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What is the biggest bubble of our day? In today’s Big Picture podcast, Jim Puplava explains how stock prices are being driven to record valuations as investors herd into index ETFs. This is a self-feeding frenzy, he states, where fundamental analysis doesn’t apply. Next, he discusses “Oil: The Coming Age of Volatility,” looking at the recent drop and why we are moving into an era of boom and bust. MP3 Audio Link Here

Trying to foretell when the stock market is reaching its peak may be a fool’s errand. Even the most respected and famed investors and market pundits can’t claim to know when it’s time to get out—or for that matter into—the market, no matter how savvy they may be on investing. That is because no matter the fundamentals and trends, stocks SPX, +0.41% can never quite free themselves from human emotions, according to Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. “There’s no formula for forecasting market tops because you’re really trying to predict human behavior, which can’t...

Any ideas on who has the best finance/portfolio site...Yahoo Finance has improved theirs again, now virtually unusable...

"Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it." ~ Sam Rayburn One jackass (oops we mean expert) after another, has been predicting that this market is ready to crash. The problem is that these brain surgeons have been making this argument for so long it almost sounds like the definition of insanity. Insanity boils down to doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a new outcome. These predictions are so off the mark that they make a broken clock look fantastic which happens to be right once or twice...

Have you ever wondered how tech companies that have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars year after year can somehow be worth billions of dollars according to the stock market? Because I run a website called “The Economic Collapse“, there are naysayers out there that take glee in mocking me by pointing out how well the stock market has been doing. This week, the Dow is flirting with 21,000 and the Nasdaq crossed the 6,000 threshold for the first time ever. But a lot of the “soaring stocks” that have been fueling this rally have been losing giant mountains...

Investors can thank earnings, as much as they can anything else, for the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s rally over the last couple of weeks. The surge this week in the Dow DJIA, +1.20% which is on track Tuesday to post the first back-to-back 200+-point gains since the two days following the U.S. election, is being attributed by many to the reduced risk of euro dissolution in the wake of French election results and hopes for corporate tax cuts and a budget deal. But there is a lot more to it than that. Since April 13, when J.P. Morgan Chase &...

The Nasdaq breached the 6,000 mark for the first time ever on Tuesday, spurred by a raft of strong corporate earnings and President Donald Trump's promise of a major tax reform plan. The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose as much as 0.4 percent to hit a record level of 6,007.72 helped by gains in Biogen (BIIB.O) and Apple (AAPL.O). The index first breached the 5,000 mark on March 7, 2000 and closed above that level two days later during the height of the tech boom. Biogen's shares jumped more than 4 percent after the biotech company reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue...

Prognostication: Here It Comes I claim no special power here, nor any inside information. This is simply arithmetic coupled with logic. I'll give you a "decision tree" sort of format with the critical points outlined. Note that if you're going to mitigate any of what I see coming around the bend you need to do it right damn now, not wait. By the time you get to those critical points it's too late. For many people it's already too late, but if you're not in that batch then you need to make your lifestyle changes today. I am operating on...

President Trump told The Associated Press on Friday that he intends to release a tax reform plan next week that includes a "massive tax cut" for businesses and individuals. This is what I have been waiting for and have been building my portfolio since December on this hope. I was very concerned when the "Freedom" Caucus damaged the momentum by not accepting reality and being hardliners who could not wait to stage in the required changes needed in the name of what Americans have their hopes in - jobs and the economy. My position is the DOW already "priced in"...

The last thing President Trump now needs is for the stock market to go south on him. After all, he’s got worries aplenty: abroad, North Korea, Syria, Russia and Brexit; at home, the stalled effort to repeal Obamacare and uncertainty surrounding “tax reform.” Compared with this tapestry of troubles, the stock market has been a splendid blessing. It’s called the Trump Rally or Trump Trade. By whatever name, it has been impressive. On Election Day, Nov. 8, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 18,332.74, not much different from a year earlier. By March 1, the Dow hit 21,115.55, a...

In fact, it’s not “inexplicable” at all. ___ Tesla shares rose to $313.38 this morning, giving the company a market capitalization of about $51 billion, surpassing GM for a moment as the most valuable American automaker. This left some industry insiders wondering about tulip bulbs. “It’s either one of the great Ponzi schemes of all time, or it’s all going to work out,” mused Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the largest dealer group in the US. He was speaking at a conference hosted by the National Automobile Dealers Association and J.D. Power. “It’s totally inexplicable, as far as its valuation,”...

