2018 and older

The elephants started to dance this week as Pfizer, the global pharmaceutical company, made an unsolicited bid to buy another global pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca.  Speculation swirled in the market that Pfizer’s initial offer, which was 30% higher than the previous…

Where to live?  The American dream of home ownership took a 90-degree turn starting with the housing crisis and the subprime debacle.  During the days of liberal lending, virtually anyone could get a home loan.  This fueled a run up…

The engine for sustainable growth has always been the ability to lend and to borrow money.  The banking crisis from the perspective of the market may be a rear-view mirror event, especially if seen through the lens of a fully…

Recent headlines coming out of the street were somewhat reminiscent of 1999 and 2000. This week was dominated by tech, tech….and tech.  Each day brought more stories of selling in the technology sector.  If I only looked at the headlines…

Have you ever read the old mission statement of the Federal Reserve?  It was short and sweet, and stated that the Fed’s mission was “to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation’s monetary, financial and payment systems so…

So how will the market start a new year?  This question was especially concerning this year given that 2014 began with the U.S. equity markets at a 5 year high.  During the first quarter the market faced three major risks, each…

It’s not just the price movement of stocks and bonds that investors watch but a multitude of markets in which we can invest and profit.  Of the many things one might consider there are precious metals, oil, heating oil, lumber,…

I get asked all the time what I think about the market.  For over thirty years my first focus when asked  was always the same thing – the bond market and interest rates.  Yes, the boring bond market, where governments…

It can be really hard to find the nuances in all the data, the news releases, the innuendos and the rumors that the market uses as the basis for moving in one direction or another.  This is especially difficult as…

The market is always interested in what “smart money” is doing because we certainly don’t care to know what the other group is doing.  Close to the top of the smart money heap are the large Private Equity buyout managers.…