Bed Bath & Beyond, once a stock market darling, is nearly bankrupt. Why? Allan Sloan tells us: (Emphasis mine) “We all know that the Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY)…is in such big trouble that it’s likely to file for bankruptcy. …. A major reason the company is so messed up is that when it comes to its own stock, the […]
» Read moreAs the market soared, pundits hawked their investment flavor of the day; “Don’t Fight The Fed!” Buy stocks based on the actions of the Fed, not the value of the company. Even forever unprofitable companies saw their stock prices skyrocket. Traders made a lot of money playing that game. Bill Bonner wrote, “After 1999, stocks rose for the wrong reasons; […]
» Read moreIn my late 40’s, fresh out of a divorce, I took stock of my life. I had a good job, a small 401k, an old car and lived in a rental apartment. I’d enjoyed my share of good times and raised a family. My personal balance sheet would have fit on a Post-it-Note with room to spare; it was pretty […]
» Read moreWhen the Fed bailed out the banks in 2008, flooding the system with trillions, you just knew high inflation would be the result. It just had to happen! The government jumped in, borrowing trillions more at historically low interest rates. Not willing to let rates rise to free market levels, the Fed simply created money for the government and put […]
» Read moreJanuary is time to look ahead for the year. Sadly, way too much depends on the Federal Reserve and world central banks. Michael Howell writes: “It has been a bleak year for many investors. Global investors have lost $23tn of wealth…so far in 2022. …. That is equivalent to 22 per cent of global gross domestic product” When bureaucrats create […]
» Read moreSince the 2008 bank bailouts, market volatility has been the daily challenge for all investors. Inflation is sky high, the Fed is slowly raising rates, hoping to bring it back to their 2% target. Interest rates are still below the rate of inflation. Stock jockeys and academics are screaming, 2% is just too hard – calling Fed head Jerome Powell […]
» Read moreIn our recent interview with Chuck Butler, we discussed the challenges of “locking in” safe interest income. The challenges are tough: Beating inflation. Currently inflation is around 8%. If your interest rate is below the inflation rate, your money will buy less when the bond or CD matures. Market timing. Locking in rates makes sense when you are near the […]
» Read moreGood friend and bond expert, Chuck Butler recently mentioned: “And someone somewhere, somehow is buying the 10-year Treasury, and the yield on the bond is slipping again, with it trading with 3.73% yield this morning.” MSNBC provides a graph of yields leading up to Thanksgiving week: Yields were at a high of around 4.2% and closed out the week at […]
» Read more“I told my dad he was dumb, turned out he was dumb like a fox!” That comment came from a friend in the bond department of a large brokerage firm. We were discussing buying bonds, CDs and interest rates. He was fresh out of college when Paul Volcker started raising interest rates to double digits. With extraordinarily high-interest rates, his […]
» Read moreWhat is money? Baby boomers worry about retirement, workers never seem to have enough while politicians spend other people’s money recklessly to buy votes. Richard Maybury writes a terrific publication which I highly recommend. His recent issue grabbed my attention: (Emphasis mine) “Ever since President Nixon bamboozled the whole world by sabotaging the gold standard in 1971, there has been […]
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