Record low interest rates have received a great deal of attention in recent weeks. Short term rates are driven by the fed funds target rate, which has remained at or below 0.25 percent since December 2008. On the long end of the yield curve, as August drew to a close the 30 year U.S. Treasury […]

“It seemed so obvious. With the economy slowly recovering last year from the worst recession in decades and the federal government seeking to tap the credit markets for over $2 trillion to fund an ambitious spending program, both laymen and experts alike seemed to agree that interest rates had nowhere to go but up. The

President Bush has proposed legislation that would eliminate the taxation of dividend income for individual owners of common stocks. We do not recommend that investors take any action at this point in anticipation what Congress might approve. Many aspects of the proposal have already been altered. Whatever new law survives the legislative process will very

The following item was sent to us by a friend. We could not determine its author, but we found it to be a wonderful depiction of the politics surrounding any proposed cuts in Federal income tax rates. Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for

Much ado has been made of the return of the Federal deficit, mostly by those who deride tax cuts. Frequently heard is the argument that deficits represent an increase in demand for credit that in turn will increase interest rates, to the detriment of economic growth. While this argument is unsubstantiated, the outlook for long-term

Several subscribers recently asked why we exclude Altria (formerly Philip Morris) from our 4-for-18 High-Yield Dow Strategy. Its current yield of almost eight percent makes Altria the highest yielding of the 30 Dow stocks and it has consistently ranked among the “top four” highest yielding issues since March 1993, soon after the company lost its

In February 2006 Ben Bernanke will take over as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The change brings to an end the Chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, which began in August 1987. While much has been written about the change in command, this is but one more bit of news that has been absorbed by the financial

No good product goes unabused by Wall Street. Such is the case with exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Our readers will recognize that we recommend several ETFs. These allow investors to take a stake in several of our recommended asset class indexes at an extremely low cost. However, ETFs have grown exponentially in a very short period

As the chart to the left demonstrates, returns from the equity markets have fallen sharply in recent weeks. These are the times that try investors’ souls, and put to the test anyone’s ability to stay the course and stick with an established allocation plan. We understand this angst, but we hasten to remind our readers