Monthly Archive for: ‘December, 2011’

Given the backdrop of easy money and what appears to be a race to the bottom in the fiat currencies, some investment analysts are convinced that the risk of hyper-inflation is building. In their world, you gotta load up the truck with gold, since it should be treated as an alternative currency. But lately gold is falling fast, and has [...]

Santa Claus has come and gone, and so far seasonal tendencies have worked a little magic on domestic equity markets, which have been drifting up. But while U.S. equities appear to be reflecting the goodwill of men and holiday cheer, certain markets are behaving more like Mr. Scrooge. The credit markets in Europe simply refuse to paint a rosy picture [...]

The S&P 500 is up more than 3% this week, leading the talking heads on TV to once again declare that a “Santa Clause Rally” is unfolding. It may seem kind of silly to hear professional investors talk in such terms, but December has historically been the best month for stocks. According to the charts below from Yardeni Research, over [...]

In the December Journal of Financial Planning, Michael Kitces, Sauro Locatelli, and I published a study entitled, “Improving Risk-Adjusted Returns Using Tactical Asset Allocation Strategies.” The title is a mouthful, but we were basically asking if changing the asset allocation of a portfolio can increase your returns relative to the amount of risk that you take, compared to just buying [...]