10 Things Economists Won't Tell You + MORE

Why the future of the economy is as tough to predict as the weather.

I received several letters from readers concerning my recent column opining that the 30-year bull market in bonds is over.
Some asked if it was really that big a deal that bonds fell by 2% in May. The answer is yes. It is a big deal, especially when 10-year Treasurys yielded just 1.7% a month ago. That slight sell-off erased more than a year’s worth of interest…

We reaffirm our Neutral recommendation on Kimberly-Clark following an appraisal of its first quarter 2013 results.    

All cash flow is not created equal.    

Filed under: Investing

The holidays were fraught with endless babble about the fiscal cliff, and concerns about the broader economy. As investors, we’re just now seeing how much impact that had on retail sales at the end of 2012. Highflier Michael Kors is releasing its fiscal 2013 third-quarter earnings next Monday before the bell…

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 300 points in two days to start last week, but managed to claw back almost every bit of that with a big snapback on Friday.
So was that the long-awaited pullback we have been waiting for, and a missed buying opportunity for those who stayed on the sidelines?
Or was that a sign that a bigger correction is nigh?
While I expect 2013 to finish as a good year with decent gains for the major indices, I think there are some serious growing pains in store for stocks in the near-term…

Commentary: The compromises needed to get reforms enacted.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that gold and silver have been perfectly investable in since the early 1970s. I think squabbling over the commodity indices is missing the bigger picture. One can use gold and silver as a proxy for the commodity universe and understand the diversification story using very clean data…

As investors were picking up the pieces after the dot-com implosion, they came across another troubled sector.

A series of looming patent expirations on key drugs meant that major pharmaceutical companies were on the cusp of a decade-long sales drought. Investors responded by dumping shares, as the AMEX Pharmaceutical Index plunged from 400 in late 2001 to just 250 a year later…