Post tagged with markets

  • Will gold keep rising against major currencies?

    March 10th, 201001:57 PM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    The answer, of course, is "no one knows." But the prospects for gold seem good - or, put another way, the prospects for currencies appear to be not-so good. Reporter Tom Sullivan offers details in Barron's. The dollar is not as good as gold. Neither are 22 other currencies. A recent study by GoldMoney.com, which enables online cross-border trans...

  • It's Difficult to Make Predictions — Especially About the Future

    December 10th, 200911:44 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    As we've stressed before, no one knows the future except God. Not even the best and brightest financial "experts" have a good track record for accurate predictions. Writing at SmartMoney.com, Jonathan Hoenig takes note of a few things that the experts got wrong when, at the end of the 1990s, they looked ahead to the next decade: It was just...

  • We should have seen it coming

    November 05th, 200909:02 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    In a column for the Wall Street Journal, the always-insightful Jeremy Seigel, a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (and author of Stocks for the Long Run), gets to the heart of what led to the financial meltdown. The key, he writes, can be found in data collected by Prof. Robert Shiller of Yale University. ...

  • Crash of '29 anniversary - setting the record straight

    October 30th, 200910:31 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    On this 80th anniversary of the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, I refer you to Mark's February 2008 article that corrects common misconceptions about the crash. As he noted then, "Sadly, because these misconceptions are foisted regularly upon the investing public, many investors fear bear markets intensely and make poor decisions as a result." ...

  • "Too big to fail" is too big

    October 29th, 200909:03 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    Jim Jubak's latest column is a pretty convincing explanation of Why Big Banks Hate Banking. He runs through several examples (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo) showing that these companies may be involved (to varying degrees) in regular banking activities, but at least recently, they've been making most of their profits ...

  • When a 5,300% gain = a catastrophic loss

    October 21st, 200902:16 PM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    Financial commentator Jonathan Hoenig, writing at SmartMoney.com, tells a sad (and recent) tale of how runaway inflation can destroy the value of earnings. From May through October of 2008, Zimbabwean stocks skyrocketed, shooting from 72,000 to almost 400,000 by early November as measured by the S&P/International Finance Zimbabwe Index. Fo...

  • Gold sets new highs

    October 07th, 200911:44 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    Gold soared to an all-time high of $1,045/oz yesterday, sparked by a couple of news items this morning. Both illustrate the point we've been making in recent months that the rationale for investing in gold stems from what is happening (and likely going to happen) to the dollar. One of the news items that sparked gold's rise was a report in the U.K...

  • A year ago...

    September 16th, 200910:05 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    Yesterday marked the unhappy anniversary of the slide into financial panic. While the financial landscape may not be in great shape today, I think most would agree that things could be a whole lot worse. In fact, I'd guess that if we had taken a reader survey 50 weeks ago, many/most probably would have expected conditions to be worse today than t...

  • There's good news, and there's bad news

    July 29th, 200910:58 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    The good news is the index of leading economic indicators is signaling that the recession is nearing its end: The index of leading indicators, which signals turning points in the economy, is rising at a rate that has accurately indicated the end of every recession since the index began to be compiled in 1959. The index was reported this week to h...

  • Even playing field?

    July 01st, 200909:49 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    If you read as much financial "stuff" as we do here at SMI, you quickly learn that writers in certain quarters are convinced the financial markets are rigged. Either the government is running the show, or some group of elites, or well, somebody is clearly up to something. While occasionally some good points are raised, the argument tends to get tir...
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