Gold has been on a nice run over the last three months, up 13% and reaching a 6-year high not long ago. The fun might be over, but it’s actually too early to want to bail just yet. Looking at gold charts, it might seem to be reasonable or at least excusable if people look […]

Carried interest are a share of the profits retained by hedge and private equity funds. We treat these profits as capital gains although many think they should be taxed normally. The concept of carried interest is believed to have originated with sea captains centuries ago, who were provided a 20% stake in the shipments they […]

California’s Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E, is the nation’s largest utility. It went bankrupt in January over massive potential lawsuits. Is it worth a gamble now? For whatever reason, California’s wildfires have been particularly brutal over the last couple of seasons. Many believe that global warming is to blame, and if that is the […]

There is a view out there that stock markets, as well as other financial markets, should somehow be shielded from speculation. Speculation is all that these markets do though. Some people believe that financial markets engage in a lot of “useless speculation.” It is curious that we would ever use the terms “useless” and “speculation” […]

Economist Paul Shea of Miller Tabak has spoken out about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s recent prognostications of doom for the economy, believing that her view is overstated. Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren claims to have predicted the economic collapse of 2008 well in advance, and she is now telling us that something similar […]

We tend to focus a lot on economic data and projections to predict where markets will be heading in the future. Investor behavior plays a big role in these outcomes as well. There is no question that economic trends do play a significant role in shaping long-term equity curves, as better economic times mean that […]

Chip stocks are up 40% this year on average, which means that this sector has grown twice as much as the S&P 500 index. Does this mean that we should be afraid? Fundamental analysts have a natural tendency to believe that stocks have a limited amount of growth that they can see over a certain […]

Private equity firms are called raiders by some of people, and when you put raider together with Wall Street, and you hate both, this can produce a lot of fire and brimstone. It is no secret that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren is no fan of Wall Street. This is not a view that […]

We normally see interest rate cuts by the Fed as expansionary, and this only makes sense because this increases money supply. Could this end up decreasing it though? People usually think of economics as a science, and it is in a sense, although it would be more correct to call it both an art and […]

The longer a bull market runs, the more nervous a lot of people get about it ending. At least at the moment, there is nothing even close to the appeal of holding common stock. Whoever came up with the phrase “what goes up must come down” certainly wasn’t a stock investor. It is well known […]