Business

A few days ago we highlighted the reckless efforts of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to force their city's pension managers to ignore their fiduciary duties and dump nearly $500 million worth of energy stocks.  Of course, the pressure to sell had nothing to do with financial projections, trading multiples or discounted cash flow analyses but rather was a blatant and irresponsible attempt to push the board's political agenda irrespective of the ultimate financial consequences such actions might have to pensioners and tax payers (see: What Fiduciary Duty?

As we’ve noted time and time again, the number of Americans scraping by with almost no money in their savings account (if they even have a savings account) is staggeringly high - and growing.

As the Motley Fool pointed out in a recent post, the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the personal saving rate in June 2017 was a measly 3.8%, or $3.80 for every $100 they earn. With the median household income in the US at just north of $50,000, that would amount to about $4,000 a year.  

In a potentially revealing glimpse of what is to come from the next Fed head, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking during a Politico forum, told the audience:

"Although we respect the Fed’s independence, we are concerned about economic growth. We’re doing everything we can -- whether it’s tax reform, whether it’s regulatory relief, whether it’s trade -- to create economic growth. And we’re less concerned about inflation at the moment."

(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) — 9/14/2017 — Trading is difficult, if it were easy there would be no losers – in order for there to be winners in markets, there have to be losers.  But trading is not impossible, and Wall St. has developed an industry out of it called “money management” which is effectively conservative trading.

Dismal China data, 3 North Korea "prepping missiles" headlines and a North Korean "threat" headline - probably nothing...

Chinese economic data plunged overnight - the biggest disappointment to market expectations in 6 months...