Blog
Coping, and the Scary Times Success Manual
With the markets making new lows and volatility shaking investors out and in both directions, I thought this would be a good time to talk about coping with loss. There are predictable stages in coping with loss. In general you can expect to go through anger, denial, bargaining, despair, and finally acceptance. The stages of
If We Have "Economic Allies", Who are our "Economic Enemies"?
Have you noticed how correlated and coordinated actions have been worldwide throughout this crisis? The concept of economic allies presupposes that we also have economic enemies. It's easy to construct a theory that countries like Russia and China are using financial markets to exert leverage in a nascent form of economic warfare. It is also
Weekly Commentary through September 26th, 2008
This was a tough week for the markets. Strangely, it might soon prove to have been a good week for the markets as well. So what is it going to take for the markets to finally bounce? History shows that most intermediate or long-term bottoms are characterized by panic selling, hopelessness, and people simply giving-up.
Weekly Commentary through September 19th, 2008
Wow! That was some week. As I went back through what happened, it is hard to believe it all happened in one week. There was: the Nationalization of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy; Bank of America's purchase of Merrill Lynch; historic government actions and regulations to reduce short-selling; massive government
Tune-Up Your iTunes Music Collection, Automatically
For years I took my music collection for granted. I ripped many of my old CDs to disk, and simply allowed the computer to save the information anyway it chose to. Over time, it became clear that there were mistakes, missing information and, in general … a mess. After several limited attempts to clean my
Weekly Commentary through September 12th, 2008
Volatility has been much higher than normal. For example, the S&P 500 index rose or fell by more than 2% on five of the nine trading days so far this month. There were only six such days during the last 4½-year bull run. Yet, for all that violent flip-flopping and massive gaps in both directions, the