Beating Inflation

Every piece of inflation news has the power to terrify and send investors searching for ways to protect wealth.  Bonds look like a poor prospect.  As the Federal Reserve (Fed) raises interest rates, bonds will lose value simply as a matter or arithmetic.  (For an explanation see this post.)  Even if the Fed were to cease its counter-inflationary effort, …

Should I Sell Out?

I received an interesting question recently.  The answer may be instructive to many.  A retired man asked: I am 78 years old and count on my investments to help pay my living expenses.  Most of my money is in stocks.  With the market up so much, do you think it would be wise to sell out now, use some …

Some Thoughts About SPACS

SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies) have become the rage of late.  It stands to reason that SPACs, or something like them, would become popular. Familiar and traditional equity investments have gained so much for such a long time now that investors naturally are searching for investments that they can believe offer a bargain.  Nonetheless, they should exercise …

Penny Stocks: There’s Danger Wherever You Look

Interest  in penny stocks has surged.  In February, the most recent month for which complete data are available, share trading volume in this area jumped to 1.9 trillion transactions, a whopping 2000 percent from a year ago.  This leap will unavoidably create still more interest.  In a social media pattern that has grown all too familiar, retail investors will …

What Is Happening with Bonds?

All of a sudden, it seems, the long-placid bond market has lurched into action.  Prices have dropped, and as is the way of bond math, yields have risen.  The 10-year treasury note, for instance, has seen its yield more than double, rising from 0.7 percent last fall toward 1.75 percent recently.  Much of what seems to have …

The Market Is Not Afraid of Joe Biden – at Least Not Yet!

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Stocks have generally seemed untroubled by Washington’s change of administration; indeed, they hardly seem to have noticed.  True, Joe Biden has threatened to raise taxes, an action that markets never like.  He has also said he will regulate more aggressively than his predecessor, and that also is something that tends to hurt …

The Bitcoin Question…

Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com Since the start of the pandemic, Bitcoin has enjoyed an impressive bull run.  With its powerful price increases, old talk has resurfaced about how Bitcoin will become a new global currency and supplant the U.S. dollar’s dominance.  To its younger enthusiasts, Bitcoin will also bring world peace and even the much …

The Market Views the Coming Election

With Election Day fast approaching, investors have been concentrating increasingly on economic prospects.  Market reactions to the possibility of either a Trump or a Biden presidency will depend less on the candidate and more on the policies expected to emerge from their administration: these will determine how the market reacts before the election, while the actual policies …

Covid-19 Diary Number 9 (July 31, 2020)

Frequently in these posts, I have warned against market timing.  Though timing buy-and-sell decisions of individual stocks can have merit, timing such decisions in anticipation of moves in the overall market is simply too dangerous and is as likely to produce failure as it is success. By contrast, buying and holding a portfolio of stocks …

COVID-19 Diary Number 8 (July 14, 2020)

It seems that many people have begun to see the market rally as an opportunity to get out whole, or nearly so, after the frightening losses of late March. They despaired three months ago when stock prices went off a cliff, and now that prices have regained much of the lost ground, they wonder if they …