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THE BLUE MONEY REPORT.

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The Blue Money Report
Staying disciplined in the face of the tremendous stress created by bear markets and the daily bombardment of investment pornography delivered by Wall Street is a full time job.
~ Larry Swedroe

Welcome to the Blue Money Report

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Your Money on My Mind

Week Ending 05.17
We stand, gazing at the headlights while the Congress (the truck driver) and the strong urging of the White House (their companion), encourages acceleration, right of way or not, through the very intersection that we are crossing.

Week Ending 05.10
The economy has found that even though April unemployment points clearly in the direction of recession, it has not receded. It hasn't recovered either but the simple effort is worth noting.

Week Ending 05.03
Back in the mid to late 1990s, almost any stock-related investment you picked, it seemed, would lead you to easy success. We all know that era is now gone. The following article appears courtesy of Dr. Tom Madell

Week Ending 04.26
Dear Paul: Your article about style purity was right on and would probably go a long way in preventing mutual fund managers from trading to satisfy the word "active". And worse, to show their shareholders that they are truly active managers.

Week Ending 04.19
There are two ways of looking at the economy in the current state. One, it is feeble and is bound to get better. Or, two, it is feeble and destined to remain that way.

Week Ending 04.11
Larry Swedroe, a friend of the site and frequent contributor, graces your screen with his skillful insight at the world of investing.

Week Ending 04.05
With the war commanding the attention of the world, investors included, Congress is making decisions that will alter the landscape of deficits for decades to come.

Week Ending 03.29
Uncle Sam Falls Off The Debt Wagon
We thought his old ways he was mending
That Sam had stopped deficit spending
But cutbacks ain't easy
They make voters queasy
Now all good intentions he's bending.

Week Ending 03.22
Oil wants to cost twenty dollars a barrel and always, even after the recent spike in prices, it looks for a way to get there. Is this part of the mixed message?

Week Ending 03.15
Vince is guy who worries about his investments far too much. He loves them and hates them, coddles them and tries to predict their next move. He's cautious and he's a gambler. He is also, for the sake of this explanation, the first real gold investor I've known since I dabbled in the early 80's.

Week Ending 03.08
It begins to sound like financial pornography after a spell. Sure, there are some serious events happening around the world that have caused markets to scramble for cover. But to add to the cacophony, everybody seemed to have something to say.

Week Ending 03.01
The White House decided to take up the battle on yet another front, setting the cross hairs on an expensive but highly successful program. Creating a Hobson's Choice, one of the best ideas from the Great Society is now a target for the administration.

Week Ending 02.22
The burning question is, how do you get those fallen icons of capitalism to rise again? Innovation. And in my estimation, innovation comes without tax cuts or capital accumulation. It comes with stability.

Week Ending 02.15

Jim Bunning, the current GOP Senator from Kentucky and MLB Hall of Famer called for Greenspan's head, pitching a high, inside brushback during the chairman's testimony.

Week Ending 02.08

I sat my son down the other day, shortly after the President revealed his $2.23 billion budget and explained to him that history is created every day with this President.

Week Ending 02.01

We begin our month long anniversary with a look at college savings plans plus a look at what we thought the President should have said in his State of the Union address.

Week Ending 01.25

Special thanks to our guest columnist, Lillian Villanova, whose article on Title Lien Certificates offers us an inside look at a protected investment. Not protected from risk, but protected by those that have used this tool for decent rates of return without letting their little secret out.

Week Ending 01.18

Our three part series continued with a letter from the author of the tax proposal as well as the governor of your state. Both of them should be able to explain what the upcoming year may be like.

Week Ending 01.11

Dear Shareholder:
What you don't see is how we have changed. Our mutual fund company has become more nimble with smaller research teams that can react better with a deeper quality decisions than we have made in the past. Not only that, but our analysts are better, not different, just better.

Week Ending 01.04

What have we learned as we turned the calendar, celebrated in our own special way (I was in bed at nine on New year's Eve after watching the ball drop in New York via CNN), and made plans to move forward with the regrettable and forgettable 2002 behind us? In all likelihood, it will be very little.

Week Ending 12.28

These days as we confront Iraq
Is gold just near-term fun?
Or after Saddam gets the sack
Might there be worse to come?

Week Ending 12.21

This is a three part series that deasl with the preparation for your year-end tax adjustments, rules to live by, and some answers about tax cuts that are in the news.

Week Ending 12.14

In Italian, Sopra Fatto means over done and here refers to the simple state of the economy. After last week's cruel and unusually harsh firing of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Economic Advisor Larry Lindsey, the White House has made moves that are sure to signal what could only mean the follow through of a poorly planned economic policy.

Week Ending 12.07

Do you believe that personal finance is inherently complex or is it perceived as being so because people generally are not taught how to understand its intricacies in a logical way? One type of insurance which often becomes de riguer during economic recessions is income protection. What is your take on the value of such coverage? Do you believe sociologists are correct in predicting the eventual disappearance of the middle class in North America because of the consistent growth in personal debt? Do you believe that the pressure of keeping up with the Joneses and keeping up appearances is an unfortunate side effect of capitalism in general or the American version of free enterprise in particular? What do you believe is the appropriate age to begin teaching children about money?
Twelve good questions deserve twelve good answers.

