18 February, 2009 In an extremely difficult investment environment, it is often difficult to know who to believe. Deflation or inflation? Have financial stocks bottomed or do they have much more to fall? When gold corrects sharply, is the gold bull over or still alive? Is oil heading to $20 a barrel or $80 a [...]

July 16, 2008 There are two rules that every investor should abide by not only in volatile markets, but in any type of market: (1) Keep your losses small and cut your losses early and (2) Let your profitable investments ride. So why is it so difficult for the average investor to abide by these [...]

July 10, 2008 – If you’ve suffered stock losses this year, this will be the most important article you will read. Back on April 23, 2008, I wrote an article called “Will the U.S. Markets Crash Now – Or Later?” and I opened the article with the statement: “Every time I’ve written about the imminent [...]

July 7, 2008 In the 18+ years I’ve been involved in finance, I’ve seen a common thread among investors during bear markets that is extremely detrimental to their financial future. The syndrome I’ve seen afflict many investors is similar to the psychological state that University of Pennsylvania world-renowned psychology professor Dr. Martin Seligman coined “learned [...]

June 26, 2008 The other day, on MarketWatch, a headline read, “Markets hope strong inflation warning from Fed in Wednesday statement will keep dollar firm as growth slows, delaying or eliminating need for rate rise later in the year.” I’ve read similar headlines too numerous to count in the past couple of months spinning the [...]

May 22, 2008 There’s a saying “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Our motto at SmartKnowledgeU is to never be fooled. We are at a crossroads today where things are going to get a lot better or they are going to get a lot worse. As the permabull sales [...]

May 11, 2008 There has been a lot of speculation for many years now that during extreme financial crises, the U.S. Federal Reserve and other entities intervene in free markets from behind the scenes and do not allow free market forces to operate. There are usually two schools of thought that dominate this hotly contested [...]

April 30, 2008 In a couple of hours, we’ll soon find out how low the Fed will go in their attempt to inflate their way out of the current subprime/housing market/financial sector mess that we are currently mired in. Last March 18th, the Federal Reserve cleverly manufactured a downturn in the commodities sector off of [...]

April 17, 2008 Consider this. If you owned a prime piece of real estate in 2001 that was valued at $1.8 million that cost 7,200 ounces of gold to buy it back then (at a price of about $250 an ounce), and if you could now sell that same property and receive $2.6 million for [...]

March 25, 2008 – Dark pools are pools of stocks listed on private or proprietary electronic exchanges that allow a buyer or seller to move large blocks of stocks anonymously without causing the bumps in the price of a particular stock as would happen if an investor were to buy or sell a large position [...]

March 9. 2008 – Diversification: The World’s Worst Investment Strategy Diversification, cash and AAA-rated instruments with exposure to Mortgage Backed Securities – If you’re deep into all three, these are three definite signs that it is time to let your advisor go. Many “professional” advisors today argue that diversification is a reason to stay fully [...]

February, 20, 2008 “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember: all [...]

February 6, 2008 The other week, a friend of mine sent me an article from a financial advisor in the U.S. asking me for my opinion. In the article, the advisor stated two things that stood out to me like a two-ton boulder falling out of a clear blue sky. They were the following. In [...]