Stock Market

Stocks to do 2x better than bonds the next 10 years - Bogle John Bogle has been warning about the perils of human behavior in investing for over 50 years.  The moment we start watching our investments regularly, we are tempted to do something stupid — we  react to a temporary market blip by selling our best investments.  That costs money and sometimes has tax implications.  "We are our own worst enemies," Bogle says. "We buy at the highs and sell at the lows."

While the S&P 500, a market weighted index, struggles at resistance, the RSP, equal weighted S&P 500, has cleared resistance and is preparing to launch.

The United States - using technology - has found years and years of natural gas supplies.  We are even exporting it! HOUSTON, Dec. 3 -- While another year of price distress awaits US producers of natural gas from shale reservoirs, technology has lowered breakeven thresholds of important plays, speakers said at an industry conference in Houston. Beyond next year, said Dan Pickering, copresident of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. LLC, $4/Mcf gas is unsustainable. In the long term, he explained, a commodity’s

Collins Stewart oil and gas analyst Katherine Lucas Minyard this morning reiterated her “Buy” recommendations on several oil majors. The fundamentals of the business are improving, she writes, with West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude prices average $78 and $79 per barrel, respectively, in the second quarter, which was higher than her $75 estimate. Refining margins are up 14% from year-ago levels, she notes. And the stocks offer a fat dividend, at 4.6%, on average. The one fly in

“Employers added fewer jobs than forecast in November and the unemployment rate unexpectedly increased…. The jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, the highest since April, while hours worked and earnings stagnated.” (Bloomberg) Hello, Washington? Is anybody there? Do you see the mess you’ve made? via Unemployment Jumps to 9.8 Percent | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty.

While two hours is a long time in this market, if the current gain holds it will be only the second time this year that the S&P 500 finishes with a gain of more than 1% for two days in a row.  While occurrences have been infrequent this year, last year they were a lot more common.  As shown in the chart below, since the bull

Bottomline - stocks go up in line with nominal GDP growth over time.  When valuation gets ahead of GDP like it did by the end of the 90s expect the next years to be negative or low to compensate for the valuation reversion to the mean. via Last decade stock returns, not predictive of this decade's returns - starting valuations are - The Financial Shift.

For the third time in the last four months, the World Federation of Exchanges reported a significant gain in world stock market capitalization for the month of October, with a $2.5 trillion increase that pushed the total value of world stocks to $52.7 trillion (see chart). The October increase follows strong gains of $2.7 trillion in July and $3.8 trillion in September (and a slight decline of $0.50 trillion in August), for a cumulative four-month gain of $8.5 trillion

The thing is, theres a much simpler explanation. During the period from early September to early November, we enjoyed a period of global stability and improving economic data, and thus there was little desire to hold dollars. Since then weve been buffeted with headllines out of Europe and Asia, and so the risk off trade is back, and dollars are back in style.Whats so hard to figure out? via CHART OF THE DAY: Time For You To Admit

Sears Holdings' Eddie Lampert's  Letter/March 15, 2006 Success must include profitable growth. As a team, we are aligned around the goal of increasing our EBITDA. We are not focused on sales or sales growth as an end in itself. Nor will we spend capital on stores simply because we have the capital available to invest or because everyone else does it. Rather, we are investing in our stores where