Week Ending 11.30

This holiday shortened week finds us thankful that so far, nothing has happened

Week Ending 11.23

There was a time when we, in America, didn't realize that we lived in troubled times. I'm not necessarily talking about the underlying threat of terrorism that has permeated the fabric of daily life like the smell of a smokey nightclub on your clothes. I am not even referring to the constant posturing that seems to be Washington these days on the importance of engaging war with Iraq. I am more concerned that we have somehow lost our voice, our ability to vote with our hearts, talk with our feet and demand that our dollar mean something.

Week Ending 11.16

According to David Ansen of Newsweek, director M. Night Shyamalan understood a very old lesson in his creation of the movie "Signs" released this past summer. In the review, Mr. Ansen suggested that the young director had grasped the concept: "it's what you don't see that makes the movie scary". For me, it was the look on Mel Gibson's character's face, the ex Reverend Graham Hess, when he first saw the crop circles.

It was that same look, that same pit of the stomach emptiness (hopelessness?) feel as I sat in a darkened hotel room in Seattle on November 6th, post-election morning. Comments on the election as well the first of our series on family economics.

Week Ending 11.09

There is a point, according to the late Dr. Per Bak, when you can do no more, where the existence of a power law becomes a surprise. In mathematics, a science that attempts to predict what will happen next, the state of criticality, the point when things can change, be it imperceptibly or catastrophically, becomes the most difficult to determine.

The economy, the markets, and the politics surrounding us, are all at critical impasse. We have reached a moment in time, so singular, that the next movement could mean nothing, or everything.

Week Ending 11.02

The column on Good Advice continued this week and concluded. Our thanks to Mr. Swedroe for the information.

Week Ending 10.26

This is the beginning of our four part series on why a good advisor can add value. Guest Columnist Larry Swedroe, an advisor himself, does a good job explaining what he would do if he had your money, and how you should use his suggestions to determine whether your advisor is doing you and your investments right.

Week Ending 10.19

Why is the economy now in such dire condition? Why have the stock markets failed to respond to the monetary policy that was supposed to create a resurgence in company spending? The government first must have a policy that leans in that direction and our current administration has no such policy in place.

Week Ending 10.12

An investor, and analyst and an economist are traveling on a train. This train speeds by what looks like a black sheep standing in profile. The conversation turns to what they had just seen. The investor concludes that all sheep are black. The analyst tries to be analytical and suggested that some of the sheep are black. The economist points out the existence of at least one sheep, and at least one half of that sheep is black.

Week Ending 10.05

I, and my of my fellow writers and authors have made a decent living warning about risk and the relationship it has to reward, and to disaster. There is another opportunity presenting itself for just such a risk coupled with just such a disaster.

Week Ending 09.28

Last week, I mentioned the late Richard Feynman who had an interesting take on the path of particles. The analogy is simple. According to Mr. Feynman, the path from point A to point B is not always a straight line, but the path that remains after all other paths have been eliminated.
Let's take a look at the economic path and it's fickle if not erratic journey from point A to what is beginning to seem like a disaster at point B.

Week Ending 09.21
Toxicologists often say that the problem lies in the dose. Drinking water is good for you; drink too much and you will drown.
The three Rs of investing are simple: Risk, Reward, and Reality. To much of one can be cause your portfolio serious harm. In other words, the dose makes the poison.

Week Ending 09.14

Last week, the unemployment figure was released to much fan fare and anticipation, or as much as can be mustered these days.

Week Ending 09.07
There are numbers of great importance. There are numbers that move markets. The manufacturing number should not be one of them. This week we take a look at the housing bubble, the Value Premium, and in honor of the holiday, we take a look at the state of labor.

Week Ending 08.31
I wonder how the CBOT would react to a Insouciant Index. The double I's would mark how little we care. Greenspan could speak, but since we have never borrowed short term, we paid no heed. When economic numbers are released, or the ticker gently slides across the screen, we would be teaching our kid how to throw a frisbee... We also take a look at somegathering clouds.

Week Ending 08.23
So many conflicting pieces of information can only be the result of some sort of complicated puzzle. We need a good code breaker and we need one now.

Week Ending 08.17
In the course of conversation with an aquaintance of mine, Larry Swedroe, he decided to quote himself and sent me the following article. Was it possible to pay too close attention to how well you were doing, or better yet, how poorly? And after simultaneous meetings, Mr. Bush and Mr. Greenspan emerged with opposite views. This is part of the growing disconnect.

Week Ending 08.10
No matter what you call it, ebb and flow, give and take, push and pull, you scratch mine, i'll scratch yours, it still remains an issue of balance. Another problem that is currently causing these small starts north of the bottom, which in my opinion has not fully formed yet, is a pension fund rebalancing that is was bound to happen. Now we have to wonder, without adequate volume and the growing feeling of disconnect, does any of this really matter as the market begin to resemble a flopping fish, struggling on the dock, gasping for air, hoping that the angler believes in catch and release? Or the frying pan.

Additional Archived Columns