For the first time ever, electric cars have outsold fossil fueled cars in Norway for a month. In March, 58% of all car sales were of electric vehicles. NPR's Bill Chappell reports: Electric vehicles are now the norm in Norway when it comes to new car sales, accounting for 58 percent of all car sales in March. Tesla's mass market Model 3 was especially popular, accounting for nearly 30 percent of new passenger vehicle sales, the Norwegian Information Council for Road Traffic, or OFV, says. The figures reflect Norway's desire to move away from fossil-fuel vehicles — with help from lucrative … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2019
Is Jerome Powell Blowing an Asset Bubble?
With a recent U-turn on his plan to continue raising rates and trimming the Fed's balance sheet, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is targeting higher inflation rates. The policy runs the risk of inflating an asset bubble. Bloomberg's Rich Miller reports: The Federal Reserve risks stoking the same sort of asset bubbles that Chairman Jerome Powell has linked to the last two recessions with its new-found eagerness to fan inflation. The Fed’s surprise pivot away from any interest rate increases this year has boosted prices of stocks, high yield bonds and other risky assets in spite of nagging … [Read more...]
Two Strategies to Avoid Outliving Your Money
In July 2007 there was a sense of unease in the markets and I was warning investors to prepare themselves with a low draw on their portfolios. I also gave investors two ways to help prevent outliving their money. Read here: At the start, retired investors and investors saving seriously for retirement (76 million boomers will begin retiring next summer) must answer two basic questions: (1) What is the proper mix of stocks and bonds? (2) How much money can be drawn annually from an investment portfolio? I have used Ibbotson data and examined 20-year rolling time periods from 1926 on. I have … [Read more...]
The Best States for Retiree Taxation
If you have a few minutes I believe your time will be well spent reviewing this piece I posted back on February 16, 2018. During your working career you can make adjustments on the fly. Paychecks are still coming in, and you can cut some spending to shore up holes in your savings plan. But once you retire, there's no more income to offset any unexpected spending you may have done. That's why you must be acutely aware of how you position yourself and your money in retirement. After you have invested your money to best avoid risk, the biggest threat to your income is taxation. Retirees … [Read more...]
Think Long and Hard about where to Raise Your Family
Your ability to act and stand-up against higher education (as in higher cost), federal, state and local taxes and the politicians that enact them has never been more necessary or crucial to your family’s long-term survival and prosperity. It’s preposterous to believe those living in ivory towers and the politicians controlling your tax dollars know better than you. They don’t. You are the best caretaker for your family and for your money. That’s why it concerns me when blue states, in particular, come after your hard-earned money due to their misappropriating taxpayer dollars for … [Read more...]
This IPO Frenzy is Different
The WSJ reports that the current IPO frenzy featuring the likes of Lyft, Uber, Pinterest, Postmates, and Slack Technologies is different than the IPO frenzy in 1999. Then, many of the firms coming public had little more than a half-baked business plan. The current crop of IPOs includes more established businesses with average annual revenues approaching $200 million. Despite the higher revenue generation, profitability is just as elusive for firms coming public in 2019 as it was in 1999. Maybe this time isn’t so different after all. The WSJ has more details below. One trait that … [Read more...]
The Small Italian Town Feeding the World’s Luxury Feast
The rise of affluence in Asia has brought on a wave of demand for luxury goods. Feeding that wave is a small town outside of Florence, bustling with activity to create "Made in Italy," luxury goods. Matthew Dalton reports for The Wall Street Journal: SCANDICCI, Italy—This district of drab industrial buildings outside Florence is getting crowded as high-end fashion houses jostle for an edge in one of the industry’s most important products: the expensive leather handbag. Luxury giants from Prada to Burberry are snapping up workshops, expanding their own factories and building new ones around … [Read more...]
Can You Guess 2018’s Most Profitable Company?
If you guessed Apple, you'd be wrong. The iPhone maker came in second with a profit of $59.53 billion. The most profitable company was Saudi Aramco, the national petrochemical company of Saudi Arabia. Rory Jones and Summer Said report for The Wall Street Journal: The oil firm’s 2018 net income shot up from 284 billion riyals, or the equivalent of $75.9 billion, in 2017. By comparison, Apple Inc.’s equivalent profit was roughly $60 billion in its last full year; Amazon.com Inc. was $10 billion and Exxon MobilCorp. was $21 billion. The three years of financial information contained in the … [Read more...]
FOMO
FOMO: the fear of missing out. Never let emotions drive your investment bus. Despite this sage advice, that's exactly what many investors are doing, reports Amrith Ramkumar at The Wall Street Journal. He writes: Investors are putting more money into U.S. stocks as 2019’s rebound continues, a shift that some analysts expect to drive markets higher despite the recent rally in government bonds and an expected slowdown in economic growth. Optimism about trade talks and the Federal Reserve’s signaled halt to interest-rate increases propelled the S&P 500 to its best quarter since September … [Read more...]
Can Apple Still Innovate?
Much of Apple's success has come on the back of the company's ability to introduce revolutionary products at the right moment. The iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone and iPad were a succession of game changing innovations that turned Apple into a worldwide mega-brand. Lately though, sales have been slowing, and Apple is turning its attention away from its devices and toward services. This is worrying some analysts, including James Wang, who spoke to Barron's reporter Tae Kim about Apples "innovation DNA." Kim reports: Even some Apple (ticker: AAPL) investors are questioning the technology giant’s … [Read more...]
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