As the stock market continues to bounce around record highs a few things remain clear: the global economy remains fragile, growth is weak and uneven, and the job market isn’t getting any healthier – despite the falling unemployment rate, which recently dropped to 6.3% from 6.7%. In a healthy and functional market, unemployment falls while...Read More

Trading volume is generally light leading into holiday weekends and that was the case again last week. On the lightest trading volume so far this year the S&P 500 ended the week at a new all-time high, closing over 1,900 for the first time in its history. But even with recent achievement the S&P 500...Read More

Two companies have recently made drastic changes to their corporate identities via stock splits. On April 3, 2014, Google issued its first stock split, a 2 for 1 affair that saw the creation of a new class of stock and symbol. Google will now trade under two symbols: GOOG and GOOGL, both around $525 dollars...Read More

What’s the problem with low yields? They encourage more borrowing, lower the costs of business expansion, and in theory, create inflation – as the increase in debt (a.k.a. the amount of spending that income does not fully cover) produces upward pressure on pricing because natural demand has been inflated by the amount of new debt. So...Read More

Stocks seem to have flattened out since reaching their December 2013 pinnacle. Sure there was a minor sell-off in January, but stocks have recovered from that. The point to takeaway from current stock market valuations is this: the average has been unable to top the performance of the economy (total market activity). See below. A...Read More

Blogging regularly is an interesting chore. Sometimes the most important topic to talk about is obvious, and other times it’s hard to find. Sometimes the title is self-evident, and other times it doesn’t present itself until long after the fifth draft. It’s an odd process to the say the least. This week’s title came to...Read More

Gold continued to move higher last week as stocks made a U-turn to the downside. The Dow Average is down 3% so far this year, and 15-51 strength has peeled off 2% from its prior year-end. But gold is the story; up 15% year-to-date. The chart below spans a very short time period (just the...Read More

Stocks regained some upward momentum last week as stock market strength gained 2.5% and the average added 1.4%. Gold has quietly risen 10% from its 52 week low set just a couple of months ago. And while the recent ten-point pop might not take all the sting away from the gold correction, it did serve...Read More

Introducing 2.0 At the beginning of the year I began writing my next literary effort, and as stated on the back cover of my first endeavor, “Don’t expect to see a sequel. Lose Your Broker Not Your Money has it all, including an unparalleled guarantee of performance and support via a totally free website…” In other words,...Read More

With the recent release of GDP numbers for year ended 2013 it’s an appropriate time to update the action zone – the historical trading range for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The action zone is a dynamic range affected by ever changing conditions such as inflation, economic activity, and stock market multiples. It’s meant to...Read More