As a handful of brave souls find out every four years, running for President of the United States generally involves opening up your personal life to intense examination by opponents, the media, and general public. Generally, the scrutiny focuses on personal histories–arrests, affairs, and lawsuits make for juicy reading. But being a public servant can also mean opening up your financial records to the public–especially if you’re potentially in a position to profit from insider information on regulatory developments.
A recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal revealed the unusual composition of the portfolio held by Ron Paul, the Republican presidential candidate who is known as a critic of the Federal Reserve and opponent of big government. The asset management strategies of the Texas Congressman, who is also a physician, are anything but traditional. Paul’s portfolio, which he indicated was worth between $2.4 million and $5.5 million, has little in the way of large cap stocks or U.S. Treasuries. Instead, his bets are primarily geared to perform well in the event that the U.S. economy collapses or inflation accelerates–meaning that his personal portfolio is largely consistent with his political views. [click to continue…]
With snow now blanketing a big part of the country and 2012 just a few weeks away, looking back at the past year becomes a popular activity. For many portfolios, 2011 has been marked by big swings that seem to be leaving investors right about where they started; there has been plenty of activity over [...]
Most investors probably never expected that it would never come to this. With only days remaining until the day the government coffers supposedly go dry, a deal to avoid a default remains elusive (one would suspect the August 2 date is at least 72 hours or so in advance of a hard deadline). The back [...]
The ETF industry continues to expand at an impressive rate, with dozens of new products debuting every month and the size of the lineup quickly approaching the 1,300 mark. While each new month generally brings a number of new product launches, it also beings some important milestones for ETFs that have debuted in the past. [...]
Deutsche Bank rolled out the latest additions to an ETP lineup that is rapidly approaching 1,300 on Thursday, debuting five ETFs that offer exposure to international equity markets while stripping out the impact of fluctuations in value of the U.S. dollar and non-U.S. currencies. Each of the new products are linked to MSCI indexes, offering [...]
PIMCO, the California-based ETF issuer best known for its active bond funds, has put another active product into its exchange-traded pipeline. The latest proposal from the bond fund giant is the PIMCO Foreign Currency Strategy Exchange-Traded Fund, which would would give investors exposure to foreign currencies through an actively-managed ETF. PIMCO currently offers 13 ETFs, [...]
Since PowerShares debuted its first active ETFs in the spring of 2008, this corner of the exchange-traded product market has grown tremendously. Though many active ETFs have been somewhat slow to accumulate assets, the increase in the size of the lineup highlights the trend towards vehicles that combine active management with the exchange-traded structure. There [...]
The last week started and ended with disappointment on the jobs front, as a stubbornly high unemployment took the wind out of the sails of what had been an impressive rally in recent weeks. Both private ADP payroll figures and the government report disappointed investors still looking for an uptick in jobs creation as affirmation [...]
There is an old Warren Buffett mantra that advises investors to be greedy when others are fearful (and vice versa). In the current environment, there is certainly no shortage of fear–or of opportunities. Despite a holiday-shortened week U.S. equity markets have been extremely volatile, surging in Tuesday trading only to crater on Wednesday thanks to [...]
Equities across the globe continued their sluggish performance for most of last week, and while broad indexes managed to climb into positive territory the last few trading sessions, the week as a whole was fairly turbulent with no real movement in either direction. Gold climbed higher amidst uncertainty in the financial markets, closing the week [...]
In recent years, emerging markets have been established as the clear leaders of global GDP growth, while the economies of the U.S. and western Europe have stalled. Developed markets are facing stubbornly high unemployment and limited flexibility thanks to mounting debt burdens, while emerging markets continue to race ahead. In a recent economics paper, Goldman [...]