On August 20, 2012, then-President Barack Obama drew a line in the sand for Syria. And after that line was drawn, Syria stepped over it by using chemical weapons. President Obama did nothing—holding fast to his ideology of strength through weakness. This was just one of many ideological positions that helped President Donald Trump win the presidency, and today, we are witnessing bipartisan support for President Trump, who thankfully did not simply draw a line in the sand and reprimand Bashar al-Assad. Some on Wall Street are indicating this move could mean uncertainty for the markets. And we all know,...

Since we started talking with Martin Armstrong years ago, he's been adamant in his belief that the stock market was heading higher. And he's been right. Perhaps it hasn't gone up as fast as he expected, but it has continued to make new highs. He's not backing down now. Businesses and the wealthy are putting their money into the market because they've lost confidence in governments around the globe. They believe their capital is safer in the stock market than in government bonds, the Euro, European Banks and elsewhere. Governments are on a rampage against the populace. It's all about...

Startups are beginning to run out of money and investors are becoming more discerning. How does this compare to the time leading up to the dotcom crash? If you were looking for an apartment in the Bay Area 18 months ago, realtors recommended you took your checkbook to viewings and were prepared to fork out for the deposit and first month’s rent – that’s $8,000 to $10,000 for a two-bedroom place in San Francisco – on the spot. “There was no negotiation because there were 10 people behind you saying, ‘We’ll take it’,” said Ron Stern, CEO of housing relocation...

Some fear rate hikes could tip the economy into a recession. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday lifted benchmark interest rates for only the third time in about a decade, and that has caused trepidation among some market participants. Lance Roberts, chief investment strategist at Clarity Financial, makes the case in one chart that raising interest rates off ultralow levels during a period of tepid economic growth coincides with recessions in the following three to nine months (see chart below, which compares real, inflation-adjusted, GDP to Fed interest rate levels). The Fed lifted key rates by a quarter-point Wednesday to a...

U.S. stocks traded higher Wednesday, helped by a bounce in oil prices, after the Fed raised interest rates, as expected. Shorter-end Treasury yields came off session highs. The 2-year yield (U.S.:US2Y) fell to 1.33 percent after earlier hitting a high of 1.401 percent, its highest since June 11, 2009. The 10-year yield (U.S.:US10Y) traded around 2.58 percent as of 2:01 p.m.

President Donald Trump is half way to marking his first 100 days in office, and as it turns out the so-called Trump rally is stacking up fairy well compared with past presidents during their midpoint to 100. Trump hits the 50-day milestone on Saturday. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.33% is on track to post its best return in the first 50 days off a presidential term since Bill Clinton’s first term in 1993, when the broad-market index rose 4.7%. In fact, it is the best 50-day performance for a GOP commander-in-chief ever and the sixth best performance over that...

If POTUS Trump can deliver on much, even if not all of his promises, which Americans would be worse off? In the final months leading to election day November 8, 2016 the whole world was anticipating Hillary Clinton would be the next POTUS. If you took a poll of people in every one of the 200 or so countries on the planet not one would have predicted a Trump victory. Some folks believe that down deep inside even Donald Trump was reluctantly resigned to defeat.

Investors reacted positively from President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average above 21,000 points Wednesday for the first time in its history. Banks, financial institutions, companies in the energy and materials sector saw huge gains as Trump reaffirmed during his speech his plans to cut taxes and push for other business-friendly policies. The Dow jumped 242 points, or 1.2 percent, to 21,055 as of 10:07 a.m. Eastern Time. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 24 points, or 1 percent, to 2,387. The Nasdaq composite index added 59 points, or 1 percent, to...

Stock-market indexes set a new round of records Wednesday as investors welcomed President Donald Trump’s tone during his address to a joint session of Congress. Some analysts suggested that the absence of protectionist comments as well as his overall tone that was perceived as “presidential” instilled confidence among investors, sending global equity markets higher. “The economy is doing well, as we can see from today’s inflation and manufacturing numbers and any additional stimulus will put it into even a higher gear, and stock markets like that,” said Mark Kepner, managing director of sales and trading at Themis Trading. If the...