“This has to be the bottom, right?” “Why?” I ask. “Well the market went up 10% in one day, that’s a record, right?” “So?” “I mean the elections are Tuesday. October’s over. Shouldn’t the market rally?” And so it goes. Client after client called me this week, flush with cash, sitting on the sidelines, just [...]

It’s now official; the nation’s Gross Domestic Product sank into negative territory in the third quarter by 0.3 %. On the surface, that’s not much of a decline but compared to the previous quarter’s 2.8% positive growth rate, it was as if the economy hit a brick wall. It marked the worst economic contraction since [...]

Today should have been another meltdown in the markets. It certainly happened overseas where overnight Japan lost 9.6 % while Europe closed off about 5%. The losses in the U.S. markets were “only” 3 plus %. You will most likely read or hear that the markets held and that a bottom is forming. Don’t believe [...]

Our concept of free markets may change dramatically as the result of this crisis. I believe that in the years ahead, the majority of Americans will no longer espouse the laissez faire attitudes of the last century. Instead, markets will be regulated and to some extent controlled by the government. Whether that will turn out [...]

Who can blame the wary, weary investor? They are faced with markets that swing wildly, the averages gaining and losing more in a day then they usually do in a year. Most have lost a mountain of money and the headlines continue to spew a litany of bad news. The markets are dangerous and yet, [...]

Events are unfolding or unraveling so quickly that even the morning’s newspapers are largely outdated by the time I sit down at my desk. Given that, the period between Election Day, the first Tuesday of November, and January 20th, Inauguration Day, worries me. The typical presidential transition requires eleven weeks. That feels like a lifetime [...]

As the markets close the week with losses that has set all kinds of world records, you have to wonder what’s next. Will the Dow Jones, which notched up its worst percentage and point drop in its 112 year history, have a repeat performance next week? Much will depend on what happens this weekend.

Sometimes I’m called upon to forecast the future in this business despite the fact that no one really knows how things will turn out. Right now, according to a recent poll on Yahoo, 6 out of 10 Americans believe we are entering a second Great Depression. They point to the present global stock market crash [...]

So the $700 rescue plan finally passed this afternoon. The entire process was a disgrace. While various members of congress extracted over a billion dollars in extra goodies over the last two weeks for their votes, investors lost well over $1 trillion of IRA and other tax-deferred investments as the market plummeted. That was money [...]