This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on February 11th at 10:00am EDT “The only things worth worrying about are the things nobody is worrying about.” – Unknown A good deal of ink has been spilled in the last two weeks concerning the potential exit of Greece from the eurozone and the train wreck that is bound to ensue shortly thereafter. Is…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on February 2nd at 4:00pm EDT Lower oil gives our foreign competition permission to devalue their currencies. With earnings season midway through, the predominant theme is that US-based multinationals are having a hard time compensating for strength in the US Dollar versus currencies of foreign trade partners, despite strong top line growth. In other words,…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on January 23rd at 9:00am EDT In addition to founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus, P.T. Barnum is also famous for vocalizing some harsh truths, like “A sucker is born every minute,” and “Give the people what they want and they will give you what you want” (where what you want is their money). Barnum…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on January 5th at 11:00am EDT Looking back on predictions made a year ago for 2014—whether on interest rates, equity markets, or oil prices, we can see that the general consensus does not always prove accurate. The majority of professional forecasters said interest rates had nowhere to go but up in 2014, though they couldn’t…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on December 18th at 12:00pm EDT There are five stages of selling during a severe pullback like the one we have just witnessed in oil and energy-related stocks. 1. The Facts Come to Light (Two Months Ago) Actual data points start to surface, which imply the price is too high — Oversupply (coinciding with a…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on December 1st at 12:00pm EDT Despite the fact that oil’s precipitous decline began five months ago, it is only now that it is really front and center. At this point we all know that Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) leaders met on Thanksgiving Day and agreed not to cut production (from the current…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on November 20th at 10:30am EDT I think the topic of risk has been so misunderstood among investors, large and small, that I want to explore it a bit here. After the cataclysmic disaster that was 2008-09 we saw a plethora of funds emerge with built-in risk management controls. Those were strategies focused so hard on…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on November 7th at 4pm EDT Is oil’s freefall over? Today it seems the only story garnering front page headlines is what’s happening with the price of oil and what it means for the US economy—and its consumers and corporations. In the last year Brent Crude Oil has been as high as $115 and as low…
This article was originally published on RealMoney.com on October 23rd at 2pm EDT The US Dollar’s recent strengthening against other major currencies may have slowed, but it has not stopped—and it has certainly not reversed course. As we have seen with Quantitative Easing, the results of a massive shift like this do not always show themselves immediately. And it has been massive. Below…
This article was originally published on TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com on 10-17-2014 The Six Flags are Anxiety, Denial, Fear, Desperation, Panic, and Capitulation. Back in June we published a piece called “Next Stop: Euphoria” in which we discussed the cycle of investor emotions, and argued that we were rapidly rounding the bases of excitement and thrill. It just felt that we were closing…
