A new wave of online speculation is erupting around crypto-currencies. If you're keeping up with financial news, you've undoubtedly run across a mention or two of Bitcoin. But have you heard of Muse or Ether? Digital currencies are proliferating, and investors are making ever riskier bets on their success. Despite low volume and high volatility, so called "alt-coin" traders are attempting to get rich quickly. The Financial Times writes that at current rates of return, investors could be dollar millionaires by Thursday. Most organisations have their share of IT workers who slip under the … [Read more...]
Monsanto Adding New Methods to its GMO Creation
The Wall Street Journal's Jacob Bunge reports that Monsanto is attempting to stay ahead of its competitors by adding new technologies to its genetic modification tool kit. New gene editing methods like the much publicized Crispr-Cas9 and the lesser known Exzact are changing the way scientists modify organisms. Bunge writes: ...seed giants and Farm Belt upstarts view gene editing as the new front in genetic technology, potentially offering a cheaper and easier method of tweaking plants’ DNA. Emerging technologies such as Crispr-Cas9 and Exzact allow scientists to change a plant’s … [Read more...]
Portfolio Strategy: Do Trees Grow to the Sky?
Speculation seems to be alive and well in the stock market. Young Research’s Bubble Basket index is up 32% YTD. Meanwhile, high quality stocks represented here by the Nasdaq Dividend Achievers Index, or if you prefer the NYSE composite, are up about 5%. Did the value of the six businesses in Young’s Bubble Basket really increase by over 32% in just four months? Hard to see how this ends well for those who still believe trees can grow to the sky. Retired investors and those soon to be retired are still best served by quality and balance. … [Read more...]
Banks Ask Trump to Hold Off on Crippling New Rules
Some of America's largest banks have asked the Trump administration to hold off on implementing new rules that would change the way banks book losses on their loans. Especially hard hit would be community banks. The bankers told the Trump administration the new rules could reduce lending, especially in depressed economic times. Michael Rapoport writes at The Wall Street Journal: The new loan-loss rule drawing fire from banks will require firms to immediately book all losses that they project their loans will ever suffer, as soon as the loans are issued. That is a significant change from the … [Read more...]
This is a Serious Problem for Investors
We have covered the problem of fake news, media bias, and the declining quality of many of the best print publications in the past (see How to invest in an age of compromised and biased information for example), but much of the coverage on this topic from the mainstream media has been focused on political news. Politics isn’t the only topic where fake news and bias are a problem. As the FT reports, fake news has infiltrated the financial markets. And why wouldn’t it? The proliferation of free “investment analysis” on the internet has made the job of the fraudsters, hucksters, and other … [Read more...]
Apple Owns More Corporate Bonds than the Biggest Funds Own
Apple has hordes of cash overseas. CEO Tim Cook says he won't bring the cash back until better tax rates are available. In the meantime, Apple has amassed a pile of corporate debt holdings larger than the top bond funds. Bloomberg's Claire Boston reports: If Apple Inc. were a bond fund, it would dwarf the competition. The iPhone-maker has $148 billion of its record $257 billion cash pile invested in corporate debt alone, according to a company filing from Wednesday. That’s enough to buy all the assets in the world’s largest fixed-income mutual fund, the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index … [Read more...]
Portfolio Strategy: Where Are You Getting Your Financial Advice?
It’s fashionable today to talk about how Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are laying the wood to the actively managed mutual fund industry. Cumulative flows into passive strategies and ETFs has been staggering, while the outflows from active funds have been similarly spectacular. Some advisors and former brokers have become self-righteous about ETFs and indexing, but you didn’t hear a word about ETFs from this crowd for decades. ETFs have been around since 1993, but many in the industry were too busy hawking high expense ratio funds with monster front-end sales loads and back-end marketing … [Read more...]
Facebook Spending Big to Fight Fake News Infestation
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has directed his company to tamp down on fake news on its site. Part of that process includes hiring expensive fact checkers to read through posted material, and then attempt to find evidence that verifies the claims made in the stories. Facebook is willing to spend the money because it wants to avoid being labeled a media company, which would come with expensive requirements regarding truth in advertising and publishing PSAs. The Financial Times reports: But the more Facebook becomes involved in policing content on its services, the greater the risk that it … [Read more...]
How to Learn About Investing
Investing isn’t one of those tasks that you should learn by doing. That’s not to say that you won’t learn a lesson or two about investing if you dive right in, you will, but the lessons may end up costing you more money than you bargained for. The Best Way to Learn About Investing The best way to learn about investing is to do so with books. But which books? You don’t want to just read anything on investing. Ninety percent of what has been published on investing and the stock market isn’t worth your time, effort, or money. You can do more damage than good if you don’t make a diligent effort … [Read more...]
The Bubble You Should Worry About Most
Politico has a must-read story up on how the Media Bubble is Worse than You Think. Politico looked at where journalists work and how fast it is changing. The executive summary is that the ascendancy of digital publishing and the decline of print journalism has created a concentration of journalists in the North East Corridor and on the West Coast. Newspaper jobs were more evenly distributed across the country, but newspapers have been shedding jobs fast. There are now fewer newspaper publishing jobs in America than internet publishing and broadcasting jobs. The Politico article is focused … [Read more...]
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