Business

As stagnant wages and rising tuition and medical costs squeeze middle class families, Bloomberg reports that US employers cut employee bonuses this year for the first time in seven years, further straining household budgets despite an ostensibly bright economic outlook. Bonuses slipped a tenth of a percentage point to 12.7% of total compensation this year, according to data from Aon Hewitt, which conducts an annual survey of more than 1,000 employers.

Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,

Pension plan administrators do it. Their actuaries and consultants do it. Professional endowment and foundation investors do it. Financial advisors do it. Private investors may or may not do it, but they probably should.

Do what?

Submitted by Shant Movsesian and Rajan Dhall MSTA at FXDaily.co.uk

Two weeks ago, Goldman's clients were so worried about an imminent crash, the investment bank's chief equity strategist, David Kostin enumerated no less than 7 reasons why, as Goldman itself admitted, "the question every client asks: Is an equity correction imminent?” As a reminder, the reasons - summarized - were the following:

With VIX at its 2nd lowest level weekly close in history, amid storms, quakes, dismal data, oh yeah and nuclear armageddon looming, it is perhaps no surprise that speculators sold more VIX futures last week... to a new record level of shorts...