Can this election get any weirder? Today’s revelation that the FBI has re-ignited the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails rocked the political world. Amazingly, the reason for the re-ignited inquiry is due to information garnered from a prior investigation into disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner’s underage sexting probe. Hey, you just can’t make this stuff up. […]

The bond market is trying to tell us something. If you look at the price of the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), you can see that bond prices are falling (i.e. bond yields are rising). In fact, the decline in bond prices of late has brought TLT, which is a benchmark fund for

During the last couple of weeks, the market has found itself trading within its consolidation range. Volatility, as measured by the cost of buying protection, took a brief gap higher but declined along with the chances of a Trump presidential election win. Put together, this paints a picture of a market waiting for clarity on

This week’s market action was a sort of continuation of what’s been happening for the past several weeks, and that is a low-volume bounce back and forth that ends up with the major indices little changed on the week. The good news is the bias was slightly to the upside, as stocks traded higher on […]

This week, stocks largely bounced around their current trading range, as investors appear to be biding their time in front of the upcoming presidential election. The madness that is the 2016 battle is nearly over, and not soon enough for most of us. While the unusually caustic banter can, at times, be morbidly interesting to

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking for some stabilization in the gold markets and the overall markets in general. This week, we believe we have begun to see it. Of course, further volatility is not out of the question. But at this point, it would appear the worst may be behind us. […]

Stocks lost ground again this week, confirming the fiscal flounder we’ve seen for the major averages over the past five weeks. When Friday’s final bell sounded, the Dow had ended the week with a modest decline of 0.56%. That loss was nearly doubled in the broader S&P 500, with that index falling 0.96% on the […]

Navigating Your Portfolio Through the Election Nuttiness ETF Talk: Regional Fund Provides Access to Established Latin American Equities Twain on Voting Has there ever been a nuttier presidential election than this one? Certainly not in my lifetime, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. A recent survey from the American Psychological Association (APA)

Over the last few weeks, we have seen a dramatic shift in exchange-traded fund (ETF) bond flows. Specifically, we have witnessed a flight away from the safety of treasury bonds via iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bonds (TLT) and a move into more risky high-yield bonds via iShares High-Yield Bonds (HYG). In fact, the asset base […]

There are many indications that the economy is stabilizing and even expanding. Recently, we have seen better manufacturing numbers and employment growth. Some wage growth and even some inflation have begun to come back. Despite all of these positives, the equity markets remain in a perilous situation. Lack of earnings have stretched valuations and central