Both gold and silver have been on a tear this week, with the yellow metal touching a nine-year high of $1,897 in intraday trading on Thursday. Silver was trading above $22.70, up 94 percent from its 52-week low on March 18.
How would Buffett be viewed if, instead of being the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, he ran an open-end mutual fund by the same name?
The economic calendar is light with a focus on home sales. Unemployment claims data remains an especially important indicator. Second quarter earnings reports will be more important than the economic data, but I do not expect much fresh information on COVID-19 and earnings outlook.
Morgan Stanley will begin reporting the carbon emissions resulting from its lending and investments, providing greater clarity than any of its major American peers on how the bank contributes to climate change.
This part two of a series of discussions about how the issues of banking, taxation and slavery became intertwined and how the debate over the national currency and the national debt that the Civil War produced would shape what we think of as an entirely modern idea - a central reserve bank.
Care to guess how well the monthly CAPE predicted future 10-year returns between January 1995 and May 2020?
Weeks before the S&P 500 bottomed, many millennial Robinhood investors began picking up coronavirus-impacted airline stocks. The buying spree continued even after Warren Buffett announced that he’d dumped his holdings.
Politicians love saying small businesses are important to the economy. In this case, it isn’t just rhetoric. The millions of little companies with a handful of workers are, collectively, more important than the few hundred large enterprises we see in the news.
In a prospecting article from May, we looked at the relative performance of active and passively-managed funds during the volatile months of March and April, a period that theoretically should have favored active managers. With two quarters of 2020 officially behind us, we thought this would be an opportune time to take a look at the longer-term relative performance of these strategies.
In this week’s “Technically Speaking,” the “Golden Cross” arrives, but are the bulls safe? As noted two weeks ago, is the 50/200 dma crossover is historically bullish for equities. However, with markets facing one of the worst earnings declines on record, could overly exuberant investors be walking into a trap?
At LPL Research, we know the stock market is forward-looking: It focuses on what’s happening today and what it sees on the path ahead. Much of the real-time economic data we follow—such as transportation activity, home sales, and jobless claims—is showing tangible evidence that economic activity—while still depressed—has begun to make a comeback.
Next time you see a client’s resolve to stay invested waver, ask them two questions…
The value of this year’s annual hedge fund performance survey was turned on its head when a pandemic shut down the global economy and sent securities plummeting. But a deeper look at consistently performing funds revealed managers that as a group have largely been able to weather the storm better than the market and their peers.
Precious metals were the big winners for the first six months of 2020. Spot gold took the first place position, rising over 17 percent, followed in second place by silver, up nearly 2 percent. Palladium rounded out the top three, essentially flat at negative 10 basis points.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact economies across the globe as they emerge from lockdowns, including emerging markets.
Be wary of these five common copywriting mistakes I see advisors make on their websites.
How does one acquire the motivation to improve?
While the “annuity puzzle” is well-documented in the academic literature, there is no “mutual fund puzzle.”
I read The Black Swan shortly after it came out. The financial crisis and Great Recession were brewing, and I was already beginning to predict a recession. We sensed something big was coming but didn’t know the details. Rereading my September 2007 review of Taleb’s book is an eerie glimpse into the past. It’s also a good reminder that more big events lie ahead.
American ingenuity is something to take pride in this weekend as we (safely) celebrate the Fourth of July.
Here are nine affordable picks from both classic and new vintners around the world.
Markets have rallied on hopes for an economic recovery as coronavirus-imposed lockdowns are eased across the globe. The rebound has been helped by oversold investor sentiment, but with sentiment back to neutral, so too is our strategists’ market outlook.
A “perfect storm” of surging government debt levels, plunging real bond yields, rising coronavirus cases and deteriorating economic forecasts pushed the price of gold to an eight-year high this week, and some analysts now project the metal to top its all-time high within the next 12 months.
The health crisis creates opportunities to unite historically disparate investor groups to help build economic and market sustainability and resiliency.
