More than 2-½ years ago when I predicted a global stock market crash on my investment blog, even foreshadowing the duration and the severity of the impending crisis by naming it the Peak Investment Crisis, many called my predictions ludicrous and far-fetched. In that article, I specifically stated that the declines in global stock market [...]

Last week, when almost every major US bank manufactured profits out of thin air by changing their regular reporting periods to exclude months in which huge losses occurred, by changing their definitions of bad debt, and by revaluing their assets at fantasy land valuations that they will never receive in the open market courtesy of [...]

If there is a silver lining to this crisis, it is that most of the investment scams for the past two decades have now been exposed and the search to find solid investment guidance has genuinely become easier. The dirty secret of Wall Street and many commercial investment firms was that their hiring processes were [...]

February 3, 2009 A recent story reported about counterfeit £1 coins out of London made me reflect upon the enormous irony of the story given that our current economic woes have been caused by an unsound global fiat currency system in which all currency is backed by nothing. It made me think, “Is there really [...]

Q: Has Your Blog Name Changed? Just a quick note. We decided to change our blog title to “The Underground Investor™” from “Zen of Investing” because we noticed that someone unaffiliated with our company is constructing a website with the title “zen of investing” in the URL, presumably to capitalize off of our regular blog [...]

February 25, 2007 – Here is a story that was running in the U.S. markets last week out of San Francisco: “The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun a broad investigation into whether Wall Street bank employees are leaking information about big trades to favored clients, such as hedge funds, in an effort to curry [...]

February 12, 2007 – If you look at this chart for Newmont mining (NEM) as of February 9, it illustrates that large institutional money is still not on board with gold yet and in addition, for this reason, this a solid anchor for your gold portfolio. How do I know from looking at this chart [...]

January 25, 2007 – This past week, I saw a professional newsletter that stated that there was almost nothing good to buy right now. That most major markets including leading emerging markets in China and India were overbought and that a buying opportunity would not present itself until there were major corrections. Though I mostly [...]

January 23, 3007 – Just taking a contrarian position all the time doesn’t mean that you will be right. It takes a much deeper understanding that can be achieved by utilizing the proper information channels that are now available as the information world continues to flatten. Last year, Steve Forbes, publisher of the noted Forbes [...]

January 14, 2007 – In Part I of this three part series, I discussed how the long tail of investment analysis and strategies can help one understand the direction of the U.S. dollar. Here in Part II, I’ll discuss: How I’ve Used the Long Tail of Investing to Repeatedly Predict the Price Behavior of the [...]

January 11, 2007 – The sharp decline in energy prices in 2007 and the decline in gold has a lot of people running for the hills, including many hedge fund managers who don’t want to become the next Brian Hunter of Amaranth. I’ve stated this before and I’ll state it again. Precious metal ETFs and [...]

Q: Is There More to SmartKnowledgeU™ than Just the Zen of Investing (ZOI) Blog? Just FYI, recently, many people have asked me whether there is more to SmartKnowledgeU™ than just this Zen of Investing blog. The answer is yes.  We will be launching a full-fledged online education campus with 23 separate learning modules, exercises, and [...]

Q: What Blog Entry Needs No Question? I guess that latest blog entry wasn’t so light hearted as is the norm with my casual Friday blog entries, so here’s a late addition that should make you smile. This blog entry has no question because the picture to the right says it all.  Recently, at a [...]