Executive Insights

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Saturday called for the world’s largest economies to urgently move ahead with economic overhauls as the global growth outlook sours and market turmoil rocks emerging markets. “Downside risks to the outlook have increased, particularly for emerging market economies. Against this backdrop, policy priorities have taken on even…

Gold prices jumped Friday after U.S. jobs data came in far lower than expected, signaling continued sluggish economic growth and easing expectations of an interest-rate increase this year—adding up to a bullish backdrop for safe-haven assets such as precious metals. Gold prices were down nearly 1% earlier in Friday’s trading session but reversed losses after…

While investing in gold and the overall mining sector is difficult, one precious metals investor says that the sector is on the verge of entering another bull market. Sunday, to kick off the 2015 Denver Gold Forum, Adrian Day, president of Adrian Day Asset Management, said in his keynote address that in every major decline…

The outlook for the global economy has weakened slightly and become less certain in recent months as ripples from China outweigh an improvement in the U.S., the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday. In the latest update to its economic forecasts, the Paris-based research body zeroed in on the slowdown in China as…

The US Federal Reserve risks triggering “panic and turmoil” in emerging markets if it opts to raise rates at its September meeting and should hold fire until the global economy is on a surer footing, the World Bank’s chief economist has warned. Rising uncertainty over growth in China and its impact on the global economy…

Gold’s many qualities make it one of the most coveted metals in the world. Not only can it be beautifully shaped and sculpted, the yellow metal also conducts electricity, doesn’t tarnish and is biocompatible (meaning it’s not harmful to our tissue). These qualities make it the metal of choice in a wide variety of industries,…

China’s slowdown and a host of other downside risks threaten to push the global economy into much deeper trouble without concerted action by the world’s largest economies, the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday. “Risks are tilted to the downside, and a simultaneous realization of some of these risks would imply a much weaker outlook,” the…

The word of the week for investors was "sell." Mom and pop investors are dumping their investments and moving to cash at levels not seen since the financial crisis of 2008. It's an "investor revolt," is how Credit Suisse characterized it. Normally when investors panic about stocks falling, they sell stocks and buy bonds, which…

The New York Stock Exchange invoked the little-used Rule 48 to pre-empt panic trading at the stock market open for the third day in a row on Wednesday. In a historic move, the exchange used the rule before Monday's open following a dramatic drop in pre-market open futures, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures…

China stocks closed sharply lower Tuesday but the damage was largely contained with most major world markets staging a recovery from Monday's selloff. The benchmark Shanghai Composite declined 7.6%, while the smaller Shenzhen Composite shed 7.2%. The Shanghai index has now crashed 42% from its June 12 peak. After Chinese markets closed, Beijing launched new…

After being bearish on gold prices during 2013 and 2014, I became mildly bullish on the precious metal in February of this year. With gold at $1,200 an ounce, I wrote an article discussing three reasons why I believed gold prices would bottom in 2015, and thus why I believe gold was an attractive long-term…

Europe has offered Greece a new $96 billion bailout after its government agreed to enact deep economic reforms under close supervision by its creditors. The rescue -- Greece's third since 2010 - should secure its place in the euro, for now. The country's potential exit from the currency union would have shaken Europe to its…