Forbes Video: How Smart People Mess Up Commodities

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Why is it that so many seasoned investors mess up when they decide to enter the commodities market? Otherwise smart people seem to lose all reason and are frequently left with a handful of nothing.

I sat done recently with veteran commodity markets investor Jeff Christian to discuss this matter. His experience goes back decades to the 1970s commodities boom and then he survived the two-decade bear market which lasted from 1980 through the turn of the millennium.

Watch, listen and learn in the following video…

U.S. News: Silver Prices May Be Ready to Shine

By SIMON CONSTABLE

Is it time to add a little silver to the mix in your portfolio? Investors doing so will need to be cautious and patient at the same time.

The market has certainly bounced considerably recently following a brutal years-long bear market where the value of the metal fell dramatically.

The slide in prices started in early 2011, when the price fell from $48.70 a troy ounce to $13.71 by late last year, according to data from the London Bullion Market Association. Prices have subsequently rebounded to more than $16 an ounce as investors piled in.

"We are seeing very strong investment demand and that makes me think silver prices can move higher," says Jeff Christian, managing partner at consulting firm CPM Group in New York, and a multi-decade veteran of the commodity markets.

Read more here.

Forbes: Is This The Worst Ever Bad Boss Behavior?

By SIMON CONSTABLE

This just in: The race to be the world’s worst boss just got some very stiff competition. It’s so bad, it may just take the cake.

I’m not sure whether the perpetrator is naturally gifted with appalling behavior, or whether whoever committed this latest atrocity of workplace malfeasance is studiously following my continuing series of becoming an appalling manager.

Either way, it makes your job of reaching the goal of being that diabolical non-leader much harder.

If you think I’m joking, here’s what happened?

Forbes: An Office Full Of Fear -- The Worst Boss Method

By SIMON CONSTABLE

[Part 16 of a continuing series on how you too can become an appalling manager.]

When employees are anxious or even scared they do their jobs badly or sometimes not at all. They mentally cower. You might find that they just stare blankly at their computer screens for hours on end or that they make many stupid mistakes.

As a potential “worst boss possible” you need to cultivate that environment of terror in the workplace.

How do you do that without running afoul of the increasingly politically correct workplace? It’s tricky, but doable. Here is a step-by-step guide to getting the job done.

U.S. News: Those So-Called Boring Stocks Are Pretty Exciting

By SIMON CONSTABLE

With summer just around the corner, it's easy to yearn for a trip to the beach and perhaps a ride on the roller coaster, like the famed Cyclone at Brooklyn's Coney Island. Whatever else it may be, the Cyclone will certainly give riders a thrill. If that floats your boat, then go for it. But what you shouldn't do is to seek out such thrills from investing.

Many people do, and it's a mistake. There are better, less stressful alternatives. Read more here.

TheStreet: Millennial Educators: Add Finance Classes for Elementary School Kids

By SIMON CONSTABLE

So much for the reputation of millennials being slackers. 

Teachers who were born between 1980 and 2000 are far more likely than their older peers to want financial literacy education added to the elementary school curriculum. 

It's not by a small margin either, with 62% of the younger group advocating the change, versus 51% of non-millennials. The older group tends to believe such education should be conducted primarily at home. Read more here.

pixabay free images, CC BY-SA 4.0, 

via Wikimedia Commons

Forbes: The Three Questions Bad Managers Ask Themselves Each Day

By SIMON CONSTABLE

At business school, our professors taught us that we’d be much more likely to achieve our goals if every day we just did something small towards meeting them.

It was as simple as asking yourself the same question every day: “What one thing can I do to inch myself closer to where I want to be?” If you keep asking that and then doing something in that vein, then eventually you’ll get there. That’s the theory and pretty much the practice.

The same is true for candidates to be the “world’s worst boss.” To make this easier for you I have developed three questions for you to ask yourself at the beginning of each workday. Read more here.

Photo by Jordan Bebek on Unsplash