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There are a number of adages that most of us have heard such as "Money talks, it said good-bye" or

another version is "He who has the gold makes the rules." Whatever one believes, money is a means of communication, especially in the markets. Investors are often beleaguered by the daily mixing of green and red data flowing out of daily market updates. 

Heidi Moore at The Guardian has captured the entirety of understanding the market in her commentary on Gold's recent decline.

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"I grew up poor. I never had any money. I was a hobo, you know, ride the freights." ~Art Linkletter

I am late in adopting model railroading as a hobby. I do know that it is important to know which track is in use and which way the trains are heading. It is no less true when facing the task of managing market based assets.

Investing, at its core, is a simple process.  You need to determine if the train is going north or south, or just sitting on a track siding doing nothing.  Once you've found a train going north, you need only to hop aboard.  If the train starts to go south, you need to jump off.

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Hope springs eternal whenever we think about the taxes we pay and wish to go away. Almost in disbelief, we find a governor actually considering the issue!

In a year in which sweeping tax reforms are on the table in several states, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal on Thursday became the first U.S. governor to offer a detailed plan to eliminate his state's income tax, a goal embraced by some conservatives.

Seen as a potential candidate for national office, the second-term Republican proposed eliminating Louisiana's personal income tax and 

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I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They're first in with their fees and first out when there's trouble. - Chief Justice Earl Warren

Cyprus on Monday put off for another day a debate on a bank-deposit levy in the Parliament—a precondition to receiving a €10 billion ($13.07 billion) bailout—and said its banks would remain closed until Thursday, as the government sought more time to shore up support for the tax and raced to avert a collapse of its banking sector.

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Turning away Turkey from the EU would be a great, long-term - a century-long - error by Europe. ~ William Hague

Turkey is currently a holding in our Global Opportunity Portfolio (TUR)

Istanbul has been in the midst of a fantastic transformation from an impoverished population to one of affluence. Popping up among the beautiful Ottoman mosques, Byzantine churches, palaces and bazaars are ultra-contemporary art sculptures, shopping malls and lush landscaping. This blend of ancient with modern fits well with the young, vibrant and culturally diverse crowd that hangs out in the local cafes, shops and galleries.

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While the floodwaters of the “Frankenstorm” Hurricane Sandy are receding, many remain without power.  This was the biggest natural disaster to hit North America in years, and it was the first time since the 1888 blizzard that Wall Street was closed for multiple days due to the weather.  Another nor’easter lies off the coast with hurricane potential possibly inflicting more damage before Sandy’s impact has been cleaned up.

The damage may well be in the tens of billions of dollars, and this doesn’t fully take into account economic losses due to business disruptions and shattered consumer confidence...

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October brings Halloween and possibly ghoulish trick or treaters to your door. Visiting the local haunted house may bring you face to face with a zombie. If it doesn’t give you a nightmare, perhaps you are losing sleep over our seemingly “zombie economy.”  We know that a zombie is an animated corpse that is not quite living but not quite dead.  Is this really the condition of our economy? Simply, yes - but this requires a little explaining. 

Let’s start with the banking system...

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David Wessel at the Wall Street Journal reports that housing has finally bottomed with an up tick in some prices. Further, 44 of 47 analysts agree that housing will no longer... 

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How low can interest rates go? No one really knows but the Fed is continuing its current policies hoping to 

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After two years of can kicking, Greece is really a fly on the wall. Spain on the other hand is a threat to European demoncracy. After WWII, the US guided the construction of the German constitution. If Chancellor Merkel...  

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