investing

In late August, I wrote a post called “Getting bearish again” in which I said that the bear market rally I had anticipated back in March was long in the tooth.  At the time, I mentioned 1026 on the S&P 500 as a sell signal. …

This comes via TheStreet.com and Doug Kass, a noted market strategist: Many strategists (both bullish and bearish) assume that a fair value P/E multiple -- based on interest rates and inflation -- rests at about 15.5 times. Averaging…

If you’re looking for a good laugh over the weekend, you might try Dow 36,000 by James Glassman, just hired as custodian of the George W. Bush legacy (hat tip Scott). It’s about the new strategy for profiting from the huge rise in the stock…

So we started September in an ugly way. With the markets down 2% across the board, and oil and bond yields also falling.  Forgive me for thinking this is a bad sign, but selling on good news doesn’t sound very bullish.   And the…

You have probably noticed a change in tone at Credit Writedowns since about June, but a lot more in the past month or so. Once mildly bullish due to the deeply oversold levels this Spring, I have become increasingly alarmed at the…

The conventional wisdom is that the US is beholden to foreign agents as they hold much of the US government debt.  In this view, if these agents sell their securities, interest rates in America should increase as demand for US public debt…

Right now many economists believe the US economy is poised for recovery.  Even I believe the economy will recover by year’s end. But for the man in the street, things hardly look like a recovery right now. Harried by falling house…

Stock markets are seriously overbought right now.  But, the rally in shares has been bolstered by better than expected economic data and earnings reports.  I first pointed to a rally in shares in March, but I didn’t get fully onboard until…

Jeremy Grantham is out again with a very important investment strategy piece entitled “Boring Fair Price!”  He leads off by talking about how markets went from extremely overvalued a year ago to cheap back to a state which he considers fair…

We’re not really hard wired for making money in the markets. We use a lot of gut instincts, heuristics and plain illogic in making decisions.  The result is sub-optimal investment performance. This is the nothing new as the field of…