Japanese stocks are off to a nice start this year.  The iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSE:$EWJ), a popular option among investors for getting access to Japan’s biggest traded companies, is up 4% for the year and 14% over the past month. Enjoy it while it lasts. Japan’s recent surge is due to its new quantitative...Read More

Pick up any financial newspaper over the past two weeks, and you’ll read about the selloff in junk bonds and what it might portend for the stock market. Remember, though junk bonds are fixed income, their risk characteristics make them more similar to equities.  Junk bonds carry higher default risk and are thus far more...Read More

Constellation Brands (NYSE:$STZ) shot up 37% yesterday and Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:$BUD) rose a not-too-shabby 5% on speculation that the U.S. Department of Justice might let AB Inbev acquire  Grupo Modelo (Pink:GPMCF) after a few small revisions to the deal were made. The Department of Justice torpedoed the original deal last month on fears that it...Read More

I could never live in Scandinavia.  The long winters would drive me stark-raving mad.  And for a guy who has driven all the way to Mexico because he needed a good street taco, the blandness of the food would prevent me from ever being happy in Europe’s great white north. Yet it seems that the...Read More

Southerners are a proud, prickly lot who, not that long ago, used to demand satisfaction for slights real or imagined with pistols at dawn. The executives at Beam Inc, (NYSE:$BEAM) might want to watch out because their decision to water down their premium Maker’s Mark has offended the sensibilities of Bourbon lovers in the South...Read More