MarketWatch Says Retirement is Endangered
Robert Powell from MarketWatch posted a reasonably thorough assessment as to why retirement in the US is "endangered" with topics ranging from Social Security not being able to meet its obligation to why various demographic segments should expect a hig...
Japan has a Trade Deficit
Yesterday was a busy day for me so I am not sure how much attention this got but Japan recorded its first trade deficit since 1980. Japan has always exported a ton of stuff and imported all of its oil. The earthquake on March 11, 2011 shut down the nuc...
A Foundation to an Investment Philosophy
Josh Brown had a fun post up yesterday about his Twenty Common Sense Investing Rules. While I would probably frame some of the points differently and don't necessarily agree with all of them there is plenty of utility in the post.Josh's number 4;The mo...
Barron’s on Dividends
The Barron's cover story was about seeking a 4% yield from stocks. It was a broad look across many sectors in the S&P 500 at stocks that have the room to increase their dividends substantially or in some cases initiate a substantial dividend.My tak...
Sunday Morning Coffee
Bernie Schaeffer had a write up in Barron's in which he referred to an article from the New Yorker. There was one line in there that intrigued Bernie that was particularly interesting;In effect, [investors have] decided that, in a market as volatile as...
The Big Picture for the Week of January 22, 2012
One of the first ETFs for Latin America is the iShares is the iShares S&P Latin America 40 Index Fund (ILF). I am pretty sure that iShares Brazil (EWZ) and iShares Mexico (EWW) predate ILF going back to the WEBS days (WEBS=world equity baskets).A f...
Market Favoring Risk Assets Right Now
A few weeks ago I shared an opinion (or hunch if you prefer) that I thought the US market was going to be in for a range busting rally that I think will then retrace. It is too early at this point to know whether this is yet correct or incorrect but I ...
Filtering Content
A very long time reader left a comment on Monday's post telling me that he had read a bunch of content from William Bernstein and concluded that Bernstein's approach seems more rational than my sort of approach. The reader said he didn't really get top...
Reuters Says Invest In Yourself
For many years I've been writing about the extent to which retirement will not be the same for people as it was for their parents (obvious observation) and that this has created a problem/challenge for each of us to solve for ourselves--meaning everyon...
Sunday Morning Coffee
Big news on the personal front; yesterday I was appointed Fire Chief of our volunteer fire department here in Walker. I've never had many goals but this has been one of them and while I am beyond thrilled it will be a lot of work. Long time readers wil...
The Big Picture for the Week of January 15, 2012
In the middle of the day on Friday we executed a trade for most of our "large" clients. We bought the Global X Fertilizer & Potash ETF (SOIL). Long time blog readers may recall my long term belief that the growth rate of the world population combin...
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Yesterday a reader left a question about where I was on investing in the banks. My answer was probably not a surprise in that I said I still believe the fundamentals stink, assuming he was talking about the US banks, because of a lousy real estate mark...
