Editor’s Note: When a mountain of debt builds up over the course of many decades — as we have seen over the past 40 years or so — you wind up with huge amounts of government spending to keep economies going, even as central banks conspire to inflate the debt away. In today’s “best of” series, we cover two must-know terms…

Today, many of us already think of the COVID-19 pandemic as another tragedy that “will live in infamy.” And while the pandemic and Pearl Harbor are very different in many ways, one thing is clear. Historians will look back at both as the beginning of considerable changes to our society and economy.

The 60-40 portfolio has been a cornerstone of retirement strategy for decades. Around the United States and the world, hundreds of millions of retirees have had, or still have currently, some version of a 60-40 portfolio.  For American retirees, though, a serious problem looms. The 60-40 portfolio is on its last legs. It is simply going to stop working as…

The way to build wealth in markets is to do things that are smart and safe. If you develop a playbook of smart and safe investing decisions, you can return to that playbook over and over again. The repeat application of smart and safe habits is a wealth-accumulation process. It’s valuable to create a process like this and then stick…

Over the past few days, the level of hedge fund short interest in GameStop fell sharply. Or did it? On the evening of Monday, Feb. 1, Bloomberg reported that “GameStop Short Interest Plunges in Sign Traders Are Covering.” Two separate research firms, IHS Markit and S3 Partners, reported the drop: “Short interest in the video-game retailer plummeted to 39% of…

It’s rough out there — not just for the United States, but the entire world. The global economy is expected to face its worst recession in 80 years, according to a new Global Economics Prospects report published by the World Bank. This means that, to find a comparably bad recession year for the global economy — all countries across the…

I’m going to tell you exactly what stagflation is and give you context to defang this economic boogeyman. And I’m going to introduce you to a strategy that’s perfectly suited to the environment we face now.

I warned TradeSmith Daily readers back in May about this rare simultaneous downtrend in both stocks and bonds. It hasn’t gotten any better since then. And bonds in particular could be a big drag for your investment portfolio going forward.

The theory was that stocks and bonds are typically non-correlated asset classes. That’s fancy Wall Street jargon for: When stocks zig, bonds zag. And that was mostly true for many decades. But not anymore.

On Friday, I mentioned the VIX, which measures implied volatility for the S&P 500. I want to pick up where we left off and talk about how implied volatility impacts options contracts.