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Posts Tagged ‘stock market’
September 8th, 2017 at 1:32 pm
Image of the Day: U.S. Investor Confidence Reaches Highest Point Since 2000
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From Gallup, confidence among American investors reaches its highest point since 2000.

Sidenote:  What explains that dramatic upward jolt from 40 in November of last year to 134 today?  We’ll probably never know.

American Investor Confidence Jumps

American Investor Confidence Jumps

March 31st, 2011 at 6:05 pm
So Much for the Federal Reserve Creating Stability

CNBC’s Fast Money quotes an investment strategist who says that when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gives his first press conference on April 27, his remarks “could induce a 10 to 15 percent correction” in the market.  Here, “correction” means “drop.”

The reason the market might drop one-tenth of its value in a matter of hours is due to some analysts’ fear that Bernanke will not continue printing money (i.e. quantitative easing) to inflate the value of assets.  When values return to more realistic levels, investors are likely to stop banking on government-distorted policies to bail them out.

The purpose of the Fed is to tinker with the money supply and interest rates to stabilize the economy.  So far, the only stability it’s guaranteeing is as fake as a free lunch.

October 15th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Congressional Effect: Making Money While Congress is Out of Session

Check out this Fox Business interview with Eric Singer, the founder of Congressional Effect Management, an investment firm that only gets into the stock market when Congress is out of session.  The key to Singer’s strategy is avoiding ‘political risk’ – the damage to wealth creation that Congress causes through taxes and regulation (real or threatened).

Read this CFIF profile of Congressional Effect Management for a more in-depth discussion on Singer’s time-tested, data-driven approach.

July 30th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Barclays Capital Study Echoes CFIF on the Danger of Raising Taxes on “The Rich”
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We note in our Lunchtime Liberty Update this week that the Obama Administration’s class warfare campaign targeting “the rich” will inflict further harm on our economy.  Not only would such tax increases hit small businesses (which create most new jobs in America) particularly hard, it would also penalize the income segment that accounts for 1/3 of consumer spending, which itself accounts for 2/3 of the nation’s economy. Confiscating even more of those dollars may sound fine on a teleprompter, but it will bring destructive consequences in the real world.

Now, a new study by Barclays Capital highlights another potential harm.  According to their analysis, Obama’s plan will cause a 9% drop in the S&P 500 and a 900-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  As noted in this morning’s edition of The Hill, that would result from the Obama Administration’s focus on taxing upper income segments:

The Barclays report attributes the potential stock drop to President Obama’s plans to increase taxes on wealthy individuals, who are the country’s chief investors.  The report claims high earners are likely to shift their investment strategies because of the coming tax increase.  ‘According to the Fed’s 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, 75 percent of stock market wealth is held by families in the top percentile of income,’ the Barclays report states.  ‘From a behavioral standpoint, if the government follows through on its plan to raise dividend and capital gains taxes for the highest income earners, it could influence the asset allocation decisions of an important investor class and potentially bring about a shift away from equities, with negative knock-on effects for the economy.'”

October 14th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Some Good News
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The Dow Jones Industrial topped 10,000 during trading today.  This is the first time the Dow has hit 10,000 or above since October 7, 2008.