Investors and analysts usually go back 10, 20 or 30 years when they consider long-term economic data. But how about taking a really long view? Let’s fire up the time machine and travel back to the middle of the 19th century. And to keep it really interesting, let’s look at the undisputed No. 1 economic … Continued
While the year began with tremendous optimism, record-high stock prices and an extraordinarily positive business environment, much of the economy soon came screeching to a virtual standstill in the face of the pandemic. The speed and violence of the reversal ravaged the economy in the first quarter. Take, for example, vehicle sales in the United … Continued
Nearly one-fifth of the nation’s economy is dedicated to health care and, at this writing, the sector’s stock prices are caught up in the wild market fluctuations spawned by the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus. So, for a long-range look at the performance of some prominent health-related companies, Luckbox is disregarding recent trends. With … Continued
Twenty years ago, the idea of publicly traded stock and commodities exchanges would have struck most investors as extremely peculiar. It might have seemed almost “meta” because exchanges were places where buyers and sellers convened to make markets. The notion of the markets themselves becoming tradeable took a certain leap of imagination. In spite of … Continued
Most traders in the United States have probably encountered two or three Chinese stocks in their search for market opportunities, but about 150 publicly traded Chinese companies are available for trading directly on exchanges here. Six of those stocks seem particularly interesting, and they fall into two categories: two are deemed weak and the others … Continued
The adoption rate of new technology varies wildly. The iPhone, for example, succeeded almost immediately, and 100 million people now use them in the United States alone. MP3 players, on the other hand, stumbled along with modest sales for years, until Apple came along with the iPod and set the industry alight. An emerging technology … Continued
Googling “gig economy companies” or “side hustles” yields a multitude of entries on individuals and organizations. They’re workers and companies offering goods and services that don’t require large amounts of capital. Whether it’s driving a car, creating a handicraft, drafting a promotional piece or writing a piece of code, side hustles abound in the gig … Continued
Every culture develops its own brand of futurism. From time immemorial, people have spun tales of clairvoyance, created magical totems like crystal balls and paid homage to legendary prognosticators like Nostradamus. That hunger to foretell events carries over into the world of financial instruments and trading. Investors long to predict prices with better than 50% … Continued
A VETERAN TRADER TACKLES TECHNICALS For decades, conservative politicians have courted votes by promising to reduce federal regulation. After all, many of their constituents are convinced that removing red tape and curbing nettlesome bureaucrats can nurture capitalism. So government intervention has, on the surface at least, been in retreat. Until the 1970s, for example, the … Continued
One sector of the U.S. equity market that’s well populated by heavily traded and dynamic securities is healthcare. However, the fact that these financial instruments reside in the same sector doesn’t make them identical. Stocks, like people, are characterized by different personalities, and stocks in the medical field are no different. In spite of the … Continued
