Archive for November, 2011
I Give Up
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011OK, I give up. If you have followed my posts for a while you know I have been very critical of government policies that support consumption at the expense of production – that I have been very critical of stimulus policies – that I have been very critical of government spending, borrowing, taxing, regulating….. Well, [...]
Flight to Quality
Sunday, November 6th, 2011During periods of financial uncertainty, such as we are experiencing today, investors seek to minimize risk by shifting their investments to low-risk securities. In recent decades, that means U.S. Government debt instruments. As market turmoil increases, the dollar rises relative to other currencies and U.S. Treasury yields decrease, as the prices of debt instruments increase. [...]
Measuring Investment Success
Saturday, November 5th, 2011How do you measure your investment performance? If you invested $10,000 and received back $20,000, was that a good performance? Possibly not. Why? Because the standard of measurement you are using, when you measure performance in dollar terms, is flawed. The IRS would like you to measure performance that way, because they do just fine. [...]