Blog

The economic and market turmoil of the last few years has sent many investors to the safety of the bond market, especially the market for US Treasury securities. With a flood of money coming in, bond prices have risen and interest rates have fallen to record lows. Low rates affect different people i...

It has been nearly four years since the US banking sector has been imploding due to the millions of bad mortgage loans made during the housing bubble:June 2007: Subprime mortgage firms collapse like dominos under the weight of bad loans; Bear Stearns bails out a hedge fund loaded with junk debt.Janu...

Summertime and early fall have always been the busy time for weddings. After the honeymoon, newlyweds typically think about tax time, right? (just joking... but they should). Here are a few things that should be considered. If there is a name change, report this to the Social Security Administr...

That's a question we get asked a lot lately. Stocks have been weak, bond yields low, and gold has been surging, closing yesterday at roughly $1800 per ounce. The price per ounce has more than doubled since mid-2009, drawing plenty of attention from investors and analysts. This raises two questions:...

Kodak has been an imaging giant almost since there has been imaging. But they have been eclipsed by their own foot-dragging in digital imaging, and even their digital cameras sales are falling since nearly every new phone has a camera. That has been bad news for Kodak. Until now. Over decades, K...

Our Brighton Securities Softball Team wrapped up the summer season last night with an 11-3 win over the Rochester General Hospital Emergency Room Team. They had beaten us soundly twice this summer and have a roster of skilled players, but we came from behind after 2 rough innings. As Coach Kravetz w...

Merger & Acquisition activity continues despite the recent market volatility. This morning we have Google buying Motorola Mobility for $12 billion, and the world's largest oil driller, Transocean, making a bid for Aker Drilling, a Norwegian firm. Both deals are for huge premiums over Friday's closin...

The New York Times thinks maybe it is. Here's a link to a front page article from Friday: Aftershock to Economy Has a Precedent That Holds Lessons But maybe all it proves is that journalists maintain archives. With the internet, we now have archives, too, and I remember similar comparisons to th...

I love my job and generally look forward to weekends no more than any work day. But I will be happy to get a break over the next couple of days. We have had an unusually volatile week in the stock market It started in earnest Tuesday last week, with the Dow down 265, over 2%. Last Thursday we were d...

There's an old saying in the economic-analysis field (sounds scintillating, doesn't it: economic analysis) that the Federal Reserve has the ability to "take away the punchbowl." The meaning is that when the Fed provides cheap money (read: low interest rates) it causes a party in the financial market...