I gave my thoughts on Robo-Advisors to Joanne Cleaver, writing for U.S. News and World Reports: “Robo-advisors are to investment advisors what TurboTax is to tax preparers,” says Charles Sizemore, founder of Sizemore Capital Management LLC in Dallas. “If you have a complex situation, TurboTax won’t help you. If you have a complex situation, the more…
Initial Reaction The big surprise in this month’s report was a decline in average hourly earnings. Details below. For the second straight month there has been a huge discrepancy between the household survey employment and the establishment jobs survey. Swings in household survey employment and the labor force have been wild lately. Last month household…
From heating homes to fueling vehicles, natural gas has been making strong inroads over the past decade. In fact, when oil prices were high, the cost of operating a truck on diesel fuel was as much as 60% more than the cost of operating the same vehicle on natural gas! Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) jumped on…
A new bank is only going to lend to companies that benefit society, I read in a magazine article. The article’s theme was how bold! How wonderful! I jumped out of my chair and shouted “Ho hum. No big deal.” What companies benefit society? I outlined this article on an airplane flying across the country….
For Google investors 2015 could not have come fast enough. 2014, namely, was not the best year in Google history on the stock market as the company’s share price dropped by 5%. What can investors expect this year? One of the biggest concerns around Google is that the budget of advertisers might be flowing towards…
The National Bureau of Statistics released today CPI and PPI data for December 2014. People’s Dailysummarizes the CPI data, which came in pretty close to market expectations: China’s consumer prices grew 2 percent in 2014 from one year earlier, well below the government’s 3.5 percent target set for the year, official data showed on Friday. The increase…
Source: Wikimedia.com Dear Diary, The Dow rose 323 points yesterday, or 1.8%. People come to think what they must think when they must think it. But what do they think now? Why do they think stocks are so valuable? Apparently, they believe that Janet Yellen, Mario Draghi and Haruhiko Kuroda – the powers that be…
The 10→5→2 yield spread is up big today with all durations dropping. Not a risk ‘ON’ alignment at all. 10, 5 & 2 year yields from Bloomberg For perspective, here is what the 30 vs. the 5 year looks like today…
A few months ago, I wrote a bullish article on Ligand (NASDAQ:LGND), with a thesis stating that the company’s outlook should improve with increasing royalty payments and new collaborations using its Captisol technology platform. I also stated that Wall Street is overlooking the fact that Ligand’s partners will spend more than $800 million in R&D in 2014,…
Yves Smith points us to additional 114th Congress changes: How the Republican Campaign to Gut Dodd Frank is a Huge Gimmie to Banks and Private Equity Funds The Republicans have been quick and shameless in using their control of both houses to try to crank up the financial services pork machine into overtime operation. The Democrats…
