There have been some interesting developments over the past week that give me additional conviction that the next crisis the investment markets face will be a sovereign debt crisis (government bonds). We’ve already seen the early stages in Europe when yields in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain spiked higher. Now we have bond yields…
Stock Market Update (Video) – Stocks Losing Momentum
A quick video this week looking at the US stock market and how the past may give us some clues as to what lies ahead: I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend! -Nick
Apple & Gold
The large majority of my clients own stock in Apple and gold so I obviously keep a close eye on both. For years these were two of the best performing assets you could own but both fell out of favor last fall. The interesting thing that I’ve noticed is how closely they’ve tracked each other…
US-Based Multinational Companies & the Dollar
Yesterday Walmart reported a $680 million dollar hit to sales because of currency fluctuations. Walmart doesn’t hedge currency risk, doing business in other countries in their local currency and simply converting it back into US dollars when calculating quarterly earnings. For the last decade plus, it was all about companies that were seeing revenue boosts…
Investing & Intuition
I just pulled a book off the shelf to reread that I read back in 2011 called The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth. It’s a really interesting book that focuses on the right-brain side of our thinking. Our left-brain is typically considered our analytical side of thinking while the right-brain is associated…
Summer Doldrums
Summer tends to be a pretty quiet time for the stock market and the correction over the past month has fit the bill. These are the times you use to catch up on your research so I’ve spent the past few weeks going through quarterly earnings calls, assessing which countries I feel are positioned well,…
Market Trends
This morning’s market reactions to the unexpected jobs number gave me even more conviction that the current capital trends are in place. Gold, bonds and currencies all moved in anticipation of further Fed easing, while stocks did not. For a while now, bad news has been good news for stocks because it has meant continued/more…
Muni Bonds & Risk
I’ve had growing concerns over the looming pension liabilities that so many local and state governments face and the recent Detroit bankruptcy could be changing things… It now appears likely that the Michigan courts will rule in favor of the pension/benefit obligations, knocking the “senior” General Obligation (GO) muni bonds down a peg. GO muni’s…