It is no mystery to anyone that the US government has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy, all while holding interest rates at record lows over the past two years. Anyone with a basic concept of supply and demand, with all of these dollars in our economic system, will fear that rising inflation is […]
If you watch the news you have probably heard a lot about dollar depreciation these last few months. As part of the economic stimulus package, the Federal Reserve has had to keep interest rates at historic lows (thereby making the “price” of dollars very cheap) while borrowing enormous quantities of money from foreign and domestic […]
The announcements of economic indicators like the Consumer Confidence Index and Personal Income were blamed for market ups and downs in the past week. Economists at large institutional investment firms such as hedge funds keenly watch these indicators and act upon them. Indicators are very important data to them because they act as guideposts in […]
If you have ever received advice on investing your money, chances are you’ve had the benefits of diversification drilled into your brain. “Diversify and rule” was my college economics professor’s one-line strategy for managing his retirement portfolio. Corny but true. The virtues of diversifying your investments have been borne out by mathematics, finance and plain […]
Return on Investment (ROI) is a concept that entrepreneurs and marketers know all too well. If you can spend a dollar to get more than a dollar in return, you should keep spending. Awesome, but why do I care? I struggle with 40 paid hours a week and another 20 of what I called “I […]
After deciding how much of your portfolio should be in each asset class (stocks, bonds, commodities, etc.), the next asset allocation decision to make is how much of your portfolio should be invested in your own country’s stock market and how much should be invested abroad. Weighting by market capitalization A common sense starting point […]
