“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” –George Washington Leave it to the genius of a Founding Father to remind us how important our freedoms are, and just what’s at stake if we ever were to relinquish our rights to political

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A Macro Data Extravaganza Today we saw a flood of alphabet soup data, with news on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the ADP report on jobs and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Let’s take each one as a separate bite here, and see what the implications are for the markets. First, today we

India’s expanding manufacturing activity of late is an encouraging sign for investors who previously may have avoided that emerging market due to the country’s slow economic growth and relatively high inflation. In fact, the country’s manufacturing activity expanded at a faster rate than China’s in June. With manufacturing on the rise, India offers a renewed

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Today we saw a flood of alphabet soup data, with news on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the ADP report on jobs and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Let’s take each one as a separate bite here, and see what the implications are for the markets. First, today we saw the continuation of

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  Stocks did something they haven’t done in a while, and that is finish the week right about where they started. The Dow ended the week up 0.02%, while the S&P edged down ever so slightly by 0.03%. In essence, the week was flat as a pancake. The only major average with any kind of […]

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A Sideways Summer Stall? The markets have made a decided move to the upside since late June, but during the past couple of days we’ve seen a bit of a summer stall. Trading volumes have been relatively light, and the markets now are keying on the bevy of earnings reports that have come in. So

“Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.” — Friedrich August von Hayek The brilliant economist reminds us that freedom, in some of its forms, can also mean the freedom to make poor decisions or to be destructive to oneself or society. This doesn’t negate the

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The big economic/political news story last week was Detroit’s filing for bankruptcy. The debt debacle in one of America’s largest cities is very sad, but it’s also not that surprising. It’s also not likely to be the only big city that will file for bankruptcy. So far, the damage financially has been relatively isolated to […]

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When I look for an investment opportunity, I am particularly interested in recovering markets. That’s why I was intrigued when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s announcement on quantitative easing spurred a sell-off in global and emerging markets earlier this month. As a result, I have found an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that taps into a diverse group

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The markets have made a decided move to the upside since late June, but during the past couple of days we’ve seen a bit of a summer stall. Trading volumes have been relatively light, and the markets now are keying on the bevy of earnings reports that have come in. So far, we’ve seen some

Tags: migrated