…Calmly observing the changing world

It’s no secret that the stock market has gone nowhere for a decade and that interest rates are so low that money is essentially free.  Armed with this knowledge, investors are exploring alternative avenues of building wealth – or at least preserving it. All companies are predicated on the fact that they put money to [...]

Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? Usually when there are rumors flying around the internet about commodity intrigue, with deliveries potentially causing a shortage and a subsequent price spike, we are talking about gold or silver.  In this, very unusual case, we are talking about… chocolate. An originally mysterious investor stood for delivery on a massive number [...]

Welcome to the world of bullion coin investing, a business that has soared alongside the popularity of gold despite its disadvantages… MarketWatch (emphasis added liberally throughout) This certainly caught my eye.  I wondered, just what were the disadvantages?  Surely, I could read on and be informed of these. The coin craze is part of gold’s [...]

Retailers are struggling to turn out consumers.  It seems like they are only willing to spend money when they think are getting a good deal – imagine that. On Saturday, I was unwittingly part of such a consumer response myself.  My wife had strategically placed me in line at Old Navy with shirts (not men’s [...]

With the pace of economic news vastly exceeding the amount of time I currently have to dedicate to this blog, there is no point in trying to keep up.  Despite this, I’d like to quickly post regarding a comment made by Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble: “I’m convinced the markets are really out of control. [...]

It’s both heartening and unsettling to see one of MarkOnMarket’s key issues come to its initial fruition.  Greek bonds – never the bedrock of stability – have finally been shown to be worth just about nothing.  Interest rates soared passed double digits after S&P belatedly rated the bonds as “junk” which caused a wave of [...]

You might be forgiven if you thought that last week’s big news was about what details were in the health care bill, or how it got passed, or who said what afterwards.  You could have thought the biggest news was the fact that the nations with a triple-A credit rating were put on notice.  Or [...]

Despite the thoroughly German ECB being disinterested in bailing out Greece, and the German people overwhelmingly opposed to the same, the German government itself is vowing to help in smaller ways (like buying up newly issued Greek debt so interest rates on Greek bonds don’t spiral out of control).  Not all German officials feel the [...]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is known for many things, but mostly he is known for pointing out just how stupid it is to try to predict the future.  The future is full of so many unknowns at every level that predictions are just bound to be worthless. And if your prediction happens to come true anyway, Taleb [...]

In a surprise move today, the Federal Reserve raised the somewhat low-profile discount rate from 0.50% to 0.75%. Supposedly, they are backing away from “emergency” operations and things are slowly getting back to “normal”. In the great scheme of things, this doesn’t sound like much, but rate cycles are long term events and while we [...]