Wall Street got off to a fairly quiet start for the week as investors were reluctant to jump aboard the much anticipated Santa Claus rally. U.S. consumer confidence data surpassed expectations as the figure came in at 64.5, versus the previous month’s reading of 55.2. Despite improving prospects for the U.S. economic recovery, domestic equity indexes drifted sideways at the start of the final trading week for the year. Gold futures inched lower towards $1,595 an ounce, while crude oil prices soared to $101 a barrel, bolstered by geopolitical tensions in Iran.
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Last week shaped out to be yet another range-bound trading frenzy, dominated by fear induced selling in the early part of the week, and ending with a modest rally on Friday as investors cheered on the developments at the summit in Brussels. Gold drifted lower towards $1,700 an ounce amidst the uncertain backdrop. The precious [...]
Bullish fever ran wild across equity markets on Wednesday after the Fed and the central banks of the Euro zone, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and Switzerland agreed to collectively lower the cost of offering dollar financing through swap arrangements. The S&P 500 led the way higher, soaring 4.33% for the day, while the Nasdaq lagged [...]
As the ETF universe has expanded rapidly over the past few years, so too has the reach of its exposure. Where there was once only a few hundred products for basic investing, there now stands over 1,400 ETFs with more than one trillion in combined assets. There are now ETFs for not only broad-based investing, [...]
Job creation–or the lack thereof–has taken center stage throughout much of the developed world, emerging as one of the most substantial hurdles to economic growth and potential catalysts of a double dip recession. The jobs situation in the U.S. is shaping up to be the central issue in the next presidential election, sticking out as [...]
The recent economic crisis has led to a frenzy of activity on Wall Street, as we have seen dramatic swings in both directions on a regular basis. Starting with a debt deal that did little to reassure investors, markets began to drop. Next came the downgrade from S&P, the first ever from a domestic credit [...]
The first full week in June has been anything but kind to investors looking to shed some of the losses that have accumulated over the last few weeks. In fact, Friday saw the Dow lose grip on the 12,000 benchmark as equities endured their sixth straight week of losses. The NASDAQ lost all of the [...]
The month of May was a generally disappointing stretch for investors, as both international and domestic equity markets struggled to overcome obstacles new and old. Commodities, which had been a nice source of absolute returns for much of the last year, fell on hard times as well; precious metals went into a brief freefall, and [...]
In times of turmoil investors tend to run for the exits of equities and other risky assets. Some investors are happy simply to park assets in cash until the storm clouds clear, while others gravitate towards safe havens–asset classes that perform well when risk aversion is running high and equities fall out of favor. Gold [...]
Earlier today the World Economic Forum released its yearly Global Competitiveness Report, which ranks 139 countries in the world on a variety of factors the Forum believes determines the level of productivity of a country, including the set of institutions, policies, and government programs. The Forum believes that this rate of productivity “sets the sustainable [...]
With the housing market cratering, consumer confidence sagging, and catalysts for real economic growth nowhere to be found, many investors have quietly become pessimistic over the outlook for the U.S. economy. And then there’s the camp that has been much more vocal with forecasts of doom and gloom, a group that includes the always entertaining [...]
