Executive Insights

China's volatile shares tumbled again on Thursday, taking losses this month to about 25 percent or 13 trillion yuan ($2 trillion), while state media insisted that the market ructions did not reflect the real economy. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended down 2.9 percent, and the CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai…

Allianz Chief Economic Adviser Mohamed El-Erian said Tuesday the world economy is at the end of the era of borrowing growth and profits from the future in the form of easy monetary policies. "Either we validate the financial asset prices and growth faster, or alternatively we will slip into a global recession with financial disorder,"…

Gold rose to a 12-week high on Tuesday, shrugging off strong stocks with nervous investors moving into safe havens as the U.S. Federal Reserve began a two-day meeting expected to give clues about the timing of the next interest rate increase. Spot gold was up 1.3 percent at $1,121.80 an ounce at 2:16 p.m. EST…

The $15 trillion rout in global equity markets since May is reawakening the lure of gold for investors seeking safety. Hedge funds and other large speculators more than doubled their net-long position in bullion last week, just three weeks after they were the most-bearish ever. Investor holdings of gold through exchange-traded products are expanding at…

The U.S. Mint appears to have sold all of the American Eagle silver coins it has allocated so far this month. The Mint allocated 4 million ounces for the week of Jan. 11, when sales on 2016-dated coins began, and then 1 million for this and future weeks. This means an allocation of 5 million…

Investors have noticed that the stock market has gone through a radical change in the past few months. Veteran investor Mark D. Cook, who pointed out red flags a year ago, feels vindicated. Finally, stock prices confirmed what he saw in 2014: We’re in a bear market and about to go over the cliff, he…

Any bounce in U.S. stocks will be short-lived, widely followed market watcher Dennis Gartman cautioned on Tuesday. The warning came as U.S. stocks were poised to open higher following data that showed China's economy grew by 6.8 percent, easing fears of a more significant slowdown. What has the publisher of The Gartman Letter concerned is…

The S&P 500 has begun 2016 with its worst performance ever. This has prompted Wall Street apologists to come out in full force and try to explain why the chaos in global currencies and equities will not be a repeat of 2008. Nor do they want investors to believe this environment is commensurate with the…

The stock market rout is starting to get really expensive — destroying $2.3 trillion from the market's top last year and $1.5 trillion in net wealth just this year. The giant companies that predominantly populate the Standard & Poor's 500 have fallen an average of 8.9% this year — which, when translated into dollars, is…

The late-day selloff came despite earlier gains sparked by better-than-expected trade data from China and an early bounce in oil prices from recent lows. But the two-day bounce faded as the mood shifted on Wall Street from the once-winning buy-the-dip mentality to a "sell the rally" strategy, says Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank. By the…

There are cynics, there are doomsayers, and then there's Albert Edwards, the Societe Generale economist who is in a league almost of his own. Edwards' most recent call is that if the US economy plunges into a recession led by weak manufacturing output, stocks will be worth about a quarter of what they're priced at…

The City of London’s most vocal “bear” has warned that the world is heading for a financial crisis as severe as the crash of 2008-09 that could prompt the collapse of the eurozone. Albert Edwards, strategist at the bank Société Générale, said the west was about to be hit by a wave of deflation from…