(Bloomberg) — Ray Dalio renewed his warning about holding cash and bonds on Tuesday amid the ongoing, pandemic-fueled increase in debt creation and monetization in the U.S. “This printing of money and buying of debt assets has driven interest rates so low that cash and bonds are stupid to own,” he wrote in a post […]
Read MoreAs a conservative-minded, value and fundamental-driven investor, my natural tendency is to shy away from stocks that market experts and popular market media analysts tend to talk to the most about. That means that my investments rarely look very sexy – but I’m far more interested in being able to keep my money working for […]
Read MoreOne of the ways that I think a smart investor keeps track of industry and economic trends that can have a carryover effect on broad market activity. One of the sectors that is useful for the purpose is the Energy sector, since energy products such as petroleum and natural gas are used in the production […]
Read MorePart of taking a smart, value-based approach to investing in the stock market involves keeping track of information on industry and economic trends that are likely to have broad residual impacts on market activity. One of the sectors that I think has a broad carryover effect on multiple other sectors in the economy is Energy, […]
Read MoreSince the beginning of 2021, the energy sector has rebounded strongly from the pandemic-driven pressures that had kept prices – particularly in crude oil – depressed throughout 2020. From a November 2020 low point at around $34, for example, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude more than doubled to an October peak at around $85. The […]
Read MoreOne of the sources of a lot of conversation among talking heads and market analysts in general lies around the “reopening” concept. This theme has been pretty constant for most of the year, even as COVID variants – omicron is just the latest – have extended the health crisis well into 2022, with some experts […]
Read MoreOne of the fairly consistent themes of 2021 has been the impact of the global pandemic on different pockets of the economy. While everybody is anxious to look past the days of social isolation, quarantine and shelter-in-place requirements at the early stages of the crisis, and talk about seeing life get “back to normal,” the […]
Read MoreThe Food Products industry in the Consumer Staples sector is an area of the market that tends to get overlooked because, let’s face it, it just isn’t very sexy. Even so, it is one of very few segments of the market that saw consumer-driven improvements in demand in 2020, especially in the early stages of […]
Read MoreNo matter what current market conditions may be at any given time, one of the primary questions any long-term focused investor – whether you prefer a growth or value approach – should be whether the strength of the underlying business is strong enough to justify a stock’s current price. For growth-focused investors, the question is […]
Read MoreMarkets are naturally cyclical – they swing from high to low and back again on a consistent, if unpredictable basis over a range of time frames. The different time periods associated with any given cycle, or sometimes even the depth of a certain cycle’s direction, can shade the casual investor’s perception about a stock’s opportunity. […]
Read More(Bloomberg) — Investors may be better off hedging equity portfolios with cash than bonds, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Peter Oppenheimer. The chief global equity strategist told Bloomberg TV that while bonds have acted as a good counterweight to stocks for the past 20 years, low interest rates have changed the equation with him […]
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