Blog

That's a question we get asked a lot lately. Stocks have been weak, bond yields low, and gold has been surging, closing yesterday at roughly $1800 per ounce. The price per ounce has more than doubled since mid-2009, drawing plenty of attention from investors and analysts. This raises two questions:...

Kodak has been an imaging giant almost since there has been imaging. But they have been eclipsed by their own foot-dragging in digital imaging, and even their digital cameras sales are falling since nearly every new phone has a camera. That has been bad news for Kodak. Until now. Over decades, K...

Our Brighton Securities Softball Team wrapped up the summer season last night with an 11-3 win over the Rochester General Hospital Emergency Room Team. They had beaten us soundly twice this summer and have a roster of skilled players, but we came from behind after 2 rough innings. As Coach Kravetz w...

Merger & Acquisition activity continues despite the recent market volatility. This morning we have Google buying Motorola Mobility for $12 billion, and the world's largest oil driller, Transocean, making a bid for Aker Drilling, a Norwegian firm. Both deals are for huge premiums over Friday's closin...

The New York Times thinks maybe it is. Here's a link to a front page article from Friday: Aftershock to Economy Has a Precedent That Holds Lessons But maybe all it proves is that journalists maintain archives. With the internet, we now have archives, too, and I remember similar comparisons to th...

I love my job and generally look forward to weekends no more than any work day. But I will be happy to get a break over the next couple of days. We have had an unusually volatile week in the stock market It started in earnest Tuesday last week, with the Dow down 265, over 2%. Last Thursday we were d...

There's an old saying in the economic-analysis field (sounds scintillating, doesn't it: economic analysis) that the Federal Reserve has the ability to "take away the punchbowl." The meaning is that when the Fed provides cheap money (read: low interest rates) it causes a party in the financial market...

Let's start with this: the 1,000 point drop in the Dow Jones over the last few days has been No Fun. Why do we put up with this? Why stay invested if it's no fun? For an answer, I look to some clients who don't seem to be too put out by all the ruckus. Here's a composite sketch: he or she is retir...

Late last Friday, Standard & Poors did what had been rumored to be coming: it downgraded US Treasury debt from AAA to AA+ for the first time in history. There's no mystery to the Friday night action; the intent was clearly to let the shock of the change be absorbed by markets before they reopened Mo...

I often post about why I think it's not the end of the world. And yet again today, I think it's not. But with a day like yesterday, people are asking if maybe we can see it from here. Stocks were down sharply yesterday, and I would be surprised if they weren't off to a weak start this morning. Psych...