From the category archives:

Stock Market Commentary

Are You Prepared for 5% Annual Returns for Years to Come?

In yet another common refrain from the Bond King Bill Gross, he stated this week (CNBC) that anyone realizing even 5% returns on stocks or bonds should consider themselves in the upper echelon of performers in the years ahead due to the debt issues in the EU and US which are anticipated to restrict growth [...]

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Timing is Everything – Investors Who Sold at the Bottom Piling Into Stocks Now?

With major market indices just about doubling in less than two years from the market bottom following the financial crash, retail investors are finally starting to pile back into stocks. Talk about timing, huh? I was blown away by my friends and colleagues who were proclaiming in 2009, “I’m out! I’ve had it! Wall Street [...]

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3 Lessons I Learned from the Greek Riots and Market Panic

The World is a Very Small Place As the New York Times so eloquently envisioned in the Web of Debt infographic, as Greece goes, so does the rest of Europe due to the incestuous relationships of virtually every large bank. And lest we don’t forget, much of Europe, and the rest of the world for [...]

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Study: Smart Investors MUCH Better Stock Pickers than Dumb Investors

I came across a neat research paper from UCLA and a few others universities seeking to address the topic of whether investors with a high IQ actually exhibit superior investment performance over others. This study strikes at the heart of the notion that stock picking is a random walk and no one investor can reasonably [...]

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How to Get Your Market Losses Back Now! (Read on)

Now, that’s a disingenuous title for an article. But I see it everywhere following the 2008-2009 stock market crash – from prominent money mags at the bookstore to web investing outlets and blogger posts. And it sure is enticing to click through and read on. There’s a simple reason you can’t and won’t easily “get [...]

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How Stupidity on Wall Street Violated the Most Basic Laws of Physics

As a physical sciences and astrophysics buff, I was struck by the irony in some of man’s greatest and most enigmatic physical laws in contrast to some of the dumbest behavior imaginable by Wall street, politicians and main street for that matter. I couldn’t help but compare some of the most famous physical laws we’ve [...]

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Price to Earnings Ratios Gone Wild – A Measure for Investors to Follow?

I came across this visual and thought it was worth sharing. With data from Robert Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance, this BusinessWeek chart highlights the massive secular trends that span years at a time where Price to Earnings ratios of the companies that comprise the S&P500 rarely actually stay around the mean of 16.3, but they do [...]

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Corporate Pension Plan Shortfall – The Next Crisis?

US Corporations are walking a thin line with Pension Plan Shortfalls that may well translate into the next global crisis. Now that the mortgage crisis is behind us (that is, until the next wave of defaults hit due to more interest rate resets and the reconfigured mortgages that fail anyway – and commercial mortgages to [...]

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Why were the Risk-Averse so Heavily Invested in Stocks?

Akin to how our grandparents’ generation is known for their thrift and frugality from living through the Great Depression, our generation may very well be known for a similar sort of risk-aversion…a changed generation of humility and financial conservatism, after seeing the worst financial conditions and stock market deterioration in our lifetime (note: in our [...]

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