Ben Carlson

Interest Rate Chasing in Your Savings Account

Yesterday I got an email from Marcus, my online savings account. They lowered the interest rate on my savings (and everyone else’s) from 2.25% to 2.15%. I heard stories from people who use other savings accounts that also saw a drop. These online savings accounts are obviously getting ahead of the possible Fed rate cut…

Animal Spirits: The Great Depression of 2073

This week’s Animal Spirits is sponsored by MarketSmith: Go to www.investors.com/animal to receive your first three weeks of the MarketSmith service for just $19.95. We discuss: Why Michael is getting back into trading Facebook’s new cryptocurrency Is it a good thing more professional investors are buying up starter homes? Should Vanguard get into private equity? Should the…

Gathering Investment Lessons From the Headlines

Just as everyone projected, interest rates have fallen off a cliff since peaking at more than 3.2% last fall: Just kidding. Basically no one saw this coming: The decline has caught nearly everyone by surprise. In January, none of the 69 economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal predicted yields would fall below 2.5% by…