As you are likely aware, Wall Street has been undergoing shock therapy in the last couple weeks. From the failure of Lehman Brothers, to the emergency loan for AIG, to the Treasury’s proposal to spend upwards of $700 billion to buy troubled financial assets, last week was an unprecedented week for the U.S. financial system. …
If you’re tired of hearing about the lousy stock market from all the talking heads on TV (or tired of hearing about it from us!), well, we wish we could say this was a report about the fantastic stock market. Instead, this post is about the lousy stock market. The timing of this report coincides …
In the running to be one of the worst 10-year periods for stocks Read More »
Everywhere we go, we come ready to talk about the economy, interest rates, the stock market, and bank stocks (more on them coming soon). But all people ask us lately is who’s to blame for gas prices, and when are they going to come down? Not that it’s an unimportant subject. Oil definitely affects consumer …
Today, National City announced its long-awaited plan to attract new equity capital, in order to shore up its balance sheet, which had been racked by large loan writeoffs. Investors are putting $7 billion into National City in the form of new shares, at a price of $5 per share. These investors are being led by …
We awoke this morning hoping to learn that Merck and a panel of cardiologists had played an early April fools’ joke on us over the weekend, but alas, no such announcement yet. As it stands today, Vytorin and Zetia are still for sale, and, as far as we can tell, still lower LDL cholesterol values …
Investors have seen their fair share of doom and gloom in U.S. stocks during the first quarter of 2008 as our financial crisis continues to unfold. In addition, the dollar continues its downward slide against major currencies around the world. However, against common wisdom, foreign stocks have actually crashed much harder than U.S. stocks so …
The question of the day for investors is when will bank stocks stop falling? Notice we said “when,” not “if.” Banks generally have a fundamental earnings base: they have a base of deposits, on which they must pay interest, and a base of loans and securities, on which they collect interest. The market works such …
To those of you who weren’t aware that the market has dropped 6% in the last month, we salute you! More than likely, you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing: not worrying. The Monarchians aren’t worrying either. It’s not that we don’t care about losing money, but we feel safer about our …
As some of you may know, I just returned from Kazakhstan, where we adopted our new daughter. Her name is Magdalena (Maggie for short), she is 10 months old, and is one awesome girl. We had a very blessed (and very long—6 weeks) trip—not in the sense that life was easy or comfortable, but it …
