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@theMarket: Wash, Rinse and Repeat
By Bill Schmick,
08:20AM / Saturday, September 27, 2014

The dollars running, stocks are falling, bond prices are jumping while commodities are tanking. Welcome to another week in the financial markets. Expect more of the same in October.

As September, the worst month of the year for markets, comes to a close (next Tuesday) volatility appears to be rising. Stay strapped down, however, because we are not through the woods quite yet.

Historically, the first two weeks of October can get pretty hairy. Some of us might recall October of 1987 as an example.

So many of us have nudged up our exposure to the equity markets this year in pursuit of more and more gains that any sell-off scares the bejesus out of us. The 1-2 percent

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The Independent Investor: Is Wall Street Responsible for Climate Change?
By Bill Schmick,
10:57PM / Friday, September 26, 2014

Monday's Wall Street sit-in by a few hundred radicals would lead us to believe that Wall Street is responsible for the present changes in the world's climate. Maybe so, but remember this, what Wall Street has done, it can also undo.

Readers know that I am no apologist for big business, the financial community or Wall Street. As for climate change, I am clearly on the side of those 300,000-plus people who participated in the People's Climate March on Sunday. The earth is in jeopardy today thanks to carbon emissions generated by fossil fuels.

The simplistic approach, preferred by this "Flood Wall Street" crowd, condemns Corporate America, Capitalism in

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@theMarket: Waiting on the Fed
By Bill Schmick,
10:36AM / Saturday, September 13, 2014

It should be clear to you by now that in the United States the Federal Reserve Bank is calling the shots in our financial markets. To a lesser extent this phenomena is happening all over the world. As such, the markets did little this week because the Fed doesn't meet again until Tuesday.

The S&P 500 Index has simply been trading in a tight range between 1,970 and 2,000. Although stocks are marking time, there has been some movement elsewhere in the financial spectrum. Take the dollar for example. The greenback is on a tear against most other currencies, but specifically the Yen and the Euro. As the dollar has strengthened gold, silver and oil have plummeted.

This is

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The Independent Investor: The United States of Scotland?
By Bill Schmick,
05:38PM / Thursday, September 11, 2014

Will the ghost of William Wallace finally see the British thrown out of his country once and for all? If the latest polls on the outcome of the Sept. 18th referendum on Scottish Independence are any indication, Scots are in a dead heat over the political and economic future of their country.

Last weekend, for the first time, polls showed that the majority of voters in Scotland were leaning toward independence. Since then new polls show the public vacillating between yes and no on a daily basis. The news has shocked the world and galvanized the three major British political parties to implement a no-holds-barred program of damage control.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberal

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The Independent Investor: Europe Follows the U.S. lead
By Bill Schmick,
05:23PM / Thursday, September 04, 2014

The European Central Bank has lagged behind both the U.S. and Japanese counterparts in their efforts to stimulate the economies of the European Union. Today, they attempted to address that fault before Europe sinks into a recession.

Both bond and stock market investors have been anticipating additional stimulus for several weeks. ECB President Mario Draghi did not disappoint. He said the bank would begin purchasing asset-backed securities and covered bonds, which are investments based on loans to corporations and residential mortgages. The hope is that others will now also jump on board and buy them too.

If that occurs, then European banks would have the courage to make more

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