The mainstream financial media may have caught a break in 2011. Neither the S&P 500 nor the Dow fell more than 20% from respective highs, meaning that nobody ran with the “Bear Is Back”... read more »

Copper is one of the world’s most popular metals. It is used in everything from water pipes to radiators to air conditioning systems. Some will say that the industrial metal posesses a Ph.D. in... read more »

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn’t too pleased that Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, a vessel that would have shipped crude from Alberta’s oil sands to the Gulf of... read more »

It wasn’t that long ago that gold bears were sticking a fork in the yellow metal. And they had several reasons. The $300+ per ounce price drop was not attracting tons of bargain-hunters.... read more »

Just a few years ago there were only a handful of bond ETFs available to U.S. investors, and almost all of them focused on securities from U.S. issuers denominated in U.S. dollars. One of the most... read more »

Following up with my prior inter-market post this week “Something’s Gotta Give,” let’s take a look at the sharp down-move that developed since then as seen in bond funds IEF and TLT. Let’s... read more »

The headline unemployment number has fallen to 8.5% from a “Great Recession” high that is well north of 9%. Many say that the trend is heading in the right direction. And the media are... read more »

In doing research for this afternoon's Barron's Online column, I found an article by Richard Bloch on Seeking Alpha. It tells us what we should have already known about the currency ETF -... read more »

Throughout the legislative battle over health care reform, health care stocks underachieved. The uncertainty over how health sub-segments might be affected – devices, providers, “Big Pharma,”... read more »

Gold had a tough December, falling 10.5% to grind along near its worst levels since July.  This sparked hyper-bearish sentiment and end-of-gold’s-secular-bull talk.  Naturally gold stocks fared... read more »