World reserve currencies don’t remain reserve currencies forever. The British pound and its gold standard once ruled international finance, but after abandoning the gold standard during World War I and unsuccessfully attempting to reintroduce it after the war, the pound ceded its reserve currency status to the US dollar. Since the end of World War II the dollar has stood...
It’s that time of year again, when families around the country gather together to eat turkey, watch football, and give thanks for everything they’ve been blessed with over the past year. Investors are no different, particularly given the performance of stock markets over the past few years. But for many investors looking warily at stock markets and wondering when...
Ray Dalio is one of the world’s richest men, one of its most prominent investors, and the founder of one of the world’s largest hedge funds. He’s also bearish on the future of the economy, betting $1.5 billion that the economy will turn south before then. If stocks turn south by the end of March, Dalio could win big....
A key component to the surge in stock prices over the past several years has been the record high level of corporate stock buybacks. Corporations have been issuing trillions of dollars in debt in order to buy back shares of their stock. That boosts earnings per share, a key metric used to determine executive compensation. In that way corporate...
Most people realize that the amount of debt in existence worldwide is enormous, but how enormous isn’t immediately obvious. Many people may even labor under the erroneous impression that the debt bubble has improved since the financial crisis, since surely businesses and individuals learned their lesson from that crisis. But the reality is that the debt bubble isn’t just...
For years, market analysts have wondered when the fourth round of quantitative easing (QE) would occur. We all remember QE1, QE2, and QE3, which mainstream economic analysts praise as having saved the financial system from ruin in 2008 and afterwards. But the trillions of dollars created during those bouts of easing have created an enormous bubble that will risk...
With manufacturing activity slowing, job postings declining, and manufacturing activity grinding to a halt, the economy is obviously headed toward recession. Yet stock markets seem oblivious to all of that, reaching new highs in the past few days and confounding everyone who sees the next recession just around the corner. Yet many stock market bears have been predicting another...
A key part in investors’ decision-making processes when deciding on what to invest in is how much they can expect to gain over the long term. Most investors are really only passive investors, buying assets and holding on to them for years, rarely making major changes to their investments, and only reallocating assets within their portfolios every 5-10 years...
There has probably never been a bigger cheerleader for stock markets than US billionaire Warren Buffett. The legendary investor and CEO and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway has always been one to speak his mind, and in his mind stocks are the only way to grow wealth. Buffett isn’t shy about putting his trust in stock markets and is always...
With stock markets reaching another record high this week, albeit just barely, even those who strongly believe that a recession is just around the corner are beginning to have second thoughts. That’s only natural, as stock markets have been essentially in a holding pattern for nearly two years. After breaking through multiple thousand-point barriers beginning in 2016 and moving...