Bureaucracy, Taxpayers Headed for a Collision
The headline atop the front page of this morning’s Boulder Camera suggests a city struggling diligently to balance its budget: “Work-Week Options Eyed”. Reading this, one might infer that the city is contemplating unpaid furloughs or some other means of reducing payroll outlays, right? That would be entirely appropriate, given that Boulder faces a $5 million budget shortfall next year. But that is not what the story is about. In the first place, it is not the city that is “eying” changes in the work week, but the workers themselves. And what they have in mind is nothing so onerous as unpaid work days…
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Why Gold Should Anchor a Portfolio
(Following is the fourth in a series of articles on gold by Chuck Cohen, a financial consultant and lifelong resident of New York City.)
Recently I discussed some of the reasons investors often fall short. Today I want to help bring clarity to your investment goals and also explain why gold should hold a central place in your portfolio. If you succeed in these two areas, you’ll not only prosper, you will also be prepared for the incredible changes and shocks that I believe are coming.
As Richard Russell always stresses, succeeding in the stock market is a lifetime learning process. At age 84 or so, he is still working diligently at it. As we have all learned, making money in the stock market is not as easy as the hucksters would have us believe. Success comes not just from market knowledge but from learning from our mistakes. And it is…
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Fed Throttles Back, Having Achieved Little
The stock market carved out yet another bowl-shaped formation on the intraday charts yesterday, making everyone who bought the dip a lucky winner. Stocks have swooned in four of the last five sessions and closed higher for six consecutive days, but yesterday’s swoon was a little more dramatic than the others. Some attributed the selloff portion of the day to mounting concerns that President Obama’s tax proposals will soak not only the “rich,” but the middle class. Whatever misgivings investors may have had about this were…
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Even in Boulder, the News Is Lurid
With the dog days of summer fast approaching, we wondered whether every small-town newspaper in America is entertaining readers these days with the same sort of lurid stories that fill the Boulder (Colorado) Camera. Boulder is not exactly the kind of place where you’d expect to find luridness in newsworthy quantities. Half the people who live here are trust-fund babies who, one would surmise, spend their days hiking the local trails, writing…
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News Unlikely to Deter Bulls
Although two big companies, Microsoft and American Express, reported atrocious earnings yesterday after the close, we shouldn’t expect the news to slow the relentless rise of stocks for long. Investors were obviously blithely unconcerned about earnings on Thursday, showing their eagerness to buy stocks by pushing the broad averages to their most impressive gains in nearly two weeks. The S&Ps settled at 976, up 2.3% on the day, and looked like an even-money bet to achieve their biggest back-to-back weekly gain since…
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