interest rates

Invest or Die Poor

Do I have your attention? Good. This is serious stuff. If you are like the vast majority of Americans, you are primarily responsible for your own financial future. And the deck is stacked against you. In the old days, before the 1990’s or so, it used to be that you got a job, worked there for 20 or 30 or 40 years, retired at 60 or 65 with a nice pension, then lived your remaining lives...

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Don’t Panic

As of the close of business yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,136 points, or 6.8%, since the end of 2013. The venerable average was down 5.3% in January, which lead many seers to warn that the market would therefore be down for the full year. I’m here to disagree with that sentiment. I believe that this is simply a long overdue correction in a bull market that began in...

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QE3

About 30 minutes ago Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, as expected, announced another round of quantitative easing (QE3) in a futile attempt to stimulate our moribund economy. This is simply throwing good money ($40 billion per month) after bad. In addition to the aforementioned bond buying program he guaranteed that rates will remain exceptionally low until at least 2015. While this is great for...

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Revisiting My 2012 Fearless Forecasts

These were the predictions that I made in the January 19 edition of my monthly newsletter, “News and Views”. All in all, they aren’t too bad after seven months. And you’ll notice that I predicted the Giants would beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Got that one dead right. I think the broad markets will be up in 2012. Put me down for a 10% gain for the Dow Jones...

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