Insights & Advice

A few days ago, Arabica coffee futures prices fell to a price they haven’t seen since December of 2005. But don’t expect your morning cup of coffee to reflect those cheaper prices. The coffee business doesn’t work like that.

Today, medical marijuana is legal in 33 states, while recreational marijuana is legal in ten states, plus the District of Columbia. Although there has been progress, little of the recent enthusiasm and hype over pot stocks will come to naught unless the Federal government does a major about face and legalizes the substance. What are the chances of that?

Turkey, a country that represents about 1% of the world’s gross domestic product, has suddenly become a cause of concern for investors worldwide. Both developed and emerging financial markets have plunged over the last week as that country’s currency plummeted. Fear that this tiny country’s problems could somehow spark a global financial contagion has everyone on edge.

There was a time, back in the late Nineties, that publicly-traded stocks were the envy of all companies, great and small. But times have changed, and since then the number of public companies have fallen by 50%.

Over the last few weeks, the threat of rising inflation has triggered a great deal of concern among investors. Given that inflation has been at a low level for a number of years, their concern may be justified.

The stock market is in turmoil. Several hundred point swings in the Dow and other averages has investors on edge. The indexes are suffering 1-2% point swings per day. How are you dealing with it?

We humans have been using wool for thousands of years. It was the primary clothing material of the middle ages. But even today, new uses for wool are cropping up, driving prices to record highs.

Financial markets worldwide ended the first six months of the year much better off than they started. Here in the U.S., the Dow and the S&P 500 Indexes both gained 8%, while NASDAQ delivered 15%.

As the stock market makes new highs, investors tend to get greedy. They also begin to believe that what has happened in the recent past will continue to happen in the future. Actually, history shows the exact opposite. It is time to give the potential downside some thought.

As the clash between brick and mortar retail enterprises and the mighty Amazon escalates, the internet shopping colossus is laying waste to one store or mall after another. One of the few areas that have not only staved off the internet shopping giant, but has actually turned the internet and social media to its advantage is the cosmetics industry. There is a combination of fortuitous developments, some peculiar to the makeup industry, and others the result of adept marketing that has allowed the beauty trade to grow unencumbered. Social media, as you might imagine, has played a big part in…