Income investors looking for a higher yield are having a tough time since high yield equals high risk. Bloomberg reports that “Junk Bond Losses Top $35 Billion.” Here are some highlights: High-yield, high-risk bonds are off to their worst start ever, and the biggest investors say there’s no recovery in sight. Junk bonds have fallen an average 3.9 percent this …
Sunday Musings: The Subprime Crisis Revisited
With almost daily news about banks having taken, or are about to, tens of billions of dollars in write-downs due to the real estate/credit bubble, you may be wondering how this whole mess got started. Sure, you’ve been catching news pieces here and there, but what caused this dilemma in the first place? How can Subprime mortgage investments have spread …
Avoiding Tragedies
Finally, I found a few paragraphs in the media that made some sense. MarketWatch featured a piece titled “Avoidable trillion-dollar tragedies.” While the story addresses several important issues, I want to focus on the portion about the misguided mutual fund management mess. Here is an excerpt along with my comments: If the next few years are as devastating as the …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 4/3/2008
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpA strong move to the upside supported the bullish cause and brought us closer to a Buy signal for domestic equities. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has moved now +1.34% above its long-term trend line (red), which means we are honing in on the +1.50% buy level. The …
The Dreaded “R” Word
For the first time, Fed Chairman Bernanke acknowledged that a possible recession can’t be ruled out. Although he did not back off his viewpoint that there would be some sort of second half recovery, he seems to have come around to what the rest of us have been thinking. His view put a stop on any continuation of Tuesday’s rally, …
April Fools’ Or The Real Thing?
Yesterday, the markets staged a major rebound with Dow gaining almost 400 points in very similar fashion to a few weeks ago. The big question remains now if this was just an April Fools’ joke or the real recovery many have been hoping for. We’ve seen these head fakes not too long ago on both, the upside and the downside. …