There’s no denying it. The stock market has been on a roll. The S&P’s index has risen more than six percent since New Year’s Day, nearly 20 percent in the last 12 months, and roughly 250 percent since the start of the bull market in March 2009, reports The New York Times. If you’ve been…
For weeks, I’ve intended to write a post on the current stock market bubble, and now, the New York Times‘ David Leonhardt has beaten me to it, but I’ll make some additional points. Robert Shiller, a Noble prize-winning economist, is among the market analysts and economists whose work I follow and admire. I discovered Shiller several years…
In the wake of the FOMC’s decision, some analysts are lurching to the extreme, speculating that a majority of the FOMC sees the economy as weakening. We won’t know what individual members think about the state of the recovery until the minutes of this week’s meeting are released. But the Fed’s announcement makes it clear a majority of the FOMC believe the economy continues to expand. We also know the FOMC decided to wait for more data before making a decision. There are probably three primary factors that influenced this decision…
Volatility is inevitable considering the importance of QE3 to the course of both the U.S. and world economy, but it has been amplified by a misunderstanding of statements by Chairman Bernanke and other members of the Fed about how they’ll make decisions to taper. I’ll offer an interpretation in this post.
In my last post, I described how Goldman Sachs used its position in aluminum warehousing to manipulate prices, and I posed the question, What can we learn about the gold market from Goldman’s actions in aluminum? Let’s look at SPDR Gold, the largest gold ETF in the world. At the center of SPDR Gold is HSBC,…
Read Part I I concluded my last post by describing how the world’s largest purveyor of paper gold, SPDR Gold, sold more paper gold between December 2012 and June 2013 than it had accumulated over the previous four years. In fact, SPDR Gold sold more paper gold in those seven months than the physical gold…
This is the first in a series of posts in which I’ll make the case for why, even in these turbulent markets conditions, you should be considering buying physical gold. By physical gold I mean gold coins and bars as opposed to paper gold sold by exchange-trade funds, or ETFs. Your very first question might well…
I’m starting this blog during interesting and often confusing times for gold buyers and those considering the purchase of precious metals. My goal is to clear up that confusion by sorting through what’s happening in the gold market, explaining why it’s happening and what is likely to happen. I take a mid- to long-term perspective…
