Market News

To raise or not to raise? That has been the question for most of the past few years if you are a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC is the arm of the Federal Reserve Bank that votes on the direction of interest rates. The challenge is that while the U.S. economy shows signs of strength, the global economy has pockets of both weakness and extraordinarily low interest rates. Because of our relatively strong economy, raising interest rates here at home has been talked about a lot in the past few years. Why might this matter to you?

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With only data on the services industry last week the markets fixated on Apple's product announcement and for most of the week did not pay as much attention to the upcoming Fed meeting as I expected. On Thursday the ECB decided to make no policy changes which may put them off until December.wa9-9aThis was a bit surprising since inflation in the Euro zone (see chart below) is still low and well below the target zone of 2%. Many US economists and many of the know nothing representative in DC continue to criticize not the original efforts to fight the recession but fight all easing efforts. They apparently do not understand that there is no clear way to defeat deflation. If they look at what has happened in Japan they should be worried.The market's opened Friday with strong fears of higher rates which pushed the major market indices down 1% by mid-day? There are many that have been waiting for a reason to sell and this may turn the investor sentiment even more negative on stocks.According to AAII there was little change again last week in the sentiment of individual investors. The bullish % was up 1.1% to 29.7% while the bearish % dropped 3% to 28.5%. The VIX has stayed low until Friday when it rose sharply and two consecutive closes above 15 is needed to suggest that a bottom is in place.

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When planning for retirement, most investors try to split their assets between stocks (higher risk, higher return) and federal U.S. government bonds (lower risk, and these days, much lower return).

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Iranians took the streets on Friday in protest against Saudi Arabia before Hajj, an annual pilgrimage for Muslims to Meca, worsening already soured Iranian-Saudi relations, possibly making it even harder for OPEC to reach any kind of oil production freeze this year.

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Today I’m going to take you inside an ignored corner of the market where you can still find cheap stocks throwing off quarterly dividends that grow..

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How do you feel about the €13 billion European Commission (EC) fine against Apple? Are you glad to see 'justice done' to the alleged big multinational tax cheats? Do you care? Either way do you care as much about this as you do about Britain's EU Referendum result to exit Europe?

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It's been a while since I last looked at junk-bond yields so I was flabbergasted at one point last week when I checked FRED, the research arm of the Federal Reserve. The yield on the Bank of America Merrill Lynch US High Yield Effective Yield was down to just a tad above 6%. I get that interest rates are low.

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For years, investors have looked at Agrium and Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan as the two fertilizer giants most likely to be a part of industry consolidation. After all, Potash fended off a hostile bid from commodity giant BHP Billiton in 2010, and that year Agrium failed in an effort to take out competitor CF Industries.

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Seth Klarman (Trades, Portfolio), a conservative investor who runs Boston-based Baupost Management, again added to his growing position PBF Energy (NYSE:PBF), the fourth-largest independent oil refiner in the U.S. – two spaces below Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)'s refiner Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX)

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Where food-focused companies ranging from Campbell Soup to Supervalu have been reporting lower-than-expected earnings and outlooks in recent weeks, United Natural Foods is bucking the trend. The organic and natural foods distributor reported fourth quarter earnings were higher than what Wall Street was expecting to see, sending the company's shares for some after-hours gains.

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