Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, the broadest measure of blue chip stocks in Japan, fell more than 7% during the Thursday (i.e. Wednesday night in North America) trading session, providing investors with another data point evidencing the fickle nature of sentiment and perhaps, more importantly, the influential role of hedge funds in...
Word from China is sending mixed messages to the world. GDP appears to be picking up particularly over the last quarter. Good news for a world in dire need of stimulus! At issue is what’s behind the growth? The debate centers around a massive infrastructure construction boom that has lead to overcapacity in residential real...
As we traveled across Canada over the last month on behalf of the M-X, I met many retail investors concerned about the markets and the fate of their portfolios. While some were concerned about the risk associated with individual holdings, many were skeptical as to how much longer the stock market in general could hold up. While...
Since the European Union (EU) bailout programs began there has been an austerity pre-condition. Mostly the result of German strong arm tactics designed to get member States to restructure social programs so as to level the playing field in a way that supports a single eurozone currency. The challenge is how does one deal with...
Watch the financial news, search the Internet, read the financial press and the most common theme coming from those who are supposedly “in the know” is that the US stock market is ahead of itself. And while those same talking heads are longer term bullish most are waiting for pullbacks to put new money to work. In other...
Barrick Gold Corp (TSX:ABX) has suffered the same consequences as many of its counterparts in the mining sector. To blame the most recent drop in gold would be misguided. While Barrick suffered a 33% drop in a little under a week on the heels of the gold sell off, the fact is that the downtrend was already well in place. One...
The last 2 months have been nothing short of a roller-coaster ride for Canadian investors. For most of 2013, the resource stocks have been struggling while the bank stocks were a glimpse of hope. That was short lived as February rolled in as a new round of selling started pressuring the darling Canadian banks. We have now seen...
Last Tuesday at approximately 1:00 pm EST, a Tweet from the Associated Press (AP) Twitter account read as follows; “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” Within a space of three minutes, US $136.5 billion of the S&P 500 index’s value was wiped out. The S&P 500 index fell...
Over the past 30 years, globalization has made the world a much smaller place. Supported by advances in technology and communications, corporations have sought markets outside their domestic borders. As a middle class takes root in emerging economies, those markets become increasingly important to the bottom line of global...
Listen to the US media and you might think your portfolio has underperformed, with US stocks making record highs with a 12.14% year to date return for the iShares S&P 500 index ETF (TMX: XSP). Note this ETF is hedged to the Canadian dollar, which added about 3 percentage points to the year-to-date return. Unfortunately,...