If you’ve been dismayed and concerned by the blurring of the line between investing and gambling in financial markets, this post is for you. During 2025, there has been a sharp uptrend in the popularity and use of prediction markets. Prediction markets (run by companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket) are exchanges where people can […]

April wasn’t all that long ago but fortunately for us, we as humans tend to have very short memories. As a result, many of us have already forgotten the extreme market volatility we experienced just over six months ago. The recovery from that swoon has been remarkably quick (matter of months) and remarkably strong (S&P […]

After another year of strong performance for US markets, there is increasing chatter regarding what will lead to its demise. This is just how markets work – the more they go up, the more participants look for reasons they will soon go down. One common refrain from bears (ie: those betting the market will decline) […]

If you followed the financial news this week, you undoubtedly heard the story about a US investor named Michael Burry, famously known for the bet he made against the US market prior to the 2008 financial crisis (focused on the complex instruments linked to the US housing/mortgage market). Spoiler alert – he was right (despite […]

This week’s Fed meeting reminded me of the often-asked refrain “do you want the good news first?” The Fed meeting started off with good (albeit fully expected) news for markets when the Fed announced a 0.25% rate cut (taking the range to 3.75-4% range). The Fed also confirmed an end to quantitative tightening (discussed in […]

Each month, Rick Rieder, head of Fixed Income for Blackrock, hosts a monthly investment call that is always very informative. Him and his team present exhaustive data on several market trends and concepts. One that caught my attention this week was a discussion of the ongoing divide between certain age and income groups within the […]

If these were normal times, I’d be writing about the September CPI and PPI inflation reports. However, as the government shutdown marches on and economic data reports are delayed, it gives me the chance to write about some new & different topics. This week, I’m writing about another excerpt from a great book I’ve discussed […]

Another week has passed and the government shutdown continues. This has resulted in a very quiet flow of economic data as many of the key reports (such as the jobs report, CPI, and PPI) are calculated by government agencies that are currently furloughed. Markets seems to have shrugged off this information vacuum – at least […]

At the risk of repeating myself, 2025 has been quite the interesting year. Just when you think we’ve seen the last of the unexpected events, something else comes our way. It seems to the be the year of “stay tuned!” This week, we had two rather unexpected occurrences – the end of Q3 (not unusual […]

Earlier this year, I listened to a podcast that discussed the need for a healthy dose of discernment. Ever since, I have kept that term top of mind and continually work on refining it. What exactly is discernment? Discernment’s dictionary definition is simple: the ability to judge well A more extensive explanation of the term […]