Pacific Park Financial Inc.

Over the course of the 4-year bull market, I’ve kept an eye on the percentage of S&P 100 stocks that reside above a long-term 200-day trendline. Market pressures always seemed to develop...

Investors may be heartened to discover that the Cyprus bailout is back on track. I am not sure how that will prevent Europeans in Italy and Spain from slowly moving their money out of beleaguered...

People are feeling better about spending money. Similarly, investors are feeling better about risking it. The problem is, whenever people begin to feel wealthy due to a faulty premise (i.e., the U.S....

Eighteen months ago, Jim Rogers explained that “everybody is having a wonderful time running the printing presses.” His answer? Protect yourself by owning real assets. In fact, the popular...

I came across an interesting fact on the news wires recently. The S&P 500 has corrected at least 5% at least one time in the first 5 months of every year since 1996. What does that mean? It...

The warning signs for a stock market pullback are everywhere. Historically, a 17% move over 17 weeks (sans correction) is not only substantive in size, it may be “long in the tooth.”...

Wayne Lin manages money at Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc. In a phone interview with the folks at Bloomberg, he explained that many investors have been surprised by the significant under-performance...

Non-cyclical stock sectors (e.g., consumer staples, health care, utilities, etc.) often do well when there are concerns about economic growth. Indeed, exchange-traded funds representing one or more...

My Registered Investment Adviser, Pacific Park Financial, Inc. manages assets for 185 families. And while it is probable that as many as half of my clients have heard something about Cyprus in the...

Many member countries of the euro-zone have had to agree to cut spending and increase taxes. Since there is no government stimulus to go around, unpopular austerity measures have placed a noticeable...

What does it mean when we learn that consumer sentiment drops to the lowest level since 12/2011? For the bulls, it means that any setback in consumer “feelings” will be offset by the...

In previous years, consumers spent more money when the value of their 401ks and the value of their homes were rising. That goes a long way toward explaining the performance of the third best...

With S&P 500 stocks approaching all-time highs daily, it may be more instructive to look at potential hedges and “diversifiers.” Here are 3 ETFs that are less likely to receive...

Over several decades, I have produced content for radio, television, magazines and web sites. And one of my longest-standing themes has been the silliness surrounding what constitutes a...

What exactly makes an exchange-traded fund in a given economic segment “cheap?” I am beginning to think that the concept is as arbitrary and as disobliging as the automatic spending cuts...

In a “Then and Now” piece, the Wall Street Journal published a number of fascinating statistics. “Then” represented October of 2007… the last time that the Dow Jones...