Insights

I just wanted to brag on being married 38 years today. Life and marriage are seldom what you expect them to be. You just have to be flexible and go with it, working to make yourself better and being gracious to the other. I don't know how much better I am but our...

Yields are so low right now that most money market funds are paying interest around 0.01% to very slightly higher, probably not enough interest over the course of a year to buy a decent meal. With yields on very short term debt are getting very close to the interest...

The Federal Reserve minutes from their 7/31/8/1 meeting revealed that, "Many members judged that additional monetary accommodation would likely be warranted fairly soon unless incoming information pointed to a substantial and sustainable strengthening in the pace of...

Some of you may not realize that a significant part of my practice is advising companies on their 401k plans. The lack of 401k knowledge I see on the part of their brokers/advisors in the small plan space, that is, below $10 million in assets is really shocking. If...

I have not posted for a few days because frankly, there is not much to say other than that we are still waiting for news, either from Ben Bernanke or the European Central Bank. There are high hopes for good news from both. My bet is that Bernanke will not do any...

The market has been flat for 8 straight days up yesterday and flat again today. That's very unusual. To have a rally, go flat and then add to the rally is usually a good thing. Pessimists will point to not breaking through the April highs that are only a couple points...

Retail sales, which had fallen for four straight months jumped up last month. Business inventories dropped sharply which hopefully means sales were stronger than expected. Yesterday, I mentioned how sluggish August has been. Well, yesterday was the lowest trading...

Need any more proof that the Europeans are driving the bus as far as stock markets go? For the 4th day in a row we have had a selloff first thing, courtesy of European traders still at work, followed by a recovery during the rest of the day. The 3 days prior to that...

Another quiet, low volume day of trading today and the stock market has been basically flat all day. The Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 200 small stock index have managed a little bit of gains. Bonds are also flat. Gold is up aboug 0.3% and oil is up 0.2%. Oil just...

Everything is pretty flat today. The stock market is close to the old highs and deciding whether to push through or head back down in another see-saw like we've had for months. The CEO of Zillow is calling this the bottom of the housing market. Prices are up about...