They’re Back: Revisiting Interest Rates

It has been a couple of months since we’ve addressed interest rates, and today we find that the 10-year Treasury bond (often considered the benchmark of bond yields) has hit 3% again.  With the recent economic data surprising to the upside, there is a possibility for rates to rise.

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The Stock Market Does Not Equal The Economy

The economic data coming out these last few weeks have been spectacular.  Whether it be employment, manufacturing, or consumer spending, the economy really seems to be on a roll.  Before you buy some stocks as an early Christmas present, it is important to remember that the economy is not the stock market.

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What Is The Best Vehicle To Accumulate Wealth?

What is the best vehicle for accumulating long-term wealth?  This is a question worth thinking about as an investor, and a recent Gallup poll shows that only 37% of those surveyed believed that stocks were a good method for accumulating wealth.

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The Predictive Power (Or Lack Thereof) Of Stock Market Indicators

There is really no indicator that we know of that can predict stock market performance.  If there ever were, it would very quickly be arbitraged away since markets tend to be fairly efficient.  Merrill Lynch uses a metric they call the “Sell Side Indicator” to determine future stock performance.

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Beating The Market: Luck Or Skill?

There is a great post at the Big Picture blog about whether luck or skill is the determining factor to outperforming the market. The short answer: luck. Research has shown this to be the case, but some other points in the article are worth reviewing.

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Fleecing Investors, When Will They Learn?

Several days ago, Bloomberg wrote a scathing article on Managed Futures Funds. These funds started to gain much more popularity after 2008. They tend to be non-correlated to the overall market, appealing to investors after losing over half their money in the stock market.

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Pay Me My Fair Share- Profits vs. Wages

One of the big themes we have seen over the past several years is capital over labor.  Corporations have seen an explosion in income while paying their workers some of the lowest wages in history. Here is a chart that shows labor as a percentage of GDP (blue) versus corporate profits as a percentage of GDP (red).

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Revisiting Gold

The number of calls we have received about gold has certainly diminished over the past several months as the yellow metal has lost over 25% of its value from the peak.  Here is a chart of the last few years.

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Never Ever Believe a Market Forecast

Market forecasts are essentially useless and cause more harm than good. We thought this chart from Societe Generate captured our thoughts nicely.

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