at the top of a market and buy right at the bottom of a market is incredibly slim, if not impossible....
Anyone who lived through the 1970s remembers the crushing effects of stagflation. The phenomenon, characterized by severe recession, double digit inflation, and high unemployment baffled Keynesian economists who had long posited that high inflation and high unemployment couldn’t exist together. The Phillips Curve propounded by the Keynesians held that...
Every week seems to bring more bad news about the US housing market. It’s clear that the housing market is headed towards a standstill and may very well swing downwards in the near future. With year-over-year sales continuing to remain weak and home sales even in previously hot markets...
If you’re like many Americans with a 401(k), IRA, or other type of retirement account, the last few years of stock market gains may have sent your paper wealth soaring. There are more 401(k) millionaires in the United States today than ever before. But with the sums in retirement...
One indicator that market analysts look to for signs of an impending recession is an inverted yield curve. Because of uncertainty about the future, investors demand more yield from longer-term investments. That’s why you’ll see higher interest rates on longer-term bonds than shorter-term bonds. An one-month bond may yield...
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis the Federal Reserve engaged in a massive amount of quantitative easing (QE). In addition to pushing interest rates to near zero, the Fed also purchased nearly $2 trillion worth of US government debt. That incentivized the US government to take advantage...
Building up a nest egg for retirement is only one half of retirement planning. The other half consists of planning to safeguard and maintain that wealth well into the future. Business cycles have been a regular part of the economy for over a century. The booms and busts that...
Stock markets soared last week in the aftermath of Fed Chairman Jay Powell’s speech to the Economic Club of New York. In contrast to Powell’s statement in October that the Fed was still a “long way” from the neutral interest rate, Powell last week stated that interest rates now...
Russia has announced its decision to forgo use of the US dollar in response to US sanctions against the country. While the Russian government would prefer not to have to take that measure, it feels that it has no option, seeing what has happened to Iran and not wishing...