By SIMON CONSTABLE
Here’s some bad news. Gold investors have taken a pummeling so far this year.
The SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund, which tracks the price of bullion, is down 5.3% in the year through Monday, according to Yahoo Finance data. Read more here.
By SIMON CONSTABLE
How bad is the worst thing you’ve ever done at work? Maybe you “borrowed” a few pens and paper for your kids. Perhaps, you “fudged” some expenses. And maybe you now feel guilty about such petty thievery.
A recently published book, Retail Gangster: The INSANE, Real-Life Story of CRAZY EDDIE, will likely make that guilt disappear in a trice.
When you compare whatever you did to what happened at long-gone electronics chain Crazy Eddie, most malfeasance will likely pale into insignificance. Put another way, your infractions would likely be as noticeable as a miniature barnacle on the backside of a blue whale. Read more here.
By SIMON CONSTABLE
While soaring inflation took a bite out of your paycheck’s spending power, something else happened. The value of the dollar has surged, and by no small measure.
And it could go far higher before the rally ends, history shows. Read more here.
By SIMON CONSTABLE
China’s economy continues to look wretched.
We know this because the country’s steel production continued to drop for yet another month. It fell 6.4% in July, and is down 6.4% for the first seven months of year, according to new data from the World Steel Association.
For years China has been the world’s largest steel producer with output of 1.3 billion metric tons of the metal in 2021, or more than half of global production. In other words, it’s the world’s major producer. Read more here.
By SIMON CONSTABLE
At the beginning of the millennium, a massive stock market meltdown along with some notable examples of corporate malfeasance carved a hole in the public’s trust in the stock market. The government’s response was to enact the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which would pile a heap of new regulations on publicly traded corporations and their leaders. At the time, the move saw huge bipartisan support and was generally greeted favorably. However, in the intervening two decades, the fallout from the new laws led to some likely unintended, but rather predictable, outcomes. Read more here.
By SIMON CONSTABLE
Swiss-based commodities company Glencore has emerged as a prime beneficiary of Europe’s energy crisis.
High prices for coal, one of the company’s main offerings, are likely to persist as the war in Ukraine pushes past the six-month mark. That, in turn, could lead to double-digit gains for the stock.
“Glencore has already outperformed, and we think there is more to come,” says Tyler Broda, head of European mining RBC Capital Markets in London. “Russia’s invasion changed the calculus in the global energy balance, and coal is a very key part of that, especially in Europe.” Read more here.