Pundits, prognosticators, and even investment boards often make misleading declarations that an asset class is broken, that its prospects for earning investors a reasonable future return are very dim. These proclamations can lead to investors’ abandoning these assets to chase recent winners.
We like to go a bit further with our definition and add that luxury goods are those for which demand has tended to grow faster than potential buyers’ disposable incomes. This contrasts with “necessities,” for which demand growth has been more in line with income growth over time.
During the coronavirus pandemic, people are drinking less. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
The unprecedented amount of fiscal and monetary stimulus that has been showered on the US and global economies has the potential to lead to inflation...an environment of generally rising prices. Unfortunately, this could be playing out in an environment of little to no economic growth.
President Trump, like many others along the political spectrum, has derided the persistent U.S. trade deficit – particularly with China – as a waste of capital leaving our country. The view that the U.S. would benefit by correcting this imbalance is taken up in a new book, with a message that should concern all financial market participants.
In this latest survey, 68 leading bond and currency managers considered valuations, expectations and outlooks for the coming months.
U.S. stocks have managed a remarkable advance in the past several weeks as optimism outweighed concerns about the economic recovery and worsening Covid-19 cases. Has this been appropriate or irrational? Howard Marks shares his thoughts on the recent rally in asset prices in his latest memo.
Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are spiking again in several countries, including the U.S. California had its biggest one-day jump in infections. Arizona, Florida and Texas are also turning into new hotspots.
Deficits are rising across the developed world as governments aggressively loosen their purse strings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But what are the ramifications of all this debt?
I’m sharing and analyzing five examples of great visual content from financial advisors.
If you asked your COIs to give you a grade, what would they say?
Prime Coalition, based in Cambridge, Mass., has raised $76 million and counting for early-stage climate startups.
While a near-term mechanical bounce in economic activity in response to the lifting or easing of lockdown measures looks likely, we expect the subsequent climb up to be long and arduous.
Why did unemployment fall? Why is Brexit proceeding? And why did so much food go to waste?
Becoming familiar with each of the components of an effective marketing email will help you structure your emails for the best possible results.
With the recent market rally, stocks are again near their all-time highs. But we face a perilous economy, coupled with the threat of a resurgence of the coronavirus. Here’s what I tell clients who are dead-certain that the stock market is due for a significant correction.
This week marked the 50th trading day since its March 23 low, with the S&P 500 rallying ~40% —the best 50 day rally since 1932. While the index has recovered ~85% of its virus-induced losses, there is still a distance to go, and if you are like me, the further the race goes, the more challenging it gets and the slower I advance.
Warren Buffett “should have kept airline stocks because the airline stocks went through the roof today,” President Trump said this week. It’s a good thing that investors chose not to follow Buffett’s lead, as airline stocks are up 50% since his exit.
Today, we’re going to look at some actual data, both medical and economic. Spoiler alert: The unintended consequences of our response may be more threatening than the actual virus, unless we begin changing some things soon.
Bruce Bond is co-founder and CEO of Innovator Capital Management. Having cofounded PowerShares Capital Management in 2003, he is recognized as one of the pioneers of the ETF industry. I spoke with him about the explosive growth in flows to defined-outcome ETFs.
The price of silver soared in May, jumping more than 19 percent on safe haven demand as well as increased expectations of a swift economic recovery, given its many applications.
Three factors that may explain today’s disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.
True expertise is scarce and limited in scope. Howard Marks’s Uncertainty II — a postscript to his recent memo Uncertainty — explains why we should be careful about the “experts” we listen to and the weight we assign to their pronouncements.
A series of charts and historical evidence exists in late May of 2020 which shows that the S&P 500 Index and the vast majority of institutional investors of all shapes and forms have concentrated their investments in the most popular stocks in the stock market.
Shake up a snow globe and the world inside is instantly upheaved, until the flakes settle and a new reality is revealed. This pandemic demands that advisors engage in the same level of strategic upheaval to ensure they thrive in an unsettled world.
