Economics for the Intelligent Amateur

In the wake of the recent controversy surrounding Free Markets, and more specifically, the “How could we be so stupid as to believe markets could work?” statements, we feel it is time to clear the air and make a couple blanket statements:
Efficient Markets does Not mean continuous growth
It is excusable in a way. We [...]

Along the same vein of our last article on this subject, we continue to find amusing investment tips in Kiplinger’s:
Page 31 of their February 2010 edition is called:
Make a Buck off a Sagging Dollar – by Andrew Tanzer
This articles states how, since the US Dollar is falling, what alternatives an investor should find in order [...]

As long time proponents of market efficiency, we are still amused by the investment methods that keep getting regurgitated. They tend to fall under two main camps: The Charting methods, that analyze past performance and try to find trends, and the Fundamentals method, which analyzes various companies and determines which is undervalued. Of [...]

If you enjoy investing in the stock market every now and then, especially if you consider yourself none too bad at it, and definitely before you start telling your friends what to invest in and what not to, we would like to point out an article in Businessweek dealing with taxes.
Here they explain how to [...]

For this generation of investors, the paradigm that is ingrained is the concept of “boom times, crash, boom time restarts”.  The United States stock market is returning to relatively new highs due to the rally in stocks that has made some investors feel that “happy times are here again”.  This has created the psychology that [...]