History reveals that in all but one case of the nine bear markets that occurred between 1950 and 2003, the market recovered dramatically within one year of hitting bottom. Investors who were patient during periods of stress and dislocation were eventually [More...]

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The U.S. unemployment rate rose to a 25-year high of 8.1 percent in February as employers shed 651,000 jobs in the deepening recession, government data showed on Friday, Mar. 6. A total of 12.5 million people were unemployed in February, the Labor [More...]

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Price-earnings ratio, or P/E, is one of popular tools for investors to value stocks or stock indices, whether their prices are cheap, expensive, or fairly valued.

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the VIX is a key measure of market expectations of near-term “volatility” conveyed by S&P 500 stock index option prices. Put simply, the VIX measures the degree to which investors think stocks will swing vigorously in the next 30 days.

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Volatility Index, known also as the VIX, helps investors measure the blood in the streets. Peaks in the VIX are closely associated with market bottoms. That's because climaxes of fear are times when everyone who's ever going to sell has sold. And when all [More...]

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Government bonds sink after Commerce Dept. says orders for manufactured goods rose more than expected in July; $32B auction of 2-year notes ahead.

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Trying to predict the outcome in the Microsoft Corp.-Yahoo Inc. saga has proved frustrating and, for many, unprofitable. For example, who would have thought on Feb. 1, when Microsoft (MSFT) made its offer public, that by mid-July, the deal would be no [More...]

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Crude oil prices jumped more than $6 on Wednesday after a government report showed stockpiles in the United States fell sharply for the fourth week in a row due to flagging imports, intensifying worries of a worsening global crunch.

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House prices are falling at accelerated rate. After dropping 5.4% in the forth quarter of 2007, home prices fell again 7% in the first quarter ending on March 31th, 2008. As the end of the first quarter, the prices have declined 16.6% since their 2006 [More...]

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Upscale addresses on Wall Street and elsewhere provide cover for all sorts of fly-by-night firms

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A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare—one every hundred years or so was enough to motivate [More...]

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Are these devices a clever way to disperse risk, making the financial system safer, as their enthusiasts claim? Or are they “financial weapons of mass destruction”, in Warren Buffett's phrase, that are poorly understood and perilous boosters of credit?

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Complex financial instruments called credit default swaps have roiled the financial markets for months. They're at the heart of the bond insurers' woes and were a reason why insurance giant AIG (AIG) just added billions to a planned writedown.

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