During my former days as a financial advisor, I’d occasionally get a call or email from someone in our “Alternative Investments” department trying to drum up business. Invariably, they wanted me to deposit my clients’ assets into a specialized hedge fund utilizing one esoteric strategy or another. Quite… Read More

The natural gas industry seems to only know extremes. A few years ago, supply trailed demand, leading to a sharp spikes in prices. But then geologists realized that we’re sitting on a lot more of the energy source than we could ever have imagined. Suddenly new wells were being dug… Read More

The financial crisis interrupted an unmistakable trend. Worldwide demand for oil, which had been sharply on the rise in the past decade as a result of ever-increasing demand in China and India, plummeted in the past year. While worldwide oil consumption rose from 64.8… Read More

Gold has been grabbing all the headlines lately as the price for the precious metal has hit record highs. In the weeks and months to come, however, you’re going to be hearing about a far more pedestrian commodity: Rice. The price of rice has started to climb based on reports… Read More

Gold — at more than $1,050 an ounce — appears to be more expensive than ever. But it isn’t. While it’s true that it costs more dollars to buy gold than ever before, the value of the dollar isn’t fixed. The dollar of decades before is not the same dollar… Read More

Looking at the yields on junk bonds today, I’m reminded of a Joanie Mitchell lyric many years ago: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.” In October 2008, the dividend yields for speculative-grade (junk) bonds were averaging 2,182 basis points above… Read More

Natural gas is trading near historical lows and could explode upward in the next few months, especially as cooler temperatures begin to remind traders in New York that winter is on the way. Investors can buy futures or exchange-traded funds… Read More

When everyone agrees on something, it’s much more likely that everyone is wrong than everyone is right. Universal consensus about the end of the dollar makes me think it won’t happen. Several things move currencies: Economics, interest rates and politics. I’m going to show… Read More

Wall Street loves to make things hard. People are mystified by the black arts practiced in the world’s financial capitals. These sorcerers hold a secret that everyone from a lowly financial adviser to a big-time deal maker doesn’t want you to know . . . The secret: It’s not hard… Read More

A good deal of political turmoil has surrounded the exchange-traded fund (ETF) world in recent months. The powers-that-be have been tightening the regulatory noose around certain commodities and leveraged funds. This has created headaches for fund issuers and millions of individual investors that have… Read More