Hi there, Boaz is away and so I’m filling in for the next few days. I want to tell you about something that has been making me incredibly nervous since I found out about it over a month ago. Aside…

BALTIMORE – The stock market got a healthy bounce on Monday. Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess. But you don’t have to guess. Because you don’t make money in the stock market from short-term moves. You’ll guess wrong…

HAMILTON, BERMUDA – Stocks rattled around on Monday; investors didn’t know where they wanted to go… so they went mostly nowhere. We turn to the newspapers… Invitation to Claptrap Opening a newspaper is always an invitation to claptrap. The New…

What are Treasuries? Treasuries are the common name for the United States Treasury securities. These are government debt instruments issued to finance the national debt of the US, the equivalent of British gilts or German bunds. US Treasuries are considered…

What is fiscal policy? Fiscal policy refers to ways of using government revenue collection, namely taxes, and spending it with the aim of influencing the economy. By altering the levels of taxation and public expenditure, a government’s goal is to…

What is a swap? A swap is a derivative in which two parties exchange financial instruments, in most cases involving cash flows between them. These cash flows are calculated over a notional principal amount. Each cash flow is commonly referred…

What is a defensive stock? A defensive stock is a type of stock that generates a constant dividend and stable earnings independently of the state of the stockmarket performance. Defensive stocks are typical of firms that produce or distribute consumer…

What is correlation? In the finance and investment industries, correlation is a statistic that measures the degree to which two securities move in relation to each other. Correlation is computed into what is known as the correlation coefficient, which has…

What is deleveraging? Deleveraging is when a firm or individual aims to decrease its total financial leverage. The simplest way for achieving deleverage is to pay off any existing debt on its balance sheet. When this is not possible, the…

What is a short in finance? In finance, short selling, shorting or going short is the practice of selling any financial instruments or securities without owning them, and subsequently repurchasing them after their price decline, obtaining profits off the price…