The Stock Market’s Small Cap Problem
The extraordinary performance of U.S. stocks over the past six years has been like the 1960s Boston Celtics: Dominant and unbeatable. But is the tide…
Category: Leveraged Long/Short ETFs
How to Make Your Investments Less Taxing
A well-built investment portfolio always takes deliberate steps to minimize the threat of taxes to the greatest degree possible. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s…
Q&A: Why Can’t Leveraged ETFs be Bought and Held?
Dear ETFguide, You and just about all the other ETF specialists are very adamant about using leveraged ETFs as short-term trades only. Please comment about…
Rules for Trading Leveraged ETFs
If you think the stock market is a volatile place, you ought to get a load of ETFs that use leverage. From Oct. 10 to…
So this is the Bursting of the Bond Market’s Bubble?
Never mind which company Bill Gross is working at this week. The talking heads on Wall Street have been ranting about the bursting of the…
Equity Bearishness Sinks to 20 Year Lows
Is pessimism about the stock market really as high as equity bulls claim? One measure of the stock market’s mood is the Investor’s Intelligence Sentiment…
Treasury Doomsayers Get Grilled by Hated Rally in Bond Prices
In late 2013 just before the Federal Reserve began its scaling back on monthly Treasury bond purchases, the conventional wisdom was that interest rates would…
The No Market Volatility Fairytale
Has 2014 stock market volatility really gone the way of dodo birds and dinosaurs as claimed? The news du jour is that falling VIX means…
Experts Get the Gold Market Wrong (again)
Two questions: How wrong have experts been about the gold market this year? And how much money has their bad advice cost people? Let’s tackle…
Bull Market in Borrowing: Corporate Debt Skyrockets to $9.6 Trillion
How healthy are corporate balance sheets? It depends who you ask. One news outlet said that U.S. firms are hoarding a record $1.6 trillion in…
How to Print Money in the Psychotic Gold Market
The gold market is the epitome of human psychosis.* On one hand, there’s the anti-gold camp that have utter disdain for precious metals 24 hours…
What Does a Professional Gambler’s Investment Portfolio Look Like?
I’ve always wondered what a professional gambler’s portfolio would look like. Would it be a broadly diversified portfolio of penny stocks with a Kenny Rogers…
Treasury Bonds Sizzle, High Tech Fizzles
What do you get when you add up Twitter, Yelp, and Weibo? Answer: Deflation. That’s the latest joke as former high-flying tech stocks fizzle, while…
4 Bold-Faced Lies about High Frequency Trading
FULL DISCLOSURE: I was once in the camp of high-frequency trading (HFT) supporters. But that changed on May 6, 2010 after the U.S stock market’s…
Rigging the Stock Market is Old Hat
Is the latest revelation of stock market manipulation by high-speed traders via a just released 60 Minutes report really new? Before Michael Lewis’ latest book…
Are Chinese Stocks Really a Bargain?
Chinese stocks are the bargain of a lifetime. That’s what pundits from Goldman Sachs to analysts at major media outlets have been reporting. Are they…
Chinese Stocks are a Wonderful Value Trap
When it comes to properly assessing China’s stock market, are financial experts bad or just blind? Here’s what they’ve been saying: Buck the Trend, Buy…
$17.41 Trillion in U.S. Debt, like Stocks, at Record Levels
The Russell 2000 small cap index (NYSEARCA:IWM) just made a new all-time high, but stocks aren’t the only thing topping. U.S. public debt is at…
Let the Spending Spree Begin!
Debt ceilings have done little to curb the U.S. government’s escalating debt load and if you thought overspending was a serious problem before, welcome to…
Emerging Markets and Parallels to the pre-2008 Crash
Are there parallels between the pre-2008 U.S. stock market crash and emerging markets today? Emerging market bulls (NYSEARCA:EDC) say that cheap market valuations are a…