Street Fight: How a New Active Wear Brand Takes on the Big Guys

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Activewear company Vuori Clothing may have launched just two years ago, but it has already morphed from its original focus.

The California-based firm started as a brand focused on yoga wear for men, and was (and still is) heavily reliant on using hyper-local marketing efforts to build brand awareness. Former D&G model Joe Kudla founded the company in 2015 at which time Nikki Sakelliou joined as the VP of Marketing. Read more here.

Funk Dooby from Kent, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, 

via Wikimedia Commons

P.J. Media: Despite Legislative Setbacks, Trump Winning War on Regulations

By SIMON CONSTABLE

President Trump might not be winning when it comes to shuffling legislation through Congress, but the same cannot be said when it comes to regulatory rollback.

On the latter matter, his actions set a historic precedent. That is likely good for the economy and may help explain the surging stock market.

“There’s a massive movement on regulations in the first few months of Trump,” says David Ranson, director of research at HCWE & Co.

How massive? As Mr. Trump might say, it’s Bigly. Read more here.

U.S. News: What Changes In Emerging Markets Mean for Your Investments

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Recent tweaks emerging market indexes and economic growth rates show the changing nature of investing in the category.

The changes this year are part of a process that will likely continue over the coming years, so it behooves savvy investors to pay close attention. Read more here.

P.J. Media: Fed Suggestion That Hurricanes are Good for Economy? Hardly

By SIMON CONSTABLE

The Federal Reserve is starting to look as absurd as a character from Alice in Wonderland.

Earlier this month, an official of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggested that the hurricanes that devastated Florida and the metropolitan Houston area would be good for the economy. Read more here.

Middle East Eye: Iran nuclear deal may be dead within weeks

By SIMON CONSTABLE

The Iran nuclear deal could be dead by mid-October, and the potential collapse of the agreement, which lifted sanctions on Iran last year, may send crude prices higher by $10 a barrel.

This is the assessment of one analyst who both understands how the politics of Washington work and also has deep knowledge of the global energy market. Read more here.

Photo by Johannes Daleng on Unsplash

U.S. News: Why Global Stocks Should Surge From Here

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Global stocks look set to surge from here.

It's because they are about to pass a significant earnings milestone. Here's what's happening and why it's good news for equity investors.

Earnings per share for all the public companies in the world could be about to surpass $30, according to a recent report from brokerage company Charles Schwab. The firm bases that figure on an analysis of consensus EPS estimates for the next 12 months for the stocks in the MSCI All Country World Index. Read more here.

Forbes: U.K. Politician Offers Cure For Housing That Is Worse Than The Disease

By SIMON CONSTABLE

A leading British politician just announced a policy that would be worse than the economic disease its designed to solve.

The man in question is Sir. Vince Cable, leader of the U.K. Liberal Democrat party who has taken aim at Britain's appalling housing crisis. Read more here.

Forbes: Forget Full-time Work, Gigs Can Be Safer

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Hardly a week goes by without someone lamenting the rise of the so-called "gig economy" where freelancers cobble together income from multiple sources. The common complaints are that there's no security in freelance work and that such workers are exploited.  The frequent call to action is that companies should create more permanent jobs because that would give workers more security.

Such claims and calls to action defy logic.

Consider the following here.

Forbes: Napoleon Hill's Lessons On Creativity

By SIMON CONSTABLE

A lot of business people confuse what it means to be creative. They frequently talk about creativity as if artists and filmmakers are the only ones endowed with such ability in significant quantity and quality.

While this view is commonplace, it doesn't make the observation accurate.

Step forward iconic self-help author Napoleon Hill with a previously obscure book How to Own Your Own Mind. It is scheduled for republication September 19. It was "first compiled in 1941," and then forgotten, according to the publisher. Whatever happened it's back and worth a read. More here.

John Batchelor Show: Remembering 9/11. Bull on Turkey and gold. Bear on Bitcoin.

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Photo by LunarHunter,

CC BY-SA 4.0, 

via Wikimedia Commons

U.S. News: When Should I Sell Stocks?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

When is it a good time to sell stocks? There is certainly a case to do so now.

The major indexes have surged these past two years. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 25.3 percent in the 24 months, while the Dow Jones industrial average grew 33.3 percent. That equates to annualized returns of approximately 12 and 15 percent, respectively. None of the figures include dividends. Read more here.

Middle East Eye: Investor love affair with Turkey may end in tears

By SIMON CONSTABLE

The recent war of words between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shows there’s no love lost between the two leaders. 

But the same cannot be said about investors who have become increasingly captivated by Turkish stocks over the past year. The vast sums of money flowing into the market are a sign of a solid economy, but there are growing concerns that things are becoming unbalanced, analysts say. Read more here.

U.S. News: Bonds Are Ideal For Balancing a Portfolio

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Even people who understand the stock market sometimes slip when it comes to bonds.

It makes sense because to most people fixed-income investing equates to math, which can be scary. Still, it doesn't have to be hard, and such securities are usually a vital part of a portfolio. Read more here.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

Forbes: Why Do We Worship Nasty Bosses?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Mean Men: The Perversions of America's Self-made Man by Mark Lipton, published Tuesday, is a long overdue book. How long overdue? I'd say at least a quarter century.

As the title suggests, the topic is the character of the entrepreneur and how unpleasant such individuals can be in the work place. Perhaps more than that, its topic is the dichotomy between the hero status given to the most successful entrepreneurs and the diabolical behavior that some such individuals exhibit. Read more here.

Forbes: Twelve Reasons Why Gold is Better Than Bitcoin

By SIMON CONSTABLE

The world has gone wild for the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin.

One Bitcoin would set you back $4,425 at the time of writing. That's up from less than $600 a year ago, according to CoinBase.

But a word of caution. Gold is still a better bet for anyone who wants to own a time-tested asset.

Here's why:

WSJ: What is GARP?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

In a recent report—“The Death of Value?”—Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs poses an important question about an out-of-favor investing style.

Its conclusion seems to be that value investing isn’t dead. Rather, it has morphed into a stock-picking strategy known as GARP, or “growth at a reasonable price.” Read more here.

WSJ: Could Some VIX-Related Funds Go ‘Poof’ in a Day?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Some exchange-traded funds related to the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, could vanish just when traders might want them most.

The VIX, also known as the fear gauge, measures the cost of buying insurance against a drop in the broad market. At issue are funds that seek to profit when short-term VIX futures contracts fall in value. The VIX itself isn’t an investible product and the VIX futures don’t exactly track the VIX, but they are closely correlated. Read more here.

Tigerzeng, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons