Will Greece default, or won’t she?  This seems to be the question on every investor’s lips, and the uncertainty surrounding the outcome has the markets on edge. I have no inside information about how this crisis will be resolved, and even if I had the phones of every European leader bugged I’m not sure the...Read More

Congratulations, you’ve just lived through the sixth-worst day in the history of the U.S. stock market. The Dow Industrials fell 634 points on Monday in response to Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States’ credit rating, and two days later the volatility continues. After a day like that, it’s important to step back and...Read More

Gold prices topped $1,500 per ounce yesterday, just days after Standard & Poor’s roiled the equity and bond markets by lowering its outlook on the AAA credit rating of the U.S. government. After a decade in which stocks went nowhere and the U.S. dollar lost value to every world currency except the Zimbabwean dollar, many...Read More

If there is one asset class best avoided in 2011, it’s gold. At the expense of sounding overly dramatic, gold is an investment whose fundamentals are rotting from within, and you do not want to be anywhere near it when the bottom falls out. In late November, I wrote a short piece for Seeking Alpha...Read More

I’m going to start this month with a prediction that might surprise you. I do not think that bonds are in imminent danger of a crash. I do agree with the growing legion of investors—including the legendary Warren Buffett himself—who believe that the bond market is in a “bubble” of sorts. And I would certainly...Read More