I’ve just finished a very funny book on how Wall Street works, published in 1940 and written by someone who worked in the markets through the crash of 1929. Where Are The Customers’ Yachts was reissued as a paperback a few years ago, and almost every page is relevant to today — perhaps even morecontinue reading

Last summer I drew your attention to the CBOE Volatility (VIX) index, which at the time was, like the Baltic Dry Index, a relatively low-profile stock market metric that had started to look very odd. (My own familiarity with the VIX index is the legacy of two years of early morning meetings with a acontinue reading

You’ve probably been ignoring it, enjoying the summer instead, but in case you’re wondering how the economy in the Anglosphere is looking these days, on this first business day of the second half in Canada, and first official day of a bear market in the U.S., two words: pretty bad. Here in Canada, even BMOcontinue reading

A recent Economist article highlights some of the questions over whether we’re experiencing peak oil now or not. There have been a number of stories recently alleging that oil prices are artificially high right now in part because there are vast quantities of crude sitting on ships offshore. Another issue is limited refinery capacity. Accordingcontinue reading

Shocking news from our friends at BMO: Canadian shoppers are still paying 18 per cent more on average than Americans for the same items, BMO Nesbitt Burns says in a study that suggests consumers aren’t reaping the benefits of a strong dollar. The rest of the article seems to indicate that, in fact, the reportcontinue reading