Three Doors Down on Your Starboard

“Three doors down on your right.” I don’t know exactly where I heard that, but it’s one of those phrases that sort of pops out and says ‘hello, cartoonist!’ and then won’t leave you alone. You think about it, you turn it over in your head, you examine …

Thursday Fixes: Greece and Ukraine Looking Good!

Want to make 100{04524d497bea0ade6defd1388b5c9b25998d95475e2938b4fa9d615e63ad1540} in 5 days? ; The GREK Feb $11/12 bull call spread is 0.50 and, if GREK finishes over $12 next Friday, you get $1 back. ;Each 100 option contract is $50 so, if you need to make $500, you buy 10 of them and come back next Friday for your $…

Investing Blog Roundup: Missing Out on Subsidized Insurance

This week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released the results of a survey showing that, of the approximately 30 million adults in the U.S. who remain without health insurance, 48{04524d497bea0ade6defd1388b5c9b25998d95475e2938b4fa9d615e63ad1540} would qualify for assistance purchasing such insurance (either tax credits or Medicaid). If you (or somebody you care about) doesn’t …

Costs Matter: Vanguard Long-Term Performance Update 2015

The purpose of Vanguard’s commitment to low-cost investing is not just to be cheap, it is to give their clients higher performance. Whenever a money manager charges higher fees for themselves, they will have to compensate by creating that much higher returns through whatever combination of skill or …

Sold DIS and IWM Naked Puts for April

I had some time to look over my holdings yesterday and really think about what I wanted to do next.  I only have two February puts expiring (FB and BA) and both are far out of the money.  I also have 700 shares of TLT that I’m short with three …

NASDAQ Reaches Escape Velocity as Volume Swells

A solid session with volume expanding and healthy price movement.  Most notably was the NASDAQ clearing its most recent resistance level.  The S&P 500 remains locked within its recent consolidation and we will need to keep an eye on the index right here.  It was finally nice to see at …

Can Technology Save Fracking?

The meteoric rise never felt sustainable – the numbers told us that. In 2013, US shale was responsible for approximately 20 percent of world investment in oil, while only supplying four percent of global production. The figures today are even grimmer. Baker Hughes is cutting 7,000 jobs; Halliburton, 6,500; Schlumberger, 9,000. The national oilrig count …

Mr Draghi finally delivers

© Hannelore Foerster/Getty Images And then there were none. On Thursday, the European Central Bank became the last of the major central banks to announce a large programme of quantitative easing, involving the purchase of over €1tn of assets, mostly eurozone government bonds, in the next 18 months. Is…

The unbalanced global economy: American shopper

UK Only Article: standard article Issue: Putin’s war on the West Fly Title: The unbalanced global economy Rubric: The world is once again relying too much on American consumers to power growth A GLOBAL economy running on a single engine is better than one that needs jump leads. The American …

Pie in the Sky

We are still in a post-crisis environment, and enough people are still negative on equities, and interest rates are low enough, to provide plenty of purchasing power. We therefore expect it to be an ok period for equities over the next year or two – not outstanding given our …