Thirty-year mortgage rates might have ticked up in the past 12 months, but for now that doesn’t seem to be weighing on new home demand. According to the Commerce Department, housing starts climbed to an 11-year high of 1.35 million units in May, a clear sign that the market has continued to improve following the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago.

How can investors navigate volatility arising from late-cycle fiscal stimulus?

Talk of a trade war with China has recently dominated the discussion in financial markets, overshadowing the other major story playing out in the US economy—normalization of the energy markets. I thought I would answer the question of whether trade with China or oil was a bigger economic issue.

Index provider MSCI’s decision to include Saudi Arabia in its emerging-markets index will likely transform the Kingdom’s equity market, and potentially those across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, according to Bassel Khatoun and Salah Shamma, Franklin Templeton Emerging Markets Equity.

Russ discusses why economic conditions (for now) support low volatility in the markets.

One of the big pieces of news in the financial world today focuses on General Electric (GE). The iconic American conglomerate has been removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and its stock will no longer be included when the index is calculated. It will be replaced by the drugstore chain Walgreens.

The economic calendar is modest. Volatility is lower even with plenty of news. The summer doldrums have arrived! It provides time for introspection to fill those empty timeslots and pages.

PepsiCo (PEP) is a Dividend Aristocrat, Champion and blue-chip stalwart that has increased its dividend for 46 consecutive years. Therefore, it should be no surprise that just as we saw with Procter & Gamble in part 5, this blue-chip stalwart has traditionally commanded a higher valuation (earnings multiple) than the average stock.

The opposite of populist nationalism is not globalist elitism; it is economic realism. And in the end, countries such as Britain, the United States, and now Italy will learn the hard way that reality always eventually wins.

Our national debt has swelled to a record $21.16 trillion as of this writing. That includes debt held by the public ($15.4 trillion) and intra-governmental debt ($5.7 trillion). At $21+ trillion, our national debt is well above 100% of our Gross Domestic Product of $19.97 trillion.