A year ago, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi promised to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro.  The reality is that he hasn’t done much of anything.  He hasn’t had to. The Outright Monetary Transactions bond-buying scheme—which was designed to calm the bond markets by buying potentially unlimited amounts of Eurozone periphery-country bonds...Read More

It’s so good to be bad—at least when it comes to investing. Vice stocks are a corner of the market where many investors—and particularly professionals—are afraid to venture.  But this reluctance by many investors to embrace vice stocks is precisely what makes them such profitable investments (see “The Price of Sin”).  Because professional investors like...Read More

If you are a Baby Boomer and looking forward to retirement, you might want to sit down with a pencil and a notepad.  Retirement is a lot more complicated than it used to be, and not just because retirees in the post-pension era are having to take more responsibility for their investment allocations. The investing...Read More

Is this past weekend’s Financial Times, Gillian Tett commented that falling fertility rates in Europe threaten government tax revenues. Well, yes, they do.  But not necessarily for the reasons Ms. Tett expects. European fertility rates have been below the replacement rate of 2.1 children born per woman for decades.  The UK and France have hovered near...Read More

It’s getting harder to find bargains in the stock market these days.  American stocks aren’t expensive, per se, but they’re not exactly a bargain either. The S&P 500 trades for 17 times earnings, which is slightly above the long-term average.  If you’re aggressively buying U.S. stocks at these levels, you’re either expecting earnings growth to...Read More