A Pathetic Attempt To Justify A Bond Short
For bond bears like myself, today was an ugly day. Fixed income prices ripped higher, egged on by continued escalations of the North Korea situation with an added dose of poor economic reports for good measure. Some dovish Fed talk was the icing on the cake, and there was no mercy shown for bond shorts. […]
Comprehensive Financial Planning – Explained
From time to time, the question is asked of me: What exactly makes up a comprehensive financial planning engagement? A truly comprehensive financial planning engagement requires 10 to 15 hours of effort (or more) by the financial planner. What exactly makes up a comprehensive financial planning engagement? Each individual situation is going to be different, and […]
The Empire Strikes Back, Part 1 – At Bitcoin
One of the uncertainties with cryptocurrencies has always been how governments would react once bitcoin and its kin got big enough to actually threaten the monopolies of national fiat currencies. That day seemed to be approaching as cryptocurrencies’ aggregate market cap blew through $100 billion and the pipeline of new bitcoin wannabes (initial coin offerings, […]
Global PMI Roundup; August 2017
The first few days of any calendar month are now flooded with PMI data. Mostly due to Markit’s ongoing and increasing partnerships, we now have access to economic or business sentiment from and for almost anywhere in the world. It isn’t clear, however, if that is a good or useful development. For example, we can […]
Despite Hurricane Harvey, Gas Prices Are Still The Lowest In A Decade
Hurricane Harvey devastated the heart of U.S. oil production and refining. The refineries around Houston produce most of the gasoline we use in the U.S. And gasoline is the lifeblood of car-loving Americans. The storm in Texas shut down refineries. That reduced the supply of gasoline, which pushed up prices. On the West Coast, the […]
Staying Afloat Up To – And Through – Retirement
The boomers’ rules for investing in retirement are a world apart from their parents’… and it’s all thanks to the “longevity bonus.” The no-brainer preservation of capital through CDs and savings that our parents used worked only because they didn’t live long enough to worry about the effects of inflation over 25 or 30 years. […]
Is The Stock Market Cheap? – Tuesday, September 5
Here is the latest update of a popular market valuation method using the most recent Standard & Poor’s “as reported” earnings and earnings estimates and the index monthly average of daily closes for the past month. For the earnings, see the table below created from Standard & Poor’s latest earnings spreadsheet. TTM P/E ratio = […]
E Do Not Rely On Full Employment To Set Inflation Targets
Every once in a while, a member of the FOMC cuts right to the chase in discussing how to set monetary policy. In a recent speech[1], Governor Lael Brainard did not mince words when describing the real difficulties facing the Federal Reserve as they struggle with setting rate policy in the face of weak inflation. […]
ETF Watchlist: Week Of September 4, 2017
I saw an article this week titled “This Stock Market is Immune to the News”. I always cringe a little when I read stories such as this because they strike a euphoric “nothing can go wrong now” tone that almost always ends badly. The article does make a few fair points. The Brexit vote initially […]
