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...
Everyone has dreams of retiring some day. For many people, that’s the motivation that keeps them coming into work every day, the knowledge that every day they’re building up more and more money in their nest egg to enable themselves to finally quit the rat race in the future. But for many potential retirees, the timing of their retirement...
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...
Despite the reams of retirement planning advice out there, there will always be some people, many through no fault of their own, who are unable to save enough money to retire comfortably. That was the impetus behind the creation of the Social Security System, to provide a backstop so that those whose retirement savings were insufficient would have an...
All investors want their retirement portfolios to perform well and make money for them, but in the back of their minds they understand that their portfolios can be subject to huge losses. That’s why many of the most successful investors over time are those who protect their portfolios from major losses, not necessarily those who make the biggest gains. One...
One of the most misunderstood factors when it comes to buying gold, silver and other precious metals, is whether to buy physical gold or paper gold. Physical gold is just what the name suggests: physical gold coins and bars that investors actually own themselves. Paper gold is the term given to investments such as gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs). How Do Gold...
Alan Greenspan was notorious as a Federal Reserve Board Chairman for engaging in “Fedspeak,” a variation of English that sounded as though he was conveying vast amounts of information but in reality was a bunch of gobbledygook that meant absolutely nothing. As long as the economy was booming, which for much of Greenspan’s tenure it was, he got a...