One thing that every investor wants to avoid is paying taxes. Having to pay taxes takes a tremendous cut out of the value of your investments, eating significantly into your investment returns. That’s why so many investors turn to tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs, since they allow investors to defer taxation on their investment gains until...
While the Federal Reserve’s rate cut last week was fully expected, the reasons behind it are increasingly unclear. At the post-FOMC press conference, Fed Chairman Jay Powell seemed to flip flop on whether this was a one-time deal, “So we do think it will serve all of those goals, but again, we’re thinking of it as essentially in the nature...
One of the key concerns most people have when planning for retirement is making sure that their money is safe. Between stock market crashes, Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi schemes, and hackers targeting financial accounts through phishing, there are numerous threats out there that need to be defended against. But while you can protect yourself against most threats when you invest...
If the Federal Reserve ends up cutting its target federal funds rate this week, it would be an admission that the economy is in a pretty precarious state. Many analysts are trying to spin a rate cut as an attempt to keep the economic “expansion” of the past ten years going, but that’s merely wishful thinking. A decade out...
The current stock market bull market has been fueled by the massive amounts of money pumped into world economies by central banks around the world. All that money had to go somewhere, and it has finally ended up in stock markets. To a large extent the continuing bull run is the result of stock buybacks on the part of...
One of the frustrating things to those who know that a stock market crash is coming has been the recent behavior of stock markets. All signs are pointing to an economic slowdown just around the corner, yet stock markets just recently set new all-time highs. What gives? If there’s one things that markets can be characterized as right now, it’s...
2018 was supposed to have been a great year for precious metals, but it ended up being a down year for investment assets across the board, from stocks and bonds to gold and silver. Silver was hit hard, with a 9% drop over the course of the year, slightly worse than the 5.6% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial...
To anyone taking a look at the US economy, the fact that the Federal Reserve is contemplating a rate cut, and the fact that markets are expecting a 50 basis point rate cut, is absolutely mind-boggling. Here we are with an economy that is supposedly booming, with employers struggling to find workers, with stock markets at all-time highs, and...
For centuries silver, not gold, was the precious metal of ordinary commerce. Numerous currencies, from the mark to the pound to the dollar, were defined as weights of silver. From Europe to China to the New World, silver coins were the currency of choice. Silver defined what it was to be cold, hard cash. That continuous demand over centuries hasn’t...
If you pay attention to financial media you’ve probably heard of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” The author, Robert Kiyosaki, has made a killing selling books and giving talks espousing his theory of investing. But while much of his focus has been on getting people to shed their concepts of how to get rich and embrace alternative methods of wealth...