Pacific Park Financial Inc.

There may be 525,600 minutes in a normal calendar year. However, there have been 788,400 minutes since the S&P 500 first hit 2050 in November of 2014; there have been 1,314,000 minutes since the...

Is the U.S. economy really in great shape? The U.S. Federal Reserve does not seem to think so.They started the year with an intention of raising the overnight lending rate four times – from...

Total business sales – sales by wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers – have fallen 5% from their July 2014 peak of $1.365 trillion. At $1.296 trillion for January 2016, total business...

One way to gauge the well-being of stock assets is to examine all of the 1900-plus stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange. We can do this by evaluating the progress of the NYSE Composite...

My grandfather was never rich. He did have some money in the 1920s, but he lost most of it at the tail end of the decade. Some of it disappeared in the stock market crash in October of 1929. The rest...

The S&P 500 notched an all-time record high of 2130 on May 21, 2015. That was 10 months ago. Since that date, the popular gauge has suffered two faith-rattling corrections – a 12% decline in...

What do these 10 companies – Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), Macy`s Inc (NYSE:M), Kohl`s Corporation (NYSE:KSS), Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ:SHLD), Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), Best Buy Co Inc...

The most common definition of a bear market in stocks? A major index needs to fall 20% from a high-water mark. And while that is precisely what has happened for most gauges of stock health –...

Some are interpreting the 9% bounce off of the 1812 lows for the S&P 500 as a sign that all is right with stocks once again. Indeed, many may view the S&P 500 trading at 1978 on the first day...

What if investors had a way to determine the extent of “stress” in the financial system? And what if those stress levels could tell investors whether or not riskier assets (e.g., stocks,...

When a country’s central bank reduces its interests rates below zero (i.e., “goes negative”), the action should boost the relative appeal of stock assets. That is the theory....

Some stock sectors thrive when an economic recovery gains traction. Industrials tend to perform well due to increases in the demand for capital goods. In a similar vein, consumer discretionary...

The U.S. economy continues to show signs of frailty. U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at a feeble pace of just 0.7% in the 4th quarter. In the same vein, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP forecast...

Are corporations in great shape? Three consecutive quarters of declines in earnings suggest that they are not. Worse yet, record high leverage coupled with close-to-record low interest coverage...

Businesses, consumers and the federal government have taken on enormous amounts of debt since the Great Recession. Optimists argue that total debt is irrelevant; that is, they believe the only thing...

A manufacturing recession doesn’t matter… until it does. Consider industrial production. For the third straight month, industrial production, which includes mining, utilities, as well as...