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…

Some Advice For New Investors

In today’s edition, Michael Batnick, Ben Carlson and Downtown Josh Brown answer a very simple question that doesn’t necessarily have a simple answer. “Where should a new investor begin?

Why Do We Need Inflation?

A reader asks: Why do we need inflation? This is a good question because wouldn’t we all be better off if prices were to fall? It’s not always that easy.